"Fear was there all along," she said sadly. "I'd been sure something terrible was coming, even before I'd been told I had to be sacrificed. And then my husband came to me, but only at night. And he told me he loved me, and laid with me all night, every night, and I was...so happy, but so terrified. Because he told me I must never try to see him in the light."

She'd set the tub of apples down at her feet a minute ago, but she picked one up now and rolled it between her hands. "That was the condition. And I broke it. My sisters are always cast as the villains for telling me I had to see, for giving me the lamp and telling me he was a monster, that neither I nor the child I carried would be safe until I knew, but...I cannot imagine I could have gone on forever being blissful in ignorance."


"I suppose," she added ruefully, looking up at Skaffen-Amtiskaw, "you would call that a very badly handled example of contact."