Edris knew the smell of an orchard full of birds before he saw one.
He had been nine when a fruiting grove opened beside the camp road. His father had stolen an hour from duty to carry him there. For days afterward Edris had found pale petals in the turnups of his trousers. His mother was still alive then. She had said the birds looked as if someone had tried to pack a whole spring into a walnut.
He remembered that sentence more clearly than her face.
The grove before him was smaller. Birds crowded its branches, stripping the moth eggs from red skins. A man in a leather apron stood beneath a tree with a bowl of grubs. When he saw the riders he put the bowl on a stump and came forward.
“Orchard’s not for sale.”
“I had hoped to buy lunch,” Edris said.
The man looked at the escort and then at the covered wagon behind them. “For all those?”
“We have provisions. I meant for myself and Sister Osha.”
