The land, though, was finally free then of the tyrant Ould Lowe, for he had finally been toppled and no more would he be heard singing in springtime.

The monster himself, who had roamed those forests since time out of mind, rested then in silt, among the weeds at the bottom of the lake, twice slain and no longer a force to haunt human habitation. His titanic head curls against his chest and his spine folds to meet his feet as a child in the womb of the world. He will rest near silent almost a hundred years.

In the days after their fight, Sanne rose in the dark hours while her husband still slept, prepared breakfast for herself, then cleaned the dishes and went off onto the land to dig stones for her oven.

When he found a decent one, Merian was always certain to bring it back for her, but by this labor alone it would take all year before she tasted bread again, and she was determined to have it sooner.

Before midday she ceased and headed back to the house to prepare his supper. When both had eaten she went back to her work, hauling the stones she had dug up to the back of the house. There were nearly enough for the belly of the stove by midsummer, and all she needed was another stack for a chimney. She still could not believe he had lived in his little room for so long without a proper stove for cooking. She knew from her last marriage, though, that the natural state of man with woman, or woman with man, was turbulence and strife. Perhaps not always loud and bursting forth from the seams, but it was ever-present nonetheless, as a deep inner spring that stored tension in its center belly and released it, either slowly over time or else all of a sudden, as in the eruptive fights that had begun to curse their young house. Nor was there time enough between their less significant scrapes for things to return all to normal. If she asked him about the stove, there would be no end to the argument it might plunge them into, so she left him instead to his fields and fried bits of pone, but no bread, and did not mention it. She would have bread for herself before the end of the season and began looking for stone for her chimney. If there was bread for him as well, so be it.

In the forests at the edge of their land she found another lode of rocks and figured it would be enough to finish her task. She considered her fortune as she broke up a stone too big to carry with a pickax, and put the pieces into the wheelbarrow. She was a powerful sight as she guided the apparatus through the woods, and there was little doubt that she had in her the will to defeat any other thing that stood in her way.

On the old farm they had said it of her as well, though she could not defeat the death that came and snatched the first one she married, neither with her skills as a nurse nor in sheer combat with the demon god once he came. For Death, she knew by then, is indeed something none can defeat but that Other in Heaven; God is most certainly other, and sometimes the two of Them in cahoots for the same end. She thought of this as she made her way home with the evening load, and how her fortunes had always been mixed in their blessings. But she knew, if fortune had marked her for it, she would master this charterless province as well as she had mastered all the unbalanced ascents and descents before it.

Nor were these her only contributions to the husbandry of the place once she decided to stay. She also wove textiles so that there was new cloth to protect their naked skin from the elements of the season, and then increased the plot of vegtables outside their little room, so there would be enough not only for summer meals but for canning and drying as well, to nourish them properly through the winter months, when all was desolate except for foraging beasts, which seemed to her too hard a way for a person to have to come by their daily meals.

When he happened upon her at midday and saw all the progress she was making, Merian thought himself lucky and wise to have made the choice he did of brides, impetuous as it might have seemed to some onlookers, who did not know them or how their house was beginning to prosper there at the edge of the world.

When he and Ruth Potter went to the settlement on one of their monthly provisioning trips, he thought of all the changes that had taken place since the previous year there, as he nudged the animal on. “Come on, Ruth Potter,” he cajoled, “we got to get home before this time tomorrow.” The animal looked around at the man with its deep willful eyes, then turned its head back to the ground, stopping now and again to take whatever it found curious, before grudgingly moving on under his prodding.

Instead of having to visit here and there for the things he needed, as he did those first years, though, he was now able to acquire all his basic needs from the chandler who had set up in the town center. Although there was no ship to be outfitted for miles around, it was how the owner insisted on styling himself, though he was just a plain dry-goods merchant such as might be found anywhere in the colony. At the inn, Merian saw they had put up shutters to the window, giving the place an air of respectability, so that the streets were in every way becoming not unlike a town still inside of human habitation instead of the end of that rough and desolate road. He began to wonder what else he might see as he sat at the bar of the inn having a pint with Content.

“There is talk that the road might be graded and boards put down.”

“And who will do this?”

“They will hire a man.”

“Who will pay him?”

“The merchants.”

“Business is good on the square?”

“It hasn’t been bad.”

Returning that night he wondered whether his own gains were as much as the merchants’ on the square and whether the little farm would keep up. He had paid that year for his goods one quarter more in hard cash than the year before.

At home he climbed into bed next to Sanne but did not mention these things.

“How is the oven coming along?” he asked her.

“It should be finished before summer’s end.”

“And everything else?”

“That’s a fair amount. Hard to say when all of it might be done.”

“And with you yourself? How are you getting on here?”

It was the first time he had ever inquired about her general well-being since they were wed and he had brought her out there. The small tenderness moved her to forgive him certain other things, so that the coil which had been tensing day by day found release in the open atmosphere that night, where it was able to let loose of its stored energy without harm. On the contrary, it was energy that manifested itself in the same tenderness with which they sang to each other that first night, so that the early days of their marriage were not all full of strife and turbulence but also of the bliss that marks happier houses, when their inhabitants are so wise as to give it free reign. No, they were not Merian’s acres alone at all anymore. Nor did he see them as such.

five

The house grew and the farm grew and Ruth Potter bore the yoke and burden of domesticity — both in the field and on the road — and Sanne and Merian began to thrive and feel at ease in the clearing that was the boundary line of creation. In the corner of the room nearest the door the belly of the stove grew; and in the fields maize, which would fill it with meal in the winter months, reached ever skyward.

At trading that year Merian acquired a cow that was not too badly used, a pig for the slaughter, and several chickens, which would give them eggs. He also bought sundry items for the house and farm, including a large tin tub, shoes for both husband and wife, a dress for Sanne and a peck of apples for Ruth Potter. When the accounts were said and figured, he owed no one, and still had monies left for the first time and did not want for anything.