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In a covered basin on the table lay, she assuined A flat, muddy footprint of a fish that Diana would sout And scale and fillet and

She sed hard

That part could wait She’d pare the vegetables first

The fire, she suddenly realized Goodness She couldn’t cook anything without a fire

By habit, she’d never strayed too near a fireplace or stove--not only because her entlewomen didn’t dirty their hands with such tasks but also because Diana had feared that inhaling s crisis

Those worries were in the past now She faced a different challenge today

She cautiously carried the scoop of glowing coals to the kitchen hearth A nearby box held so on the hearthstones, she heaped the tinder in the grate, then lifted the scoop and gently sifted a few e curl of s all her excitement with it

What was she doing wrong? She thought of Aaron stoking the fire in the s the bellows

The bellows That was it A fire needed air

She scattered another few embers over the tinder, then lowered herself almost to her belly, pursed her lips, and blew A flurry of sparks resulted Encouraged, she inhaled slowly, then exhaled again, careful not to overtax her lungs This ti in a few lapping tongues of flame

Diana rose to her knees and cheered--quietly--while brushing the dust from her hands and skirts A s start

Her sense of triuan to flas to keep the fire going She looked around Nothing, to either side of the hearth Then she recalled the well-stocked woodpile outside the s exhalation to nourish her s an ar back, all the while praying the fire wouldn’t die in her absence

She knelt before the hearth--no more care for her skirts this ti tinder

The fla in a thin pluiac smoke

"No," she cried "No, no, no"

She flattened herself to the hearthstones and huffed desperately, trying to rekindle the flao back to Aaron and ask for un, and that she couldn’t perform the most basic of household tasks What use could she ever be to hie, but she wasn’t ready to foreclose the possibility

"Please," she begged "Please, please Don’t go out"

And as if soht a notch on the underside of the wood The fire began to gnaw at it, dripping morsels of ash

Hosanna

She fed the fire carefully, not daring to stray a pace from the hearth until she had a tall, respectable blaze

When she felt it safe to rise, she gave the basin on the table a wary glance She wasn’t ready for that fish just yet

Instead, she found a knife and set about paring vegetables and adding theed three potatoes, two carrots, and an onion with only one slice to her finger She bound her wound with a strip of linen torn frooat for her silly tears

After hanging the kettle on a hook and swiveling it over the fire to boil, she could no longer postpone the inevitable

Tiut the fish

She went to the table and lifted the cover from the basin

"Ah!" With a

Oh Lord, oh Lord

Several ain and peer inside She hoped to see so different this time But no

There it was

It wasn’t a fish

It was an eel

And it was still alive Just angrily alive and now agitated, weaving slick, dark-green figure eights in its basin of ain Then she drew out a chair and decided to sit and think for a while, about just how ht of Aaron’s kiss The strength of his arms around her The heat of his body, and the tenderhers She re down a country lane, as fast as the spring mud would alloith the top of the curricle down

Then she pictured that eel, filling the basin with its writhing, slippery will to live

She just couldn’t Could she?

Diana opened her eyes and steeled her resolve Some days, she decided, freedom meant the wind in your hair and the sun on your face and lips swollen with forbidden kisses

And other days, freedoest cleaver in the kitchen and gripped it in her right hand With the left, she lifted the cover froainst you," she told the eel "I’m sure you’re a perfectly fine creature But Aaron and I have so standor slitherin the way of it"