Umbertina remembered the clear blue eyes of the tall shepherd Serafino when he had come to say good-bye.

“You are right to go,” her father had said. “I am in bondage to a piece of land which is all rocks and to a family which keeps growing. If I were free I would go.”

“It is a hard thing to leave one’s place,” said the shepherd, and his eyes were moist. “A man thinks of marrying, having sons, and being laid to rest where he was born. It is the natural way.”

“Go with God,” said Carlo Nenci, embracing his friend. Nothing more was heard of Serafino in Castagna, for he could not write back his news, nor would they who knew him have been able to read it.

For those who remained, life stayed the same. Only the weather varied. Summer days were filled with the dappled patterns of sunlight filtering through the trees; winter was cold. Though Umbertina’s feet were then covered with goatskin shoes tied on with thongs of leather, and her shoulders were covered with a thick shawl, still her hands turned blue with the cold. Ice formed in the stream where she drank. Without the sun the days filled her with restless longings that she didn’t understand.

The change in things had come in her sixteenth year. It was the day, returning from market, when she had had words with her brother Beppino.

“It’s not your part to interfere in the bargaining,” he had scolded, trying to intimidate, though he was younger. “When I set terms for the sale of the goats that’s what it is. I am the man.”

She had looked at him with the scorn she never concealed from him. She infuriated Beppino by being more clever than he was. And she didn’t care.

“Scemo,” she jeered. “You forgot the black goat is about to kid—what were you doing, giving the kid away? If I hadn’t stepped in, you would have heard about it from our father later on.”

“Men have to deal in these things, not women; you should have left the bargaining to me.”

“I will leave you to you,” she said as they reached the ruins. “Go on by yourself and tell yourself what a man you are. I am going to stop here to wash in the stream.”

Scowling, Beppino waded the stream and set off on the mule path up to the village. Umbertina sat on the bank with her feet in the water, looking upstream to where women were soaking and beating their wash. The sound of singing came up behind her. It was Giosuè the charcoal maker coming back along the dirt road from Soveria Mannelli.

“Ssu cunocchiella ch’haiu lavuratu

accettala mo’ tu, ppe amore mio;

ppe quante puntattelle l’haiu datu,

tanti suspiri m’esciano ppe tie.”

He was singing the song the young men sang to the girls for whom they whittled carving combs, spoons, or needle holders as signs of their affection.