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After all her talk, the next weeks in Granded into cold water without a chestful of air She would not speak to me, and I was, for the first time, really and truly ihters I nursed ingat my ears She tired me, oh, how she tired me! I could only nap, like a sick cat, awake and asleep, awake and asleep—flagstones are no cradle, and they are no bed, and I had no horse rass to teach her the feel of it She would never know any of the things I knew

And her black eyes were always open in the dark Her skin was always pale and clammy, and she shivered so, she shivered so in the damp She was thin and chilled, thin as a , and I hile she suckled, rocking back and forth against the slimy wall She never cried at all She just watched me with those hollow black eyes

“Aerie,” I sniffled one night, into the shadohere Grand her Aerie”

“That’s a hopeful naht, let alone a high nest between snowy mountains”

I stroked her soft cheek, which had no color at all, just a shallow grayness beneath the skin She turned her an to cry I was so weary of crying, by then My ht every day that I ive, but every day I wept again, and nursed again

“I can’t, Grandmother, I can’t You want me to put her down like a horse with a shattered knee and I can’t Even if it would be better for her, I couldn’t, I couldn’t even keepto her the moment she cried—her cry is a hook and it catches me in the throat”

“Oh, little one, I would never ask you that How could you think I would? Not for nothing have you heard me rattle on like a tortoise shell blown froive her is better than that, and certainly better than ill e for ourselves Knife, let me have her; trust that the tale I told was to a point You want to call her Aerie? Well enough We’ll see e can do about getting her one”

She had to pry Aerie fro, and she sht in her ar her for the first time since she took the child fros we could gather, to protect her fro great icy breaths and sobbing to the rafters

The old woan to prepare herself—for what I could not think—shutting her eyes like veiled doors, and instructed me to do the same

I saw no point All I had was the power to kill a few deer and ride a horse, bind up a rotted li to kill my child, I had no help to offer She told irl continued to wail; it disturbed the worms and roaches and spiders that crawled happily over our cell I ached to reach for her, to wrap her again and hold her to my breast, no matter how dry a

nd exhausted that breast ht be

Granders fall over Aerie’s sole to work, you know” She cleared her throat “I have never done it, and the Wolf never toldbut space, but a filled hole is a Star I ah”

I had never heardunder the red sun If she had said that one rabbit should be enough to feed the world, I would have nodded and set about stripping its fur

Grandmother bent her head to the floor as if in prayer, and slowly thuainst it, over and over, harder and harder I tried to catch her and pull her up but she shovedher face into the stones A dark, wetrock grew thick and ugly before, finally, she stopped and raised up her face again

It was bloody, yes, but a the black streaks of blood were streaks of silver, streaks of light, like gray growing in a young wo over her eyes, dripping froy ht on her fingers, bent her brow to hter’s mouth