The Prodigal Troll by Charles Coleman Finlay

when he'll have the complete day to settle affairs there, instead of at dusk tonight. I came to inquire if you and your niece might join me for the evening meal?" Yvon felt like a man sinking in quickmud. "We ..."
    Sebius stood formally, right arm across the waist, left arm extended, as a woman did at the threshold of her house. "The campfire is my home tonight. M'lady Pwllya is invited with her child and escort to partake of the best my humble table has to offer."
    Xaragitte straightened her shoulders, flipping Claye around in her arms to face the eunuch. "We are honored to accept your invitation, m'lady."
    Sebius clapped. "Most, most excellent. Now I beg you, yet again, to excuse me."
    Xaragitte glared at the eunuch's back as she hurried away. "I hate her," she said, rocking the child on her arm. "She means to rob Lady Gruethrist."
    The experience with the mammut seemed to have changed her attitude. "Let's just eat her food and sleep a bit," Yvon said, "so that we'll have the strength we need when we must escape."
    "I'm strong enough now to do whatever must be done," she replied. "Let me know when you are too."
    She turned her back on him and carried Claye away.

    At sunset, they sat a little apart from the herders on a hillside above the river and ate porridge mixed with strips of meat so salty it was impossible to tell what animal it had once been. Yvon scooped his into his mouth with his fingers and thought it delicious, eating slowly to be gentle on his recovering stomach. Xaragitte set her bowl down to play a clapping game with the baby.

    Claye leaned his head back, his mouth as wide as a nestling bird's. He wagged it from side to side and said "Ahhhhhh!" Xaragitte opened her mouth all the way too and leaned toward him, pulling his hands to the sides and pretending to chomp on his nose. He giggled, and she clapped his pudgy hands again.

    Yvon watched them, thinking about the rhyme. Any story told about two gods in any of their guises was always, really, about the third. The goddess Bwnte might bake the moon, and her son Sceatha, god of war, might spit it out. But in another story, Verlogh, god of justice, gathered up the fallen crumbs and planted them in the ground where they sprouted up as people.
    Claye closed his mouth more with each repetition, imitating his nurse. When his lips were tight shut, she kissed his mouth and told him he was a good boy. He tucked his chin into his chest, grinning, but she set him down to rub her chest just above her heart. Claye grabbed a handful of porridge from Xaragitte's bowl and flung it on the ground.
    Yvon started up. "Hey! Don't let him waste that!"
    A hand fell on his shoulder and he jumped. Sebius's high voice said, "No, no, no, that's fine. With such a lovely child, how can anything be wasteful?"
    Xaragitte sucked Claye's hand clean in her mouth and wiped it on her skirt. She stood, lifting the little boy. "I'm glad to see you, m'lady Sebius," she said, without a trace of gladness, "so that I may thank you thrice for your hospitality. But the day has tired us, and we should sleep."
    There was a different imperial plural in her voice, thought Yvon: the royal we of every mother and her child. It did not include him.
    "Of course," the eunuch chirped. "Is there anything additional I may do?"
    "You've done too much already," she replied. Taking her blankets from the pack, she went a short distance away. Yvon watched her go, wondering what had happened to the cheerful woman he had once watched from afar in the castle.
    Sebius lay her staff on the ground and sat beside Yvon with her own bowl of food. "I see how she looks at you, and how you look at her."
    Yvon jumped a second time. "What do you mean?"
    Sebius smiled around a mouthful of food. "It is obvious that you are not her uncle, and also that the child is not yours. You stand like a beggar outside her door."
    A saying among men, out of place on the lips of a eunuch: A woman's body is her home-only those that she invites inside