A shutter had worked loose from one of the windows at the base of the tower and was beating itself to pieces in the March wind. Five years and a few months later, when Miranda stood looking out, no trace of it remained. Now in her upstairs room she put down her bottle of sweet wine. Almost she felt like weeping from sheer loneliness. Alone in this house except for ghosts and clumsy memories, she also was alone in this strange world, a single light burning along this whole deserted coast. When she thought of Peter and Andromeda, soon she left them in the snowy woods, the boy with the man's right hand, the yellow dog. Soon she brought them back in time with her, to before her aunt's history book had been destroyed in the bonfire on Christmas Hill. She'd brought them all the way back to Berkshire County where they'd been friends: Peter with his missing hand, and beautiful Andromeda whom she'd known since childhood. She remembered Peter's face as he'd shown her little places in the woods he'd loved.
