The fourth last of the fifteen days was always the one where I began to grow truly weary of sunlight. I’d made thick curtains for the windows out of animal hide, and only then was it ever dark enough for us to fall asleep. But with the curtains, the stifling heat was trapped inside and tried to bake us in our own home. I suffered horribly from heat rash and almost longed for the chill of winter again.

The fifteen days began as a time of work. With no fading sun to end the days, for the first while, everyone had many extra hours to do what needed to be done and saw fit to do them. But by now the motivation to be productive had expired, and the village laxed into a dreary state of tedium, with only enough energy to lie abed and dream of the cool air and shade that was not for love or money to be found anywhere close by.

Those taking part in the Feignt were the only ones who found any relief. They dove deep enough to where it was cold and stayed under long enough for it to matter.

I took to lying by the side of the forest rock pool on those lazy mornings and afternoons while I waited for Taelon to return. I’d been cautious about entering the forest for fear of another encounter with a creature but trusted his Lordship’s intuition. The crow had taken to accompanying me; a strand of braided string tied around one of his legs and bound around my wrist, with enough length as to allow him some freedom to find a perch while I dipped my feet in the balmy water and listened to the cheery, polite babble of the brook.

There was something enchanting, but not uncomfortably so, about being inside the forest in the heart of summer. The trees were thick and lavished me in the little cool that could be found. The leaves made a canopy above my head that kept off the worst of the light and created patterns on the ground with dappled shadows. The birds whistled. Insects were few. The land spoke to me in its native tongue of all the things which it held back, and the ones revealed to me. I grew intimate with the place and reveled in the secrets it bestowed upon my knowledge.

Bronagh had told me that this small lake was where her father disappeared on the night of her birth. That some believed it to be a gate to the Otherrealm.

I could believe it. There was something there. A prickling along my skin that was not of the natural kind. But it did not seem an evil place. Only curious, and welcoming. The grass was perfectly soft for me to lie upon. The big, flat stones were smooth and the kind of warm that one would take pleasure resting upon. Butterflies might alight upon my nose and taste my lips if I was careful not to move. I felt my presence there was embraced by whoever kept the land. If not appreciated.

Even the wolf was not terrifying, but like his home, interested. Hesitant, but in some way, gladdened.

It was uncommon for islands, especially small ones like Seaggis, to have wolves. But I’d seen them many times. Only a small pack that sometimes caused trouble for a home and its chickens, but otherwise kept to themselves. They lived in the deepest part of the forest where no one wandered, and only appeared when natural game was scarce and they had to look elsewhere for nourishment to last the winter months.

I had been frightened, clearly, the first time I realized one was watching me. I’d turned around to fetch my basket, and there he was, standing just in sight, yellow eyes unblinking and watchful. But the crow attached to my wrist had no fear of him, and so I learned to overcome the panic and remain peaceful whenever I came to be in his presence. I named him Sorrow because there was something sad about him. He was smaller than the other males in his family. Scrawny, with a sandy pelt. Of course, wolves in general were mournful creatures. When I was a girl in Saje, sometimes I would hear them faintly in the night, calling out to the moon on the outskirts of town. They were lost. Or had lost something. And they howled for it to come back. To be found.

My father said that wolves were not creatures of this world. And if the legend were true, he would be right. It was believed by some that the first wolf was not a wolf at all, but a man who’d lost his cloak in the middle of winter, and Staad, the god of beasts, granted him a fur coat so that he might never be cold again. Only when the man returned home to his wife, she did not recognize him and ran away screaming into the night. The wolf roamed ever on, in search of the woman he loved.

Sorrow was not a particularly romantic figure; scruffy and rough as he was. I had the feeling he was very young and knew little of love and tragedy. But still, I felt no fear of him. I was quite as curious as he was.

Our most intriguing encounter had happened not three days before, when he appeared out of the bushes, bold as anything, and dropped the mangled, headless body of a hare at my feet, and then sat down to watch my reaction. When I didn’t immediately fall upon it with enthusiasm and rip into the flesh with my bare teeth, he blinked his eyes once in a way that portrayed absolute astoundment and slinked away, affronted, when I tried to give it back.

I looked for him this day, hoping I hadn’t irreparably damaged his elegant wolf sensibilities and thus our strange companionship. It would be a shame if I never saw him again.

The wolf was nowhere in my sight, but I allowed myself to believe I would see him once more before the fifteen ended, and peeled off my shoes so I could settle my legs in the rock pool. The heat was pleasant here, beneath the leafy trees, on sunbaked earth, where I was free to play with the shifting beams of golden sun that passed through the canopy, infused with the green of leaves.

I lay back on the moss lining the bank, careful to avoid the patch of jaelin, the wild nettles that grew thick beneath the bent tree that spread its roots out in the water and closed my eyes with a sigh, imagining a cool breeze that might ruffle the strands of hair that curled around my ears when the air was damp.

The string around my wrist tugged, and my eyelids fluttered open so I could watch as His Lordship, settled contentedly on a branch above my head, lifted his leg, and used his beak to clean between his toes.

I lifted my hand to give him more length, and he ruffled his feathers appreciatively.

Behind me, leaves rustled.

“How did you know I was here?”

“You have been every day these past five afternoons.” Taelon lay down beside me and held out a hastily wrapped package. “I’ve brought you something.”

I opened it up and beheld the contents with delight.

“Ice? However was it managed?”

“Harid’s father keeps it in his barn under a load of sawdust during the warm seasons. He uses it for his horses. He offered some to me, and I couldn’t resist.”

“My most gracious thanks to you. And to he, for sparing it.” I closed it back up and crushed the block into eatable pieces against one of the stones. “How was it today?” I pinched an ice chunk and dropped it into my mouth, barely resisting a moan as I tasted real cold for the first time in who knew how long.

“A bit tiring.” Taelon’s clothes were already completely dry, which meant the sun must have been hotter than ever. I pressed a bit of ice between his lips, and he accepted it.

“Any news?”

“It’s believed a storm is blowing in.” He ran his tongue over the top of his lip where the skin was dry. “A bad one. It might last the whole of tonight and the day after. Maybe longer.”

“I’m sure we could do with one.”

He made a noise of assent and slung his arm over his eyes.

“Are you tired?” I asked him.

“Yes.”

“Thoroughly?”

“Thoroughly.”

“What a shame.” I ate another piece of ice. “I suppose I should let you rest then.”

He removed his arm. “What do you mean?”

I shrugged, smiling, and peeled off my overdress so I was left in my shift, and let down my hair, wading into the deep part of the pool, smelling of ferns and clay. Taelon rose onto his forearms to watch me.

“You look like some sort of creature of the water, with your body submerged and your hair spread out in such a way,” he said spreading the fingers of his left hand to demonstrate. “Like your head is floating upon it. It does not look earthly.”

“A lovely water creature, I hope. Never mind earthly.”

“Very lovely.” He smiled and plucked a strand of grass which he flicked into the water. “You always are, you know.”

Not sure how to reply sensibly, I took a breath and dunked my dead beneath the surface where all was warm, weedy, and quiet. I stayed under until I’d watched all my air go up in iridescent bubbles and then stood, lifting my face for a breeze, the slightest wisp of air to make me the littlest bit cooler.

“Any better?”

“Not really.”

I accepted Taelon’s sympathetic hand and stepped back onto the bank, streaming water, and flopped back down, not bothering to wring out some of the dampness so my shift wouldn’t cling, soaked as it did, to my skin.

“I’ve wanted to tend to you in this place,” I said, laying my arm beneath my head. “Ever since I have known about it.”

“You have.”

“I haven’t. You’ve tended to me.”

“It is the same thing, isn’t it?”

“I thought so. But it isn’t.”

“What is the difference, then?”

“I can’t say. I would color.” I sighed. “Anyway. You’ve thoroughly exhausted yourself. Spent all your energy beneath the sea and returned with nothing left for me.”

“It isn’t so.”

“Isn’t it?”

“No.” I thought he must be blushing, even if I wasn’t looking at him. His voice changed when he blushed. Softer. Lighter. “I have a reserve set aside, which may be used, at your leisure.”

“And then you shall be spent.”

“Both of us, I hope. By a much better way to go about it.”

“You can be very bold when you wish to be.” I laughed, and beside me, he shifted.

“Would you rather I wouldn’t be, Ingrith?”

“I don’t mind either way.” I closed my eyes as he kissed my neck. “One of us must be, or else we’ll stay hidden away with neither making the first move forward. Nothing would ever get done.”

My breath quickened as the playful kisses took a more serious turn and hastened to slide my shift down my shoulders and to my waist so that all places most wanting would have a better opportunity to receive his attention. My drying skin prickled as a warm breeze blew through the forest, rustling my damp hair, and I dug my fingers through his as he lowered his head and placed his lips upon the skin between the two halves of my ribcage, while his hands bunched the cloth clinging around my calves up around my thighs.

“What is this?” He tugged on the string tied to my wrist curiously.

“Oh, dear. I forgot.” I looked up at the tree and saw His Lordship sitting peacefully on his branch, politely facing the opposite direction.

“Do you think he will stay if you take it off?”

“Yes. Yes, of course he will.”

I’d enjoyed the sweet clumsiness of our first intimate tending, just as much as I delighted in the more confident, arduous ones that followed. They each had their time and place. In this instance, I felt it was more likely to be the latter. So, I unclasped the collar of his tunic where it did up around his throat to hurry things along a bit.

I was nearly unclothed. He was on his way to being. We were alone and there was nothing better to do, so I was vexed when Taelon froze, one hand splayed along my hip, the other propping him up on his side as he stared at something over my shoulder.

“Why stop?” I asked. I was close enough I could taste the salt from the ocean on his skin.

“Ingrith, look,” he whispered. I huffed and turned around, and then stared.

The wolf stared back, hackles raised, eyes wary from the sight of a lesser-known presence. We waited and watched each other for a few silent seconds, then, with one last hard look in my direction, he turned and loped away back the way he came.

“It’s only Sorrow,” I said calmly. “He’s no more vicious than a rabbit.”

“I have met a vicious rabbit,” Taelon remarked faintly, eyes still stuck on the place where the wolf had stood.

“I don’t know why, but I feel strangely guilty.” I sat up and rubbed my hands up and down my bare arms to rid myself of the sensation. And then I chuckled. “He seemed a bit jealous, don’t you think? Only I’ve just remembered a few days ago he tried to offer me his kill. Perhaps he was playing at courtship.”

Taelon’s eyes squinted as he laughed, tension gone. “It isn’t as strange for me, somehow, to believe you’d have a wolf fall in love with you, as it rightly ought to be.”

“Goodness. I must be very charming.”

He took my face in his hands, and he kissed me sweetly, his thumbs brushing over my cheekbones. And even though the urgent desire between us had faded over the start Sorrow’s presence had caused, I did not mind. There would be plenty of other chances.

We had our whole lives.

I awoke to thunder. A clap so loud it shook the house. I rolled over and pushed my matted hair out of my face, peering blindly about the room.

“What is happening?” I mumbled, patting the space beside me on the bed when no answer came. It was empty. I sat up.

“Taelon?” I called.

The windows rattled and outside, the wind howled.

“Taelon?” I called again, my voice rising with my panic at finding myself unexplainably alone.

Warm rain hounded me the moment I stepped out of doors, and I gasped at the sight before me. Everything was red. The sky. The storm clouds, swollen and vast. The ocean was a roiling serpent the color of blood. Even the rain seemed to fall like wine from the heavens.

I shielded my eyes with my hand and peered down at the beach, where through the gale I could see what seemed like the whole village gathered on the sand. And there, further away, hardly visible at first, was a ship.

My stomach dropped.

It less road the waves than clung; barely rising from the seething water as it towered and roared delight over the pitiful vessel that dared to think it could come ashore.

My bare feet stung as I sprinted down the path and through the village. The puddles that dotted the ground were warm as bathwater. They splattered my skirt as I ran through them, and the wind, near as warm, threatened to toss me aside.

When I reached the beach, I stumbled back as one of the waves washed to the entrance of the village.

The village people were up to their knees in the surf, all shouting and pointing. As the water pulled back in, I picked up my skirts and delved into the group. No one made note of my presence. No one appeared to notice me at all.

Where was Taelon?

Someone grabbed my arm, and I swung around, ready to on instinct to strikeout.

“What are you doing here?” Taelon demanded. He was soaked, his hair plastered over his eyes, tunic stuck to his upper body, and his eyes were dark in the red of the night.

I wrenched my arm away, feeling defensive. “I woke and you were gone. Why didn’t you bring me? What is happening? Why is everyone here?”

His reply was broken as another far-reaching wave slammed into us and I grabbed onto him to steady myself.

“It is dangerous, Ingrith.”

“You cannot expect me to stay home just because it’s dangerous. Why, nearly everyone else is here.”

“I know.” His hold on me remained secure, and he watched the ocean carefully. “But you were sleeping. I didn’t want to wake you.”

“What’s happening? I saw a ship.”

“Yes. And it won’t make it to shore. We are trying to decide whether to risk sending out some fishing boats.”

He dropped my arms and took my hand, weaving between the people watching for the ship.

Grieda, Argall the miller, and two other older men were gathered in a tight group, arguing loudly over the voices of the people. I heard Grieda’s sharp voice laughing in mockery.

“You know as well as I do that anyone we send out will drown. No.”

“That’s a ship full of people, woman,” one of the men snarled. “Would you have us watch as they drown?”

“Argall!” Grieda whirled on him, one hand on her hip, the other keeping her wild hair out of her eyes. “You must see that this is nonsense! Sending our people out there . . . we may as well hand them knives and tell them to commit Jassialhwar!”

Argall shook his head, his red hair seeming to bleed down his cheeks as the rain-streaked through it.

I shuddered.

“We can send out the Feignt men. They’re fine swimmers.”

My gasp must have been louder than it was meant to be. They all turned their heads and saw us.

“Don’t go.” I gripped Taelon’s arm, hard enough that he had to look me in the eyes; had to see how serious I was.

“No! I won’t consider it!” Grieda was as frightened as I was. “Sacrifice half the healthy young men on this island that already has so few, in an attempt to save strangers? No!”

“I’ll go!” Ulliam pushed his way through to us, eyes bright despite the heaving ocean and the threat such a declaration posed. He puffed out his chest. “I’m not afraid.”

He shot a proud look at someone in the crowd.

“Lunacy!” Grieda hissed. “Will you really face certain death only to impress a woman? What do you expect she’ll think of your waterlogged, bloated corpse when it washes up on the beach in a few days’ time? How dashing and noble you were?”

Ulliam flushed.

“Grieda,” one of the men said gently. “We understand that the loss of your son affected you, and your feminine sensibilities have—”

“My feminine sensibilities?” Grieda seemed to swell and suddenly tower over the people around her. The man shrank back. “What have my feminine sensibilities, or my dead son, to do with not wishing death upon our people? I was given this place on the Council IV because I earned it. I have seen more of life and death than either of you can imagine. I am a part of this council and so I will be heard, and I will be respected.”

“Let us hear from the young men themselves,” the eldest man said. “We have one who is willing to brave the waters as a savior.”

“Oh, I—Actually—” Ulliam stammered.

“I can speak for my son,” Argall said proudly. “He fears neither man, water, nor beast.”

“Dara has a wife, a young child, and another on the way. If he dies, what will they do?” Grieda asked sharply.

“Bóann, my nephew, is an honorable lad,” the old man said. “I know he’ll go.”

“You’ve lost your wizened minds in this mad weather!” Grieda cried. “Offering up your sons and neighbors and nephews! For shame!”

“And Taelon will go, of course,” said the other, staring at him pointedly. “Of course, he will. Wouldn’t be a coward, would he?”

Taelon stiffened.

“Is it cowardice to live?” I inserted myself between him and the men, anger, and fear making me feel far more courageous than I was. “Is it cowardice, or is it wisdom? Is this courage and honor you speak of so freely, truly bravery and nobility, or is it foolhardiness? Recklessness? Where is the courage in dying hopelessly? In wasting life?”

Many of the other villagers were watching the argument now, and I felt the prickle of eyes on me.

Above us, the thunder rattled the earth with an explosive peal of laughter, and the rain fell harder. Tears of mirth, at a silly mortal act that failed to be impressive. How I wished the gods remained in the sky; that bringing an end to this storm could be achieved with only earnest prayer.

“Ingrith,” Taelon said, but I didn’t turn round. I was disgusted by the uncertainty with which he said my name.

“If you get into one of those boats, I will go with you,” I said quietly, so the others wouldn’t hear. “If you go into that water, I will follow you. Don’t fear for me. I swam nearly every day as a child. I’m sure I’ll survive at least as long as you.”

“We waste time as we stand here and fight!” Argall huffed. “I say we wait and watch. The ship may prevail yet. It could still reach the shore. I agree that it would be wasteful and disregarding of our first duties as councilmen to send out our own people when the need for it is uncertain. If the ship breaks, any that wish to go will go. We won’t stamp down upon a man’s free will. Not even you, Grieda.” He raised an eyebrow.

Grieda crossed her arms and scowled.

“The ship!” came a voice from the crowd. “The ship!” We all turned and watched in cold dread as the vessel went down below one of the towering waves. We waited and waited for it to come back up.

The mast rose from the red water and tipped. No ship came up with it.

The vessel had broken.

“It has passed through the reef,” Herring shouted, squinting through the rain, perfectly at ease even in the face of what was sure to mean many, many deaths. “Past the dangerous currents. Past the monster waves. We can risk the passing.”

“But—” Grieda fumed, fists shaking.

“Bring out the boats!”

“Taelon,” I said, as the people split. Some swarmed to the boathouse, and others spoke of fetching blankets for the survivors. “You mustn’t go.”

He squeezed my hand. “You told me I couldn’t keep you from things simply because they were dangerous, and you are right. Besides. What Herring said is true. The ship made it past all the worst parts of the bay. There’s minimal danger for us. But it is too far for them to swim back. Many could be injured.”

I took my hand away, biting my tongue to keep from spewing all the cruel hurtful things I wanted to say.

“You are all the same,” I spat, and stomped away toward the village, away from the frothing waves.

Would that he was a coward.

I felt a gnarly spear lodge in my chest and bleed me of my righteous anger, filling me instead with feelings of guilt and regret. Surely, Taelon was doing what any good man would do. I couldn’t rightly begrudge him that, and I did feel nasty doing it.

Watching as the fishing boats filled with the young and the brave, my heart was in my mouth. I could see the pinpricks that were people fighting not to drown. I might have been one of them once. Wouldn’t I have wanted someone to save me? Even if it meant risking their life?

But it was his life. A life of more worth to me than anything I had. To die for someone I didn’t know . . . for yet another boy I loved to be taken by the sea, it would be unbearable.

“He will be alright,” Grieda said, standing beside me. She sounded as though she were speaking to herself, rather than me.

“Even monster waves and currents without, there are still dangers in a storm swollen sea,” I answered stiffly.

“He wouldn’t risk losing you.”

“Isn’t he now?”

“No, I don’t think so.” Grieda clenched her hand over her bosom; narrow, sharp face tense as she stared at the boats. “He wouldn’t have gone if he wasn’t sure he would come back.”

“They always think they’ll come back.”

“No.” She breathed in, wiping the rain from her eyes. “There are four things that men consult before making a decision. Their balls, their pride, their heads, and their hearts. All four can bring ruin in the wrong combination. But also, success with the right one.”

“And which ones have Taelon consulted tonight?” I asked.

“Two out of four.”

“Which two?”

“We’ll see, won’t we?”

I didn’t want to see. I wanted to sprint down the sand and dive into the ocean. I wanted to swim to his boat and drag him off it, then pull him to shore and keep him forever as my prisoner; in a cage, in my heart, in my everything, so he’d never be in danger again.

The sand became a ripe bed of all manner of scraps from the ship. Torn sail, rope, wood, and barrels. Those of us who’d stayed behind were tasked with cleaning it up; gathering up what could be used and storing it away. All the time my insides were in knots, and my eyes were not long to be kept from the ocean.

But the boats returned, full of people; ours, and others, and all was well.

The women were wet to the bone, weak from the struggles with the waves, and bleeding from the various wounds they’d taken from the destruction of the ship. Some of them were mere surfaces gashes, but others were more serious, and the girls who bore them unconscious. There were some of the sailors too, shaking, and coughing water out of their lungs.

I helped hand out the blankets and pat backs, while Grieda cleaned and bandaged wounds. Some of the people brought back faded from unconsciousness to death, and we carried them out of reach of the waves to wait for when others could be spared to dig their graves.

Taelon met my eyes uncertainly when his boat came back ashore, waiting for a sign that would clarify whether I remained angry with him. I couldn’t decide if I was. It felt like I’d been proved wrong, somehow, and so I’d lost, or been one-upped. I looked away and helped a woman wrap a quilt around her child.

There would be time for apologies later.

I must have been the only one who heard the cry for help. I was the only one to look up. When no one else did, I thought I must have imagined it. But it came again, and I stood up to search the waves.

There was a shape. A definite human shape in the water, a child, struggling to stay above the waves.

I looked back. No one was even glancing in his direction. I opened my mouth to call him to their attention, but another gargling, weak scream had me dropping all sense and plunging into the ocean.

I didn’t feel the strain of each pull against the water that took me farther out. The waves slapped into my face and filled my mouth with water. I spat it out and swam on, blind from the rain and deaf from the thunder above.

The boy was just barely staying above the surface, clinging weakly to a broken slab of wood. I feared he would slip off before I was near enough to catch him.

He looked up and saw me, his lips moving in a barely perceptible, “help me,” and I threw more force into my strokes. Not a moment after I flung out a hand and my fingers slapped against the rough wood, a harsh wave jostled him, and he fell sideways, thin, gashed hands slipping off the board.

I reached down, and my fingers closed around flesh. Hauling the boy up was no easy feat. He wasn’t as young as he’d looked. At least ten years old, and with no strength left to help me.

The board wouldn’t be able to hold his weight if I were to try and slide him on it. I wasn’t strong enough to lug us both back.

“Wake up, damn you!” I cried, tilting back my head to keep from sinking as I lost hold of the board altogether and took the child into my arms.

Self-preservation screamed at me to let him go and save myself. But I couldn’t watch yet another person taken from my arms into the sea.

“Give him to me!” Just like that, Taelon was there, like a spirit summoned, and he took the boy’s shoulders, leaning his head on his shoulder. Together we carried him back to shore.

“Is he alive?” I asked Grieda, gasping, as soon as we were back on the sand, and she’d spread him out before her on his stomach.

“He is.” A stream of water trickled out of his mouth, and his eyelashes fluttered.

“Tell me honestly, Ingrith,” Taelon said, on his knees beside me. “Did you go out yourself to get back at me?”

I gathered my hair over one shoulder and squeezed it out, though Sunah knew there was little point in all the rain. “Maybe. Partly. We’re even now. You frightened me, I frightened you. And we both saved a life.”

“I do not understand your logic,” he said brokenly. “I do not understand it at all.”

“I don’t either,” I admitted. “But I don’t think, no matter how angry with you I was, I would have seriously risked myself. He wasn’t that far out, and I’m not a heroic person. Certainly, I’ve never been selfless.”

He gave an incline of his head, either so confounded with me he had no inclination of what to say next or to acknowledge he thought I spoke true.

The next task to be tackled, now what could be found of the dead had been temporarily taken care of and the living were safe, was who would take them in until permanent housing could be sourced.

Grieda and the other councilmen arranged volunteers. The inn could squeeze in seven at the most. The rest were to be split between all the families that had floor space or a barn to spare.

“I think we can take in a few.” Ulliam raised his hand.

“And we!” Pathedra said. “We’d be glad to.”

“Especially those strapping sailors, eh?” I heard Purity add. Verity tried to hide a smirk, and Pariena gave them both a traumatized expression.

“We can take someone, can’t we?” I asked Taelon. “I don’t use my old room any longer. And we can make up a place by the hearth.”

He nodded. “We can take on two, Grieda. Four, if they don’t mind sharing beds.”

Grieda hmphed in approval and directed a woman and her daughter to us. “Take the boy, too,” she said. “I can’t find out he has a mother or friend anywhere here. You’d better carry him, he’s in no fit state to walk up a hill just yet.”

Taelon bent down and scooped him into his arms. Together we led our guests through the rain and back to the shelter and safety of home. I put the boy to bed directly, with the woman’s daughter. She, introducing herself as Pounin, insisted on sleeping on the floor beside it, despite my offer to make up a bed for her by the hearth. Then I searched through the pantry for anything to eat that wasn’t spoilt by the heat or meant to be saved and made up a late-night meal for everyone that was hungry.

“Is it morning yet, do you think?” I asked Taelon as he came up beside me and took the bread and knife from my hands, proceeding to slice it into pieces. He’d changed into dry clothes, but his hair remained damp, and I could smell the salt on both of us.

“I don’t think so. It will be soon, in an hour or two.” He finished with the bread and set the knife down carefully on the table.

“I am sorry that I distressed you,” he said, pressing both hands flat down on the wood and staring at them. “I really wouldn’t risk myself. I know you don’t believe it, but I wouldn’t.”

“Don’t apologize,” I said uncomfortably. “We needn’t talk about it now.”

“I think we should.” He lowered his voice and threw a look over his shoulder to make sure we were alone. “You shouldn’t have swum out after that child on your own. I’ve thought about it, and I think I understand why you did, but you shouldn’t have.”

“You paint me as such a heroine,” I said flatly. “Saving his life did come into it, I’ll have you know.”

“I know. Of course, I know.”

“And if I’m honest, I wasn’t really even thinking at all. Not about you, or anyone. Though, that must make it seem worse, doesn’t it?”

“You are a kind person, Ingrith,” Taelon said seriously. “You care for people. And perhaps there is more to it than I know. But I’ve told you I won’t risk myself. Please do me the same, and we’ll say no more about it.”

I arranged the bread slices together tidily and gazed at them unhappily. “I did act foolishly,” I allowed after some consideration. “I seem to do that, no matter how hard I try not to.” I laughed a little. “One thinks that age alone will determine how fast one matures. How silly.”

Before I’d reached it, and then gone over it, sixteen had seemed like the most important milestone, equal parts magical and impossible. It was the age girls began being treated like grown-ups; could wear long dresses; begin their proper lives and start their own families. I was seventeen now. Sixteen was a memory. But it was also many, many occurrences to come. Achieving maturity and adulthood wasn’t a day. It was an adventure just like any other, unique to each soul.

I was not foolish, I believed that full-heartedly. And certainly, everyone did stupid things over the course of their lives. So, there was no call for me to face some deep, childish thing and vanquish it; turning my life down a road of piety and sobriety. But I’d told Taelon I tried not to act foolish, and it wasn’t true.

I never stopped even once to think I shouldn’t. Maturity would reach me in its own time. But I took pride in being sensible, at least most of the time. In acting in accordance with respect and value. Or at least I wanted to.

“I will try harder to not be quite so careless and immature when the consequences could be dire.”

“Not too much harder.” The tightness of Taelon’s mouth loosened. “I like you a bit careless. It makes me feel like I can be. We’re still young, aren’t we?”

“It’s decided then.” I struggled with a smirk. “We’ll be sensible and serious only on the days our lives are in danger. Then we shall waste the rest away without a care in the world, playing with animals, eating ice, tending in all the places we can find, and getting into all the trouble we can.”

Taelon’s face turned a little bit red, but he grinned at me, and said very honestly, “Such a life with you couldn’t possibly be considered wasteful.”

Sleep was not to be familiar to me that night. Scarcely two hours after I’d laid down my head, I was brought back into waking by someone shaking my shoulder.

“What is it?” I mumbled, covering my eyes with my hand to keep out the sunlight sneaking through the curtains.

“Good woman, you must awaken. The boy child . . . he is drowning.”

“Drowning?” I dropped my hand and sat up. “But he’s not in the water.”

Pounin’s hair was matted around her ears, and she held her hand to her chest, the lines around her eyes and mouth deep in her fright. “He says he is drowning.”

Taelon woke the moment I touched him, and we gathered around the bed where indeed the boy lay, shivering, struggling to breathe, spluttering, and coughing. He grabbed my hand, and his fingers were tight and slick.

“Save—me,” he rasped.

Between the three of us, we carried him to Grieda’s house. She opened the door immediately and asked no questions. Sweeping the clutter off her table without a care for what broke on the ground, she told us to lay him upon it, and we did.

“He’s unconscious,” Grieda muttered, pulling up his eyelid with a gentle thumb. “And freezing. Ingrith, fetch a blanket. Take one from my bed.”

“But—” I looked down hopelessly at the boy unmoving on the table; brow wet, lips tinged blue. I couldn’t leave him. Not when I’d pulled him from the water. Not when he’d gripped my hand so tightly before.

“I will fetch it,” Taelon said, touching my shoulder briefly, and then disappearing.

“What may I do?” Pounin, asked, fluttering from one side of the table to the other.

“Return to your child,” Grieda answered, and lay her ear over the boy’s heart. Our eyes met, and I chilled.

He wasn’t breathing.

She tilted up his chin, bent her head, and kissed him on the lips. At least, that was what it looked like at first. She pinched his nose and breathed into his mouth. Once. Twice. Three times. When there was no response, she pressed her hands over his chest and pushed down.

I had seen this strange act once before on my mother’s table. A weeping woman brought her son to our home, his clothes soaked, and hair sand crusted, with a still heart. ‘There is life in him still,’ the woman had cried. “I know it.”

The breath of life. My mother had kissed his pale lips and hit his chest, and then water dripped from the young man’s mouth, and he opened his eyes.

I waited, holding the child’s clammy hand, for the same miracle to happen to him.

Taelon returned with the blanket, but only held it limp in his hands as we both watched Grieda breathe into the boy’s mouth, then thrust down on him again and again, harder and harder.

Nothing.

Wordlessly, she gestured for us to turn him over and we did. She pressed down gently on his back.

Nothing.

He was turned over once more, and she gave him her breath, and continued the thrusts, harder and more desperately each time, until there was the crack of ribs breaking and she dropped her arms, the greying curls around her eyes damp from exertion.

“He’s too far gone.”

“You couldn’t have done anything, Ingrith.” Taelon sat down on Grieda’s porch step beside me. My knees were tucked up to my chest to avoid the water cascading in rivulets from the roof.

“I don’t understand.” I trailed a finger along the lines of my palm. Did they really depict my future? “How could he drown on dry land?”

“I have seen something like it once. Seowan was asked to treat a woman whose husband went mad and tried to drown her. He couldn’t do anything for her, even though she’d not died while held under.”

“But why?” I pressed. “Why does it happen?”

“I do not know.” He took my wrist, and the pressure of his fingers made me conscious of the force with which I was using my nail to trace my heart line. Not hard enough to draw blood, but enough to scrape the skin away. Fate and destined paths seemed suddenly too oppressive. Couldn’t I decide for myself how I lived? Who I met? Who stayed and who left?

The sun poured through the clouds like wells of light overflown here and there over the landscape, while the skies continued to weep, and streams of water ran down the paths in spiraling, muddy little rivers. Otherwise, but for the odd peaceful cluck of one of Grieda’s hens, the island rested in silence.

I turned over Taelon’s palms and rested my own beside them to compare. Both our heartlines were cut in deeply, and deeper were the ones supposedly dictating our connections to fate. But both our separate lifelines branched off unevenly from each others.

The thought of being separated from him was like a serrated blade between my ribs. I would not be separated from him. Not ever. Not by different paths. Not by death. I would defy fate if I had to. This was my life. I had the right to live it to advantage. As did he.

“What are you doing?” he asked, softly, so as not to interrupt the respectful quiet surrounding the corpse on the table.

“Reading our futures.”

“Can you?”

“Of course,” I said gravely. It felt a little strange, jesting a mere hour after a boy died. But somehow, I felt it would be stranger not to. More painful not to. As humans, we spent so much of our lives covering the unseemly things. Hurt and self-hatred with pride and judgment. Unhappiness with smiles. Anger with politeness. Lust with purity. Guilt with defensiveness and denial. Why, even the ground, when the autumn colors had been leeched away and all that was left was bare and homely, there was snow to hide it all from us until spring made everything seemly again.

Here, now, there was so much to say. So many worries. So many things to be frightened of if I let myself imagine them even for the shortest amount of time. So many reasons to think something horrible would happen to one of us, to the people we’d grown to care for. And our futures, which had been so carefully scripted upon our hands as in fate’s web; those futures which we had such hopes for, could be abused abominably at any time, and none of us would know until it was too late. I stared and saw, but none of the lines in our flesh meant anything. None of them told me anything. Not a warning, not prevention.

Smoothing my hair over my shoulder, and untightening my fists, I smiled.

“I am a woman of many hidden skills and talents. My real name . . .” I lowered my voice mysteriously and whispered in his ear, “is Clearasglass the Allsee. Keeper of many crystal balls and holy chalices. For your weight in gold, I can tell you whether it shall rain tomorrow and whether chickens hatch from eggs.”

“And what of my future, Great Lady?” His lips twitched. “What can you tell me of that?”

“Well, I can tell you that your life is blessed to be perfectly happy.” My heart felt as though it were being stretched by two large, rough hands, but I kept smiling. How I wished it would be so. That there would be nothing but happiness in store for him, and I by his side.

“Chance will have you meet a traveling princess who will fall in love with you and take you to her homeland to become a king, where you shall rule over a peaceful, beautiful land and many happy, adoring subjects. You shall live lovingly, reverently, for many, many years. When death comes, it shall come sweetly. Hand in hand you shall walk with the one you love most, into the silver surf, and together your souls will leave peacefully and begin life anew.”

I cleared my throat of the pebbly ache beginning to build and leaned back against my hands to face the rain, so it didn’t quite feel like my eyes were trying to cry. “But . . .”

“But?”

“Now I’ve told you your future, if you wish for it to come to pass, you must pay my price. Three times your weight in blue gold, and twice in red brass.”

“An impossible feat, Great Lady. I haven’t a coin of either.”

“An unfortunate predicament indeed. And most pitiable,” I acknowledged mercifully. “It would seem then that I must take from that which you have.”

“What would you take?”

“For such a future as I saw fit to see?” I looked at him and pressed my fingertips over his heart. “Young mortal, I could ask for nothing less than your heart and your soul to be mine for this eternity and the next.”

Taelon’s eyes were intent, fixed upon me. He encased my hand with his, and when I moved it upward to caress his cheek, brought it to his lips and kissed my palm.

“This too is impossible for me to yield. I fear both and more have long since been held captive in your prison.”

“Oh, dear.” I smiled. “Aught I release them back so you might reclaim them?”

He let my hand go and kissed me again, my lips this time, eliciting a tug in my chest that told me slyly that such vital instruments of my own body could no longer conceivably be considered mine alone.

Pulling back, only a breath away, Taelon’s fingertips traced the structure of my face as though I were a masterpiece, hewn from the crystal of his infatuation and pure-hearted devotion.

“You would not dare.”

The rain continued to fall all the rest of the day, and the next, with no signs it planned on a halt. By that time the bodies gathered from the wreck of the ship, and those washed ashore in the days afterward, heated, soaked, and salted, were beginning to gather a foul odor, and we decided a burial could wait no longer.

We gathered, those of us who could be spared, in the fallow field used for informal burials, and, in the rain, dug a grave for each who perished. Those with shovels used shovels. Those of us without used digging sticks and our hands. Luckily, despite the dehydrating heat of the fifteen days, the rain had by now softened the cracked, hardened ground, so it didn’t pose much of a task to upheave.

When the graves were dug, and considered deep enough, we lay a corpse within each. Those who arrived together remained close by. Those who arrived alone were no longer alone. Then we covered them in mounds of fresh, damp earth, and planted a Bohiarl, a grave flower seed on each.

Tired, wet, and muddy, we waited solemnly as Argall recited one of Sunah’s blessings.

“Bones of thy body, be now bones of the earth. Flesh of thy shell, be now flesh of thy mother. Blood of thy veins, flow now as blood of thy land. Soul, reclaim thy throne in the sky. As thee withers, thy blossom it blooms. And thy life shalt begin anew. So is it that thy loving mother decreed. So shall it be. Return thee now unto her womb and blessed be.”

“Blessed be,” we echoed.

“Poor souls,” Pounin said mournfully as we walked back home. She held her daughter’s hand tightly, like the death of the boy had driven into her the cold fear that her own child might be taken from her.

I realized with a lick of shame, that I’d never learned his name. He’d stayed under the same roof as me, and I’d never seen fit to know his name.

As though sensing my thoughts, Taelon encircled my shoulders with his arm.

“Mamma,” the girl, Pfougan said, curious and bright in her innocence and ignorance of death. “When the pretty flowers grow, does that mean the souls are back in the heavens?”

“It means the souls have been born again,” her mother corrected, smiling tightly.

“But what if the flowers don’t grow?”

“Then the souls haven’t been born again. Some take years. Some take days.”

“No, Mama.” Pfougan shook her head. “What if they never grow? Does it mean they never come back?”

“Sunah’s life and rest, Pfougan.” Pounin stopped walking and lay her hands disapprovingly on her hips. “What’s gone into you, asking such questions?”

“Papa never had a flower.” Her daughter blinked at her obviously. “Does that mean Papa will never come here again?”

The woman’s stern expression sagged, and she shook her head, lips thinned. “The flowers are only there to tell a family when their lost one has been reborn. They do not decide whether or not they shall be. Enough of this now.”

Pfougan hummed and skipped a step. “I hope Papa never comes back. I hope he got taken to the Seven Hells and stays there forever.” Then she scampered up the rest of the hill to the house, calling, “Birdie! Birdie, let’s play!”

Sitting miserably out of the drizzle on the doorstep, his Lordship gave a start and hopped away before the reaching hands could pull his tail feathers or pinch his beak.

Pounin stared after her daughter, aghast.

“Your husband . . .” I intruded on her thoughts carefully, aware of the possibility of hurting her. “Is—Was he a cruel man?”

“No.” Pounin’s delicate brow was wrinkled, and her brown eyes anxious. “No, he was the best of them. And Pfougan wouldn’t have known either way. He perished, days before her birth. I don’t understand . . . She’s a kind girl. But since the journey on the ship, she has been saying such cruel, wicked things. I do not understand what has happened to her.”

With the fifteen days at an end, and the rain coming to a halt, the men of the village began work building homes for the newcomers to take up a more permanent residence. This was a relief to me, for though I would hardly admit it, I grew uncomfortable in Pfougan’s presence, and longed for the house to be Taelon’s and my own again.

To distract myself, I spent much of the time-of-day baking. And though her daughter unnerved me, I was grateful for Pounin’s willing help around the house. An extra set of hands made everything go by much faster. To cook for and clean up after four people, including myself, would have been a very tiresome task, especially as Taelon was almost always busy these days with the Feignt, and everything else.

It did sometimes irritate me that the people here seemed to consider him a sort of borrowed farmhand or errand boy and gave him all the tasks they didn’t wish to do, knowing he was too kind to reject any pleas for aid.

Of course, it was through that which we got much of what we needed, so I couldn’t be that annoyed. But it did make my baking and churning more determined. Our guests would leave at some point in the reasonably near future, and I hoped to have him here with me, to myself, for at least a few full days.

“I must ask Grieda for more milk,” I thought aloud one afternoon, a few days after the rainstorm, as I considered the contents of the pantry, taking note of everything which was plentiful and everything which was not. Though summer was not over yet, I knew it was never too early to begin winter savings.

After the heavy rainfall, there was an abundance of mushrooms popping up everywhere in the forest, and I’d spent much of the previous day with a basket, picking and selecting all those which I could at once distinguish as edible. Tonight, I would string them over the hearth and dry them so they would keep.

We had some salted and wrapped slabs of meat, plenty of fish, oysters, and a jar of buttermilk in the cool box, as well as some eggs, and assorted vegetables. There were also two sacks of flour; one which I delved into daily, and one which I put aside to be joined by more after the harvest if Argall’s bounty proved fruitful.

I’d traded a cream cake for several jars of preserves. Wild strawberry, hedgeberry, grape, apple, young radish, and bone stock, which I’d set at the very back of one of the top shelves so I wouldn’t be tempted to use them until later.

Apart from that, there was plenty of dried seaweed for soups or flavoring, and three plucked chickens, one of which I would cook tonight, with a few carrots.

“And biscuits,” I decided, taking out the buttermilk. Biscuits with fresh butter and just a small, small portion of the strawberry preserves.

My mouth watered at the thought, even as my head swam, and I had to lean against the edge of one of the shelves, terribly fatigued for a moment.

“Good woman Ingrith—Oh, are you unwell?”

“No, thank you Pounin.” I accepted the woman’s helping arm and hefted the buttermilk more securely into my own. “And please, call me Ingrith.”

“If it does please you.” Her hand hovered beneath my elbow as we both left the pantry, as though she worried I would keel over. “Forgive me for saying it, but you look pale. Are you sure you are not ill?”

“Quite sure. I had a moment’s faintness, is all. I’ve been on my feet all day. I’m only tired.”

“Then please let me do the washing today.”

“There’s no need for that.” In truth, I dearly wished to escape the gossip of the well and the tiresome climb back with a basket of wet clothes. And under such heat as there was today. I was certain I wouldn’t manage it.

“I insist,” Pounin, stated, already tearing off her apron and moving toward the washing basket that sat beside the door. “Put your feet up. Rest.”

“I won’t, but I will bake,” I said. “I enjoy it.”

Pounin left to do the washing, and I set out all the ingredients for biscuits on the table. As I rolled out the dough, I felt my spirits begin to lift.

There was a scraping noise, and I twisted my head around.

Pfougan pushed a chair up close to the table and then climbed onto it, staring intently at what I was doing. Her gold plaits stuck out stiffly on either side of her head, and tightened the skin around her eyes, making them look narrow; calculating.

I gave her a friendly smile, and went back to kneading, trying to focus on the warm, bubbly dough that crackled and popped faintly as I sunk my hands into it, rather than the girl breathing over my shoulder.

“Add more flour,” she advised confidently. “It’s stuck all over your hands.”

“Yes, I was going to add more flour.” My smile turned a little crooked, and I shook myself as I sprinkled more flour onto the sticky mound. I’d never felt this bothered around a child before.

“Why aren’t you singing?”

This time I chose not to stop what I was doing, and only said, “Hmm?” in as indifferent a manner as I could.

“Mama and I always sing when we make bread. Otherwise, it doesn’t come out right.”

“I see.”

“Didn’t your own Mama teach you bread songs?”

“My mother preferred to bake in silence,” I replied elegantly. “She only sang when she wove, embroidered, or knitted.”

“I’ll teach you one.” She held out a hand, eyebrows arched expectantly. “Dough.”

Sighing, I gave her a handful and withheld a wince as she pressed both her palms in the flour I’d set out for myself.

I’d been a young girl once. I knew just the sort of things they got their hands into.

“One, two, three, four, and five,” Pfougan chanted seriously, molding, and beating the fluffy substance beneath her hands in time to her tune. “When I was young, I had sisters five. Slogne, Ifnu, Medt, Btir, and Myge. For five, for five, I baked my bread for five. Four of them smiled and one of them died.”

My fingers stilled. “Died?”

“Hush!” Pfougan glared at me and gestured to the dough. “If you interrupt the song, the magic is broken. I’ll start again. And listen quietly this time.”

I did as I was told, my frown deepening every time a verse ended and something horrible happened to one of the sisters.

“—for three, for three, I baked my bread for three. Alas, I’ve no honey. I put poison in her tea. Two, two. When I was young, I had sisters two. Slogne and Ifnu. For two, for two, I baked my bread for two. Now one of them’s black and one of them’s blue. One. Now I am old, I am but one. For one, for one, I bake my bread for one. It took some time, but now I’m done. There.”

She finished shaping her last biscuit and laid it out with the others for scrutinization.

“Why did the sisters die?” I asked, genuinely concerned.

Pfougan scoffed and rolled her eyes. “Because that’s how the song goes. Don’t you know anything?”

“You’ll have to explain it to me.”

She sighed heavily. “That’s how we do it in Bunting when we make our first bread in a new house, or after a wedding or burial. We bake six loaves. One of them we let burn, so the house never does. One we throw out of the door, so thieves never steal. One we put poison in and leave it inside the wall for the Pseugama—”

“The what?”

She sighed again and rolled her eyes. “The unwelcome guest that lives in walls and cellars. They steal babies if you don’t poison them first. Anyway. Then two of them are beaten into crumbs and scattered over the doorstep, for good fortune, and the last you get to eat.”

“It sounds needlessly complicated and wasteful.” I patted one of my buns into shape, sharply conscious of making them visibly better than hers. “Here we only burn bread by accident. We never beat it into crumbs unless it’s for the birds. And we certainly never poison it.”

“Yes, well—” Pfougan wiped her hands off on her dress and hopped off the chair, clearly intent on leaving me to clean up the mess on the table alone. “You other people are plain stupid.”

“Pfougan,” I said sternly. “We aren’t done yet. We still need to tidy up while the bread rises, and then take it down to the oven.”

“Don’t want to.”

“I’m afraid we must.” I dusted off my hands and tried my best to sound commanding. “Now.”

The line-up for the village oven was dauntingly long. It seemed almost every woman was there, wanting to bake something.

I spotted Bronagh, looking distressed by the heat. Yet still, she smiled at me and waved. I waved back.

Pfougan stamped her feet and tried tugging her hand away. I held fast. “This is boring,” she whined.

“Yes, dear.”

“I hate this place.”

“Yes, dear.”

She bristled, and I felt a glow of mean delight.

“I hate you.”

“I’m not that fond of you either. Dear.” I smiled in all sweetness at the furious face glaring blades at me.

“I hate—” she rumbled, eyes brimming with contempt, “my mama, and my papa, and everyone and everything. I hope your house burns down, your favorite things get stolen, and your first babe is taken away. I hate you all so much I hope you get taken to the Seven Hells and be in pain forever. I hope you get taken to the Eighth Hell, and—”

“That’s a lot of hate,” remarked a dry voice from behind us. When we turned around, Grieda was standing there stoically, arms crossed, and blood splattered over her apron. Her eyes were fixed on Pfougan, and there was something like mirth behind their sharpness.

“The Eighth Hell is a terror not even arch-enemies wish upon each other. I’m surprised you even know of it, young as you are.”

“I hate you too,” answered Pfougan, though looking a little less sure.

“Ingrith,” Grieda said lightly, “bring your baking to my oven. And this child as well. I think you’ll both benefit.”

Roisin, Mairead, and Orlaith were playing at tops together in the kitchen when we arrived at the butchery. I set my breads in Grieda’s oven immediately and smiled at her gratefully. “It would be a nice thing if each house had its own.”

“Ay, it would,” she agreed, elbowing a chicken off the table. It squawked indignantly and strutted toward the open back door, with a deeply injured toss of the head. “Mairead, Roisin, Orlaith, greet our guests.”

The girls stood up from their game in a flutter of skirts and giggles. Instead of greeting me, they bobbed around Pfougan energetically.

“I like your hair,” Orlaith offered kindly, the shyest of the bunch. “Mother never has time to give me two plaits. I only get one. Except on special days.”

“Your dress looks old,” Roisin observed boldly.

“Do you want to play with my doll?” Mairead held out a straw doll, dressed in a rag skirt and apron. “She’s named Ferdí. You may tell her things. She won’t tattle.”

Pfougan looked at the three girls around her, eyes dark. I knew she would do something. But Grieda shook her head at me before I could say something and put her finger to her lips.

Pfougan’s hand snapped out and she tore the doll from Mairead. Then, making sure they were all watching, she threw the toy to the floor and stamped on it.

They all stared at the crushed hay and cloth on the ground with shocked eyes, and Pfougan turned on them each, one at a time, pointing as she went around.

“You’re ugly,” she said acidly to Orlaith. “Your dress looks like a washcloth, and you have dirt on your face,” she told Roisin, and then whirled on Mairead, whose eyes were beginning to shimmer with tears. “And that’s not a doll. That’s just stupid grass. I have a real doll at home on Bunting. She has a real cloth face and real yarn hair, buttons for eyes, and a real sewn dress with shoes and everything. And your face looks funny when you cry.”

There were outraged shrieks, a few more spiteful insults, and a bit of forceful plait-pulling before Grieda finally stepped in and separated them. Her nieces were sent to play nicely together outside, the battered straw doll was retrieved from the floor and set aside to be fixed, and Pfougan was told sternly to sit in a chair.

She refused only until Grieda pinched her ear.

“Check your biscuits and make sure they’re rising, Ingrith,” Grieda said, rolling up her sleeves, and I did, wondering what was going to happen.

Part of me, the mean part, hoped Pfougan would be scolded, most unmercifully. I knew Grieda was more than capable of it.

The biscuits were doing fine; and already filling the house with their friendly, nostalgic scent. I closed the oven door, pleased, and turned around in time to see Grieda cupping one of Pfougan’s ears with a clay jar, and the other with her hand. She bent her head and whispered something. There was a low, vibrating hum that tickled the bottoms of my feet through the floor, and traveled up my whole body in a warm shiver, then a whoosh like a short gust of wind, and Pfougan’s eyes grew unfocused.

Grieda corked the bottle and patted the dazed child on the head. “Go and join the girls now, and apologize.”

She nodded, still a bit glassy-eyed, and slid off the chair.

“What did you do?” I asked, a bit accusingly.

“Only an old wives’ trick.” Grieda shrugged and tossed the bottle into the fire. I wasn’t sure, but I could have sworn a low, breathy voice cried out as it hit the coals.

“She’s not hurt?”

“Why, no, not at all.” She glowered at me. “I would never harm a child.”

“But she looked so . . .” I gestured helplessly to the door Pfougan had peacefully glided through. “Different.”

“Quite the contrary. She’s back to normal I believe. Now.” She spread out her hands on either side of the table. “I have some dishes need washing, and after that, laundry on the line that needs folding. The washing bucket is by the door.”

She waited. I waited.

“Well?”

“You mean me?” My mouth fell open in horror. “Why?”

“Did you expect you would just sit idle for the next hour until your bread baked in my oven?” She scoffed. “We don’t use money here, girl, but we do expect to be reimbursed for what we give. Once again, the wash water is beside the door. To the left. In a bucket. A big cup with handles. You can’t miss it.”

“I know what a bucket is,” I grumbled, and grudgingly went to collect it.

“Oh, don’t sulk. It will pass the time. When you’ve finished, the bread will be too. And if it's not, you may muck out the stalls.”

It sufficed to say, I’d never lingered so long over a basin of dirty dishes, or a line of laundry in my life.

My hands were stiff and uncomfortable as I walked home, holding Pfougan’s in one and my basket of fresh biscuits in the other. Somehow Grieda had found a way to excuse me time to scrub her porch step.

At least it hadn’t been the barn stalls.

“Did you enjoy playing with the other girls, Pfougan?” I asked hesitantly. The dazed expression was gone, but she’d not uttered a single hateful word since Grieda’s mystery treatment.

“Yes. I taught them how to jump rope, and they taught me how to make flower crowns.” She eyed the late blooms lining the path with her usual seriousness, but not contempt. “I’ll make one for Mama tomorrow.”

“She’ll be very pleased.”

“Mhmm. And I’ll make one for Papa too.” She halted. “He was fevered,” she said, and her voice was very grim. “That’s why he died, Mama told me.”

“Oh, I am sorry.” I was. My insides twisted as I remembered Taelon’s fever; how I held his hand and was all but certain he would die.

“I wish he wouldn’t have died. It’s selfish.”

“I’m not all that certain he had a choice. But I am sure he loved you both, and wouldn’t have gone on purpose,” I expressed earnestly, feeling, for the first time, a sympathy for her.

Her eyelashes fluttered, and I hoped she wouldn’t cry. I didn’t know what I would do if she did.

After a faint, gaspy sob, she lifted her trembling chin proudly and stared at the sunset with squinted eyes, and said, in a way that told me she’d never noticed it before, “That’s very pretty.”

“Yes.” We stopped walking, halfway up the hill, at the almost perfect vantage point to appreciate the splatter of colors in all their glory. Vehement red, rich strips of lilac, glowing orange like fiery coal, and deep, swollen, sensual pink all soaked the sky. The clouds, puffed and enlarged, sponged up as much as they could hold, and looked full enough to burst and rain everything down on us. Bellow it, the last of the day’s heatwaves distorted the air and the greywater beyond.

I’d missed the sunsets and sunrises. Fifteen days and nights of light were quite well for anyone with a mind bent toward work alone. But I for one found more peace in the balance of knowing the bright hours were numbered.

What a gift this sight was. I could not understand how it came to be, but it was a sign, surely, that our land was created by magic and love.

At dinner, Taelon had some pleasant news for us. Three houses had been finished. They were small, only one room, and had no proper furniture but cots at this point. But if this was acceptable, they were ready for inhabitants. Those with children would take first picks and there were only two other mothers in need, so Pounin and Pfougan could take one as soon as tomorrow if they wished to. Those who were alone, whether by choice or misadventure, would remain where they were until there were enough homes for each.

Pounin and I worked together long into the night and the next day, me patching together and sewing two quilts, and she knitting a thin mattress coverlet. Pfougan, still uncannily polite and gentle, helped by picking out slices of cloth and yarn from the scraps sack in the All Trade; free for anyone in need, and handed them to me without my having to ask.

The wood smith was kind enough to donate some stools; the potter some pots; and everyone was expected to deliver food.

That night, Taelon and I walked Pounin and Pfougan to the doorway of their new home. There I bestowed a kiss on both their cheeks, a basket with a ready-made meal, some items which would not perish to start their winter savings, and a bunch of late summer flowers to brighten things.

The house seemed uncannily quiet and still when we returned, and though I was immensely glad it was just we two once again, there was, I admitted, a little bit of sorrow. Then Taelon kissed me, and the sorrow was gradually nudged away. But it had awakened a yearning in my heart. For more. More family. More people to love. More people to make light the dark when candles could not.

I hoped dearly that my parents, wherever they were, however they were, were thinking of me. No, more than that. That they knew I was thinking of them. That I might not have been with them, but I thought of them every single day. And most of all that I was alive. I was content. More than content, I was truly happy. And I would stay that way. I would not become a child taken from the world, and leaving my parents forever in agony, wondering whether I lived.

I would not be Asetha. I would not be that little boy