She wrung her hands together, darted in agitation about the room, gradually grew calmer as the grandmother ghost patted her arm, ragged lips moving in words that were only bursts of unintelligible noise. She drifted back to hover in front of Aituatea.

The Tekora’s youngest daughter, she said, three years old and just walking, a noxious little nit who should’ve been drowned at birth. On the eve of the new moon they turn the place upside down, double the work on us. I don’t think much about it except that I’d strangle her myself if I come across her, she is wrecking my plans because she took off. Three days later they find her facedown in the nursery fountain, shriveled and bloodless like a bug sucked dry. Not drowned but dead for sure. ‘F I was scared of leaving before, well! Tekora would tear Silili brick from plank looking for me, or that’s what I’m thinking then. The other maids are as jittery as me. We are Hina in the house of the Temueng, that makes us guilty even if we do nothing, and the other bondmaids are too stupid and cowed to say boo to a butterfly. Housemaster beats us, but his heart isn’t much in it. And things go on much the same as before. On the eve of the next new moon another daughter goes and I am there to see it.

They order us bondmaids to sleep in the nursery to make sure the daughters don’t just wander off. This night is my turn. A bondmaid brings me a cup of tea. I sniff at it when she goes out. Herb tea. Anise and something else, can’t quite place it. I take the cup to the garden door and look at it but can’t see anything wrong. I sniff at it again and I start getting a touch dizzy. I throw the tea out the door and carry the cup back and put it by my pallet so it looks like I drank it. I stretch out. I’m scared to sleep but I do, up before dawn running like a slave for those bitches, I’m tired to the bone. Something wakes me. I don’t move but open my eyes a slit and keep breathing steady. A minute after that I see the Tekamin standing in the doorway, the Tekora’s new wife she is, he set her over the others and they are mad as fire about it, but what can they do? Hei-ya brother, I have to listen to a lot of bitching when I am fetching for the other wives, they don’t get a sniff of him after he brings that woman back with him from Andurya Durat.