The people below spun around and danced, playing with their paper effigies of Helna and the water woman. The smell of cooking food settled as a fragrant haze over the whole village.

It made Sif's heart ache.

Now that he was well, he was seriously considering what to do about what Helna's sister had told him. He held it in his head that there was a certain chance she had lied; after all, she could've also been lying about being Helna's sister.

But even though he didn't want to admit it, he was beginning to suspect that that much was the truth- why else would the water woman sound so bitter and sad about Helna's passing? If they were simply two animals sharing territory, she wouldn't have been upset; and, furthermore, given that Helna went out of her way to keep the water woman from eating people, shouldn't she have been happy that there was one less obstacle in her way?

Sif felt that if she was telling the truth about being Helna's sister, she must've been telling the truth about the matter with the tongue as well. He disliked the prospect immensely.

All of his own villagers were off limits. Even if one of them did something horrendous enough to earn his ire, he would rather not have a voice that his people knew. That left only outsiders, very few of whom ever actually visited. For there to be a stray traveler was an event that happened only once or twice a year, and merchants stopped by even less; in his own memory, he could recall only three times that he had seen them.

And what was the chance that one of these rare outsiders would be someone human, yet so horrible that Sif would feel no guilt over taking their tongue?

He got bored of being up on the platform, and decided to put the matter out of his mind; he decided that he would jump down and learn how to dance.

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