So they can grow up like Mari, thought Lovisa, instantly, unexpectedly bereft.

“Lovisa?” said Nev. “Are you okay?”

Lovisa felt her brothers stretching away from her, to a place where she couldn’t follow. “I’m fine,” she said. She was the sister who’d burned their house down and left them. She’d ruined their family. They didn’t need her and probably wouldn’t want her.

Nola bustled into the tiny, cramped room. “Lovisa?” she said. “I finally have some time. How are your muscles?”

Lovisa didn’t deserve a massage from Nola. She began to cry again, tears seeping quietly down her face.

“Let me help,” Nola said.

“You’re just pitying me,” Lovisa said, trying to sound harsh and unfeeling, but knowing she only sounded pitiable.

“Pitying is definitely the wrong word,” said Nola, sitting on the bed beside Lovisa, shooing Nev away, then finding the sore place where Lovisa’s shoulders met her neck. “You don’t have the sort of spirit that lends itself to pity.”

Because I’m hard, like my mother, Lovisa thought. “Everyone is leaving,” she said.

“Yes, everyone is leaving,” said Nola, in a smooth, measured tone, fitting words into the rhythms of her strokes, reaching deep, to the places where Lovisa’s sore muscles met bone. Had Nev grown up with this blessing too? Being touched, healed, by a mother? “Not right away,” Nola said. “But everyone seems to have places to go. You may stay as long as you like, Lovisa,” she added, “if you’re not ready.”

Lovisa swallowed. “Is Nev leaving?”

“Yes. Nev needs to get back to school.”

Lovisa grieved those words. School had used to be her kingdom. The chair in the dorm foyer was her throne. Nev and Mari were her neighbors. They were her friends, weren’t they? Could Lovisa have friends?

“What is your scholarly discipline, Lovisa?” asked Nola.

“Politics and government.”

“What a great deal you could do with that,” she said, “given everything you know and all you’ve seen.”

“No one can do anything with politics and government,” Lovisa said scornfully. “It’s just two bickering sides who’re exactly the same, pretending to fight about good sense and ideals when really it’s all about money.”

“Hm,” said Nola. “Imagine if someone came along with intelligence, and passion, and experience. And deep insight into how our government works, and how it affects the land. Someone who actually did have good sense and ideals.”

Lovisa didn’t know what Nola was talking about, and saw no point in imagining it. No one would ever want to work that hard, while standing in opposition to such a force.

“Someone who was good at taking old power structures down,” said Nola. “I wonder what someone like that could achieve.”

—

The next day, she walked with Saiet again as he went on another farm visit.

“Have you ever visited a pig, Lovisa?” he asked.