The Dollmage

Chapter 2

The older ones will remember: Annakey and Renoa were born the day my husband died.

He had been ill since the snow covered the peaks to the timberline.

“Do not die,” I said to him.Was I not his Dollmage? Could I not command him?

He got worse.

“I forbid you to die,” I said to him, loudly, every day.

I gave him feverfew and bloodroot and saffron tea. I made my best healing doll for him. The healing doll did not work.

With his lifeless hand in mine, I stared out my window for many hours. Four great mountains make our valley, and this day they held up the sky, a great bowl of melted blue. I could not breathe this heavy, wet sky. Outside my window I could see a bough of the plum tree. The plums baked in the sun. The bees dropped sluggishly from fruit to fruit and flew home sadly to make hot honey. My past and many years weighed down my heart, and I realized I was near the end of my powers.

I had feared for some time that my powers were getting old along with my body, and now I took my husband’s death as proof. What was I to do, since I had no daughter to take my place? I was far past the age of bearing. Neither had I chosen a successor, one with the gift, to whom I could teach the art of dollmaking. Now I had expended every strength to make my man live, and I had failed. I was sure I had no power left at all. I grieved for myself and for my people.

In the evening, when my husbands body was stiff and cold, I went into my garden to comfort my heart, and found my husband’s ghost hiding behind the root shed.

He beckoned to me.

“Did you not promise to die with me?” he asked. I had promised indeed, on the bed of our young love, a long time ago, as we whispered together in the dark.

Now, I loved my husband, but I did not want to go with him, not yet. I was old, but not old enough to die.

I said, “If I had found and trained my successor before this I could go with you now, husband. How many times you nagged me to do so, but I did not want to share my power. Mostly, I did not want to see that I was old.” It comforted me to realize I was talking to my husband’s ghost. Only one with the power of a Dollmage could see a ghost. My powers were not entirely gone yet.

“I will come back for you,” he said, and he turned away.

I almost tripped over the bucket of pea pods as I ran from the root shed to the village common. Children played in the shallows where the river was widest, and farther upstream fishermen cast their lines. Youths were frog catching in the cattails, and a few girls watched them and laughed from the bucket-path. I could not die and miss these summer sights of red cows in a green field, and children splashing in the river, and the toft-gardens tumbling overgrown with vegetables. Nor could I miss the smells of sausage and cabbage and leek gravy that came out of houses as the women cooked their supper meal. I could not die and miss the merry-alder that shaded the houses, and the bright bridges that crossed the river all through the valley like stitching. How I loved the crowding forests of the uplands and the bouldered screes of the mountains. I wanted to live, and will any of you blame me?

My husband would come for me, though, as soon as my successor had been named and trained. Briefly I thought of not naming a new Dollmage, but even the thought made me tremble. What would happen to Seekvalley if I died anyway, leaving you without a Dollmage to make the story of our village? Who would make the promise dolls? It would mean the end of our people.

I stood upon Weeper’s Stump and waited. I did not have long to wait. Everyone assembled quickly.

Silently, as I stood there, I prayed to God who dwells upon the mountains. I prayed to know how I should know my successor, how I should know who would have the gift to make the promise dolls.

God answered me, as he always does, but not as I had thought.

As he always does.

I saw my husbands ghost walking through the crowd, walking toward me. As he walked by Mabe Willowknot, the baby in her womb, overdue to be born by some time, leaped and kicked so that her dress jumped. It took Mabe’s breath away. Ah, I thought. So that was it. My successor was not born yet.

All of you waited for my words, if not quietly, at least respectfully. I raised my hand and the crowd fell silent.

I said, “Today my successor will be born.” Everyone cheered. My people, my villagers, so happy that a new Dollmage would be born that day, forgetting that it meant their old Dollmage must be losing her powers, that she may be dying. Only one person did not cheer. Only one person looked up at me sadly: Vilsa Rainsayer. She already knows, I thought. She already knows I am losing my powers. It made me angry that she knew. Vilsa always made me angry.

Perhaps that is why I chose not to see her, pregnant also, step aside to let my husband’s ghost pass.

I see it now, in my mind’s eye. I am forced to see, for the story is not mine, and not of my choosing. It is Annakey’s story, and there is nothing like a story to make us see what we would not see. I refused to see that Vilsa had seen my husband’s ghost, that perhaps, being related to me, she might have the blood of a Dollmage in her veins.

I got down from Weeper’s Stump and walked back to the root shed. My husband’s ghost was there, and he was shelling the peas for me.

“Husband, I cannot come with you,” I said, “not now, and not next spring. The new Dollmage is not yet born.”

My husband left me. I was sad because I loved him, but I was happy because now I would live.

Those of you who are old will remember how the people milled around Mabe Willowknot, congratulating her. Mabe had seven daughters. I knew when she had this eighth daughter she would be happy enough to let me have her and raise her.

There had been one cloud on Mount Crownantler that morning. By midday the whole west sky was black with clouds, and at evening meal the storm broke.

“Mabe Willowknot labors with child,” Gilly Post reported to me, her face lit by distant lightning. I nodded and sent her away. I was making a trail of peas from the root shed to the bedroom in the hopes that I could entice my husband’s spirit to sleep with me that night. Now that I knew I would live, I missed him.

Someone else came to the door. The child is born already, I thought.

“Dollmage, I have news.” It was Greppa Lowmeadow’s oldest child, dripping with rain at my door.

“Wen?”

“My mother has gone early into childbirth.”

I did not answer. Once again, God had tricked me. We are friends that way.

“And Norda Bantercross, also, Dollmage. And Vilsa Rainsayer.”

Greppa’s child shrank back a little at the sight of my face, and then ran away when I began to laugh. When my laughter was spent, I wept. It was the first time I had wept since my husband died. I wept to lose him, the one who had been my husband, my child, my friend —and then I wept to lose my powers. Here was more proof that I was dwindling in power, for I had not foreseen that more than one child would be born. I prayed for three boys and only one girl. I prayed to have power enough to be Dollmage for my people until the next Dollmage was old enough. When I had done with tears, I picked up the peas one by one and ate them and mourned out my mourning.

That night, in the lightning and thunder, four children were born into the village. To Norda Bantercross was born a son, who she named Manal after her dead husband; to Greppa Lowmeadow a son, who she called Areth because she had no taste; and to Mabe Willowknot, a daughter she named Renoa. But God loved me so much he chose not to make my life too easy. Vilsa also was delivered of a daughter, who she named Annakey.

Now this was a puzzle indeed. “Which girl is the Dollmage?” the villagers asked. You older ones will remember how you asked me in just this way: “Which baby girl is the Dollmage? Which girl will have the gift and power to make promise dolls for our people, to make the story of our village?”

I stared at you. I did not know how to answer.

Finally I said, “The promise dolls will tell.”

But I had already decided in my heart that it must be Mabe Willownot’s daughter, Renoa. Why? I will tell you the truth. I had more than one reason to dislike Vilsa Rainsayer.

This is why I did not like Vilsa Rainsayer, even though she was my distant cousin. First, her house was always cleaner than mine. A woman who keeps her house so clean is asking to be disliked. Once I had tried sprinkling a little dust over her house in the village doll. It hadn’t worked at all. The next day I went to her house and it was cleaner than ever. My husband said, “Perhaps she has a little power of her own. Is she not your relative? Perhaps it is only enough to resist the story you make of her in the village doll.” His suggestion infuriated me, but not as much as what he said next.

He said she was beautiful. That is the second reason I disliked her. Since I loved my husband, there was no one to blame but her.

Do you think I enjoy confessing all my niggling faults? But if I must do it, be sure I will tell yours, also. How many of you harbor little resentments, almost invisible envyings? How many of you, when you hear of another’s misfortune, before you have had time to train your heart to be sad, feel first a tiny thrill of gladness? Ah, you think in the secret corners of your brains, because it has happened to him, it has not happened to me. If only for today, life has been kinder to me, and though I am not so fair or rich or strong or wise as he, I am unafflicted by his sorrow. Now you will see what great sadnesses can come from such tiny prides and baby hates.

Now I will tell you the third and biggest reason why I disliked Vilsa.

The fall before Annakey and Renoa and Manal and Areth were born,Vilsa’s husband, with another man, went away to look for another valley. “There will not be enough land for our son’s sons,” Fedr Rainsayer had declared at a village meeting.

You older ones will remember. Fedr said, “My tally stick says in the next generation there will be dearth.”

“There are no more valleys,” I told him at the meeting. “The valley where my great-grandmother lived was taken over and infested by robber people. All the villages around were destroyed. Only we survived. We came here to the only other valley that could be found in the endless range of mountains that make up our world.”

“We have no choice but to look,” Fedr said gravely. “We must think of our children and our grandchildren.”

I shrugged my shoulders. “You are going to your deaths,” I said.

Then Vilsa Rainsayer spoke up. “Dollmage, where is your faith? Is this not your art? Do you not remember that when our great-grandmother was young and the robber people came, she made a doll of this valley? She made it first, and so it was found, and so we live here. Could you not make a doll of another valley?”

“Of course I remember,” I said. “I care for the village doll she made to this day. I add to it. Nothing is built in the village until it is first added to the valley doll. I make the story of the village by it.” But my pride was damaged. How dare she instruct me, I thought.

Vilsas voice became gentle, and she touched my hand. “Make us a doll of a new valley, and my husband will find it. Make him safe among the deep passes and the slag peaks, Dollmage, and he will find a new valley.”

Now I knew her gentleness was to appease me, but it offended me almost worse than her instructions. I tried to make a new valley doll but my pride was taking up all the room in my heart. There was no room left for my art to breathe. Also, I was not so young as my great-grandmother had been when she made a new valley doll.

I tried to make something. I tried, but it would not come. I might have seen even then that my powers were dwindling, but at the time I blamed Vilsa. I thought, I cannot make the doll of a village that is not there. Well, she would have something, and so I got out my materials and began. Finally I fashioned something, a valley held by five mountains. It was done. There were crags and water and wild forests. There were pines on the stony slopes, and flowering oak and blue-holly on the valley floor. To the untrained eye it was sufficient, but I knew that it had not come from any place real.

When I showed it to the men who journeyed, they looked at it solemnly and nodded and said good-bye. Vilsa Rainsayer, when she looked at it, however, was not pleased.

“Dollmage, is there no deer-trod in the thicket?” she asked.

“There is game. It is midday and the hart sleeps.”

“Dollmage, where are the roosting birds and the mice and the owls?” she asked.

“Sleeping in their holes,” I said sharply.

She looked puzzled. “I see no dens, no nests.” She walked around it. “Is there no cornflower in the meadow? Is there no nettle? No wild corn or creepers?”

I glared at her. I hated her then. How dare she criticize! She as much as said she saw no art in it, no dreaming, no vision, and she might have found no better way to insult me.

She became afraid for her husband and begged him not to leave. He and his companion, Petr, the fieldmaster’s hermit brother, disappeared into the mountain forest. When they were gone, I took the new valley doll.

I meant to set it on the floor in the corner, but it slipped out of my hands.

It smashed against the wall, breaking, and the small pieces I had made for men flew onto the dirt floor. It was dark. I looked for them on my hands and knees, sick in my heart. I could not find them. After a time I gave up, and left the mess in a dark corner of the room for the mice to gnaw and the beetles to crawl upon.

“Well,” I said to the dark in the room, “I told them they were going to their deaths.”

The guiltier I felt, the more I blamed Vilsa. When it was known in the village that Vilsa had a child growing in her, I began to despise her. God had not sent me a child. To make things worse, though she was pregnant, she was still beautiful, and her house was still cleaner than mine.

Now you know why I did not like Vilsa Rainsayer. When she gave birth to a daughter on the same day as Mabe Willowknot, I liked her even less. I asked God why he was doing this to me. “To make you wise,” he said. I was surprised. I was already very wise.

The thunderstorms ceased in the night and the dawn rose on sleet showers. I went to visit Mabe Willowknot.The turf in the village common was spongy underfoot so I did not frighten the swans that fed on the river, nor did Mabe hear me coming. Her infant child was crying, but Mabe lay unconcerned.

“Let her sisters pick her up,” she said to my cross look. “I’ve fed the child.” She was a winter peach: sour, and at her center a hard core.

“What will you name her?”

She shrugged. I named the child Renoa after the baby I never had, and I began to love her.

Then I went to see Vilsa Rainsayer. Her roof needed thatch, and the shed door was in poor repair, but what was to be expected? Her husband had still not returned. When people suggested that she mourn for her husband, she only laughed. She refused to believe that he was dead. She was a quiet lass, but bone stubborn.

Vilsa sat in a rocker, cradling her babe as if she had given birth to her own heart. The floor of stone flags was clean as a river pebble. Before the fire were two sturdy chairs, and on them were thick, soft cushions, newly sewn, the stuffing smelling sweet of ladies’ bedstraw. The fire was cheery, the mantel dusted, the hearthstone scrubbed, and the chimney breast decorated with a swag of dried flowers.The pottery sink was without stain, the cream pans were polished, and the kettle scrubbed. Through the bedroom door I could see a bed, thick with quilted comforters, and a few worn clothes hung clean and mended on hooks. A chest at the foot of the bed had been freshly oiled. There were clover tarts in a basket on the table, the scent of them warming the house as much as the fire.

I love clover tarts, but today the smell of them made me gag.

“How could you clean today?” I asked.

She was pale, but prettier for it. “My friends have been kind,” Vilsa said.

“You were not supposed to be the one,” I said to her.

“Forgive me, Dollmage, but is God not the one who gave me to deliver in the storm?” Her voice was deferent, but strong in the truth. When was she going to learn not to be more right than me?

“Perhaps,” I said, “but she will not be Dollmage.”

“Have you made her promise doll already?” she asked, surprised.

“No.”

“Then we will see.”

She did not see that I wanted to slap her for her insolence. Everyone else feared and flattered me, and I had become used to it.

She could not keep her eyes off her baby child. Why did that also cause me a small pain at the back of my heart?

“What will you name her?” I asked in the most civil tone I could manage.

“Annakey, for her father loves that name.”

“Let me give you some advice,” I said.

“Yes, Dollmage.”

“It is foolish to love your Annakey so. A child who is adored and meets with nothing but kindness in its own home will be baffled when it meets the world full of greed and cruelty. A child who is protected does not learn to fight, does not learn to be wary and sly.”

Vilsa smiled and said respectfully, “Dollmage, did our grandmother not teach us that a child who is loved in her own home will grow to look for love everywhere?”

Why must she remind me of our shared heritage? Why must she ever contradict me?

She saw my look and said quietly, “Dollmage, in my joy for my child, 1 have forgotten your sorrow in losing your husband. I am so sorry for your loss.”

“Your husband, too, is dead,” I said. I wanted to hurt her. Had she not hurt me?

She looked at me for a long moment. She was pale from childbirth, but she became even paler then. Finally, she shook her head. “I would know.”

“You cannot know.”

“Dollmage, you have made a valley doll. My husband had great faith in your art. He will find the valley, and then he will return.”

“If he does not, it will not be my fault,” I said. “I told you all before I made it that there is nothing beyond these mountains.”

Vilsa looked down at her child and held her even more tightly. “My husband will come home with a story to tell.”

Then she forgot me, and began to sing to her child a sweet song of love.Vilsa’s husband was gone, but God had given her a child to comfort her heart.

Summer turned into fall as I found the perfect wood for each infant’s doll. I fasted and prayed to find the promise that lay hidden within.

It did not come to me. It would not. I went without sleep many nights. One day I went to Mabe Willowknot’s home. I picked up the baby Renoa and took her to my house.

“Poor babe,” I said. “You waited too long to come, and now there is no power in me even to make you a promise doll.”

Baby Renoa began to wail, but even as she did, I knew how to make Manal’s promise doll. I let God guide my hands as I carved away the wood that hid the promise of the child’s life. When it was done, I knew how to make Areth’s, and then the dolls of the infant girls. I borrowed on tiny Renoa’s powers.

One day I climbed upon Weepers Stump to announce the day of the promise doll ceremony for the four babies. As you gathered, I rejoiced to be alive, and to have found a way to serve you until Renoa was old enough. I rejoiced in our good valley, for black cows in a gold field, and for white geese growing fat on the hay stubble. My husband’s ghost was nowhere to be seen.

“The promise doll ceremony for Renoa, Annakey, Manal, and Areth will be at the next full moon,” I said.

Many tried to find out about the dolls before the ceremony. Some asked subtle questions and reminded me of all the favors they had done for me. Some brought whitemeats and puddings to my door and tried peeking around while I thanked them. It was for naught. I had hidden the dolls in the secret, locked room of my house.

Before sunrise, on the day of the promise doll ceremony for the new babies, the women were moving quietly in the dark, covering the tables in the village common with hot bread, with dishes of fresh butter, stewed fruits, crisped salt-meats, baked brown eggs, and baskets of sweet buns. Milk still warm from the cows’ udders steamed from clay jugs.

The sun rose while the moon was still in the sky. Men and children tumbled out of their cottages and crossed the arched bridges to the common. The mountain forests gleamed green, polished by the heavy rains.The mountaintops were blue and there was no snow on them. The rushy waters of Shrink Creek were swollen to the tops of the banks, spilling over in places throughout the valley to water the fields already deep in corn. It was an auspicious day.

As the villagers gathered, they eyed the food but they would not touch it until after the ceremony. The four new mothers, holding their infants, stood in the center of the common. One by one I would hang the promise dolls, each as small as a child’s thumb, round the necks of the infants in the presence of the witnesses.

Because it was the day I would give the promise doll to the new Dollmage, I had also made memory dolls for each member of the village.

“Take them,” I said as you assembled. “Take them, one to a person. There are some of cloth and some of wax. Here, for you, the one who lingers in the back, who did not reach out to grab — for you, I have a glass one. Put it in the window of your home and see what happens. Here, little ones, whose arms are short for the grabbing, I have dolls filled with pebbles and corn and wheat, and for the infants I have some filled with horsehair or sheep’s wool or feathers.”

You pressed around me, my people, talking and laughing, for your memory dolls. Some of you did not want memory dolls, for you saw no benefit in remembering. To those I gave dolls with more than one purpose. For those, I had dolls with beaks and bills and snouts. “As you keep them,” I said, “so will your barnyard animals be healthy and avoid hoofrot and lice.

I may have forgotten to tell them that their memories, too, would have beaks and bills. That is what you get.

For a woman whose child whimpered at her breast, I had a fever doll, and for Old Man Peel, who had many sins, I gave a memory doll that was also a mercy doll. “Who said old age is a time of rest?” I said as I gave it to him.

Finally, when everyone had been given his gift, I stood upon Weepers Stump. In the ritual way I said, “God has given me the gift to fashion the god of your spirit. It is my gift and power to do so, and will any of you gainsay it?” Normally I do not wait for an answer, but today I let the silence hang in the air for a time.

“So have I done for the four babes.” I cleared my throat. “I have used two different types of wood for the boys, but the same wise beech for the girls. With my knife and many incantations I have carved the woods into small totems, each with ear markings, to ensure that we hear the promises others make and so encourage them in the keeping of those promises. Each has eye markings, so they can watch that we keep the promises we ourselves make. The other markings are different for each child. The markings of a Dollmage are given to none else. The powers of a Dollmage are breathed upon her by God, fallen down from heaven, dream-given. It is the gift. It cannot be taught or learned. It comes out of the sky and lands in a baby when she is born.The only things that can be learned are the dollmaking skills, and the ability to interpret the promise God has given each soul.” The crowd looked up at me expectantly, but some murmured among themselves.

“What is it?” I asked. No one answered.

“What is it?” I asked again.

Only Oda Weedbridge had the courage to speak up. “Dollmage,” she said, “they are wondering how you made promise dolls for the two girls, both born on the day upon which the Dollmage was to be born.”

I smiled patiently and nodded. “I will reveal to you now what I did. Both girls’ promise dolls have the eyes of a Dollmage: slightly askant so they may not see the world straight on, but that they might see under the corners of the everyday world. As I made them I will confess to you that I was amazed. How, I asked God, can there be two? I had searched the scripts of the Sacred dolls, and the law was clear: There shall be only one Dollmage in one village.

“Then God told me what to do, something that I have never seen done before. I made an important difference in the promise dolls. Then, he told me to allow the babes to choose before all the people.”

There was a silence, then a murmuring of agreement, and I could see that you, my people, loved me for my wisdom. Is it my fault? I told you clear as clear that God had given me the wisdom. If you still chose to honor me instead, it could hardly be my fault.

“These children,” I said, “are like the mountains that cradle our valley. Out of storm were they born, but they will be unmoved. They will have stories told of them. For Greppa Lowmeadow’s son, Areth, I have made a beautiful promise doll. Like Southslope Mountain, he will be fair of face. Remember, though, that Southslope Mountain in winter can send down the avalanche. Areth must make sure winter never lives in his heart.”

I hung the doll around the infants neck and everyone clapped.

“For Norda Bantercross’s son, Manal, I have made a doll from most precious wood. He will be strong, like Mount Crownantler, tall and full of weather. His soul will run with the wild game, he will drink from cold rivers and be free. A compass is carved upon the doll, for all things will be measured by him.”

I hung the doll around the infants neck and everyone clapped. Norda held her child up high for all to see. There was gentle laughter.

I gestured and Mabe Willowknot and Vilsa Rainsayer came forward with their babies. Vilsa’s face was radiant with joy. In her eyes was so much trust and humility before my power that for a moment my heart smote me. I remembered then that she had been an obedient and respectful girl all her life. I remembered that she had come to my bed of mourning to oil and rub my feet, and that her tears had fallen on my ankles. Her own husband was gone, and though she refused to believe that he was dead, she knew how gray was my world. I remembered that she always agreed with me at meeting in the House of Women. Though the babies would choose the promise doll they wanted, I knew which one would get which. Knowing what would be leftover for Vilsa’s child Annakey, I had felt a secret gladness. Now, I felt sorry. I realized what a cruel thing it was, and I was sorry.

Even the children in the crowd were silent now. I held up the promise dolls for all to see, just within reach of the babes’ little hands and bright eyes. There was a gasp, as I thought there would be.

One of the promise dolls had a smile and hung true. The other promise doll hung crookedy, and on its small face was a frown.

Both mothers hesitated when they saw the frowning promise doll. Even Mabe, who hardly heard her child’s cries in her indifference, seemed unwilling to give her baby the fate such a promise doll would suggest.

I dangled the dolls before the babies. They smiled, cooed, and both reached out for the promise dolls. Both reached out for the frowning promise doll.

I was aghast. Both baby girls had grasped the frowning promise doll and were tugging at it. Renoa, being the lustier, snatched it away from Annakey and put the cord in her mouth. Annakey began to wail.

“She wants it,” the people around her said.

“Give her the other promise doll to comfort her.”

Unwillingly, I placed the smiling promise doll in Annakey’s hand. She threw it away and wailed even more loudly.

The crowd became noisy. Vilsa was silent and pale. I picked up the smiling promise doll and put it in Renoa’s hand. Greedily she grabbed onto it, and dropped the frowning doll. I put the frowning doll in Annakey’s hand, and instantly she was silent.

The outcry died down at the same time that Annakey’s cries were stilled.

“Well,” I said. I did not look atVilsa. God had decided. I placed the soggy, smiling promise doll around Renoa’s neck. “Renoa has a promise doll with the eyes of a Dollmage. She will see behind things and under things. Like Mount Lair, she will be wild and beautiful. Though Mount Lair is pathless, she will make paths.”

Everyone clapped and cheered. They gathered around Mabe and her child, almost forgetting that there was another child to be done. Small children began stealing eggs from the table. I held up my hand and the crowd settled a little. I placed the frowning promise doll around Annakey’s neck.

“This child’s doll, too, has the eyes of a Dollmage — slightly askant, so that she might see netherworlds and things meant to be. But this child will be like the valley that is not yet found.”

Vilsa looked at me with great eyes, her face open and vulnerable, willing still to trust me. But in my face she saw that I thought it was a bad omen, and she dropped her eyes. I saw her look into the sweet sleeping face of her baby.

No one clapped. A few murmured.There was a wind in the beeches, and a single black swan rose from the river thicket.

“What does the frown mean, Dollmage?” Vilsa asked low.

Now, I had obeyed God, but the truth was I did not know the meaning of the frown. Unwilling to appear ignorant before my people, I said, “She will be sad because she cannot be Dollmage.”

Vilsa was silent and still. Everyone stared at her, sorry for her but glad it had not happened to them. There were a few murmurs of sympathy, and a few people whispering all the reasons they thought Vilsa may have deserved what had happened. It is important to make people deserve what happens to them. If bad things can happen for no apparent reason, then bad things might happen to innocent us.

Vilsa then turned toward her fellow villagers, head held high, and did an unthinkable thing. Grasping her promise doll, she made a promise.

“I promise,” she said clearly, “that my child will be happy.”

The crowd fell utterly silent.

I was not sorry anymore. How dare she challenge my art! If I put a frown on her daughter’s doll, then frown she would.

“Fool!” I said to Vilsa before the whole village. “You make a promise for another’s life, and so it must come out of your own doll. If your daughter is happy, it will be because you are not.”

Vilsa bent her head and walked away.

My mother once told me that every tear I cause another to cry would be gathered by God, that one day he would boil the tears to their hottest point and drip them upon me one by one. When I was very young, I was cautious. As a youth, however, I knew that what she said was a lie, and I caused many tears to fall. In my old age, I know it is true. The single tear Vilsa shed as she walked proudly back to her house drips hot down my heart even now.