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her?”
    “You never have to ask, Talia.”
    I went to the cellar and opened my old toy chest. Many years ago, before my father had sailed away and never returned, the chest had been full. Now, only a few treasured items remained. One of them was a stocking doll, stuffed with unspun wool, with a stitched face and yarn for hair. I took it upstairs. Rose turned to look at me as I came into view, and her eyes lit up at the sight of the doll.
    “Look, Rose,” I said as I knelt beside her. “It’s for you.”
    She looked up at me, and then she shyly reached out, as if it were a real person. I placed it in her arms, and she hugged it tightly. “It’s a surprise,” she said, her eyes lingering on the stairs.
    “Yes. A surprise for you.”
    ***
    Not a week later, Rose got lost again. Again, we stationed my mother inside their doorway, and we looked for her for long hours. Finally, at sunset, I came back home to fetch a lantern.
    I heard a sound in the cellar.
    I crept downstairs and looked around. Rose was there. My toy chest sat wide-open, but she had found something even more interesting. She looked up at me and gave me a brilliant smile as she spun the wheel of the spinning wheel.
    “Look!” she said.
    “Rose, come here,” I said. “Your godmothers are—”
    “You have a spinning wheel?” another voice asked.
    I spun around and looked at Andante, whom I had not realized had followed me. The look in her eyes I’ll never forget—it was as if I had betrayed her in the cruelest way possible.
    I opened my mouth to reply, but I could not. I was astonished that they didn’t know about the wheel. It was an open secret on the entire street.
    She rushed by me faster that I thought possible, snatched Rose away from the wheel and spun around to stare at me.
    “How could you!”
    “It’s…my mother, she—”
    But Danty was already leaving. She brushed by me without another word.
    The next day, they were gone. And my heart was broken once again.
    ***
    In my loneliness after the loss of Rose, I decided to find another lover. Mother was poor company, I had no friends and my experience with Caleb had taught me that even a plain woman can seduce a man, especially one as well-built as me. Under my clothes, I had a body any woman could envy. My legs were slim, hips wide, my waist narrow. My stomach, which had never borne children, was flat and shapely, and my breasts, which had never suckled a babe, were round and pert. I arranged my clothes so they highlighted all my best parts, and put an ever-so-slight shimmy to my walk. And it worked.
    One evening a few months after Rose’s departure, I dressed with care and ventured into Widow Harla’s tavern. A neighbor’s visiting cousin had caught my eye, and I went with the hope of his stopping by during the course of the evening. I took a table in the middle of the room. Harla came over to me.
    “I haven’t seen you in this tavern since it opened,” she said.
    “Mother retires so early each night,” I said. “I get lonely for company.”
    She leaned in close. “I bet that’s not the only thing you get lonely for, is it?”
    I looked at her in surprise. Her voice had a saucy lilt, and her eyes danced.
    She moved away while she took care of some other customers. I watched her closely as I speculated. I realized that she was younger than I thought. Surely she was not yet fifty. Several things I always wondered about her fell into place. By the time she came around to refill my mug of ale, I had some questions ready.
    “Are there any brewers in your family, Harla?”
    She glanced at me. “No, I’m the first.”
    “Hmm. Is brewing an easy art to learn?”
    “Not at all. It’s much like alchemy.”
    “I recollect that there used to be a brewer who lived on this street.”
    “’It’s true. He was getting frail, so he went to live with his son.”
    “Is his son a brewer?”
    “No. He was too dense to learn the art.”
    “Was the brewer the one who taught