"You be careful, running up them slopes," Danvik said sharply to his daughter as she passed him with a forage basket, ducking past him as he stood in the open door of the hold.

"Yes sir."

"Don't forget we had a lot of rain, the slope will be slippery."

"I'll mind."

"And mind out for the madman!"

"Yes sir."

Andoya spoke mechanically as she drew a couple of deep breaths, adjusting her eyesight to the sunshine. The air might be cold, but it was better than the cloying atmosphere in the hold with its fitful light from glows and tallow dips.

Fifty years since Thread had last fallen, the Red Star was beginning to recede from the daytime sky, and still her father shuttered and locked every single window and door at night in his hall.

He also posted lookouts; Andoya waved to Vikna and had his acknowledgement before she turned to the path up to the higher levels of the abandoned Weyr. Abandoned for fifty years, and the local holders had systematically robbed out anything of value left after its abandonment. In truth, there was not much in the hold to show for it, a few pottery bowls and basins perhaps, some bone and horn spoons, but that was all that had been left.

Andoya shook her head at the long mystery of the abandoned Weyrs. Most Lord Holders would have it that the dragons and their riders had voluntarily committed suicide by going between rather than be a drain on Pern's resources. Neither Andoya nor the old auntie Smola who was her particular charge believed that.

"Gone ahead, gone between," auntie Smola would sing in her reedy voice that had been so notable in her youth they had wanted her to train at Harper Hall. "You remember the teaching songs, dearie, and teach them to your own."

Andoya always dutifully agreed to that, and sometimes managed a smile, even though the remembrance of having been jilted still rankled a full year after that perfidious runner had seduced her and left her, thankfully without a child to rear fatherless.

Reaching the higher slopes, Andoya paused to draw breath and look around. The wind was keen, blowing from the north and the far icy wastes. The sky was blue, however, with just one bank of low dark cloud, and the sun was shining, to make it a lovely day after the two days of rain and cold they had endured in the dank depths of the hold.

The berry bushes would be full this year, Andoya thought contentedly, and they would be able to make as much bubbly-pie filling as ever. Two years ago they had had a dreadful summer with rain and wind and hardly any sunshine, and they had gone hungry that winter. Never mind that Danvik could have sent a boy down to his nearest neighbours and asked for help, his youngest daughter knew he would never do that.

Andoya paused on the next shelf of land and began picking greens in their sheltered corners between the tumble of rocks. These big blocks of stone, covered with moss now, beginning to be unrecognisable, must once have been buildings, she always thought, buildings that had once hugged the road up to the Weyr, once been full of people coming and going to that place. Bees hummed and buzzed up here, and she could look down across the lower shelf of land where her father had established his small hold fifty years ago.

Andoya frowned at the stray thought that crossed her mind; fifty years was a significant anniversary here on Pern. Fifty years ago the last threat of Thread had finally gone, and the Eighth Pass was officially declared closed. This Interval would last another two hundred years and she would not be alive to see Thread. Was that good or bad, she argued to herself. Generations of Pernese never encountered Thread; they lived and died in the Intervals and never knew of their great enemy except from the teaching ballads and the songs of praise to the Dragonmen.

"Dragons must fly, when Thread is in the sky," Andoya sang to herself as she cut expertly, not stripping any plant, but leaving enough for it to regrow.

"They'll be back soon, like a snow shower in summer, and gone as quickly," a harsh voice said, and Andoya leaped around, nearly cutting herself.