This time round, I am a human girl and Harry is a dog. This is inconvenient, because my parents didn't really want a dog with a jutting eyebrow fringe and a shaggy, untrimmed beard. Nor did they want a dog that cost five hundred dollars. ""A pedigreed Schnauzer!"" I said in despair when I recognised him that morning at the agricultural show. ""Why did you have to be a pedigreed Schnauzer, Harry? I mean - why did you have to be a dog?"" Harry looked sheepish. His beady little eyes peered out from underneath that peculiar fringe. ""Sorry, Aelfthryth..."" A curse (or maybe a blessing?) sent Saxon girl Aelfthryth, and her boy husband, Hereweald, tumbling through time. They wake anew in each century, and live for a brief time under different identities. To occupy a tedious captivity in their current incarnation, Aelthryth tells her story to her fellow captive, the mysterious Saranna.