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building, which had been taken over by their few livestock, Merian began tearing down the interior wall between the two rooms, to combine the whole into a single structure. Although he worked frequently in the empty room, heconstantly invented reasons to be in the part of the house where they were.
    It was during this season that proper warmth began to flow between husband and wife as well, when Sanne saw how her husband went through no end of invention to be near the newborn, and Merian saw how well she guarded his boy from harm.
    That was also the winter Sanne began to take over management of the stores, beginning at first with her helping Merian count how many bales of hay were left until the time the cow would be able to graze outdoors again. It was then that she saw how precarious their own survival was as well, and dependent on an early spring. In fear she began to make suggestions about how the land was allocated to the different crops.
    â€œWe’ll have to feed the cow from our own food,” she said, “and unless you give another field to hay this year we might be in the same position next winter as well.”
    â€œWe might have to slaughter it,” Merian replied stoically, going to count the preserves in the half-empty room. “Now, how long will the cow last if you divide it by two people and the rest of the winter?”
    Sanne thought it was a joke, even though she found herself involuntarily performing the math in her head. When she realized he was serious, though, she grew incensed. On her last place they would rather get down to the nub of their stores than kill an animal that wasn’t marked for slaughter, and a cow was almost a living relative. As the weeks progressed, though, the hay continued to thin, and Merian was forced into giving the animals smaller and smaller portions. To save the cow, Sanne would sneak some of her own meal to it when her husband was not looking. Still, the animals all grew thinner, until the cow’s warm morning milk had given out well before there was yet any sign of thaw in the fields. In desperation Merian went out and dug up turf from the ground beneath the snow, and took to feeding the animals that, but it was not enough to sustain them properly. They continued to weaken.
    â€œDo you want to wait until your own milk has given out too?” he asked, arguing his course of action with her. “The little one can’t eat turf.”
    Sanne did not answer him, and indeed began to withdraw some of the affection she had previously restored. He is just barely an animalhimself, she thought. If he managed his stores right we would not be in this situation.
    Their misfortune, he told her, was not his doing. “I am as beholden to the climate and the mercy of God as anything out there,” Merian said, as if reading her thoughts. “I do not make it rain or hail or snow or drought, or else descend on a poor fellow like the locusts, or bring fire, or make crops die from disease that can’t nobody see till the corn is withered all to ruin.”
    He got up from the table, leaving half his dinner for the woman and child, or rather the animals, as he knew what she did with the scraps from her own plate, even with her husband’s head aching and light from hunger.
    â€œIf you kill the animals we’ll never have anything more for ourselves than season to season,” she said, as he stormed across the room and made a pallet for himself on the floor.
    â€œIf I don’t we won’t make this one, Sanne,” he said, with increasing frustration.
    He woke up early the next morning and left the house before she knew he was gone. By the time she did find him missing she was already at the stove, making the thinnest ashcake ever measured out and set over a bed of coals. She looked around presently and counted the animals, as was her usual habit. The cow and the mule were both missing, and she went to the door in great agitation to see if