Stefan grabbed him by the arm. “She did not float. She drowned. She was innocent.”

  “The water ran cold today.” Bastion rubbed his arms, shivering.

  “She was innocent,” Stefan repeated.

  The villagers looked back and forth between the two men.

  Bastion turned to them. “Did you see the way she fought? Did you hear her scream? She did float—I saw it—but Satan took her under. She wanted to confess everything.” He clucked his teeth. “You are in greater danger than I imagined.”

  Someone took off their wrap and offered it to Bastion, who accepted it with thanks and set back toward the village.

  One by one the crowd turned and followed Bastion. None of them looked at Stefan again. Stefan waded out into the water, his hands skimming the surface. As if she might surface, as if it were not already too late for her. And for him.

  Stefan stood in the green water, motionless. He watched it flow past, the current urging him to follow Nelsa in death. He closed his eyes, imaging the sweet, cold water flowing over his face, pushing him down, underneath the world, to a better place, a quiet place where God alone took responsibility for suffering. A place where God answered every question from a crystal throne. A place where His rule gave perfect clarity. Stefan would be just another soul in His care. His troubles would be over. There would be no more riddles, no more confusion as he stood helpless beneath the cross.

  Stefan took another step deeper out in the water.

  A hand grabbed him around the ankle, and he heard a cry again, but as if from another room.

  He screamed, pushing back through the water for the trees, finding his footing and running until his side burned so badly he had to stop and breathe. He had imagined that. He was distraught. A branch had caught him by the hem. He glanced back in the direction of the river. Nelsa’s body was already far from here. She was dead.

  “You must choose,” someone whispered.

  Stefan covered his ears with his hands.

  “What do you want from me?” Stefan screamed. “Am I in the place of God?”

  “You must choose. Are you a shepherd or a hired man?”

  Stefan saw no one near, no animals fleeing in fear. Alone he cowered under a tree.

  “Choose,” came the voice, much further away, an echo from the mountains that surrounded the river.

  “Choose.”

  Stefan watched the full moon outside his window in the dormitory. He could not sleep, not with the outrageous light pouring in his room at this hour. Prayers would begin soon anyway. There is no point to sleeping, he thought. I cannot find rest. I do not know what I heard or what it meant.

  Bastion slept at the other end of the room and did not stir. His sleep was always deep and calm.

  Bastion finds rest. What is wrong with me, that I try to do what is right and cannot sleep? he thought. He brings terror, and God blesses him with sleep. Have I been so wrong about You, Jesus? Do I even know Your voice?

  Stefan sneaked out still in his bare feet, the wood floor blessedly quiet. He stood blinking in the moonlight, listening to the sounds of the sleeping village. He heard rats rustling through the gutters and empty market stalls across the lane. Rats here grew to be the size of cats, and the cats had given up trying to catch and eat them. The air, so crisp and clean it almost sparkled, told him that no one had begun throwing wood and manure into their fire to cook breakfast.

  She’s not sleeping, he thought. She can’t be, not in this moonlight.

  Stefan approached the cage. The cover lay on the ground. The witch Ava looked up at the moon and turned when he came near.

  “Would you cover me?” she asked. “I do not want to see the moon anymore.”

  “It is beautiful tonight.”

  “I like being covered,” she said.

  Stefan lifted the cover and began throwing it over the edge of the cage, moving around to each corner, pulling and tugging it into place. He stopped when he reached the last end. He couldn’t see her very well now, just her silhouette. She sat, her legs crossed, facing him.

  “You should speak it out loud,” she said. “It’s why you cannot sleep.”

  Stefan looked up at the sky. He couldn’t see any stars. Just that brilliant white eye, staring blindly at the world below.

  “You are not a true believer,” she whispered.

  “In Bastion? No.”

  “In God. Why else would you be here, talking to a condemned witch before dawn? You cannot sleep because you do not believe.”

  “I do not believe in myself. Nothing I say seems true.”

  “You believe in the power of your words. That is the poison you drink.”

  Stefan yanked his head back as if she’d scratched him.

  “Bastion teaches with words, yes,” she said, “but he is a man of action. He has worked since he arrived. That is why he sleeps so well.”

  “Bastion is wrong,” Stefan said, glancing behind him.

  “Are you jealous? He has many followers, even here in your own village. Your own people love him over you.”

  “It’s not love. It’s fear. What he does makes them fear.”

  “Then make them fear you. Or love you. It looks the same to me.”

  Stefan groaned and flicked the cover over the last portion of cage. I should sleep, he thought. This will profit me nothing.

  “Father, look upon me. Bastion offers me freedom. He has given me a way to atone for my sins, to satisfy this guilt that is eating me alive every minute. I gave him a witch, a woman to terrify the crowds. But you and I? I can offer you nothing. And what have you offered me?”

  “I offered you the truth.” He pulled the cover back up. He wanted to see her face.

  “But what good is your so-called truth to me?” She scrambled to him, her face inches from his, her filthy fingers wrapping around the bars. He flinched, but she could no longer hide the humanity in her eyes. “Will your truth mend my heart?” she continued. “Will it make me forget my son? Will it set me free of the guilt and pain that pierces me through every time I take a breath? I don’t want your truth. I want peace. I want my son. Can you give me that?”

  “No. But I can bring you beer,” he said. Saints help me, he prayed. I am losing my mind. I am reduced to offering drink instead of wise counsel.

  She wiped her face, streaking black from her palms across her cheeks. She blinked rapidly before answering. “Yes.”

  Stefan returned with a tall mug of his best beer. Water would kill a woman in such a weak state, but he used the best grains, the most careful attention, for his beer. Many ailing people felt renewed after a mug. Probably the only miracle he had ever offered or witnessed.

  He couldn’t fit it through the bars, so she pressed her face against the bars, opening her mouth, and he poured it in. He tried to be careful and not spill it, pushing the mug against the bars, watching how he tilted it, willing the stream to go slow and not spill over.

  She drank it all, using her long skirt under her shift to wipe at her mouth, leaving a wet stain across it.

  He looked at her, this mess he had created. She looked down at herself, then at him and burst into laughter.

  “Shhh,” he urged, glancing behind. “I would be stoned for this.”

  “I have not tasted beer since my arrest. Just spoiled wine reeking like vinegar, whatever dross Bastion did not trust to give the village pigs. And never clean water, though I am tortured by the sound of the rivers as we travel. You cannot imagine my thirst.”

  She looked up at the moon, squinting.

  “One time,” Stefan said, “I ruined a batch of my father’s beer, spoiled the hops, letting them ferment, so I fed them to my mother’s pigs. I didn’t know pigs could get drunk. My father came home from the fields and found all his pigs staggering about, foaming at the mouth. He thought them possessed, so he ran them all off into the forest out of fear for his life. We had no bacon that winter.”

  She laughed, and Stefan did too, shaking his head.

  She reached her hand through the bars at him.

  Stefan remembered the beating she had given him, but he did not step away. Her hand touched his face. He reached up and caught her face too, and they stood in the strong moonlight, not looking away from each other.

  A light shifted in the dormitory windows as someone inside walked past a candle.

  Stefan dropped his hand and replaced the covering. He ran inside the church before his crime could be discovered.

  The next morning Mia set out to find a bit more firewood. She had used up her winter supply. She hated the forest and worked quickly, bringing home just enough fallen, dead branches for today.

  As she opened the door to her home, a sword winked at Mia as Bjorn turned it over, wiping down the blade with a polishing cloth.

  Bjorn did not look up as Mia came through the door. She held her breath and entered as Alma grinned and rushed for her legs. Mia bent down and scooped her up, kissing her on the cheek, exhaling with relief. Alma made everything better. Even when Alma was frightened by a noise outside the window or a flash of lightning in the sky, it was Mia who felt comforted as she cradled Alma. Alma could never know the deep relief Mia had on those nights just touching her, holding this soft, trembling little flower. Alma gave Mia a reason to be brave. God let women bear children so women would never give up hope. Even if here on earth women were denied everything else, God would always let them bear children. Alma hinted at His goodness. Children were a promise brighter than the rainbow.

  Mia sat Alma back down, swatting her on the rump to nudge her in the direction of her doll. Alma grinned and went back to it.

  Bjorn had still not said a word nor even looked at Mia. She kept watch on him out of the corner of her eye, her body stiff with dread. Stefan had given no comfort or help yesterday. Mia had gone to Mass early today anyway, careful not to look at Stefan in the eye. She had focused on the statue of the Virgin Mary, who remained blind to her too. No one in town said a word to her as she left.

  “I am sorry,” she said. She was sorry for it all: the missing dinner, the leaving with no word yesterday, the anger.

  Bjorn looked up, his eyebrows arching. “For what?”

  “I am surprised you need ask.”

  He stood, lifting the sword, turning it to catch the light from the fire under the cooking pot. “I’m going to ask you a question, Mia.”

  She waited.

  Stepping closer to her, he offered her the sword, hilt first.

  “Would you kill me? If you knew you could not be caught?” he asked.

  Mia pushed the hilt back with her palm, slowly, careful not to push the blade into his stomach. She turned and bent over the cooking pot, pretending to stir. It had gone bone dry while she had been out. Any good wife would know this meant disaster. Anything she put in it now would scorch or curdle. Bjorn would taste her neglect for weeks.

  “Does it look good?” he asked. “I would like a good meal tonight.”

  “I can’t say. I need to fetch some water for it.”

  He caught her by the arm, pulling her face to his.

  “Where were you?” he asked.

  Mia looked at the floor. Always best not to look someone in the eyes when they grew angry. Thomas had taught her that, though not because he beat her, as others would, but because he relied on her hard work to buy his beer.

  “I went to Mass. Then I got some more wood, for later today. I ran out of wood.”

  “You went to church? Father Stefan was there?”

  “Of course.”

  Bjorn moved around her, to her back. His arms went round her waist, one of his hands still holding the sword.

  “But you went yesterday, too. There could be only one reason to go back again today.”

  “Mass makes me feel better. That’s the only reason.”

  He brought the sword up along her body, resting it under her chin, the sharp blade cold against her throat. Alma dropped her doll, her eyes wide.

  “And what did you say to the good Father today?” Bjorn asked. “Did you complain about me? Did you whisper my secrets to him? Are you the reason he resists Bastion and me?”

  “I don’t know any of your secrets. I didn’t know you had secrets.” She tried not to think of what Bastion had told her about his adulteries. Bjorn would hear those thoughts in her tone.

  “Then you’ve told the other women. Everyone knows the women of this village love a bit of gossip. How they must enjoy yours.”

  “They don’t talk to me.” Mia would not add that they did not like her, that they treated her with indifference. She would not humiliate herself to escape his wrath. She had grown tired of that escape.

  “I may be bewitched by another woman, but I will not be cuckolded by my own wife. Keep your petty complaints, your stupid, baseless suspicions about me to yourself from now on.”

  He lowered the sword but did not step back. His body pressed into the curves of hers.

  Alma’s expression changed to one of anger. She marched to Bjorn, holding open her palm and pressing her other hand into her stomach. Bjorn stepped back with a short laugh. “Give your child something to eat.”

  Mia tore a piece of bread from the morning’s baking and gave it to her. Alma flopped to the floor, tearing at the crusts, nibbling at it like a mouse, her eyes watching Bjorn with a fierce interest.

  “Why did you marry me?” she asked.

  Bjorn replaced the sword over the doorway.

  “I asked a question,” Mia said. She kept her voice soft, more interested in an answer than in an argument. She moved away from Alma so she would not hear.

  “I never wanted to marry,” he said. “It’s too much effort to please a woman you have to see every day.”

  “So you married me because I did not need to be pleased?”

  “I needed a wife. You did not ask questions back then. I thought you would give me peace. I thought you would be a good wife.”

  “Am I not?”

  Bjorn laughed.

  “What will become of us?” she asked. “When Bastion is gone and the village is quiet?”

  Bjorn ran his hand over his chin, walking to settle himself at the table for his meal. Mia ignored the rising panic, knowing she had no meal to feed him.

  “Nothing,” he said, his eyes cold and hard. “Nothing at all.”

  The word sank like a stone in her stomach. Mia looked around the little home, her pathetic attempts to copy the other women of the village by setting things in order, behaving as the marriage book had said she should, trying to please Bjorn no matter how it crushed her spirit. She had failed. Everything looked a mess. She had no meal to feed him, never mind her own empty belly.

  Bjorn reached for the plate on the table with a glare toward Mia. He knew the pot held nothing for him. She saw it in his eyes, everything it told him about her and these years together. She had nothing to offer him.

  Mia rubbed her hands together, nodding.

  She bent down by Alma, whispering in her ear. Alma stood, raising her arms over her head. Mia scooped her up and walked out.

  Mia could not pretend any longer. She had no energy left to try. If she stayed, if she tried again, desperation would cling to her, seeping into her voice and expression. Bastion would smell it out when he came calling again. She would have no argument, no defense. She would have no reason not to give up, no reason not to fall into his arms and let him take her far from this life.

  Except for Alma. Mia would not give in, and never give up, because God had given her Alma. He healed Alma for no cause Mia could think of. He dwelled in shadow and mystery, to be sure, but Mia knew one thing about Him now, one thing forever: This God of mystery and shadow gave good gifts, even to those who failed Him. Even if she failed Him again and again, she believed He would still be near, walking with her in her darkness.

  And Mia knew something else, too: She would choose to die in the forest before she broke her promise to God to honor Bjorn. Bjorn wasn’t worthy of it. God was. She would be true to this mysterious God, and by setting foot into the forest, without sword or knife, she knew she chose to die.

  “I will take care of Alma,” she whispered to God. “I will take her as far from here as I can.”

  Mia stepped into the shadows of the trees, cradling Alma in her arms. The forest rested quiet in the day. Those with hungers slept, waiting for night. Mia saw paw prints in the earth, one set, each print about the size of her palm with four toes, each with a claw curving in toward the center—the mark of a large wolf. A wolf had found her house last night. Bjorn had killed one wolf, and another had sprung out of the darkness to take its place, pacing back and forth, watching. Mia picked up her pace, hoping the wolf would not wake.

  The foolish virgins, Mia thought. I am no better than they. Mia had heard the parable of the foolish virgins from Father Stefan. Ten beautiful young virgins waited at night for their groom. But the wait proved too long, and the night was so dark that all ten virgins fell asleep. At last the cry rang out, “The groom is here! The time for the feast, the wedding, it is upon us!”

  But five of the virgins had no oil left for their lamps, so they couldn’t make their way to the feast. They went out into the dark streets, searching for oil, searching for help. And the five wise virgins, the ones who had stored up oil, the ones who were ready for a long, dark night, these women won everything—even love.

  The five foolish virgins mocked Mia as she picked her way through the last of the afternoon light, through this thick forest, with Alma clinging to her, every step difficult and painful. Green boughs scratched Mia’s face and caught her by the hair. She continued forward, letting the bough take a piece of her hair with it. She only wanted to save Alma.