her? She’s quick of mind, pretty enough. Neither markedly pleasant nor unpleasant. Speaks peculiarly, but perhaps they all do.”
“Don’t fret her with questions.” Mandrik hammered away. “I think she has work to do. I don’t think she wants to be married.”
“Who doesn’t want to be married?”
“I don’t, for one.”
“She doesn’t seem like what you are.”
“You can say ‘mystic,’” he said, the corners of his blue eyes wrinkling with amusement. “It doesn’t hurt.”
“I don’t like the sound.”
“I think it’s the sense you object to.”
“I can’t believe she’s come from the Beyond, and she sits here, talking to us.”
“From beyond the Beyond. You’re lucky to have her, Yves; lucky that my calling precluded her staying with me, and lucky that none else in the village would accept her.”
“Were they asked?”
“No, but I can imagine their response. Have you taken her yet to the cairn?”
“I ran to get you practically as soon as I woke.”
“Take her.”
Adelaïda sneaked into the barn on silent feet, and squatted down beside us, her eyes bright with worry. “That stranger has done some odd things in your absence,” she whispered. “I thought I should tell you.”
“Witchery?” I asked.
She gave a wide-eyed shrug. “First thing, when she woke, she went into the yard with the most magnificent, pearliest cake of soap I ever saw, and spent ages at her ablutions—scrubbing that face like it was laundry, then rubbing herself with unguents about. Then she did something to her mouth with a bright green stick that made her foam like a mad horse and reek of peppermint leaves. Then, when she came back in and I offered her a slice of bread, she held it over the fire until its edges were quite black, and ate it as if it were the world’s finest delicacy.”
Her report seemed cause for alarm, yet my brother kept at his hammering and said, simply, “Toast.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Toast. Burnt bread. There are some peoples, Ruth’s among them, I suppose, who like to eat it. For breakfast.”
Adelaïda looked disappointed. “What about the other things?”
“None dangerous, I think. You should get back to the house before she finds you here whispering about her.”
She stood, sorry, it seemed, to have no cause for alarm, and went out to feed the chickens in the yard.
“You’re sure you’re right about this?” I asked him. “I have a child to protect.”
Mandrik kept unhurriedly at the nails. “She is no danger to Elizaveta.”
When Ruth returned, she sat quietly with a block of the finest, fairest paper I had ever beheld on her lap before her, and asked to know about measurements, the lathe, and the slight bow in the shape of the finished wheel, an improvement we had stumbled upon quite by accident, producing perhaps our third two-wheeled cart, and whose efficacy she did not at first understand. She admired our craftsmanship, which made me proud, and addressed my brother with the shy attitude of respect such a holy man deserved. She fingered the engraved box and pronounced it beautiful, but did not ask to look inside—which I took as a sign of good judgment.
We wrighted two new wheels that day, and the next built and attached the second axle. The next Market Day, we drove the new cart into town, to the never-sated astonishment of our brethren and the natives of Nnms. Cheers erupted as we drove, laden with the first fruits of spring, through Mandragora that fine morning; Desvres, Ydlbert, and our neighbors lauded us as if we had personally sprinkled the ground with the morning’s dew. But as I watched, from aloft, my brother walking alongside the new invention, beaming with pride and answering the many questions with grace, I began to wonder anxiously what I could invent next. And who knew but that all our neighbors’ attention was focused not on our work but on the tall, square-shouldered stranger who rode with her arms stretched along the rear gate and her smiling face pointed toward Heaven.
To attend church Ruth wore her loose trousers and a pale, modest shirt, and wrapped a handkerchief around her throat. She still looked odd, and her legs were still rather too visible, but at least her modified garb might prevent Father Stanislaus from choking. My wife and daughter dressed in their town-bought linen of robin’s-egg blue, so fine it made the petals of the blooming wildflowers look coarse. We climbed into the cart, newly strewn with fragrant hay, and drove to town behind our Hammadi, the wind whistling through her black mane. We arrived as the last bell tolled, and tied Hammadi to the post, where she snorted affably at Ydlbert’s Thea and received a nose to the cheek from Jepho Martin’s gray Gar.
Were I to build a church, I would name as its patron one of the great avenging saints: Michael, I mean, or George. But when our forefathers started a parish, she who drew their hearts was St. Perpetua, no worker of miracles, but a young Roman who, for her faith in the Church, was sentenced to die by a stampede of cows. Since childhood I had puzzled over this choice of patroness, gathering from her story that one should keep quiet about unpopular beliefs and be wary of kine. My brother, however, had a deeper understanding of its import, and wrote a translation of her tale, with an exegesis in which he explained that in Perpetua’s story our forebears must surely have seen the image of their own persecution. Ruth, too, must have been surprised to see our patroness’s name over the door, for as we entered our sanctuary she whispered, “St. Perpetua? Who’s that?”
Elizaveta whispered back, “Someone who died.”
The murals, painted by Cedric von Broleau, were the most vibrant and beautiful thing in our village. To me they were specially dear because of the old rumor that Cedric had fallen in love with my grandmother before she married, and, brokenhearted, painted her face again and again on the walls of his parish church. I believed I saw some resemblance between the saint and my daughter, especially about the dark eyes, which were rare in my family; and, as Friedl Vox had remarked, the paintings bore a passing likeness to our Ruth. Whether the rumors were true or no, I took great comfort in these brilliant scenes of martyrdom; that pale face, with great dark eyes and ripples of dark red hair like the waves of the sea, beckoned and held me. Strange indeed these murals must have seemed to a foreigner, strange the ravening kine. The church, as always, was abustle with bodies, full of chatter and laughter, the occasional sick lamb or piglet brought for blessing, and playing in the hay on the floor with the children. As we entered with our stranger, some of the talk fell to whisper, but Ruth held her head high. We took our customary seat on a bench toward the front, while many, whose families had not been able to donate one, sat or stood on the floor in the rear.
“Where’s Mandrik?” Ruth whispered beside me.
“He doesn’t worship in church.”
“Neither do I.”
“Shh.”
When Stanislaus came in from ringing the bell of which he was so proud, he widened his already wide eyes at the spectacle on our bench, but managed not to make mention of it. For the next hour, he spoke to us of our duties—to obey the
