Aunt Andromeda is waiting for him at her front door, spidery shawl around her shoulders, slippered feet, dark curly hair pulled up on top of her head streaked with silver at the frizzy temples. She wraps him up in a warm hug that smells of lavender and the forest and memory, of falling asleep in this house every night for years to the sound of hares and foxes and birds nesting down in the crooked old trees.