I remember the day clearly. The sky was overcast, heavy with clouds that threatened snow but never delivered. I had spent the morning on the mountain as always, laughing at something he had said—some dry observation about the habits of mortals that made me snort with unexpected humour. I left him at the plateau, promising to return the next day, and descended the path I had worn smooth with years of climbing.

  The village was quiet when I arrived. Too quiet. The usual sounds—children playing, chickens clucking, the distant ring of the blacksmith's hammer—were absent. The air felt heavy, wrong.

  I knew before I reached our hovel. Something in my chest told me, some primal instinct that recognized the shape of tragedy before I saw it with my eyes.

  The door was ajar.

  I pushed it open.

  She hung from the beam in the center of the room, the same beam that had sheltered us through countless winters, that had held the pot over the fire, that had been the backdrop to every moment of my childhood. Her face was swollen, discoloured, unrecognizable—but I knew her anyway. The shape of her. The dress she wore, the same one she had worn for years because we could afford no other. The hands, still and pale, that had beaten me and held me and beaten me again.

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  I don't remember screaming. They told me later that I did—that the whole village heard, that people came running, that someone had to cut her down while I stood frozen, unable to move, unable to look away.

  The days that followed were a blur of grey. The funeral was small—no priest would officiate, no one wanted to be associated with a woman who had died by her own hand, in sin, unforgiven. A few of the older women dug the grave themselves, their faces tight with disapproval even as they worked. The midwife who had told me the truth of my birth stood at the edge, weeping silently.

  I stood alone at the graveside. No one stood with me.

  And after the grave was covered, after the small handful of mourners dispersed, the whispers began.

  "Poor thing," they said, but their eyes slid away from me when I looked at them. "What will become of her now?"

  "She's old enough to work. Strong, too. Look at her—climbs that mountain every day like a goat."

  "Bad blood, that one. Her mother was touched, you know. And the father... well, we all know about the father."

  "I heard the elders are already making inquiries. There's a merchant in the next valley, wealthy, looking for a young wife. They could make a tidy sum arranging it."

  I walked away from their whispers, back to the hovel that was now mine alone. It felt emptier than it should have, given how little space my mother had occupied in life. But her absence was a presence in itself—a void that pressed against the walls, that filled the corners, that followed me as I moved from room to room.