Clearly I hadn’t yet recovered from yesterday’s travail, because my mind had barely managed to trudge past several bland retorts before he returned to inform me that he was headed out to hunt and there was meanwhile a treasure-house of provisions in the shed. Then he was gone.

I gasped as I set my feet on the packed earth floor. The cold seared right through my skin. I ached all over, but I knew that would fade. With a blanket sewn of lusciously soft beaver pelts wrapped around me, I got the fire going and the kettle heating. The bench shoved right up against the brick of the hearth helped the clothes dry more quickly. Wool steamed, its scent rising. The worn cotton cloth I had stolen on Salt Island fluttered as the fire roared.

Shivering in wet wool, I ventured out of the hut and ransacked the shed. Right inside the door I found a large tin tub and a pair of wooden buckets. From the evidence of the frames and troughs, I supposed the hut and shed to be a haven where winter trappers and hunters could deal with their kills. Since the winter pelts of animals were thickest, it made sense that winter was the best time to hunt and trap for furs, and if villagers came there every winter, they likely stocked it late in the autumn. Crocks and baskets sat on frames out of the reach of rats. Parsnips! Barley! Lentils and broad beans! Nuts in the shell, already dried! Withered bunches of dried nettle and hoarhound hung from the central beams. Dried vetch for animal fodder was bundled in sheaves. When I discovered a stoppered jar of linseed oil, I almost wept.

Would the villagers who used this hut consider us thieves? It didn’t matter. Our canoe had hit the sand. We simply could go no farther right now.

Quite some time later I had barleynut-cakes baking on the bricks, a pottage of parsnips, lentils, and barley simmering, and a pleasing tisane of nettle and hoarhound at brew. I made a place for the cacica’s skull at the back of the table, against the wall, and set before her a slice of parsnip garnished with a drop of the tisane. After this offering, I drank the first infusion of the tisane to soothe my raw throat and gobbled down two bowls of soup.