No one knows where she comes from, who her family is or her clan, even the wives are scared to ask. And there she is in that doorway, slim and dark and lovely and scaring the stiffening out of me.

She comes gliding in, touches the second youngest daughter on her face and the daughter climbs out of the bed and follows her and I know what she is then, she’s a Kadda witch, a bloodsucker.

I lay shivering on my pallet wishing I’d drunk the drugged tea, my head going round and round as I try to figure out what to do. I think of skipping out before morning and trusting I can keep hid. But I think too of the Kadda wife. I don’t want her sniffing after me; I have a feeling she can smell me out no matter where I hide. Well, brother, I raise a fuss in the morning, what else can I do? And you better believe I don’t say one thing about the Tekamin. The other daughters howl and scream and stamp their skinny feet and the old wives they go round pulling bondmaid’s hair and, throwing fits. When the Housemaster beats me again, it is just for the look of the thing, and for himself, I suppose. He is scared himself and happy to have my back to take it out on.

I keep my head down the next month, you can believe that. I try a couple times to sneak out of the handmaid’s dorm, but the damn girls aren’t sleeping sound enough and keep waking up when I move. Anyway I’m not trying too hard, not yet. The Kadda wife isn’t bothering me-except sometimes she looks at me^-like she is wondering if I was really asleep that other time. I’m thinking maybe I can last out the year and get away clean and all the fetching and carrying and cleaning up don’t bother me near so much. Then the Wounded Moon starts dribbling away faster and faster till it is the eve of the new moon again and curiosity is eating at me till I can’t stand it. You told me more than once, brother, my nose would be the death of me.