Ulf’s long nose is poked through the gap of the door. Lisbet creeps to him, places her hand over his muzzle to push him gently backwards. He licks her palm in long, rough tracks. His tongue is dry as sand, and she lifts the bucket, takes it outside with her, scanning the yard as she refills the dogs’ trough. The night is smotheringly warm though the sky is clear, the stars pricking brightly at its fabric. A figure rounds the wall.

‘Nethe,’ she hisses, realising even as she says the name it is not her. They are too short, and as he lifts a hand in greeting Lisbet sees it is Eren.

Lisbet’s hands go across herself: she is in her nightdress, an old tunic that is far from indecent, but frayed about the collar and cuffs, with a rip under the right armpit showing wiry black hair.

Something smoulders in his hand. A pipe, giving off sweet smoke. Eren has paused, and Ulf goes to greet him, his old tail creaking from side to side like a rusted hinge. Lisbet realises how she must look, clutching at her swollen body, and so she drops her head and moves back into the house. She knows Eren is waiting, giving her time to go to bed and avoid the encounter. But instead she lights a beeswax candle, takes up a knife, and slices the bread. The baby is shifting inside her, filling her throat with sourness, and she needs something to settle it.

The musician opens the door, moves aside the broom. He pauses at the threshold, registering her presence. Backed by moonlight, he seems cut from shadow. She gestures at the chair across from her, places a slice of bread on a plate, slides it across with a wafer of honeycomb, the honey pooling onto the wooden slab.

He nods his gratitude, and unslings from his back a bundle: his instrument, she guesses, though she has not seen the like before. A drum she knows. A pipe. But this has a bowl and a neck, and strings hauled taut across them. The bowl is painted yellow, and she thinks of her tree, the ribbons gaudy in the green.

Eren sets the instrument down on the table beside his plate. Its strings thrum in response, a low hum of song. He winces and reaches out his hand to still them, raising his other in apology. His fingernails are white, crescents smooth on his dark skin, but when he turns his hand to her, she sees the calluses across his fingertips.

She is staring, and rises to fill a cup, sets it down in front of him. He nods his thanks, and bends his head to pray. Lisbet didn’t know Turks prayed. She joins him, and then watches him out of the corner of her eye as they eat.

His shoulders are slim, but his body is broad, nudging his arms out from his sides as though someone were lifting him beneath the armpits. His face is long, and his eyebrows thick, black as his hair and beard. His skin is dark as the wood of the table, his hand resting still and light upon his cup as the other brings bread to his lips.