One morning, when I’d gone farther than I had before and was feeling the effects, I sat down in the shade of a tree next to a field. Five people were hoeing up and down the rows of something I didn’t recognize. One of them reached the end of the row nearest me, looked up, smiled, and came over.

“Hi,” she said, dropping down onto the grass. “Sparrow, isn’t it? I’m Kris.” She pulled her straw hat off to reveal a brush of hair the color of the hat. She tugged a bandanna out of her pocket and wiped her face with it; then she undipped a flask from her belt and poured some of the contents over the bandanna. She draped that over her head like a veil and jammed the hat back on. “Funny-looking,” she said with a grin, when she saw me watching the process. “But it does the trick. The evaporating water keeps your head cool.”

“Looks like hard work,” I said, nodding back out into the sun.

“Goddess, it is. Especially this part of the year. Harvesting isn’t any easier, but it’s more fun, and you have something to show for it right away. Every year about now I start wishing it was winter.”

This was a reasonable line of conversation, not too personal. “What is that out there?”

“Sugar beets. We voted to do ’em this year instead of tobacco, thank Goddess. Don’t get me wrong — I love to smoke. But I’ll pay for my tobacco and be glad to. It’s a good cash crop, but the hand labor is murder, and no matter how careful we are, we always have trouble with the tomatoes when we grow it. Turns out we’ll make as much on the beets, anyway, so I can afford to buy my smokes.”

“Oh,” I said. Every word of that speech had made perfect sense, but I still wasn’t sure what had gone on.

Her grin broke out again. “That’s right, Sher said you were strictly a City-dweller. And we were supposed to be patient when you walked through the basil and fell in the flowerbeds.”

“You’ve been lucky so far. The state I’ve been in, the flowerbeds could have fought me off.”

“Yeah. What does Josh say, are you doing all right?”

My own fault; I’d introduced the subject. “Fine.” I stood up. “I should be getting back, I think.”

“Me, too — back to swingin’ dat hoe. Ugh. You coming to the whoop tonight?”

“Whoop?”

“We’ve never figured out a better name for it. In the town circle. There’ll be some drumming and dancing and singing and shouting, and food, and a bonfire… what can I say? A whoop.”

“I don’t think I’m quite up to dancing.”

She flashed white teeth. “We’ll pretend you’re an ancestor. Sit by the fire and we’ll feed you and ask which song you want to hear next.”

“I’ll see,” I said.

I didn’t think I’d be there. But when I got back to the farmhouse, I found the kitchen in a state of cheerful uproar, and the inhabitants united on the question of where I was going to spend my evening.