Rigg liked to work alongside people. Much better than being a judge—he didn’t like arriving with an office that kept him distant. He realized that Ram Odin might be right—Rigg didn’t need to talk to people, but he needed to be near them as they talked to each other. They saw that Rigg was trying to learn and that he worked hard—he certainly wasn’t accepted enough to marry one of their daughters, but they trusted him enough to talk in front of him.

Ram Odin, on the other hand, gravitated toward the old men who gathered in the Cave, which was not a cave, but rather a house-sized building with few interior walls. It served as town hall, church, court, and ballroom by turns. And it was the gathering place of the old men who got cold too easily and left all the last-minute winter preparation to younger folk. “I plan to die this winter,” said one of the men. “So what do I care if there’s firewood? I won’t be using it.”

“You say that every year,” another retorted.

“Not bending over to pick up sticks is why I didn’t die.”

Ram Odin soon joined in with a dry witticism or two, and after a while began discussing various philosophies with them, in a folksy way.

Rigg and Ram soon learned the same thing: why this village was a sad and suspicious place. A girl had been lost fifteen years ago, and not in winter—it was spring when she disappeared. No one saw her leave. She was simply gone at suppertime one day, and no one knew what happened to her.

All their children were known to all, and loved more or less according to their character. But this girl, Onishtu, was spoken of with reverence. Not only was she an extraordinarily beautiful girl—“Like the sun when she first comes warm in spring to melt the snow”—but she was also kind and generous, loved by all, and if any of the other children envied her, they kept it to themselves because no one wanted to hear ill of Onishtu.

“They took her,” said someone, and with each person there seemed a different idea of who “they” were. Mostly, though, the candidates were the people of this or that nearby village. “Took her, they did, and stuffed up her mouth so she couldn’t cry out, and carried her off.”

To be somebody’s wife. To be everybody’s wife. To be disfigured. To be kept in a cellar and fed as little as possible until she became scrawny and sour. “They’ll give her back to us then, when she’s an ugly hag, bitter and mean. Then they’ll say, ‘You were so proud of her, do you like her now?’”

And people would nod as if they agreed. Only they’d nod again at the next theory.