‘Mutti?’ She whispers it. She crawls, so the reeds no longer brush her head. So all there is is sweetness. It grows as she reaches the edge of the reeds, the place where her brother saw the Devil’s tail. But instead, there is a foot, swollen, greenish, cold.

She pulls it, hand over hand, towards her, pulling it from the deeper water. She can hear nothing but her own breath. She closes her eyes, so she doesn’t have to see. She noses her way into her mother’s shoulder. She runs her hands over her body. Sodden clothes, lumpy with rocks. There, the smoothly shaven head. Here, the soft hands, so soft they might have no bones in them. Here, her chest, fearsomely still. She kisses her mother lightly on the lips, tastes poppy.

Though there is no one there to hear her, except maybe the Devil among the hanging reeds, Lisbet hums to her mother, and rocks her as though to sleep. It is hours before her brothers think to search the river, minutes before they find them curled together. It takes them only seconds to prise Lisbet’s fingers from her mother’s waist, and part them forever.

•

The baby kicks. Lisbet is on this bank, by this river. She smells of beeswax, not clove, and her body is too hot. She must cool it, for her boy. She must be brave. Lisbet moves carefully down the gentle slope of the bank, and into the water. It is blessedly cool, and she groans aloud. The silt sinks up between her toes, and reeds twine about her ankles, their loose grip and release seeming conscious, deliberate.

‘Mutti?’

But her mother doesn’t speak to her, and for the first time Lisbet understands that to be a blessing. She stops when she reaches the smooth stones that line the riverbed proper. She knows even without the measure of the dog that at this point in the river’s channel, three more steps would have her waist-high. Ulf splashes past and she clicks at him to move further away, but he brings a length of branch to her, nudging at her with his nose, and he looks so daft she relents and throws it downriver.

When Ulf returns with the stick, she heaves herself back up the bank, smooths a whisper of river weed from her calf where it has weaved amongst the dark down of her legs. Ulf places the stick before her and shakes himself, water flying over her skirts.

‘Scheiße, stupid dog.’ She kicks the stick away with her bare toes. She sits on the felled trunk and attempts to replace her stinking leggings. They snag and catch at her damp legs. She gives up. There is no one to see her.

Even as she thinks it, she feels eyes upon her. And then a rustling, too gentle to be Ulf. Fear grips her throat. Someone is watching.

Like a child, she wants to squeeze her eyes shut, count to one hundred, make the forest disappear. Still she feels a gaze, so direct it is as though they had a grip of her neck. She could pretend not to know there is someone there, whistle for the dog, start home. Perhaps they mean her no harm. She holds this thought tight to her like a doll, and calls for Ulf. He does not come.