And, to everyone’s vast delight, Raina gathered cooking herbs and showed Mag how to make her stews savory and tasty. For her part, Mag showed Raina that pregnant women were by no means helpless creatures. Far from it. Although Mag tired easily and her back ached, she was still capable of plenty of vigorous activity and, in fact, seemed the healthier for it. Raina had grown up assuming that, because they lived so close to the land, the spirits of the common peasants would somehow be strengthened by the link. But, she was surprised to discover that the exact opposite was apparently the case. It was not the land that drained them, but rather their families. It was as if a piece of both Arv’s and Mag’s spirits had left them and entered each of their surviving children. Raina wondered in between lifting, carrying, cooking, and cleaning if this phenomenon explained why common people so often failed to resurrect. As interesting and exhausting as sampling the life of peasants was, Raina’s thoughts were mostly elsewhere.
