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didn’t want to see those poor black potatoes taken by the sídhe . We didn’t want to smell what was left of them.
    Instead we lay there with only the gleam from the smoored fire, worrying. Overhead the hens were clucking on their rope. They made me think of Maggie. Long ago she had strung that rope across the eaves for them to roost.
    “The thing about hens,” she had said, “is that they argue every night, clucking away. They’re trying to decide whether they should fly back to Norway where they first came from.”
    I remembered watching as she said, “Be kind to them so they’ll stay one more day and lay another egg or two for us.”
    And now Celia was saying we’d be wringing their necks for three meals.
    I shuddered. “What about the eggs?”
    “We will close the door and go to Maggie in Brooklyn, New York,” Celia said. “We will do that straightaway.”
    Horses clopping down the street, milk in pails, froth on top .
    “We will ask Sean Red to write us a letter,” Celia said, “to tell Maggie we’re coming.”
    I didn’t say that Sean knew only letters, not words, and not all of the letters anyway. I cleared my throat. “What money will you use to send the letter?” I asked. “And what to get us on a ship?”
    She sighed. “We will wait for Da. Yes, all we have to do is find food for each day. Maybe we could do that.”
    The hens stopped their clucking. They were going to stay another day with us as well. My eyes wanted to close. “We will have eggs,” I said.
    Next to me Patch was almost asleep too. “Eggs, eggs, eggs,” he whispered, and was still.
    “And we will eat just one meal, every night,” Celia said. “We can spend our time searching for food.”
    I went to sleep at last and dreamed of Anna. I couldn’t remember what it was, but in the morning I awoke suddenly, my heart pounding and a sharp pain in my stomach. Celia dragged herself up across me and opened the door to let the hens out. I pulled the cover up over my nose. “Close the door quickly,” I said. “The smell is …” I couldn’t even think of a word.
    “Fuafar,” Celia said.
    Fuafar . Disgusting. Yes. I had to get up. I had to do something.
    “Aha.” Celia reached into Biddy’s basket. “A nice brown egg for Patch.” She smiled at him. “I will cook it for you this minute.”
    I rolled out of the straw and onto my knees to say my morning prayers. I prayed that I would look out the door and the smell would be gone and the potatoes would be growing strong in the stony field. But I knew that wouldn’t happen.
    “I will go now to Anna’s,” I told them as I stood up.
    Celia began to cry. “We just have to hold on, all of us,” she said through her tears.
    I turned back to her and put my arms around her. “We will,” I said. “Somehow.”
    For a moment she cried even harder. Then she patted my cheeks.
    I went across the field, pictures of Da in my head, one after another, his blue eyes, the color of the sky over Maidin Bay, his arms strong, angling for a fish from the cliff top. He’d lean forward as he told stories about his first fishing trip, about meeting Mam with her curls tied back with a piece of string. I wanted him so much I could almost feel his arms around us and I reached out with my own arms.
    But instead of Da, Patch had come along in back of me, the bottom of his skirt dragging. He put one hand in mine and pointed with the other. “Sean Red there.”
    I saw him too, going over the road, his brothers with him. They carried the currach over their heads so that only their legs showed beneath them. The currach looked like a great black beetle inching itself toward the sea.
    “They’re on their way to catch fish.” I wondered if I could go with them someday. Would there be room? I’d work hard, I’d tell them, if they’d give me a place and a bit of the catch to take home.
    I wasn’t good with the oars and they all knew it.
    “Nory.” Patch tugged on my arm. “I have the