Flint nudged it a few more times, entranced as ever with its bobbing, until he realized that the hazel-eyed woman was waiting for an answer and the little boy was lunging for the toy. The dwarf handed the bird back to the youngster and nodded to the woman.

"You are Flint Fireforge," she stated. It wasn't a question.

Flint nodded again.

"I would like to buy some toys from you," she said abruptly.

"Well," Flint said, drawing it out, "that could be a problem."

"Why?" she demanded.

The dwarf turned and leaned one haunch against the oaken table. He rested one hand on his knee and looked past her toward the oaken hutch. "First of all, I don't sell toys. I give them away. Second, I never sell to strangers."

Her sharp features fell into an offended mien, and she turned so fast that the toddler practically swung off his feet. "Well, I guess that's that, then, Master Fireforge," she said, and reached to open the door.

Flint took a deep breath of the shop's metallic air, then spoke just as the woman's hand grasped the door handle. "Of course, if you would bother to introduce yourself, you wouldn't be a stranger," he said mildly, examining the nails on his left hand and using a sliver of iron to clean out the forge dirt he found encrusted there.

The woman stopped, her back to Flint; she appeared to be thinking. Then she swiveled, eyes snapping. "Ailea," she said brusquely. "Eld Ailea to those who know me well." "Eld" meant "aunt" in the elven tongue.

Flint inclined his head. "And I am Flint Fireforge."

"I know th-" she started to say, then sighed and waited.

"And," he continued as though she hadn't spoken, "while I wouldn't sell toys to a stranger, I might be inclined to give some to a friend."

She sighed again, but a faint smile found its way onto her thin lips. She resembled an Abanasinian cat, offered some prize it had long coveted. But her words showed only exasperation. "I'd heard you could be like this. Master Fire-forge," she commented.

Flint swiftly crossed before her and opened the hutch to display the dozens of toys he had brought with him from a winter's worth of carving in Solace. Some had not survived being jounced on the back of a tylor-panicked mule, but most were in fine condition. He gazed at the contents of the hutch, selected a whistle that was too big for the toddler to swallow, and handed it to the little boy, who blew such a ferocious blast on it that the dwarf immediately wished he'd chosen something else. Flint's thick hands continued to move over the toys, plucking out one here, one there, until more than a dozen rested in the front pockets of his loose leather tunic.

Minutes later, the toddler was seated happily on the end of Flint's cot, arranging lines of carved animals on the dwarf's clothes chest and intermittently tooting the whistle. Flint waited for an iron kettle of water to come to a boil on a hook over the forge's fire, and Eld Ailea measured into a tea strainer a tantalizing mixture of dried orange peel, cinnamon pieces, and black tea. She paused to sniff the potpourri. "Wonderful," she said in a low voice, and sighed. "It reminds me of a drink my family used to make when I was a child."

"Where did you grow up?" Flint asked automatically. The spiced tea he carried with him from Solace every trip was more a human specialty than an elven one.

"In Caergoth," she said. When Flint raised an eyebrow at her, she continued, "My father was banished by the Qualinesti."

"For what?" Flint demanded without thinking. The elves almost never banished anybody; the crime must have been deemed one of the most menacing possible under Qualinesti law.

"He led a movement to open Qualinesti to outsiders," she explained. "He was banished. The family, of course, went with him. Eventually, we settled in Caergoth, where the family had distant relations." Human ones, Flint guessed; that's where the link came in. "I trained as a midwife with a group of clerics, and when I grew old enough, I returned here."

"Why?" The water was boiling, and Flint swung the kettle away from the fire. Catching up a thick woolen sock- practically clean, he figured, having been worn only one day-to use as a potholder, he hauled the water over to the table and poured it over the tea leaves in a heavy ceramic pot.

An expression of sadness slipped across Eld Ailea's face but was gone so quickly that Flint couldn't be sure it had ever been there. "I had no friends but humans, and by the time I'd finally grown up, they'd all died of old age. I know something of weak forms of magic-potions to ease the pain of labor, illusions to amuse children, and the like-but I could do nothing to halt the aging and the death of my childhood friends."

Flint wondered whether among those long-dead friends was a special man, a human lover, whose passing occasioned the sadness that pooled in the old elf's eyes. Sitting at the table and mindlessly moving the strainer through the tea, she looked away and said matter-of-factly, "My parents had died. There were few other elves in Caergoth. I was lonely, so I came back here."

A mist of orange and cinnamon scent wafted from the thick teapot. Over on Flint's cot, the toddler slept sprawled on his back, a wooden cow in one fist and a toy sheep in the other. Eld Ailea spoke again, suddenly cheerful. "I fit in better here than I did there."

She looked up and must have seen the sympathy in Flint's eyes, because she bristled, her greenish brown eyes growing hard within the corona of silvery braid. "Don't you feel sorry for me, Master Flint Fireforge," she said. "I chose the path I walked."

He cast around for something to say.

"You're sure I can't interest you in some ale?" Flint said.

Eld Ailea leveled a severe look at him. "I'm babysitting," was all she said.

They sat and sipped their drinks for a short time, then Flint reflected that, after all, it was nearly lunchtime. So he got out some quith-pa and sliced off a few chunks of cheese, and Eld Ailea retrieved plates from the cupboard. Flint had been to Caergoth on one of his travels, so they talked about the city. It seemed Eld Ailea had left it before Flint had been born. Then Flint demonstrated how he'd made the toddler's bobbing bird toy, and he made her a present of one just like it. And Eld Ailea told him about some of the babies she'd delivered during several centuries-"I delivered the Speaker of the Sun and both his brothers," she said proudly-and how she had retired as a midwife but continued to care for people's infants and small children. "I love babies," she explained, showing animation for the first time. "That's why I came for the toys."

All in all, it was a comfortable way to spend a spring day.

Eventually they finished the last of the cheese and bread. Eld Ailea rinsed their plates and put them away, and Flint went back to work on Tanis's sword-after moving the sleeping elf child from the cot, too near the forge, to a spot on Eld Ailea's lap. The tap of the hammer, while it initially roused the child, ultimately served to lull him more deeply into slumber. The old woman sat quietly, humming to the youngster, sipping one last cup of tea and watching the progress on the sword. An hour passed, and Flint looked up to see Eld Ailea asleep, too, one green-sleeved arm leaning against the table and her cheek resting on the little boy's head. The dwarf smiled and continued working.

The tin chimes on the oaken door of the shop sounded again, and Flint hastily looked up, preparing to hurtle himself at the door and shove Tanis back outside. The sword was beginning to take shape, the blade smooth and tapered, the handguard a fantasy of curving, shimmering steel. Flint heaved a sigh of relief as a robed figure stepped into the shop.

"I didn't interrupt something, did I, Master Fireforge?" Miral asked, a quizzical smile on his thin mouth. His voice, normally raspy, had hoarsened to a whisper. After a sharp glance, he nodded at Eld Ailea, who was slowly awakening. On her lap, her babysitting charge shifted and opened blue eyes.