Sect Year 4 · third month · night of day 26 · the thirty-fifth life: Ketch Shoal, her first year
The first thing Tovra knew was the cold. It came in with the air, sharp and wet, and it was followed at once by heat and slipperiness and a pressure that squeezed the whole of her in one direction. She didn’t yet know that there was a direction. She only knew she had been somewhere warm and dark and was being pushed out of it, and she didn’t like it, and she opened her mouth to say so.
Nothing came out but a thin shriek.
Under the floor the tide worked at the stilts. It made a slow grinding sound, like someone turning a stone over in a patient hand, and every time the water drew back the boards settled a little and the reed walls breathed in the draught. The house smelled of salt water and lamp-oil and the sour iron of the blood that was still on the mat.
A woman lay on the mat in the centre room, panting and cursing in the voice of someone who meant to be cursing for a long time yet, and beside her knelt the old midwife with her sleeves knotted above the elbow and the bone knife on a cloth at her knee.
