That evening, back in her cottage as she curled up in her favourite chair, she heard the wind blowing outside, steadily growing in strength. There was a storm coming. A chilly breeze was already pushing its way in through tiny gaps around the doors and windows and she pulled the shawl tighter around her shoulders to keep warm. She had lit an oil lamp, standing on the small table beside her, and its yellow light illuminated the pages of the book she was reading just enough for her to make out the crabby, handwritten text.

     She owned nine books, all of which had belonged to her mother, and some of them had belonged to her grandmother before her. Family heirlooms passed down from generation to generation. Each one an individual, hand crafted work of art in this world that still lacked the printing press. The one she was reading, angling the pages so that they caught the light better, was a collection of the sayings and life experiences of Goodwife Gelda, an old woman whose daughter had been a friend of her mother. In the passage Tala was currently squinting her eyes at, Gelda was recounting her experiences of the raising and breeding of pigs, passing on her wisdom to someone who hadn't been born when severe arthritis in her hips and knees had left her homebound with nothing else to occupy her time but carefully and meticulously putting her life down on thick, heavy parchment.

     It occurred to Tala, as the wind howled and battered the trees outside, that what she was holding in her hands was more magical than anything that any witch had ever done. With a book, a woman who had died thirty years before could speak to her as if she were still alive and sitting in the room with her. The bishops and priests who preached in their pulpits every Sunday morning accused witches of necromancy, of communicating with the spirits of the dead (something that, to the best of her knowledge, no real witch had ever been able to do) but what was reading a book if it wasn't exactly that? And the real miracle was that it didn't require any magic at all. All that was needed was to learn to read; something that anyone, even the greatest simpleton, was capable of.

     There was a rattling clatter from outside as something metal was blown along the crazy paved path that led to the outhouse. The lid of her waste bin, probably. She must have forgotten to put the rock on it to weigh it down, or perhaps the foxes had pushed it off to get at the uneaten remains of her morning's breakfast. She sighed. She'd spoken to them about it time and again but the lure of food was just too great for the creatures to resist even though it was bad for their stomachs. The number of times she'd found puddles of fox vomit in her herb garden...

     She should go out and find the lid before it was blown all the way to Merrin, she thought. She actually rose from her chair, but one glance out through the window, whose curtains were billowing slightly in the wind that found its way in through the badly fitted glass, was enough to put her off. It was full night out there, but enough light from the oil lamp filtered out through the slightly green glass to illuminate trees that waved like demented demons in the wind that had now reached gale force. She definitely didn't want to go out in that. The animals would help her find it when the storm had passed, she thought. Especially the foxes. They'd caused the problem. They would help her fix it.

     She was jolted out of her thoughts by a loud crack coming from outside the window. The wind had broken a branch of the huge and ancient ash tree that grew just outside, in the garden. She would have some clearing up to do in the morning when the storm finally abated, she thought. Half the tree was dead, and every time the wind blew with any force twigs and small branches rained down to litter her garden. If a large branch was getting ready to fall, as sounded likely, she would have to cut it up into neat lengths with the steel saw she kept in the shed at the bottom of the garden. It would be hard work because the saw had long since lost its full sharpness and dead ashwood was hard. Brittle but hard. On the plus side, though, she would end up with enough firewood piled up outside the kitchen to last her a good way into the winter.

     She made herself relax, therefore. A fallen branch would be a good thing. A literal windfall. So long as it wasn't that big, heavy branch that worried her from time to time. One of the four branches that formed the main body of the tree. It was dead through and through, its bark splitting open to reveal bare, dry wood full of boreholes and spotted with tiny red toadstools, and it reached out over the roof of her cottage. Right above where she was sitting now...

     The ceiling collapsed inwards, crashing down under the weight of the branch, as thick around as her waist, that had fallen on it. Tala jerked upright in terror, throwing up her hands to ward off the mossy twigs and branches that tried to swat her to the floor. Then she scrambled to the side, out of her chair and towards the door, just in time as a smaller side branch collapsed under the weight allowing the main branch to collapse further and roll to the side, smashing a chest of drawers on which some fine, porcelain ornaments had been standing. The small table beside her chair was also destroyed, as was the oil lamp had been standing on it. Oil splashed out and was immediately set alight by the still burning wick. The threadbare rug that covered the floor was set alight and small flames began to lick at the dry twigs and leaves that had fallen on it.

     The room, that had been cosy and warm just a moment before, was filled with a gale force wind that turned it into a maelstrom of chaos. Tala stood in the doorway to the kitchen, the wind tugging at her clothing and blowing her hair around her face as her stunned brain struggled to process what was happening. Her home, her refuge against a hostile world, had been breached. Had received a terrible, possibly fatal wound that left her shocked, terrified and numb with disbelief.

     <Mummy!> cried a mouse from somewhere behind her. <What's happening mummy? Make it stop!>

     <Is it the monster?> another mouse demanded fearfully. <Is the monster getting in?>

     <Mummy will protect us,> said another confidently. <She always protects us.>

     Not this time, thought Tala desperately. She looked at the wreck of the coffee table where the flames were rising higher. She turned and ran into the kitchen where she kept a barrel of water she filled regularly from the well in the garden. She grabbed a saucepan, filled it from the barrel and carried it back into the living room where she threw the water onto the fire. It only made the burning oil splash wider, though. Some droplets fell onto the curtains, setting them alight, while others fell onto the delicate lace cloth draped across the back of the chair she'd been sitting in. Tala stared in shock as flames spread rapidly across the whole room, fed and whipped up into a fury by the winds that were still growing stronger as the storm gathered force.

     The house was lost, she now saw. All she could hope to do was save herself. The front door was on the other side of the fallen branch, which was held up off the ground by the broken fragments of side branches under it. She would have to climb over it if she wanted to go that way, and the ruined ceiling contained cracked beams that might fall on her while she was doing so. All her savings were by the door, though. Nearly a hundred florins in a tin box under a loose floorboard covered by another rug.

     Forget the money, she told herself. Just save yourself. She turned and went back into the kitchen, therefore, where she threw on her good walking boots and her thick winter coat. <Get out of the house!> she told the mice. <The monster's here! Get away before it gets you!>

     She heard the mice give wails of shock and terror but she put them out of her mind. They would be able to survive out in the wild, if they found a hole to hide in, and the owls and foxes would be lying low while the storm lasted. No need to worry about her friends. She threw open the cottage's back door, therefore, but staggered as a violent gust of wind pushed her back. She braced herself against it and ran out into the night.

     She had to feel her way in the darkness. Her memory told her where the bushes and fences of her garden were but she kept tripping over fallen branches, ripped from the trees by the force of the storm. She had to make her way slowly and carefully, her hands outstretched in front of her. Gradually, though, she found that she could see. There was a source of light behind her. Her cottage, burning. She turned and saw that flames were now reaching out through the hole in the ceiling setting the thatched roof alight. As she watched, the living room window exploded outwards and flames reached out that way as well. She stared in horror as her home was consumed. Her mother's home. Her family's home for three generations, entrusted to her by her mother in her last lucid moments as the fever stole her away from her. She had died with the comfort of knowing that her daughter had a home she could call her own. Now that home was gone.

     She heard another branch crashing to the ground somewhere nearby, reminding her that there were trees all around her. The next branch could land right on top of her. She picked her way across the herb garden, trying to reach the open field that lay beyond as flying twigs and leaves tangled in her hair. She felt a stab of pain as something stung her face. Something small and sharp hurled at her by the vicious wind. She put a hand to her cheek and felt the stickiness of blood. She pulled the hood of her coat up over her head and struggled on, hunched over to reduce her profile as the wind tried to throw her back the way she had come.

     Finally she sensed openness above her and looked up to see silver clouds scudding fast across the face of the crescent moon. She looked back to see that her cottage was now nothing more than a ball of flames, whipped out to one side by the force of the wind. As she watched, the roof collapsed with a soft crunch and a shower of sparks that exploded upwards, some of them catching in the branches of trees and starting secondary fires. There was no rain. Everything was tinder dry and the flames spread rapidly. Soon even her garden would be gone. There would be nothing to show that anyone had ever lived here but blackened timbers and a surrounding field of ashes.

     Tala stood in the field and watched, feeling wretched and empty. She had no idea what she was going to do now or where she was going to go. When the ashes had cooled, she could dig down and try to find her hundred florins. The bronze coins should have survived, but it was a pitifully small amount and the only other things she had left were the clothes she was wearing. Perhaps she should just go back to the cottage. Walk into the flames and let them consume her as well. The only alternative she could think of was to find some man to marry her, Dougal perhaps, and wait for the inevitable day when he discovered what she was. Fire or the stocks. Those were her choices. At least the fire would only hurt for a moment, while the pain and humiliation of the stocks might last for hours before a rock, thrown by some righteous defender of the King's law, finally crushed her skull.

     She didn't have the courage to end her life, though. Instead, she just stood there while the wind continued to pull at her coat and hair and the occasional small object was slammed into her from behind. She stood and watched for hour after hour as what was left of her home shrank into a steadily low mound of yellow fire. Only when dawn finally came, the flames finally beginning to die down along with the fury of the storm, did she finally turn and begin to trudge slowly away, like someone in a dream, towards the road that led into town.