Hild looked curiously, more curiously, at the young woman when she made mention that they were in the city at the same time. It must have been early on, Hild figured, when she was still learning the ways and manners of the strange new place into which she had been transported. She tried to memorize every face she saw, note mentally who was a native and who was not, who looked interesting and who looked unimportant. Effy looked interesting. Effy would have been noticed, perhaps. But there was so much to absorb back then that Hild decided not to fault herself for not having looked closely here.

"It does," Hild agreed, but her words only a breath of acknowledgment. She was much more intrigued by what else Effy had said.

"You truly remember everything that happened before, here? And you went back to your life before when you disappeared? Or did you go to some other place as well?"

It was a strange thought. Hild had often wondered which would be the case, whether she would return to Northumbria and recall every piece of the modern that she had encountered, every friend and lover she had made. But her story was in the past. Surely if she brought some of this knowledge back with her, things would have been different. She would have been different. And she had to be the same.