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After that each added “Pa” to his name. Pig-­belly-­Pa. Suck-­tooth-­Pa. Fat-­ass-­Pa. Females lost their labels once they had children, each becoming a Ma, or, a generation later, a Grandma. Men never became Grandpas, however, since they were assumed to have had no part in producing the grandchild. So it was pretended, at least, though incest was not uncommon in Hench Valley. The only exception to these generalities was Grandma Lillis, who had first been identified as “Ma the healer,” and was now called “Grandma healer,” the word “healer” setting her into a separate category, making her valuable enough to leave alone at an age few other women reached, certainly not while still whole in body and mind.
    Needly had been of no immediate value to her Ma or her putative Pa: Trudis had, in fact, put the child to the breast without even looking at her, and did not seem to notice when Grandma removed her from the household. If girls were valued at all by Pas, it was as a future source of profit. This child here, marveling at the Griffins in the dawn light, was still a year or so too young to prove profitable. Girls when just about beddable—­those who lived that long—­were very briefly profitable at eleven or twelve because they were in very short supply. Females had a high vanishment rate among Hench Valley folk. The reasons varied: girls were “Sold to somebody at Grief’s Barn.” Or “at Bag’s Arm.” Or “at Gortles.” Girls “disappeared.” Girls “up and died.”
    All this was part of the reason Grandma had intended Trudis to remain childless.
    T HE PROBLEM OF T RUDIS HAD begun with her birth in Tuckwhip, one of the small Hench Valley towns. Grandma was then known merely as Lillis. Lillis had moved into Tuckwhip with a stranger man and had built, from the ground up, a well-­constructed house. No one moved into Hench Valley. No one had ever built a decent house there because no one there knew how. Somehow this man did. He was one whom the resident men had thought it unwise to either insult or attack, a man who made no attempt whatsoever to become acquainted, much less friendly with any of them. He was not a Pa, he would not use the title, his name was Joshua. Lillis had subsequently borne him twin girls—­Sally and Serena (becoming a Ma in the process). When the little girls were around two, Joshua had gone away a month or so before Jeremy had arrived to father Jules the golden-­haired. After Jeremy had come Jubal to father lilt-­voiced Sarah, and then after Jubal, James, whose children were twins again—­sturdy Jan and Jacky the dancer, who never toddled but went directly from a crawl to the extravagant grace of some creature born with winged feet.
    Lillis thought she should feel it was promiscuity, this sequence, but she didn’t. Each of them was different from the others, distinguishable, that is, but they were so much alike ! It was a kind of faithfulness with the added spice of novelty! Each of them had returned every now and then to visit Lillis and his child or children. When each child, including the first ones, reached the age of four or five, his or her or their father arrived to take the child or children away. All Lillis’s men had shared the way they behaved as well as their appearance. All of them were taciturn to other villagers, strong, capable, and—­with Lillis—­companionable, affectionate, and exceedingly intelligent. The one who had actually arranged such matters: a person? an agency? To herself, Lillis called them or it the Planners . It was clear that the Planners preferred that the person or agency found useful should live in a very unpleasant place among quite unpleasant ­people but nonetheless do it as happily as was possible under those conditions . Each time child or man went, Lillis had grieved: she had accepted grief as part of the