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into another. The second room was smaller and paneled with a blond wood that made it shine. I’d read about this! The room for women’s work. At the center, around a smaller fire, were a small clutch of women, vaguely threatening. Two sat spinning on glowing blond benches. The third paced with a baby at her breast, whispering to it and kissing its white head. Its soft hair waved with her breath. Betta didn’t introduce me, and I was grateful. They nodded, a couple smiled, and we moved on.

    A door stood at the end of the room, all golden wood with iron hinges and a little gable with crossed dragon heads above it. A child’s dream door. Something breathtaking and special should be on the other side, like a world made of candy. And it was.
    The mudroom at the back of the house was a great profusion, lit with the same little wall lamps stuck into the dirt walls here and there. They illuminated a rich and abundant life. Dozens of wool cloaks hung from pegs, leather boots lined up below, a tall stack of big bowls, so many baskets, tools, brooms. Bows and arrows hung on the wall, next to a pair of long, curved blades and a string of blunt ax heads, everywhere lay knives and axes and other bits of metal made for cutting. One corner was filled of wooden handles of every length from hatchet-sized to taller than Jeff. Another corner was stacked with crude snowshoes and long, flat slats that were the skið I had read about— snow skates —like thin wooden skis. Low benches lined the back wall, one piled high with folded blankets and sheepskins. Under the bench, a small wooden sword and tiny shield lolled, forgotten. The home’s true heart was not the fire pit, but here.
    The room was chaotically alive and yet neat as a tack. A house run strictly but bursting with love, kept in order by a good wife. Maybe it was the one with the babe. Had she worn keys at her waist? A pang of emotion erupted in me, an anger so sharp that I staggered onto the bench. Who did she think she was, the woman who kept this house so beautiful? I was confused. Shocked at myself. Frustrated and mad at being lost and weak. This was a gorgeous home, bigger, more extravagant and comfortable than any longhouse I’d imagined, and I was lucky, so very lucky.
    My head was a dead weight in my hands.
    A little girl with long, brown braids knelt in front of me. “Come Lady, are you alright?”
    I lifted my raw eyes to her, and she told me she was Ranka, exactly six. Betta knelt beside Ranka, looking speculatively between my feet and a little pair of leather ankle boots. I noticed my own by the door, two salt-watered lumps. She pursed her lips, matching my foot to a sole. Ranka gave advice in a sing-song voice about girls with growing feet.
    Besides the way we came through, there were two other doors. One went outside, I assumed. Another had a complex iron latch. And there was also a passageway—a simple opening in the floor with steps going down into the earth, extending into a dark, unknowable interior.
    I stood and wobbled, reached out my hand for the latched door, and Betta and Ranka nearly knocked each other over scrambling to pull me away. “Nei!” Ranka’s eyes were wide. “We do not go there.” I let them steer me away and down the dark stairs into the earth.
    The tunnel wasn’t frightening. Just high and wide enough that Betta and I could walk comfortably, it looked like something built by friendly elves. Betta let Ranka hold a small torch, and I winced when she waved it too close to my face. We hardly needed it. In less than half a minute we could see a square of light where the tunnel ended. It was a charming little door with a paneless window cut out of the top half. We seemed to be inside a hill, and right ahead of me I could see the clean air.
    I stepped out, and the sun off a million blades of grass slashed at my eyes. I cried out, covering them with my hands. I opened my fingers slowly, and when I was able to look, the world was stunning. We