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By Root 2077 0

so that it melted in the sun and crusted, and men had to go about with their bone axes, and chop down to the grass, which, indeed, was still green, for the weather right up to the time of the snowfall had been warm enough. Now folk hurried to get their sheep in from the higher pastures and to slaughter those that would be used for winter meat, and to byre up their cattle, and the season was busy from the work, and unseasonably wet and uncomfortable from the snow. It also happened that around this time, Helga felt the quickening of another child in her belly, and she had suspected this for some time, for she had been ill off and on through the summer. The child did not seem to agree with her at all, and from the first quickening, seemed to roll about in her belly like a skiff in a storm. Sometime later, she began to feel so ill every day that she asked one of the women from Gunnars Stead to come and stay with her, for indeed, she had little strength for working about the steading and running after Unn and Gunnhild. It happened that Johanna came, and Helga saw that the two must learn to live together at last.

Now the first thing that Johanna did on the morning she brought her belongings around the hill was to throw all of the straw out of her bedcloset, and find herself newer straw. Then she made a ball out of the cloaks and furs that had lain in the bedcloset, and she set this outside the door, and then she laid her own cloaks and furs over the new straw, and she was at this for no little time, until Helga had to bite her tongue to keep from remarking about it. Johanna went about these tasks with hardly a word, and when Helga asked after their father, or their father’s sister, or the others on the steading, Johanna only said, “He is well enough,” and “She is quiet about the place.” After making up her bed, Johanna took the ball of bed furnishings and unrolled it, and took out each piece and carried it into the light of the doorway, and fingered through the hairs of the furs, and some articles she threw down and others she only shook out and laid in a stack beside the door. Helga sat with her feet out of her bedcloset, and it seemed to her that her innards were going to rise up into her throat, but she swallowed hard, and at last she said, “What do you intend about those things, there?” Johanna gave them a kick, and said nothing. Now Gunnhild came into the steading, and her feet and stockings were covered with snow, and Johanna took her by the shoulders and turned her about without a word, and put her out again, and then went out after her, and brushed the sandy snow off her feet. Helga got up and went to the doorway, and saw that her sister held the child by the shoulder in a firm grasp, as if she were holding a sheep, and swept the snow off her with brisk strokes, and when Gunnhild wiggled out of her grasp, her hand shot out and clamped down upon the child, not roughly, but not tenderly, either. And now Helga’s innards did rise into her mouth, and she staggered out the doorway and around the corner of the house to the midden, and vomited for the second time in that day.

Later it seemed to Helga that she might sit up at the loom for a while, and while she was at this, Johanna came up behind her and stood silently for a few moments. Then, wordless, she sniffed, and turned away, and soon after this, it seemed to Helga that the pattern she had chosen was not so pleasing after all, though she had liked it before, and she got up from the loom and sat on the bench beside the table. All trenchers and bowls and cups and other utensils, that usually lay about in a little disorder, were more than neatly stacked. All corners and handles were aligned on the shelves, and a piece of wadmal had been cut, hemmed, and hung across the lower shelf, to hide such pots and vats as there were there. Things were very neat, but Helga did not care for them. Now Johanna came in from the storehouse, and she was wiping her hands on her robe, as if the storehouse were very dirty. When she saw Helga, she smiled one of her slow smiles, and said, “My sister,