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♫♪Suggested Music: from The Village on AudioNetwork
Mina gathered Yuila and a change of clothes and found the inlet of which Mahasha had spoken. Edvard took up his watch at the outside of the inlet where the boulders were laced with ferns and moss.
Mina spent the first few moments untangling Yuila's long tresses and listening to her talk of the other children. She described the fish that had eluded them in more detail than her playmates, Mina noticed. She silently picked a thin tick out of the girl's hair and flicked it away as the subject turned to supper and what it would be.
They met Edvard at the boulders when they finished batching and he headed for the water and his own bath. Yuila immediately sat on the nearest rock and moaned.
"I feel like I'm still in the water, Sapo." She rubbed her legs quickly. "Mirra said her father sells mussels and clams," she said leadingly.
Mina sat on the rock beside her. "And that's what you want for supper."
The girl's large violet eyes got bigger. "Can we?"
She tousled the Crone's oddly-cast blonde hair with a towel. "I don't know if Edvard's going to want to eat something like that if he doesn't have to."
"Well, one of the other boys said his mother would sell us a chicken maybe."
She dried the girl's hair for a long moment. "You think you're old enough to find supper?"
To Mina's surprise, Yuila thought the question over carefully for a long moment. "I could get something we would all eat, not just shells."
"Can you count money?"
"Some," she said slowly.
Mina sighed. "We'll run it by Edvard." When the girl looked at her strangely, she said: "We'll see what he thinks of it."
Edvard didn't expect to see them when he emerged from the inlet a few moments later. "I thought you went back to the room."
"Well, we had an idea," Mina said as they joined him on the path back to the village.
"What kind of an idea?" he asked guardedly, attention going to Yuila.
"Not what you think," the girl said, then stopped herself before saying something else to Mina.
"Never mind what I think." He shook his head, mumbling something and pulling at his shirt ties that hung loose. "What's your idea?"
By the time they reached the yurt, they had convinced him that Yuila might be responsible enough to procure the ingredients for supper—provisionally. It had been more an exercise in Yuila's yearning for anything resembling seafood than responsibility, and it appeared to Mina that Edvard had had a lot of practice in the role of an older brother who must be persuaded by a younger one.
Yuila's hair was nearly dry by the time he nodded and reached for the leather pouch that hung from a cord beneath his shirt. She grinned as he took out four small bronze coins.
"Nothing here should cost more than that," he told her, putting the coins in her hand. "And whatever you get should already be dead. I don't want to butcher anything."
She nodded eagerly. "I'll get something dead."
A strange way to qualify supper, Mina thought, discovering how different her life had become the last five weeks. The young girl left, a triumphant smile on her face, the coins clutched tightly in her hand, swinging a reed basket.
"Be back before the rain," Mina called after her. She blew a few strands of hair out of her face that had escaped her pony tail in the rising humidity. She looked to Edvard. "You think it was a mistake?"
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