“Look here, your woman’s with child.” The Old Woman is frowning and shaking her grandmother’s finger, speaking as though it’s plain to see. “Sevastian, find me what I need to knit a new blanket.”
Osip is speechless. It never crossed his mind that Noé secreted herself away because she was expecting. With every other pregnancy, she’d kept on with her life till the little ones slid out from between her legs.
“She’s twenty-five weeks on,” the Old Woman adds.
Osip smiles. Newborns are what he likes best, babies he can hold in his hand, who need nothing but mash and their father’s skin.
Osip smiles, his brother calculates.
Twenty-five weeks, that’s six months. Sevastian counts back — August, July, June, May, April, March. This is a February baby, conceived in the snow while Osip was watching over the flock in his tower. Over the winter, the younger brother doesn’t venture out.
Osip smiles again, obligingly, when Sevastian states, “This child is mine.”
Standing in the kitchen, Sevastian has spread the first fall supplies out on the table: a bag of rice, a kilo of sugar, three flasks for the Old Woman, tobacco for Noé, a blank notebook for his daughter. After the first storms, the trail leading to Seiche will be cut off: it always takes him a dozen trips to assemble all the provisions they’ll need.
Sevastian empties his pouches, pulling out a new ladle, tea, two kilograms of salt, a glass jar full of yeast, three bags of potatoes. He throws the package of tea leaves over to Osip and repeats, “This child is mine.”