The fields around the river near her childhood home gave no crops and grew full of soft grass. That was where the comet had fallen, allowing the water a new channel. If someone were to walk across the untended fields as you washed, you would not hear the approach. Not that the Devil walks on loud feet. On silent hooves, he steps towards you. The Devil lived in the comet-hewn river. That’s what they were all told. Her eldest brother Michael saw him, among the jewel-bright eyes of toads. His forked tail twitching between the smooth, unnatural banks. His wide smile among the young, lank-necked reeds. Lisbet turns her head away, toward these trees, this time, this river, but they flicker, fade.

•

They cannot find her mother. That morning Henne had come, asked to marry her. She said no, as she had to three others, because she could not leave her mother. And now her mother is gone.

Her brothers are searching the barns. Her father is searching the town. Lisbet is left the house, though it is clear it is empty. No one in the bed they lie together in, nose to toes. No one in the rafters, or hiding absurdly in the largest pot. She knows there is one place she has not looked. But Mutti will not be there. She hates it just the same as her. They are alike in this, know each other’s minds.

And it is because they know each other’s minds, that Lisbet knows if her mother did not want her to find her, there is one place she will be.

She goes empty-handed, bare-headed, barefoot. Her feet make no sound in the long grass. The comet tore a full field with its landing, at the moment she tore from her mother. She knows the way as well as she knows her mother’s face. Lisbet stands at the bank, at the mouth of Hell. She knows Hell boils, but the river is deceitfully cool. She feels the suck of the earth, the smell like hidden places rising at her.

‘Mutti?’

Her voice is reed thin, bending into the black. Somewhere, some tiny slice of light catches and glints. The Devil’s mouth, opening. The glass of a water-smoothed piece of quartz. She wants to run screaming. But she steps into the reedbeds at the water’s edge.

‘Mutti?’

She puts her arms out in front of herself. The Devil brushes her hair from her forehead. The reeds brush her hair from her forehead. She feels among them, sorting their slicing bodies. Her heart is blocking her throat. She can breathe only shallowly, the thick smell of water.

Lisbet moans, grips the trunk where Ida gripped Nethe and kissed her. She has come this far, she must go through. There is another smell. The smell is rosemary and cloves. The smell is the salve she rubs on her mother’s feet. The smell is her, and her mother, them together. Lisbet sinks to her knees in the river.