My father and brothers were sitting on a mat of bullock hide against the stone wall, talking There was no furniture in our tent. We rested, ate, and slept on the dirt floor. Little Mishal sat with them, pretending to be a man. He mimicked my father, slapping his right hand on his knee and frowning.

My father was a handsome man. He had golden-red hair and a long beard, and his hair shone in the dark shadows. He wiped his hands over his face often, and sometimes I saw in him a haunted, sorrowing look that tore my heart. He did not share my strange love for the firestones we mined, but he told us grand Quelled myths of a glorious past when all the world was filled with warmth and there was no need for fire or mines, Quelled or Chosen. My brothers smiled at the stories, and my mother shook her head. Sometimes our singers sang the myths and we danced to their music, laughing and clapping our hands. But mostly we were too tired to dance.

My father looked up at me as I came in, and a look that was half anger, half sorrow crossed his face. “I heard talk of you, Elsha,” he said, in that deep, quiet voice of his. “And I see your face. They say that tomorrow you must bring out four-and-thirty loads. Is this so?”

I shot him a dismal grin, and nodded.

“It will kill you, child,” he said, with heavy quietness.

I crouched by my mother near the fire, and warmed my hands near the flames. My fingers trembled, and I clenched my fists to make them still.

My father sighed. “Five sons I have,” he murmured, “and from them not a shadow of a bother. But you, Elsha – you bedevil me with your fiery soul. Why did you work so slow today?”

“Because today I am sixteen,” I said.

“So?”

I looked through the flames at him, and tried to find the right words. “The Chosen don’t own all of me,” I said. “I kept some of me today, for resting in the dark, and for joy.”

“God, Elsha—” he said, “joy?”

He covered his face with his hand, and I thought he laughed … or wept. But he took his hand down and said in a low and tender voice, “Help your mother, child.”

I took the turning-fork from her hand, and she gave me a fleeting, weary smile. She was not yet forty years old, yet her face, once vibrant and beautiful, was deeply lined and ingrained with firestone dust. Her hair was totally grey. Her hands shook all the time, and she sobbed sometimes when she straightened her back. She was old by Quelled standards. Soon, I hoped, she would be permitted to stay at camp as a caretaker.

She noticed me looking at her, and smiled. “No matter what happens tomorrow,” she whispered, “they can never take away today.”

I finished cooking the wheat cakes, then made a salad out of kohlrabi, onions and other vegetables the caretakers had grown. I served the meal to my father and brothers, then sat with my mother a little distance apart and waited while they ate. We never dreamed of eating with our men; it would have been a sign of greatest disrespect.