Page 182 of Circle of Days

Ani got bowls and spoons and served meat and small white carrots in a stew. When they had eaten their fill, she said to Dee: “I guess you became a shepherd because your parents were shepherds.”

Dee nodded. “Both my mother and father died when I was quite young. I’d seen only twelve midsummers when I was left to look after my little brother.”

Joia had not known this. “That must have been hard!” she said.

“Well, I knew how to look after sheep, which was the important thing.”

Ani said: “Did neighbors help you?”

“A little, but shepherds aren’t very neighborly. They live far apart, and anyway they tend to be independent types. But my grandfather helped me. He’s a shepherd, Joia has met him.”

“And now?”

“I live with my brother and his woman, and we take care of the sheep together.”

“What’s his woman like?”

Ani often questioned people this way, but they never seemed to mind. She had a way of doing it that disarmed them. She never judged them. And they were flattered that she was so interested in them.

Dee said: “I get on all right with her, though I sometimes feel the two of them could manage the flock without me. All those years it was my responsibility to keep my brother alive—but now he doesn’t need me.”

“Do they have children?”

“A baby girl.”

Something else Joia had not known.

There was more that she wanted to know, but Dee asked Ani about her life, and Ani told her of the deaths of Olin and Han, and talked about what it was like to be an elder. The evening passed quickly and darkness fell. The three women lay down to sleep in the house.

Joia thought over the conversation and concluded that Dee was restless. She was feeling superfluous in her own home. Perhaps she was looking for a new life.

Or was that just wishful thinking?

Dee was returning home in the morning. Joia had the feeling that in the last five triumphant days she had somehow missed an important opportunity.

For breakfast they ate the cold leftover stew, then Joia said: “I’ll walk with you to the river.”

They passed through the village, which was waking up to the morning light. Joia had a hundred things to say but did not knowhow to say any of them. They walked to the start of the long path that led to Upriver and beyond. There they stopped to say goodbye.

Feeling desperate, Joia said: “You don’t always come to our Rites.”

“My brother used to bring the hoggets to trade on Midsummer Day, but now he wants to stay home with the baby.”

“So will you come again next midsummer?”

Dee said: “Do you want me to?”

“Oh, yes, I want you to,” Joia said fervently.

Dee smiled. “Then I’ll come back.”

“Promise?”

“I promise.”

Dee kissed Joia’s lips gently and tenderly, and the kiss lasted longer than Joia expected. She could have held it forever, but Dee broke the embrace. “Goodbye, dear Joia,” she said.

“Until next year.” It sounded like forever.