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bargain but she had not foreseen its weight.
    When Lillis was twenty-­five, Trudis was born: her last child; the child who confounded all assumptions. Her father had resembled those whom Lillis called “the J’s,” but he had been in some ways quite different. A little somber, perhaps. Not so musical. Unlike all the other of Lillis’s children, Trudis had proven to be perfectly suited to Hench Valley and therefore—­obviously—­she was also an inappropriate candidate for leaving it. Inexplicably, despite her extremely select parentage, by the time she was two, Trudis was seen to fit the Hench Valley mold all too perfectly. It was as though the valley itself had engendered her. Trudis’s father went away, returned saying he had sought advice and subsequently followed that advice. He told Lillis with regret and sorrow that Trudis had simply had not turned out to be . . . suitable, and when he left—­reluctantly, as each of the others before him had been, though for a different reason—­he left Trudis behind.
    Lillis would not accept this. Her pride rebelled against it. Lillis was a stubborn woman. She believed, with all her mind, that the man had been as carefully selected as Lillis herself, and no child of theirs could be . . . what Trudis was!
    In Hench Valley, the Rule was that each house was owned by the eldest woman in it. The owner could be a Grandma or a Ma or the oldest girl born to the preceding Ma: Lillis and Trudis occupied her house together. The rule also said that if there were any women of breeding age in the house, there should be a man in it, a Pa. In Lillis’s case, however, once her last consort left, she had no man in the house. Only the fact that she was the Healer Ma kept possible invaders away. Though the reason was unspoken and very possibly indefinable by local standards, no one wanted her to be owned by anyone else. She was too useful to them all.
    Someone had sent Lillis to the valley originally. The Planners and the ­people Lillis thought were responsible might not be the same person or ­people, which did not matter at the time. She had no real “relationship” with either. The Planners had governed her life until now—­and she had agreed to it, for she had been told that the result would have “beneficial consequences for mankind.” This promise came from a sufficiently exalted source in a sufficiently exalted place that Lillis believed it. Implicitly. The words were sufficiently lofty and lacking in detail to allow almost any interpretation, and “beneficial consequences” dropped into lockstep with Lillis’s unbreakable habit of looking on the bright side. All went well and as planned, thus, until Lillis had her last child, Trudis.
    Ah, Trudis! Those senders had looked deep, very deep, into Trudis within hours of her birth. Without dissent they considered Trudis to be both useless and hopeless. Worse (from their point of view) this judgment required that they look deeply into those of themselves who had arranged for the girl’s parentage. Those individuals were evaluated also, and were judged as having been, at best, inept. Years of research had been backtracked. Hundreds of studies had been reviewed and re-­re-­reviewed. Fingers of various types had been pointed at faces of various species. Everyone agreed that it was an unfortunate mistake, and—­given perfect hindsight—­completely preventable occurrence. These particular foreseers, however, did not consider perfection to be impossible. Everything else in the plan was on target, however, and in the face of Lillis’s furious determination they felt sufficiently distracted, and, moreover, sufficiently guilty to let her try to salvage Trudis.
    Prognostication said that only tragedy would result if the girl’s father stayed in Hench Valley for the length of time this salvage might take. He bid Lillis a loving