“Five winters, I think.” Five years, seven months. I look across to the pebbly beach. “You showed me how to hunt for fossils. Do you remember? You showed me the creatures trapped in the stone.”

The memory of it is sweet; following Agnet along the beach while she turned over rocks, hunting for the magic ones that held a phantom trapped in stone. I remember how my nerves would crackle around her, as if every sense was tuned only to her voice, her smell, her laugh. It was an awkward, yet sweetly agonizing moment in time. Before our first kiss, but after I knew my heart was snagged on her hooks.

“I miss those days,” I say.

She doesn’t reply. I have heard people gossip about Agnet. She has been married for a year now and still is not with child. The women whisper that she is barren, the men that she is unwilling. I wonder if it’s through sheer force of will that she does not bear his child. I go so far as to wonder if Agnet refuses to consummate the marriage. That is a foolish thought, but I still think it.

The shawl drapes open to reveal a few more freckles on her face. Her eyes go to my hand tucked inside my shirt.

“Are you hurt?”

“The bite. It stings a little.”

She insists on seeing it so I withdraw the hand from the folds of my shirt. The flesh is purple, the skin cracked like dried mud. Agnet is repulsed by it.

“Are you poisoned?”

“No,” I reply too quickly. “It is nothing.”

“Have you seen Hagar about it?” When I tell her I have not, she shakes her head. “Go see the midwife, Kaspar. Before that gets worse.”

It’s only when she turns to leave that I see what she is hiding. Her bottom lip is swollen and discolored.

My heartbeat ruptures my eardrums. I stop her. “Agnet, my God. Did he do this?”

“It’s nothing.”

“I’ll kill him. I will murder him—”

She twists her arm out of my grip. “Stop it. The man would eat you alive.”

“What happened? Why did he hit you?”

A sigh. Agnet looks up at the sky. No clouds. “He didn’t mean it. He’s not himself if he can’t go out to sea. The poor man feels helpless and useless. His temper...”

I can’t believe my ears. How can she pity the brute? After what he’s done?

“Poor man?” I spit. “You care for him?”

She looks at me like I am a simpleton. “He’s my husband. I have to.”

“Do you have to make excuses for him, also?”

“Do not judge me,” she says, curling her bruised lip into a sneer. “Ever. You have no idea.”

“Agnet, I don’t want to see you hurt.”