Location:The Millford road — The Halbrook Holding; The Yard; The Stone Barn
Date/Time:TC1858.02.12 – TC1858.02.13
The ice on the byre trough was a finger thick, and Nissa broke it the way she broke it every morning, with the heel of her fist, because the mallet was in the barn and the barn was full of soldiers.
It hurt. It always hurt. She'd stopped minding somewhere around the second week of the frost, the way you stopped minding the smoke in a kitchen with a bad flue. The ice went in two pieces and then in four, and the black water came up between them, and the cows put their heads down to it over her arm, and she stood there with her knuckles stinging and watched the road.
Sedge came and leaned on her leg. He'd started doing that at midwinter. He had never done it before and she hadn't asked him to, and she didn't push him off.
