The Pearl had been intended for my brother. Devron was fourteen, just beginning to grow broad in the shoulders, when Great-grandfather fell ill. No one knew exactly how many winters the old man had survived, but this one would be his last. He called us to him one blustery morning, when the clouds were more black than gray, and sleet rattled against every loose-paned window.

As usual, Devron could not be found. He was probably hiding in the stables. My mother and father and uncles stood around Great-grandfather's bed, the headboard carved with the scene of a hunt, the stag at bay, yet fighting on, the dogs lying dead at its feet. The rows of candles from the night before had almost burned out. I remember watching one and then another gutter into curls of smoke, still tinged with the honey scent of beeswax. I was, I suppose, a little afraid of Great-grandfather, who was wrinkled and gruff and had never so much as patted me on the head in all my ten years.

I could hear Great-grandfather's rattling breaths in between the gusts of wind outside. As the soft golden light of the candles died away, his skin turned whiter. I had the fanciful thought that when the last one had burned itself out, his life would end.

A feeling welled up in my child's breast, of loss and tenderness and a great yearning to speak before it was too late. I had been standing beside my mother, the way I did when I was little and hid myself in her full skirts. Something drew me forward. Only two candles remained, and one flickered, leaping and struggling as if the storm outside had penetrated the room.

Great-grandfather had closed his eyes, but now the lids jerked open. His eyes were full of lightning and clouds and things I could not name. His lips - so withered, so dry! - moved. I thought I heard him speak a name, but whether it was Devron's or my father's or that of someone dead long before I was born, I could not tell.

The next to the last candle went out. The stone walls shivered and grew still, expectant. My father and uncles waited, motionless, hardly breathing. I felt the pressure of my mother's fingers on my shoulder.

Again the old man struggled to speak. Tears sprang to the corners of his eyes. A pain shot through the center of my own chest.

Great-grandfather lifted one hand, one poor bony hand that quivered like a twig in a gale. The skin was all dried out and mottled with huge liver-colored spots.

No one moved.

Suddenly I could bear it no longer, that he should be calling out, reaching out, and no one would answer him. No one held him in loving arms. He had never been kind to me, but he was hurt and lost and alone.

I broke away from my mother's grasp and rushed to him. What did I know? I took his hand between both of my own.

"Great-grandpapa!" I cried out in my child's voice. "I am here!"

At first, he did not seem to know me, but when I pressed my lips against his shriveled cheek, he roused. "Is it you? Is it time at last?"

"Yes, it's me."

"Rayzel, no!" My mother's voice seemed to come from far away.

Before anyone could stop him, Great-grandfather shifted on the bed, raising up enough to slip a long silvery chain over his head. I had seen the chain before, glinting through the opened neckline of his shirt, and assumed it was some sort of priest's medallion, such as those old people wore for protection against joint-bane and fever. What dangled from it, however, was no slip of metal, but a glowing marble set in a cage of silver wire. I caught a flash of bronze in its depths, red like fire.

Then, with a grip so fast and hard it left me breathless, Great-grandfather pulled me close and looped the chain around my neck. Heat flared though the layers of my dress and shawl, as if the pendant, whatever it was, had been plucked from a fire.

One of the men - my second oldest uncle, I thought - shouted something, but I could not understand. All I could hear, above the pounding of my heart, was the whispered sigh that came from Great-grandfather.

"It is done, then."

The last candle went out.