![]() Pappa always laid it, and they only tended it, keeping it banked at night and breaking its crust each morning to let the hot heart of it breathe. The second day, for the first time in years, the fire goes out. ![]() Her breasts, back, and between them her heart, are caught in her winter vest, bundled tight together. She lifts her hair to show the grubby nape of her neck, spreads her fingers to let the warmth lick between them, lifts her skirts so her woollen stockings begin to singe and stink. Everywhere it touches, she tells herself, she is real. She keeps herself together by filling her belly until it aches, and by placing as much of herself as possible in the warmth from the fire. If she doesn't eat, she will become smoke and gather in the eaves of their house. ![]() Maren feels the food so solid inside her, and her body so unreal about it, she imagines herself pinned down to the earth only by Mamma's stale loaves. They eat nothing but old bread, settling like pebbles in their stomachs. They are snowed in for three days, Diinna portioned off in her narrow room, Maren unable to rouse herself any more than she can Mamma. The kirke stands dark that Christmas, that first day after, a hole between the lit houses, swallowing light. Snow piles on snow, filling the windows and the mouths of doors. ![]()
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