have to suffice, then, won’t it?”
“Besides,” I said, searching through wood scraps for possible wheel spokes, “the sea is too far. No one wants to go all the way to the sea.”
Ruth said, quietly, “Indo-China.”
Mandrik said, “Indeed.”
“I’d like very much to talk to you about your journey.”
“Perhaps in due time.”
Ruth watched his work, and only on occasion glanced upward at his face. “Whenever you think it’s right.”
“The tale of my travels is longer than Midwinter’s Night, and I wouldn’t want to bore a stranger.”
“Perhaps when I’m no longer a stranger, then.”
“Yes. Ruth,” my brother said, barely looking up at her, “have you any skills? Can you turn a spoke on the lathe, or work with metal?”
“I could learn—I could be useful. I don’t want to be in your way.”
“I was only wondering about your line of work, back home.”
I tossed a stick at him. “She’s my age if she’s a day, Mandrik, sure. What would she be besides a wife?”
“Any number of things.”
“I’m not married,” she said. “I’m not sure I ever will be.”
“Is it because you’re so tall?”
She grinned. “I think of myself as being medium-sized.”
“You must come from a land of giants. Why are you not married?”
“I’ve had boyfriends.”
I’m sure I raised my eyebrows. “More than one?”
“Not at the same time.”
“What was wrong with them?” I asked. “Had they no land?”
“To answer your question, Mandrik—I’m still in school. I’m a grad student.”
“A student of what?”
“Anthropology. Peoples and civilizations.”
He nodded as if she made good sense, his lips pressed tight in concentration. “Well, then. We must be quite a boon.”
She said, “Yes,” then paused. “I am so anxious to learn everything you’re willing to teach me.”
“We will do our best to oblige.”
She stood and brushed nonexistent particles from her clothes. “If it’s no bother, then, I’d like to make notes on your work on the cart. Would you mind?”
I graciously shook my head no.
“Great. Let me get my notebook.”
I felt magnanimous as I watched her return to the house for whatever object she required. “It must be because she’s so tall,” I mused aloud. “Otherwise, what could be wrong with 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