Hjordis sat down on her knees beside Trinny’s bag, struggled with the clasp, a leather noose snug around an amber button made of bone. She looked inside before she reached inside, slowly, half expecting a poisonous viper to jump at her. 

To her dismay, the contents were quite… expected. First item she picked up was a small flat tin, dented. She shook it, it rattled. Inside: three wrapped squares of dark sugar candy— the expensive kind— Esta Import. Hjordis had once received a similar tin when she was about six by her dad’s sister. Before the dispute regarding Oskar’s fortunes made Catrain cut correspondence with the ‘obscenely greedy’ Aunt completely. 

Two of the candies were still intact. One had a bite taken out of it and then carefully rewrapped. 

Hjordis stared at this for a moment. She understood that. Making what little ye had last.

Next her hand found a stub of coal wrapped in cloth. Residue on the cloth was extensive, well used. Nothing suspicious about that either. Next, a stoppered vial of something amber. Not empty, but a third remaining. Could it be poison? She pulled the cork, met by a thick fume of port wine. 

But then, below the flask and the tin, she found a stack of something rectangular. Letters? She looked over her shoulder, heart racing. Yes, this was it. Proof of Trinny’s Shiin’s day plans. It was clear this was the most protected thing in the bag. Several sheets of varying quality wrapped tight in waxed cloth and tied with a length of ribbon. Hjordis rifled through them, some sheets were blank. Some were folded into shapes she couldn’t fully open without destroying them. One was already half-unfolded, so she picked that one and undid it completely. 

It was a song. Some kind of tavern ditty. Hjordis’s tense shoulders sagged from disappointment. The ditty was written in Coraneese in bold loops and flourishes taking up more space than necessary. The content: a man (presumedly) drinking his way through the calendar, wagering increasingly inappropriate items. By Ferno he’s lost his boots. By Glamos, his breeches. By Malos end, he’s nude drunk and far from bright. 

Hjordis sighed, tucked it away, froze then as she realized she couldn’t refold it. Tried twice, the crease wouldn't sit. 

“Shiin’s nads” she muttered, ending up pressing it flat anyway and tucking it back in wrong, which she knew would be obvious. As she did a playing card skittered free, landing in her red lap. She looked at it. A figure dangling upside down from a tree by their ankle. ‘The hanged man’ written in golden letters. But that wasn’t the absurd part: someone— Trinny presumably— had drawn in a small dodger between the blond figure’s legs. The card was soft at the edges from handling. 

The real treasure, perhaps what she’d come looking for, was found by accident— after rooting around in the surprisingly roomy bag, she felt something give wrong. The leather was double-layered at the bottom and something flat and rigid sat between them. Rectangular. Hard-edged enough to be bound in board. A book perhaps? She ran her thumb along the seam, looking for a clasp or a fold but found nothing. 

It was sewn in, the stitching too fine to unpick without a blade and she hadn’t got one to hand, and she’d already been in here too long. 

She growled in frustration, throwing the bag back down. The candies rattled accusingly in their tin. 

Then the barn door opens behind her.  

Catrain didn’t shout. She’d never been a shouter— that went out of her with Oskar, along with most things. She just stood there, framed in the doorway with the festival lantern and the sunset glowing behind her. 

“Hjordis,” She said softly. Disappointed, but not surprised.

Hjordis straightened up at once, the bag landing between her feet. Contents falling out, tin complaining, coal rolling over stomped earth. The folded paper was sitting wrong in its oilcloth. Trinny would notice. There was nothing she could say to cover it.

“’Tis not what—”

“I ken fine what it is,” Catrain said, dark eyes narrowing. “Put it back.” 

She stood there waiting. Hjordis put it back, the tin, the coal, the vial, the card. She closed the stubborn button and stood up with the bag in hand. 

“Mam, it’s not what it looks like—”

“She’s a guest,” Catrain said. “Brought meat for the feast. Thought I raised ye better than this?”

“She’s not here for the feast, Mam!”

Catrain’s weary expression didn’t change. “Put it back lass where ye found it.”

There was no argument in that voice. Catrain wasn’t necessarily angry— she rarely was anymore— she was already elsewhere, already drifting back towards the square and the gossip. She turned and went before Hjordis could say something more. She stood there in the half-dark barn with a stranger’s bag in her hands and hidden compartment she couldn’t open and a song about a naked man she couldn’t refold. 

Thought of that cryptic card. The hanged man.

Finally she set it back where she found it, in the shaft of light, and left it looking like an invitation once more.

Morning came and with it, finally after weeks of toiling harvest and careful planning: Shiin’s day. 

Hjordis hurried across the square, medical herbs clutched to her chest. It was almost time for the traditional communal soup, where all of the village would attend. Maidens in their whites, boys in their dark blue tunics. The rest of the women, mothers and crones in what ever earthy color scheme they fancied. Hjordis, still in her red dress. Such was tradition. Before the luncheon would start, she needed to prepare her mother’s special brew, before the restlessness began. 

Near the Helmbane cottage she passed old Tomsun shuffling towards the feast: rows of benches and decorated tables lined up before the church’s smoothed limestone steps. Hjordis had thought for as long as she could remember, the priest resembled a walking corpse: liver-spotted skin stretched across bone, neck corded with tendons, white tall beard yellowed at the edges. His eyes however, dark, typical Coraneese burned with unsettling vitality. He leaned on his carved yew staff, ringed fingers clutching the wood like talons. One bore the intricate M of the Magistracy. 

“Mind ye bring that wayward mother of yer,” he commanded, voice reedy but firm. “Empty seats at Shiin’s Eve bring the goddess’s scorn upon us all.”

“Aye, Father Tomsun,” Hjordis replied, lowering her gaze as custom dictated. 

Tomsun sniffed, his prominent nostrils flaring. “Goria tests us through you, lass. Pray tonight in the moon’s light, and she might as well grant ye mercy.” 

“Aye, Father.” Hjordis curtsied as she’d been taught, pinching on to the edge of her skirt no longer than necessary. He shuffled onward, muttering blessings that sounded more like curses at the searing heat.

Around him darted boys, no older than twelve, their skinny legs bouncing about like calves, spring with the careless freedom of childhood. No men walked Arable’s paths save ancient Tomsun and Mads. It had always been that way. 

Hjordis moved on. Inside their cottage, Catrain stood at the window looking out, her posture straighter than usual. She’d washed her face and combed her greying hair sleek and wore a faded blue dress long forgotten in a trunk. 

“Don’t gawk like a stunned fish,” Catrain snapped without turning, could smell the herbs. “I don’t need yer potions today.”

Hjordis set down her herbs, surprise giving way to suspicion. “Ye’ve hardly wore that dress in years.”

 Catrain’s laugh rattled like stones in a copper pot. “Perhaps I’m tired of pissin’ in chamber pots while life happens beyond these walls.” She straightened the worn collar of her dress, fingers a bit shaky from years of wine-soaking.

 “That huntress has stirred the pot. Might as well see that bubbles, aye?”

They arrived at the Shiin day luncheon at noon when the sun was at its highest, such was tradition. Tomsun presided from the head table, his skeletal hands raised in blessing. Five maidens in white sat nearby in their white garments, eyes downcast but smiling smugly at being Tomsun’s chosen. 

Dora Tallahand bustled around sharp-nosed and constantly vexed, directed women carrying platters of bread and roasted seeds for the soup, while children darted between legs and tables, balancing jugs of watered wine. The air carried that particular Shiin's Day charge, the kind that made even old grudges feel smaller than usual.

Trinny sat among a group of younger women, including two in white gowns who must’ve fled from Tomsun’s table. Her gesticulating hands carved through hushed words and whatever story she was dripping into their ears, it had them all giggling. Hjordis leaned in, catching their conversation. 

“Perfectly natural to wonder,” Trinny was saying, eyes twinkling with mischief. “But truly, there’s more to such matter than what this village’s customs teach.”

One white-gowned girl, Hjordis knew simply as Marila Greenfield’s daughter with her tanned skin and dense curls, leaned closer, “The cities terrify me. They say women there sell themselves like cattle.”

“Sell themselves?” Trinny’s eyebrows arched high enough to vanish beneath her fringe. “Strange you’d fear that, when here you’re given away each Shiin’s Day without seeing a single copper.” She nodded subtly toward Tomsun further down the table biting into tough bread, then to where Mads stood ladling soup to the children. “At least city women name their own terms.“

The maidens gasped, then exchanged uncertain glances, a flicker of forbidden curiosity passing between them. More of the older women noticed the nature of the conversation, making more heads turn. Tomsun with his bad hearing was yet too busy getting through the bread’s rough crust. Mads had noticed however and put down his ladle. Hjordis was quicker, stood and placed herself behind Greenfield’s daughter. 

“That’s enough of that,” Hjordis hissed, boring her eyes into Trinny’s.

Trinny looked up, utterly unperturbed. “Ah! Little Helmbane! Just offering some worldly wisdom to these sheltered flowers.”

“Filth,” Mads said sharply, now standing beside Hjordis, not quite meeting anyone’s eyes. “This isnae the place for…” his voice cracked, “for talk like that.”

One of the maidens stifled a giggle. Hjordis frowned, crossed her arms. 

“Mind yer tongue, Gloria,” she snapped. 

“Filth?” Trinny’s eyebrows shot up, she straightened, leaned back on the stool with crossed arms. “Funny name for something that feels so divine when done properly.”

More gasps erupted from the gathered women. Mads hands clenched at his sides, had no answer to that, virgin as he was. His ears had gone red however. One maiden pressed her face into her hands, shoulders shaking with suppressed laughter. 

“Mad as a field of March hares, all of ye,” Hjordis snapped, turned and sat down at her end of the table, staring down at her fresh bowl of vegetable soup. 

“Return to yer places,” Mads ordered the two white-gowned girls, who scrambled to obey. Then at Trinny. “Ye'll keep that tongue still if ye wish to see Shiin's red moon.”

Trinny’s eyes sparkled with calculation, the threat not convincing enough to kill that infuriating grin of hers, but she offered a curt nod. “Sorry, sorry. Just Idle chatter.”

Mads passed Hjordis before returning to his duties. “Keep yer eye on her. She's trouble.”

Before Hjordis had picked up her ladle, Catrain slid onto the vacant spot beside Trinny and reached for the wine jug with steady hands. 

“So you’ve opinions on our ways,” she stated, pouring herself a generous cup. “Been so long since I heard plain talk behind these cursed walls.”

Trinny studied her with open interest. “And what’s your view, Mother Helmbane?”

“Tradition’s just the dead clutching on to the living,” Catrain snorted, wine sloshing as she gestured towards Hjordis. Hjordis stared with slack jaw, face burning hot. Not now, not another fit of madness. This Shiin’s day was cursed enough already. 

“My daughter wears red because some ancient crone decided failure needs markin’.” She drank deeply, meeting Hjordis’s shocked stare over the rim. “Not all customs deserve keepin’, especially those invented by men afraid of women’s power.”

Hjordis’s fingers went to her dress for comfort, felt the raised threads of this year’s embroidery beneath her fingertips. Five years she’d worn this color. She’d sewn it herself, from fabric bought from her father’s last coins. Started adding golden threads that first humiliating autumn when she was deemed not good enough. Broken. 

“Well said,” Trinny replied boldly, “I suspect you see more clearly than most here.”

“Don’t ye dare encourage her,” Hjordis warned, back again at their table, reaching for her mother’s cup. Catrain reclaimed her wine, knuckles whitening around the cup. 

"I'm more meself tonight than I've been in years, acorn." She fixed Hjordis with a shrewd look. “Ye’ve had yer eye on Mads since ye were twelve, lass. Think ye'd prefer him for the fruition ritual over Tomsun?"

More heat rushed to Hjordis's face as Trinny choked on her drink, eyes dancing with delight at Catrain's crudeness. "Mam! For Goria's sake!"

"It's truth," Catrain pressed, voice cutting through the shocked silence that had fallen around them. "Men taking what they want while calling it sacred duty. Our bodies, our daughters, even our sons." She glanced pointedly toward the boys playing near the fire. "This village sends lads away and keeps women docile. Ask yerself why." 

Trinny just grinned, arms crossed, amused by the spectacle, like a cat watching two sparrows argue over a breadcrumb. The visitor's obnoxious superiority sat in her chest like a swallowed stone. She did something truly undignified instead— she pushed out her tongue at Trinny and hurried back to her soup. Trinny cackled down the table.

“So — what did you make of the song, poopsie? Think I've a future in the musical arts?”

Damn. She knew. Of course she’d know. 

Hjordis didn’t answer, started slurping soup like one possessed, biting into tough bread in between, while Tomsun, still oblivious, rose unsteadily to begin his blessings. 

Such was tradition.