If we could see our future, could we change it? Countless times over the following week, I heard many of my friends and neighbor fretting that if only they had ‘known this would happen,’ maybe they could have prevented it.

But what could we possibly have done?

I decided, firmly, the morning before my sixteenth birthday, that people only said this sort of thing to fool themselves into thinking that they had the slightest bit of control over the situation, when in truth they had none.

“Judeth!” my mother snapped. “Stop daydreaming and start washing those sheets!”

I looked down at my hands and realized that they were laying listless and still in the now lukewarm water inside the washing basin. Though I rather desperately wanted to tell her that I wasn’t ‘daydreaming’ as she put it and that I was thinking, I kept my mouth closed and turned my attention back to kneading the soapy suds into the white cloth.

Yes, white.

I had washed the sheets five times over in the past three days and could confidently tell anyone that they were clean enough for a Queen to sleep on.

But I didn’t say this either.

My mother had been doing her best to fill our days with endless chores to keep us occupied, but they were quickly running out, and, as I did with the sheets, I found myself completing the same dreary tasks over and over again every single day to no end.

Despite fearing what I would be met with out of doors, I was finding the urge to brave a chance meeting with a terrifying Radkkan just so that I could get out of the house and away from the terrible cycle of waking, eating, cleaning, eating and sleeping, in steady repeat.

Pausing for a moment, I wiped my hands down on my apron and turned politely to my mother. She was sitting by the fire, darning a pair of stockings, that I might have, in other situations told her not to bother with because they were nearly nothing but darning already. But I pushed down the urge, smiled, and prepared my sweetest voice to make my request.

“Mother,” I began.

She looked up at me with narrowed eyes.

“Yes?” Her tone was sharp and suspicious, but I continued.

“I was wondering if, when all my chores are done, I might be permitted to go outside? Accompanied, of course. I’m sure that James would be willing to walk about with me, and he’s ever so strong and brave. You wouldn’t have to worry about me a moment.”

She frowned and returned to her darning. I waited, watching her needle weave through the remains of the stocking, leaving a path of rough, brown thread in its wake.

“Not today, Judeth,” she said sternly. I knew from the lines around her mouth that there was no room for discussion, so I dejectedly returned to my washing basin and resumed my work, assured of a fate that would leave the days to blur and without the slightest shred of excitement.

Not for the first time in my life, my powers of predictions proved faulty. Not two hours later, I was awoken by my mother’s sharp voice. “Judeth! Wake up!”

I had taken up the habit of having an hour-long nap during the day, since there wasn’t really all that much to do, anyway; and I was not used to being so abruptly brought out of it.

Rather annoyed, I untangled myself from my blankets and was blasted with a wash of cold air. When I twisted my head to look out of my window, I could see a thin dusting of snow along the ground.

“Oh, I don’t want to!” I moaned, laying back down and curling into a ball.

“Judeth, get up. We’re going out.”

I sat up.

“What?”

She tossed me my cloak. She was already wearing hers.

“Where are we going?” I asked as she half dragged me out of my room and into the kitchen where I stopped in surprise.

Standing near the fireplace was a young boy. He was thin, with a freckled, pointy face and a mop of red curls on his head. He looked nervous, shifting his weight from one foot to the other whilst twisting his hands together in the hem of his tunic. Rough, colorless fabric. I knew immediately that he was from a very poor family, from his state of dress and of course the fact that he had less than the desired amount of flesh on his body.

“This is Renod. He came here asking for help,” my mother told me while she moved swiftly around the kitchen, tossing this and that into a burlap sack.

“Help with what?” I asked, staring at him. He stared back, unabashed.

Hefting the sack over her shoulder, mother turned toward the door, motioning the both of us to follow her.

“Mother, what does he need help with?” I asked, wincing as I left the warmth of the house. The snowfall wasn’t thick, but the wind was harsh and biting. I clutched my cloak tighter around my body and shuffled forward over the snowy ground.

“Tis me mother.”

I turned my head to the side as Renod spoke-up unexpectedly. He had his head bent against the wind, and his arms wrapped around his ribs.

“What’s wrong with her?” I directed the question toward him this time.

“Tsn’t her. ‘Tis the babe.” He shivered. “She said it don’t feel right.”

“I see.”

As a trained midwife, this hadn’t been the first time my mother had been called upon for family matters. But it had been a while since the last time. Most women would rather risk a complicated, or even fatal delivery than the possibility of falling under the shadow of a witch’s curse.

“Aren’t you cold?” I asked the boy beside me, after a few more minutes of trudging in silence. His teeth were chattering, and his lips were tinged light blue, though that was no surprise as he wore only one layer that I could see.

“Well, sure,” he said. “But I’m used to it.”

“You don’t look used to it,” I informed him worriedly. “You ought to wear a cloak.”

“Don’t got one.” He shook his head. “Father sold it.”

“Sold it for what?”

“Well, I’ll suppose for mead or something alike, because he came home real drunk that night.”

“Mead?” I exclaimed. “Your father sold your cloak for drink?”

“Seems so. He said he got to, because Mother drank his last bottle and he said if he want to stay alive he got to have his drink.”

I couldn’t think of anything to say, so instead, I let the silence return and brooded over the conversation myself. I couldn’t even imagine my father selling something of mine for mead or anything else like that. Did Renod’s father bother to think that his son would be left to freeze during the winter? Did he care?

‘Men turn to drink when they’ve nowhere else to turn to,’ I remembered my father telling me once, a long time ago, after we had attended the burial of Bann Turner, who had died from a drunken fall off the cliff edge.

My mother hadn’t wanted us to attend, saying that he brought on his demise by turning to Sinner’s Blood.

When I had pointed out that she herself used spirits, she told me it was different because she used it to help others. To keep them in the world, not excuse them from it.

We attended the burial. I remembered vividly that it was very dry, where most burials were compared. Only one person wept, and that was his mother. The rest merely stood solemn and silent.

‘Was he a wicked man?’ I had asked soon after the party had split, and I stood between my parents watching the solitary candle flickering upon the mound of fresh earth covering the body.

‘He wasn’t himself, but his tendency toward drink had him doing bad things now and then.’

‘Then why did he drink it?’

‘Men turn to drink when they’ve nowhere else to turn to.”

Mother had scoffed at this, but the conversation went no further. It was clear she despised the thought of any sort of drinking. Beer. Ale. Cider. Mead. And I had decided then that I must hate it as well, though only because she felt that way, and not because I understood why. But now, watching Renod struggle through the cold and the snow, with no bitterness toward the father who had taken his cloak, and left him to freeze, I thought I was beginning to.

Clenching my teeth tightly to keep from shuddering, I unfastened my cloak and draped it over the boy’s shoulders, securing it around his neck. He was stunted in growth, and so it dragged on the ground, but I felt better seeing him covered.

“I can’t take this from you, lady,” Renod told me, shocked. He tried to take it off but I stopped him, my heart fluttering over the first time someone had called me a lady.

“It is awful rude to refuse a gift, you know. Just take it. My mother may stitch me a new one. Just mind you hide it, so your father doesn’t go selling it.

“I . . . Thank you kindly.” Renod’s peaky, pinched face flushed, and he avoided my eyes.

Satisfied, I tucked my hands deep into my pockets and tried to pretend I was warm. Squinting through the snow at my mother, I could see that her mouth was drawn in a firm line and her eyes were set with determination.

Did she know she was walking through a snowstorm, risking a confrontation with the people invading our town, to help a family which readily took part in something she so disapproved of?

Finally, we reached a small house, framed by two tall trees standing on either side; bare branches reaching out as though to welcome the snow. The house itself, at least from the outside, was plain like most others. A small twist of smoke spiraled out of the chimney.

“This be our house.” Renod hurried forward to the door and held it open for us to come inside.

“Thank you,” my mother said to him, before taking off her cloak. The inside of the house was nearly as bare as the outside. It composed of, from what I could tell, only two rooms. The walls were barren, the floor held nothing but a collection of ratty blankets and pillows laid out in the farthest corner, and in the fireplace a few twisted twigs smoked and leaked a pitiful flame.

Standing around it were five young children; boys aging from what I guessed to be one year old to thirteen. They stared at us, the youngest held inexpertly by the eldest, eyes wide in their narrow faces.

“They’re here to help Mother,” Renod told them.

“Judeth, get the fire going,” Mother commanded.

Without a designated place to put her discarded garment, she placed her cloak neatly on the floor and smiled assuringly at Renod. “Where is your Mother?”

“Thisaway.” He led her through the single door opposite us.

Though I felt extremely uncomfortable having my way in someone else’s house, I did as my mother asked and started work on the fire. The sticks provided little warmth, so I snuck around the back of the house and managed to collect a small stack of wood. Each piece evidently used to be part of something else, but I could hardly tell what.

I couldn’t get the to blaze. The wood was damp. The coals weak. But there was soon a good deal more fire than smoke, and the children huddled around it gratefully. I considered that achievement enough.

“Judeth.” My mother poked her head out of the door and called for me to bring her things. I grabbed the sack and heaved it across the floor and into the other room which was just like the house. Nearly empty. The furniture comprised an old chest which I supposed must have held clothes, pushed up against the wall beneath the cracked window; and there was a bed.

In the bed lay a woman. She had drab, red hair which lay loose and tangled over her shoulders, contrasting with the white of her nightgown, like blood against snow. Her face was thin, pale, and pinched, with an ashen grey hue. She looked tired and unwell.

As soon as I entered the room, her eyes locked onto and followed my every step. I did my best to pretend I hadn’t realized and handed my mother the sack.

She pulled out several blankets, which I recognized from the cupboard where she kept a collection of various spare items in case of need. Blankets mostly. Dried meat, hard biscuit, clean rags, flint stone, and medicinal herbs.

“Give this to Good Wife Mea Ginnias. If she needs it, help her wrap it around her shoulders,” whispered my mother softly into my ear as she passed a blanket into my arms.

I walked confidently toward the woman, Mea Ginnias, doing my best to seem like I couldn’t feel her gaze on me, like needles.

“This is for you, Mea, wrap it around your shoulders to keep warm,” I instructed kindly.

“You’re a girl,” she said in a faint, strained voice.

“Yes, I am,”

She tugged lightly on a piece of red hair, speaking absently, as though to herself. “Always wanted a girl. They do things right. Don’t mess around.”

“I don’t know about that.” I took initiative and started winding the blanket around her shoulders. “Most people I know say they wish they had more sons.”

“Well, Sunah knows I have enough of them. But they all are too young to be much help ‘round the house. And that husband of mine—” she snorted, “–useless as mule’s behind.”

I couldn’t find anything to say in answer to the woman’s statement, so I just smiled and pulled the corners of the blanket more snuggly around her.

“Maybe the babe will be a girl,” Mea spoke again.

Babe?

Suddenly I realized I had forgotten the key reason my mother had come here.

A baby.

Mea Ginnias’s stomach wasn’t as large as I thought it would have been, in fact, I hardly would have thought she was carrying a child if I hadn’t known that she was.

Five years previous, a woman had visited my mother in a panic, babbling on about how she’d been turned out and the physician refused to see her.

I remembered her perfectly, though I only saw her for a brief moment. Long, dark hair piled high on top of her head; a deep red velvet cloak; glistening jeweled earrings, and of course the most noticeable fact of all: her large, round belly.

'Help me,' she had begged.

My mother had sent me to the Market Square with a long list of errands to run, and by the time I returned, the woman was gone. The only trace left of her in the house was her beautiful earrings, which my mother wrapped up carefully in a handkerchief. I never saw them again, and all that my mother would tell me about what had transpired was that everything went well.

She hadn’t brought it up with my father either, so neither did I. And soon enough, I ceased to wonder. Only recently had I come to understand why we never spoke of it again. I had heard tell of the brothel women, who found themselves in a bad way and were cast out and shunned when they tried to seek help. Many of them died after trying to help themselves. They were buried under nameless graves, and no one wept for them.

No one except my mother.

Watching her now, as she joined me by the pregnant woman’s bedside, I realized that there was so much about her I didn’t know; so many things I had never bothered to wonder about.

Who is my mother?

If asked, I would have said that my mother was the person who was in all my memories since birth. She was warm, stern steadiness that kept me safe. I never thought of my mother before me. I never wondered who she was before she had a child. Who was she before she was Mother? Who was Cheldna?

“What exactly do you feel at this moment?”

I was confused for a moment, thinking my mother was addressing me, before I realized she was speaking to Mea. Her hands were placed on either side of the woman’s stomach.

“Can’t tell exactly, just don’t feel right.”

I noticed a thin sheen of sweat glistening on the woman’s brow, and how she kept absently rubbing her thighs together. My mother noticed it too. She frowned and shifted her hands to other points on the woman’s stomach.

“Judeth, how about you go deliver these blankets to the other children?” She nodded at the other blankets, which sat near the wall. “Go keep them company.”

“What are you going to do?” I asked.

“Whatever I need to do. Go on.”

“But what if it gets dark before we leave? What will we do then?”

“We’ll decide that if it happens.” Her tone vibrated with finality, and I knew I shouldn’t argue.

The children were still huddled close around the fire when I joined them in the main room. They looked up in unison as I approached, questions lingering unspoken within their hungry, glazed gazes.

“My mother will do her best to help,” was all I said, before wrapping them up in the blankets, and looking around for a pot or cauldron.

The one I found was a dented, ugly thing; blackened with coal dust, but it was big. I opened the door, stepped outside, and filled the pot with snow, having found no water in the house. Then I hung the entire thing over the fire and sat down to watch it.

There wasn’t a real use for it, but my mother always said that if you were in a strenuous or uncomfortable situation, you should boil water.

So that’s what I did.

What seemed to me like an hour later, my mother emerged from the room and slid an object in the fire. “Call me when it’s well and truly hot,” she instructed, then disappeared back into the room.

Upon closer inspection, I could see that the object was very sharp. A large, thin-bladed knife, in fact.

From the wide-eyed horror in the children’s’ faces, I gathered they also persevered as much.

“It isn’t for your mother,” I lied quickly. “It’s for cutting cloth. You needn’t worry.”

“Why it got to be burned?” Renod asked.

“Because it’s better that way.”

Soon I could see colors begin to move up and down the blade of the knife and called to my mother that it must be plenty hot by now. She removed it carefully from the flames, being sure only to grasp the handle with a handful of her skirt, and left once again.

There was a moment of pure silence before an agonized cry rent through the air.

Everyone stiffened. Two of the boys began to cry.

“You think that lady is chopping up Mamma?” I heard one of them whisper in Renod’s ear.

Renod shook his head, but he didn’t look all that confident.

Unable to stand the tension, I left the fire and began a hunt for something to boil with the water. There weren’t many options. A handful of strange dried leaves stored in some tiny jars near the window, a few cobwebs in the left-hand corner of the ceiling, and a bottle, nearly empty but with a few dredges remaining in the bottom which smelled suspiciously like whiskey.

In the end, I nipped outside, despite the growing storm, and grabbed a handful of pine needles from a tree that grew conveniently near the house. Returning inside, I walked back over to the fire and, with the eyes of all the Ginnias boys on my back, dropped the needles into the water. They watched as the pine needles churned about in the water with expectancy, and I did the same. Anything to act as a distraction from the horrible sounds coming from the bedroom.

I’d once witnessed the slaughter of a live cow. The creature had been run into by a chariot and lay dying the middle of the street. The driver, lacking an ax or a dagger, tried to put her out of her misery with a stone. He had to hit her five times before she finally died.

The sounds she’d made, a keening, low wail, had turned me cold as winter beneath the spring sun.

That was the closest thing I could begin to compare to the screams rattling the small house.

After a few minutes had passed and it became clear that my concoction wasn’t about to turn an array of bright and unnatural colors, or make a loud pop and become a fine roast chicken, the boys turned their eyes to me again, as though waiting for me to explain this injustice.

“My mother used to make pine tea for me in the winter,” I tried. “It doesn’t taste that bad either.”

They looked at me doubtfully.

“And it’s not poison,” I added.

After finding a few dishes stacked beside the chimney; a four bowls, two clay mugs, and an empty jar, I poured the steaming hot liquid into each of them and handed them out, being sure to sip my own first, loudly, with an exaggerated sigh of satisfaction.

It worked. At least I thought it must have done, for soon the room was filled with the sound of slurping. With each sip of steaming pine needle tea, the ice between us thawed.

Feeling calmer now than I had been, I glanced outside for the hundredth time and noted with a twinge of worry in my chest that it could not be that far from sunset. Would we make it out in time?

The house was silent. Perhaps the ordeal was over. I got up from where I had been sitting cross-legged on the floor and tiptoed toward the room my mother was in, hoping to politely encourage that she would hurry up.

The moment I flung open the door, I gasped.

Blood. Blood soaked the sheets, the blankets, and the brilliant white of Mea’s nightdress. The woman herself lay pale and thin against her pillows.

My mother looked up at me when she heard my exclamation of horror. Her eyes were wide, her hair was tangled and sweat and blood mingled together on her skin.

I couldn’t breathe.

“Get out, Judeth,” she said.

I didn’t move.

“I said get out!” She pointed a finger to the door.

I ran out, hands covering my mouth, and put my back to the wall. Never had I seen so much blood.

What was happening?

Then the door from outside flew open, and the scant heat we’d managed to accumulate was brutally murdered by the cold air that poured in on the sharp wind. I winced as my cheeks and nose were attacked by the harsh snowflakes, sharp and silver like daggers. Standing in the doorway was a man. His eyes were red and bloodshot, his hair was tangled and thin, his boots were caked with snow and mud.

“Who are you?” he asked. His voice was hoarse and slurred. Even from our six-foot distance, I could smell the alcohol on his breath.

“I—I—“ I stuttered, my mind gone completely blank.

The door to the bedroom opened, and my mother came out. She had blood smeared across her forehead and her dress. Her hair had come out of its twist and lay matted against her shoulders. Her eyes were grim and serious. She carried a small object wrapped in a bloodstained sheet and this she deposited in the man’s arms.

“I managed to save your wife,” she said coldly. “But you have lost the child.”

She walked over to Renod and handed him a small clay pot of special herbs. “Stew a handful of these in fresh water twice a day and give the mixture to your mother,” she said gently. Then she grabbed her cloak from the floor, wrapped my own around my shoulders, took my hand, and led me toward the door.

“That’s it? You’re just leaving?” The man, whom I now supposed was the father, hissed at us. He pointed an accusatory finger at my mother. “Witch!” He spat on the floor. “I’m holding you responsible for this.”

“Do as you like,” my mother responded, her fingers tightening around my wrist. “But we both know who’s truly responsible.”

Then all at once we were out of that house and surrounded by snow.

I stood there and breathed, my mother too, as though we hadn’t drawn breath since the moment we entered the place. The cold air stung my lungs but cleared my head, and I found I could think again.

“What did you mean by, ‘we both know who is responsible?” I asked as soon as we had started walking.

The sun had only just started to sink below the trees, but I knew that darkness would be fast approaching.

“That woman’s body was covered in scars and bruises. She’s been beaten. Regularly and harshly.”

“By her husband?” I asked, aghast.

“Yes, Judeth, and she’s hardly the only one.”

“Will she be alright?”

“We can only hope.”

I chewed my lip thoughtfully. “It would seem I have much to learn about the world,” I admitted.

“There is no end to the horrors in this world,” my mother whispered. “Don’t wish to become prematurely acquainted with them. You will know them in time.”

There was an alarming amount of pain in her eyes.

“Have you become acquainted with them, Mother?” I asked.

She smiled at me. “We all have seen and will see our fair share of hardships in life Judeth, there really is no running away from that fact.” She stopped walking and cupped my cheek with her palm. “Oh Judeth, if only I could promise you a world where you could know you’ll always be safe. That is my greatest wish for you. Know this Judeth, everything I do, everything your father does, everything we do; we do it for you. We do it to help create a world where you can be happy and without pain. Never forget that, hmm?”

I smelled the blood on her skin; I felt the sharp chill of the snow and wind biting my cheeks.

It was neither that made a shiver run up my spine.

That feeling. That sensation of knowing that there was something hidden in her words; concealed underneath the surface, just enough that I could sense it but not truly grasp it. Like when you wake from a dream, but the more you try to remember what it was, the further it slips from your consciousness. It remains a shadow in the back of your mind that no light can be shed upon.

It was that which filled me with cold.

“I know,” I told her.

We began walking again, at a quicker pace than before.

The sun had sunk just below the horizon, and the sky above it was a deep, deep blue. The snow was growing thicker by the minute, both around us and underfoot. The skirts of my dress were coated in it. My hands grasped numbly at any warmth they could find; one clutched around my cloak and the other entwined with my mother’s.

The snow was so thick that we nearly missed the dark shape looming in front of us. But we didn’t. My mother stopped short and so did I, my heart hammering in my chest.

It was a man, and I knew the moment I could make out his face that he was from Radkka.

The urge to scream and run left nearly the moment it came, and I stood, frozen to the spot.

“You’re cutting it close” he told us. His voice was deep and confident, vibrating authority.

“The sun has not yet gone down. We are breaking no rules,” my mother told him, and if I had not been so terrified, I would have applauded how she spoke without a single tremor in her voice.

But she was shaking. I could feel it through our clasped hands. She was as terrified as I, and that made it worse. When my mother, the most fearless woman I knew, was frightened, I knew we were in real, honest danger.

The Radkkan leaned forward, his blue eyes narrowed and calculating as he took in our appearances. The blood on my mother’s cheeks. Our disheveled hair. The frost coating our lashes and turning our hair silver.

Then he laughed. It was soft, barely heard through the wind. But the sound caused my heart to drop inside me.

“Five minutes,” he said. “Five minutes, and the great eye shall be lost to the sea.”

“Yes, so please allow us to leave so we may go home,” my mother said.

He hummed as he rolled back on the balls of his feet.

His coat was lined with fur. Dark and silken. I knew it must be blissfully warm.

“I cannot allow you to go without assuring myself that you haven’t been up to anything that puts this town in danger, can I?”

I felt my mother stiffen through her fingers, and I glanced at the trees. The sun was nearly completely invisible.

“Take this.” She dug around in the pocket of her dress and pulled out a shining silver Seft. She pressed it in the Radkkan’s gloved hand.

He twirled it between his fingers, eyeing it in the last of the sun’s light. I held my breath. Finally, he said, “You are in luck, woman.” He closed his fist around the coin and glared at us, leaning in so close I could smell his breath, hot and full of smoke. “But next time the price will be thrice that. Be warned.”

Then he stepped aside. My mother tugged at my hand and dragged me through the snow until my legs started working again, then we ran. We ran all the way, not stopping even when the snow piled up along the paths and stuck to the insides of our dresses. Not even when we were out of breath, and our eyelids bled from the ice flying hither and thither in the blustering wind. We didn’t stop once until we reached our house and were safely inside.

Even when my mother had helped me out of my frozen clothes and into a warm shift and we were both sitting near the fire with cups of steaming water in our hands, the sense of panic didn’t fade.

“Where is Father?” I asked, suddenly aware that he wasn’t inside the house, and how wrong this was.

“He’s sleeping in the barns, quite safe,” she assured me. “With the horses, where he works. He’ll be all right. He told me he would do so this morning.”

“Why?”

“Because he knew he was going to have a long day, and the chances of him making it back before nightfall were too slim.”

“Oh.”

I settled down.

“Judeth,” Mother spoke up suddenly. “You won’t be speaking of this to your father when you see him, will you?”

“Why shouldn’t I?” I asked.

“Because,” she inhaled slowly, “because we weren’t supposed to be outside. He’ll be furious if he finds out, especially if he knows I took you with me.”

“But we were helping someone.” I frowned. “Surely that makes it alright?”

She shook her head. “I put us both in harm’s way. In times like these, one should be more concerned with oneself than one’s neighbor.”

“Then why did you decide to help?” I asked.

She thought for a moment.

“Because I owed that boy a favor,” she told me, finally.

“How?” Nothing had suggested to me that my mother and Renod knew each other before today.

“Two years ago, he saved my life.”

“He did?”

She smiled. “Yes, he did. He pulled me out of the way of a horse cart, whose driver had lost control. He broke his leg doing it too.”

“I see.” I struggled to imagine the boy as a hero, with his scruffy red hair and skinny arms. But then I imagined him running through the snow without a cloak; arms wrapped around his frail body to lessen the biting cold as he hurried to find help for a mother who had so many children that one less hardly made a difference, and I felt an unusual spike of pride in my heart, which was odd because I could hardly take the credit of his bravery.

It was pride and sorrow mixed together, and it was bitter, because a young boy should not have to be a hero. But then, so many did.

“I won’t tell Father where we were,” I decided.

A look of relief flashed across my mother’s face, mixed with sickening guilt.

“But, Mother . . .”

“Yes?”

“I want you to tell me about your life.”

She laughed and took a sip of water. “You know about my life, Judeth.”

“No, I want to know all of it. What came before I was born.”

She appeared to grow tense. She set down her cup and her eyes were wary. “I have a colorful past, Judeth.”

“I don’t care,” I reached out and gripped her hand with mine. “Please, I want to know who you are. Who you were.”

She looked at me, her eyes traveling over every part of my face as though to seek something out. Evidently, she found it, for she took a breath and spoke.

“As you know, I was born in Lyoa, back when settlers thought they could brave it. I lived there with my parents until I was twelve years old, and then we moved to T’cor. It was a vast change, for me especially, who had only ever known the wildness of untamed country. Suddenly I was in a city. A huge, powerful city. There were people, houses and noise. It was exciting, to say the least. Then, on my thirteenth birthday, my mother gave birth to my sister. Stillborn.”

I nodded. I had heard it mentioned before that my mother had lost her baby sister.

“I wasn’t affected by it. I had never wanted a sibling. But it did terrible things to my parents. I went from being the precious only daughter to someone who was barely spoken to from one day to the next. My mother kept to her bed and became despondent and angry. My father buried himself in work and drink, and we hardly saw him. When we did, he was drunk. At first, it wasn’t so terrible. He would come back home late at night when we were all asleep. He would eat whatever leftovers were on the table and then collapse into bed and leave before morning. But then it got worse. One night he returned to find that dinner was not waiting for him on the table and threw a fit of rage. I remember . . .” her lips trembled, “waking in my bed suddenly to the sounds of raised voices. I was afraid, so I came to my parents’ room to help them reconcile. But just before I entered the room, I saw my father raise his hand and slap my mother.”

The pain I had seen in her eyes when we were walking home had resurfaced, and I understood.

“Is that why you detest drink?” I asked.

“I have seen what it can do to a family. I have experienced it firsthand.”

The pure hatred and disgust on her face caused a chill to run through my body, and I could see it. The young girl, neglected and nearly forgotten by her parents hiding in the dark as her father beat her mother.

Helplessness. Terror. The sudden feeling of being jolted out of the cloak of comfort and familiarity she’d been so used to, and shoved rudely into a world that was unfriendly as it was big and terrifying.

It was not unlike the feeling, I imagined, of watching the enemy take over your home, while all you could do was watch and wait. My upbringing couldn’t have been different from hers, but I liked feeling I could understand, just a bit, how she felt.

“It carried on for three months,” she continued. “I had taken to going out in the town and only returning once I knew both my parents were asleep, frightened that I would be next. And it worked. I evaded him. Until one night I arrived home to find my father waiting for me. He had gone into my room to find me, he said, and when he found I wasn’t there, he grew angry. He took his belt from his waist and thrashed me. Ten times across my back.”

She paused and glanced down at her hands. I saw her frown as she realized they were shaking. I brushed my fingers across her palms, letting my warmth tell her what I wouldn’t say aloud. That she wasn’t alone. That I saw her pain.

She smiled at me and squeezed my hand, telling me she knew what I wanted her to know.

“What happened after that?” I asked.

“I ran away.”

This was surprising.

“You never told me you ran away from home before,” I accused.

“It’s not the fact that I ran, which I wanted to hide from you.” She took another sip of water. “It’s what happened after.”

“What happened after?” I pressed.

She rubbed the crease between her eyes. “Well, since you seem sure that you want to know, after I ran from home, I joined a brothel.”

“You did?” Never in my life had I imaged such a thing. I was so shocked I couldn’t feel repulsed, or betrayed, or anything else that should have accompanied such a revelation.

“After three months on the streets. Yes, Judeth. I, your mother, joined a brothel at the age of fifteen. There I met my first friend, Hakuna. I was struck the moment I saw her by how beautiful she was. Long, dark hair braided into a tower atop her head. Smooth, glistening skin, glorious dresses made from silk and satin, and her spirit.”

There was warmth in my mother’s eyes now. The beautiful honey warmth of memory.

“Her spirit was so free. Nothing chained her to the ground. She walked as though she flew, like a bird in the sky while the rest of us had our feet on the ground. She took me under her wing and protected me. For the first time, I knew the joy of having a sister.”

“How long did you work there?” I asked.

“Until I was seventeen.”

“Why stop then?”

“Because—” she paused, “—because I was apprenticed to an old wise woman. A midwife, and physician, who taught me to read and write, and see there was more to the world than what I’d been shown there was. I grew unhappy with my work in the . . . brothel, and wanted to do something different. Living for almost three years in that place, with women all around me being taken with child, cast out, and many dying in delivery, I felt it was my calling to help them. To help any woman, man, or child who needed me. That’s where I met your father. On the table inside that old woman’s house. He had fallen against a pane of glass and his entire right hand was covered in blood and full of glass shards. Even though I fixed him up as best I could, his hand never truly healed properly. I never forgave myself, but somehow, he did. A few months later we were married. Then he took me from the streets of T’cor and brought me to Saje. You know the rest. I never saw my parents again, nor Hakuna, except for once, several years ago when she found me unexpectedly and asked for my help.”

“That woman was Hakuna?” I gasped. “The one who came into our kitchen and left you with her earrings?”

Now it was my mother’s turn to be surprised. “You remember that, Judeth?”

“Of course, I remember,” I told her, insulted by her obvious shock at my good memory.

“She came to you to get rid of her baby, didn’t she?”

“Unlike myself, Hakuna stayed at the Brothel. She was upset when I told her I was leaving to study medicine and midwifery, and we had a terrible argument. I told her she wasn’t ever to see me again. When she arrived in our kitchen, I couldn’t have been more surprised. At first, I planned to turn her away. But then she told me what happened, and I knew I had to help her.”

“What happened?”

“One of her . . . visitors had become obsessed. He forced himself upon her when she was unwilling, and when she found out she was pregnant, the brothel cast her out. She traveled to every physician she could find, but none of them consented to help her. So, she came to me. I had never seen her look so unhappy. Whether or not it meant too, the child she carried was binding her to the earth. She was no longer the free spirit I had known. So, I did what the others wouldn’t do, and I helped her. I took the child from her body, and I gave it away.”

She looked at me warily. “You may find it immoral, Judeth, but I have no regrets. When she came to me, she was a bird stuck in a briar patch. When she left me, she was free.”

“I don’t think—“ I paused to let myself reconsider my words so that when I said them, I could mean them. “I think I understand.” The look of relief that eased her expression was clear as freshly drawn water, and I realized that she feared my disapproval. She feared I would be unhappy with her. She feared that I would think she had done wrong.

“A weight has been lifted off my shoulders, having told someone of this,” she said, laughing in a breathless, relieved sort of way. “I hadn’t realized how it had been weighing on me. Thank you, Judeth.” She touched my cheek gently. “Thank you for urging me to tell you my past. Though it may cause you to see me differently, I am glad that you know.”

“I don’t see you differently,” was my response. “I see you the same as I did before, but I feel as though I know you, and that makes me glad. Do not be ashamed, Mother.”

“I am not ashamed,” she promised me. “Our pasts do not decide our future. Who we are doesn’t have to be who we were. You remember that, Judeth. It’s important that you make sure to remember that.”

“I will.”

“Good.” We smiled at each other for a moment, then she nodded to the hall. “Now go on to bed, Judeth. It is your birthday tomorrow, after all. Make sure to have a good sleep.”

I had completely forgotten that tomorrow was indeed my birthday after the busy events of the day. I stood up, said goodnight, and hurried to my room where I burrowed gratefully underneath my quilt.

As I lay in bed, waiting for sleep to take me, I let my thoughts wander over what she had told me.

Who was my mother?

My mother was a woman with a past full of pain. My mother grew up with her own morals. She knew that what had happened before did not define her, and she was confident in that.

I saw her leaning over Mea Ginnias’s bloodied bedside; eyes desperate and sorrowful as she tried to save what she could just as easily end.

My mother, I thought, is an incredible woman.

Tomorrow I would be sixteen. Almost a woman. I hoped with all my heart I would become one at least half as wonderful as she.