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mucus?”
    “Fine, I guess?”
    “Does it resemble egg whites, near ovulation?”
    “For a day or two. But my period’s not—that regular. With the medications it gets better, but still it’s not, like, clockwork.”
    She is so worried. And trying to hide the worry. Her face keeps twitchingout of its behaving lines, cracking with
What if? What then?
then smoothing, obeying again. Deep down she doesn’t believe the mender can help, no matter how much she wants to believe it. This is a person unaccustomed to being helped.
    “Let’s see your tongue.”
    White scum over the pink.
    “You need to stop drinking milk.”
    “But I don’t—”
    “Cream in coffee? Cheese? Yogurt?”
    Ro nods.
    “Stop all ofthat.”
    “I will.” But Ro looks like she’s thinking
I didn’t come here for nutrition tips.
    Eat warm and warming foods. Yams, kidney beans, black beans, bone broth. More red meat: the clock walls need building. Less dairy: the tongue is damp. More green tea: the walls are weakish still. All in the elementals, bitches. Everyone wants charms, but thirty-two years on earth have convinced the mendercharms are purely for show. When the body is slow to do something, or galloping too fast toward death, people want wands waved.
Broth? That’s it?
The mender teaches them to boil meat bones for days. To simmer seed and stem and dried wrack, strain it, drink it. Womb tea makes a cruel stench.
    She pulls down the tea jar from the north cupboard. Shakes some into a brown bag, tapes it closed, handsit to Ro. “Heat this up in a big pot of water. After it boils, turn the heat down and simmer for three hours. Drink a cup every morning and every night. You won’t like the taste.”
    “What’s in it?”
    “Nothing harmful. Roots and herbs. They’ll make your lining lusher and your ovaries stronger.”
    “
Which
roots and herbs, exactly?”
    She’s one of those people who think they will understand somethingif they hear its name, when really they will only hear its name.
    “Dried fleeceflower, Himalayan teasel root, wolfberry, shiny bugleweed, Chinese dodder seed, motherwort, dong quai, red peony root, and nut grass rhizome.”
    The tea tastes (the mender has tried it) like water buried underground for months in a bowl of rotted wood, swum through by worms, spat into by a burrowing vole.
    The hair onRo’s upper lip. The irregular bleeding. The scummy tongue. The dryness.
    “Has Dr. Kalbfleisch checked you for PCOS?”
    “No—what’s that?”
    “Polycystic ovary syndrome. It affects ovulation, so it could be contributing.” Seeing Ro flash with fear, she adds: “A lot of women have it.”
    “Wouldn’t he have mentioned it, though? I’ve been seeing him for over a year.”
    “Ask for a test.”
    Ro has a gentleface—freckled, laugh lined, sad in the mouth corners. But her eyes are angry.

 
    How to make boiled puffin (
mjólkursoðinn lundi
):
    Skin puffin; rinse.
Remove feet and wings; discard.
Remove internal organs; set aside for lamb mash.
Stuff puffin with raisins and cake dough.
Boil in milk and water one hour, or until juices run clear.

THE DAUGHTER
    Is seven weeks late, approximately, more or less.
    She stares at the classroom floor, arranging linoleum tiles into groups of seven. One seven. Two seven.
    But she doesn’t feel pregnant.
    Three seven. Four seven.
    She would be feeling something by now, five seven, if she was.
    Ash passes a note:
Who finer, Xiao or Zakile?
    The daughter writes back:
Ephraim.
    Not on list, dumblerina.

    “So what are we talking about here?” goes Mr. Zakile. “We’ve got whiteness. The white whale. How come it’s white?”
    Ash goes, “God made it white?”
    Six seven.
    “Well, okay, that wasn’t really what I was …” Mr. Zakile paws through his notes, likely ripped whole from online, searching in those cut-and-pasted sentences for the brain he wasn’t born with.
    Of all divers,
said Captain Ahab,
thou hast dived the deepest .
    Has moved amid this world’s