It was summer, and the light was tinged with pink.

A bleak conversation to have, thought Margrét, but there was some comfort in talking about death aloud, as though in naming things, you could prevent them from happening.

Rósa’s poetry kindled the shavings of my soul, and lit me up from within. Natan never stopped loving her. How could he? Her poetry made lamps out of people.

Instead, I, I . . . I encourage her to speak of her past. Rather than address her, I allow her to speak to me. I provide her with a final audience to her life’s lonely narrative.’

I dreamt of Natan. He was boiling herbs for a draught, and I was watching him and running my hands over the smithy’s turf wall.

Memories shift like loose snow in a wind, or are a chorale of ghosts all talking over one another. There is only ever a sense that what is real to me is not real to others, and to share a memory with someone is to risk sullying my belief in what has truly happened.

And though the snow smothered the valley and the milk froze in the dairy, my soul thawed.

and pray for forgiveness. As though prayer could simply pluck sin out.

My throat closed up with pain, and something else, something hard and inciting and as black as tar. I did not let myself cry.