Hindsight is a fine thing. At the time, safe back by our little fire, sharing this wonderful, unexpected feast as dusk fell, I basked in the forest’s protection, and I never thought such a small act could herald such terrible consequences. Indeed, at the time I believed the windfall might have been meant for us, a bounty that had fallen into my hands through the good will of the forest spirits, or maybe the Lady herself. I did have some common sense, though, and so I did not go that way again for a long time. I was not foolish enough to court discovery.

Time passed, and I spun the thread for the second shirt. The first was a sorry-looking garment, the woven patches cobbled together, the sleeves strangely uneven. But it would serve its purpose. One morning there was crisp frost on the ground and the bushes bore robes of sparkling silver that melted into droplets with the sun’s hazy rising in a sky of lavender gray. Winter was coming and with it my brothers. I worked on as steadily as I could, always thankful for the dry wood heap my brothers had left, for my fingers ached with the chill. I took the risk of making a bigger fire, and roasted stolen turnips in the coals. Once or twice snow came down, gentle flakes escaping the net of bare branches to drift silently to the ground outside my doorway. Here, where the trees grew close by the water, it did not lie deep; and for that I was grateful. I wore my own old dress, and the red woollen one over that, and a blanket around my shoulders, and on my feet Padriac’s boots. And still I was cold.

By the time my brothers returned, I was weaving the back of the second shirt. It almost made me laugh, thinking back to the day I had set out from Father Brien’s. It seemed such a long time ago. A few moons, from winter to summer maybe, I had believed this task would take. Now here I was, nearly a year later, and I had scarcely begun. I had become a little quicker with practice, but my hands did not always obey me, so misshapen and abused were they from the treatment I gave them. Just as well, I told myself, that I did not care about marriage and all that went with it. What man would look at a girl with knobbled hands like an old crone’s? That sort of life, with weddings and banquets, with music and reading and fine embroidery, seemed so far away now that I could not imagine any of us would ever return to it. I never dwelled on what might happen afterward, when finally I would slip the sixth shirt over my last brother’s head and restore them to this world once more. I worked as fast as I could, and let my mind travel ahead only a certain distance, no further.