East

Father

ONE PROBLEM WITH MY being a mapmaker is that I hated to travel. ("A born southeast," Eugenia would say.) And I blamed myself when the mapmaking business failed. In fact, it had already been on shaky ground, but when Esbjorn and his wife died in an influenza epidemic and the business fell to me, it soon became clear that I couldn't make a go of it. It didn't help that two of Esbjorn's biggest customers had also died in the epidemic.

Eugenia had already worked her way through half of the compass points, so there were four children at home but not enough food to go around. When a distant cousin of Eugenia's offered us a small plot of land to farm, we seized the opportunity and moved the family to a remote pocket of northern Njord.

The cousin was generous, charging only a nominal rent, and all went well, for a time.

Until Elise died.