Since that was clearly what Bak already meant to do, all the mayor did was turn Bak’s intention into the mayor’s command. And everybody knew it. The mayor walked away and Bak reached out a hand to them.

“Come to my house. Sit at my table for the noonday meal. That’s where I last saw the button on her blouse, if that’s a help to you. And you’ll see how she does in the kitchen, fixing up the food, if that helps you.”

“Oh, so I have to do the work?” asked Jobo. “My button, my loss, but I have to fix up their noonses?”

“I know where the bread is,” said Bak, “and I can boil eggs.”

“I don’t want you cooking in my kitchen!” snapped Jobo. “I married the clumsiest oaf in the village, and I’m not having you breaking eggs all over everything.”

“Fixing to boil them is all,” said Bak mildly.

But Rigg saw how the people didn’t much like her, and liked him fine. Her snapping at him was a shame to herself, but not to Bak, because clearly none of the folk thought he deserved it. They kept their silence though. It was between woman and man, how they talked to each other.

Rigg and Ram Odin followed to a good-sized house. Not a poor family. It was a house they had passed. Rigg could see Jobo’s path going in and out, as also Bak’s. And children, but they must be grown because the paths went away and didn’t come back.

“Children still living here?” asked Ram Odin. “Big house like this.”

“My parents had seven that lived,” said Bak. “We had two. The boy went off to seek his fortune, poor lad, and the girl married out. I fear they didn’t like it here.”

Rigg wondered if it was marital squabbling that drove them away, or simply wanderlust. Or, in the girl’s case, maybe love.

“Think the boy found it?” asked Ram Odin. “His fortune?”

“If he has, he didn’t come back yet to share it,” said Bak.

His wife made a glottal stop to show exasperation. “He’s only two years gone,” she said to him.

“A year to get a fortune, a year to waste it, and then come home,” said Bak. “I expect him any day.”

“I’m going to see our daughter one of these days,” said Jobo. “Her husband writes twice a year.”

“She’s afar off?” asked Rigg.

“As far as an honest girl could go,” said Jobo mournfully. “Three villages yonder.” She pointed toward the south. Apparently the fourth village that direction would only lure dishonest girls. Ram Odin had been right. Their world was small.