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Taddus?” Dagma asked. “She has been waiting all these long days, sending her aunt to ask at the docks what ships have come to port, carrying what traders safely home.”
    â€œI’ll see a barber first—”
    â€œYes, or your beard will frighten her off forever, and you’ll never get sons to inherit the property she brings you,” Karleen said.
    â€œYou go with him, Husband,” Bertilde said. “You also need barbering, and you can bring back news about the losses from the storm. I’ve heard two ships were seen to go down.”
    â€œDrowned men sink under the waves. It’s from filling their bellies with water, when they try to breathe water,” Nido told Elske, with the same pleasure the war bands took in telling of their battles. He told her, “When they rise up again they are black and swollen with death, and the soft parts of their faces and flesh are eaten—”
    â€œWe don’t need to be reminded,” his mother said.
    Tavyan said, “There is nothing anyone can do now, to make or mar those fortunes. So let us consider a fortune we have at our disposal. What shall we do with Elske?”
    Elske hoped they would let her sit by the fire with the sleeping baby on her lap, and feed her again when she was next hungry.
    Bertilde asked, “Can’t she hire herself out elsewhere as a servant?” and Elske understood that in other houses a servant might be wanted.
    â€œI could marry her,” Nido said.
    â€œYou’re still a boy,” Karleen said, then asked, “How old are you, Elske?”
    The warmth of the stones against her back had made Elske drowsy, so it took her a moment to answer. “This will be my thirteenth winter.”
    â€œYou look younger, but that’s still too young to marry,” Dagma decided.
    â€œWhat do we know about her?” Bertilde asked.
    â€œShe’s strong,” Taddus said. “She’s clever.”
    â€œShe knows letters,” Tavyan said. “Reading and writing.”
    â€œShe kept us from fighting,” Nido said, but “How would a girl do that?” his father demanded, and Nido answered, “Well, we didn’t, did we? Also, Elske never once complained.”
    â€œShe seems to know about babies,” Bertilde said. “If she kept her cleverness to herself—for who wants a servant who can read?—she might find a place in one of the great houses, in a Courting Winter.”
    That night, Elske slept beside the warmth of coals, and woke early. She had the fire built up before anybody else stirred in the house; although, having done that, she could only sit beside it and wait for what the morning would bring.
    After their morning meal, the two men left the house for Old Trastad, leaving the women in charge of the shop and the home. Bertilde kept Nido back, to accompany her to the marketplace on Old Trastad, where she hoped to find a good fowl for the pot, and cabbage, and a fat, sweet onion, too. Elske, clothed now in a dress that rested light as a summer wind on her flesh, despite its long arms and tangling skirts, asked if she might go with the mother, but Bertilde told her that Nido couldn’t be expected to be protection for two women. So Elske stayed with the baby in the cook room, and when Karleen came running in with the troublesome news of eight kittens born, with none needed or wanted, Elske snapped their delicate damp necks while the sisters watched horrified through the window. She placed the bodies in a sack, which she left beside the shed.
    â€œShe could have spared one!” Karleen cried, when her mother returned.
    â€œTaddus will remove the remains,” Bertilde answered. “None of us enjoy getting rid of kittens, so stop your sniveling, Karleen, and you, Dagma, spare us your outrage. You’re not children. You should be glad Elske was here, or you might have had to drown them yourselves.”
    â€œBut why drown them