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Elisabeth was supposed to be one of the last bright occasions in Bloody November, the hateful month when most animals had to be butchered. Only a few of the strongest would be spared to share the precious stores of grain over the winter. Anna hated November. She had come to know each pig by his temper, each calf by his name, and each sheep and goat by his coat. She did everything she could to avoid the killing. But now Anna even dreaded the family dinner as she walked slowly toward her uncle’s home.
    There she found Thomas alone outside the door, bewildered and sobbing. She led him to the garden and helped him out of his wet clothes and put him in a shirt Martin had outgrown. The little boy twirled around in circles, happy again.
    â€œOh Thomas! Do you understand anything? ” she asked.
    Agnes was angry so there was no celebration for Elisabeth’s day. A simple dinner in silence followed the service, leaving the afternoon for the more bloody tasks of November. If only it were still October , thought Anna. She had spent many pleasant October days with the whole family in the forest, collecting nuts and fallen wood. During the silent meal, Anna remembered the last breezy, clear afternoon when, after filling two heavy baskets with beechnuts, acorns, and chestnuts, she had rested and watched Thomas. He ran laughing to Margarete, trying to hand her his basket. Margarete ignored her little brother, so Anna grabbed him and praised his work, a basket full of pine cones, pebbles, and twigs.
    â€œWhat treasures, Thomas!” she exclaimed, and he clapped his hands joyfully. Then Anna grabbed Thomas by his wrists and spun him round and round until they both fell to the ground, dizzy and laughing. Anna remembered watching her little cousin, lying on the ground, blinking up at the trees and waving his arms like the branches.
    â€œYou’re almost as stupid as he is,” snorted Margarete, who turned to help Elisabeth with her heavy basket.
    All Anna had thought was how wonderfully Thomas could smile and laugh.
    Sweet, hopeless, Thomas, she now thought. He’s ruined Elisabeth’s day .
    Anna’s daydream was interrupted by Agnes who ordered her to fetch buckets of water while the men and boys began the butchering. But she was glad for the bloodless assignment. Martin’s old shirt fell below Thomas’s knees as he waddled happily behind her to the well. Returning to the house, Anna spotted Martin with his father and older brothers. He was barefoot and stripped down to his britches, killing animal after animal, bloody and exhilarated. She remembered a few years earlier when Martin had cried for weeks after his mother slaughtered a gosling who had followed him everywhere one summer.
    How he has changed! she thought. But at least he’s forgotten Dieter’s teasing .
    Last November, Anna recalled that Martin had been enraged when he had been forced to help her with the skinning.
    â€œThis is women’s work,” he complained.
    â€œAnd when did you become a man? ” Agnes had replied.
    He had worked in furious silence with Anna, scraping the hides clean of hair and fur, which was saved for brushes and for stiffening the clay used to build the walls of the houses. A tanner would turn the hides into leather for shoes and clothing. At least this year Martin is working with the men , thought Anna.
    For the rest of the day and in the days that followed, Anna often worked with Margaret and Elisabeth. They poured blood collected from the slaughtered pigs into boiling pans of oats and barley that hissed and then coagulated into black puddings. They boiled hooves to make jelly and saved horns for Uncle Karl who would carve them into spoons and cups. They made needles from bones and turned bladders into flasks. They helped Agnes salt meats that they hung from the rafters to cure slowly over the always smoking hearth. Later, the meat would be left to dry, hanging from beams, out of reach of the