And they took that at face value for a while.
But finally the question came. “Who did you build it for?”
He would not tell them. “A man doesn’t have to tell. Shouldn’t tell. She chose another.”
They started ticking off the women who had accepted houses during that year. They all agreed—for by now the whole town had assembled—that the man had not shown special attention to any of those women.
“Did you never offer it?” asked a man.
“She already took another,” said the murderer.
“Who, then? Because if it’s one of these, she never knew.”
“I’m a shy man,” he said. “I was afraid to speak, and then it was too late.”
“You never even looked at any of the women of Woox-taka-exu,” someone pointed out. “Was she an outsider?”
“When would I see an outsider girl?”
“Who was it?” they demanded.
He named one of the women who had accepted a house at the time.
“You never looked at me, you never talked to me,” the woman said.
“I was afraid you wouldn’t like me,” said the murderer.
“Then why did you build a house for me?” she asked. “Who builds a house for a woman he thinks won’t like him?”
“I hoped you would like the house.”
They all looked at the house. “It is a fine one,” said the woman, “but what kind of empty-headed fool would marry a man she didn’t love because the house he built was so sturdy?”
“I hoped you would,” said the murderer. “Now I’m going home with my family.”
He reached for his wife, who had been there when the conversation started. But she was gone. With the children.
“She must have gone ahead to prepare the table,” the murderer said.
Only then did the murderer seem to realize that his outward calm was no longer in place. He looked tense. He looked as if he was barely controlling himself. So now he let go with an emotion he thought might explain his nervousness. “Why are you asking me these questions? Are you accusing me?”
“She wasn’t wearing her clothes, they were wrapped around her,” said a woman. “I think someone tore them off and then wound them around her dead body.”
“Not me!” said the murderer.
No one looked at him.
“Not! Me!”
“Why isn’t your wife standing by you?” asked a woman. “I’d stand by my husband, if such things were being said or even thought. Because I know he doesn’t have it in him.”
“She knows I don’t have it in me, either,” said the murderer. “Do you think she’d have married me and stayed with me all these years if she did?”
That was when some men came back with the wife, who hadn’t gone far. “Found her crying just around the corner there,” one of them said.
“You know something,” said a woman. “Tell us all.”
“She knows I’m innocent!” said the murderer.
Reluctantly, the murderer’s wife spoke. “I had my eye on him for a long time. When he built his first house, I hoped it was for me. But it wasn’t. I knew it wasn’t because he never looked at me. He never looked at any girl but one. And her too young for a house.”
“If you’re accusing me,” said the murderer, “how can I stay married to you?”
“He kept building on it after she disappeared,” said his wife. “But maybe that was just for show.”
“I’m the father of your children,” he said quietly.
“I think you need to winter in another house,” she said.
Those words hung in the silent air. Snow once again started drifting down, but there was no wind and it looked like just a flurry.
“I think you need to winter in another valley,” said a man.
There was a murmur of assent.
The murderer visibly sagged. “Do you even care that I didn’t do this?”
Rigg became conscious of the many eyes that were now glancing at him. Or openly watching him.
“You’re a kind of holy man,” said a sausagemaker. “Do you think we’d be doing a wrong if we held this man to account?”
Rigg did not know how to answer. So he just looked at the murderer. A long, steady gaze.
“You’ll believe a stranger over me?” he shouted. “He comes into the village and suddenly he knows where she’s buried! Don’t you think that’s suspicious?”
“Hard to guess his age,” said a woman, “but he’s young. I think he would have been under ten years old when she died. So no, I don’t think that’s suspicious. I think it’s the Sight. He said he sees the paths people take in their lives, and he saw where her path ended.”
“Did he do it?” another man asked Rigg.
“The boy is not a judge,” said Ram Odin. “He had a dream. You found the body that he saw buried in that dream.”
“But did he see who buried her?” demanded a man. There were open declarations of agreement.
“I would never accuse a man on the basis of a dream,” said Rigg. “I don’t know which dreams are true and which are merely dreams. I’m sorry this one turned out to be true.”
“You didn’t answer,” said a woman. “Was he in your dream?”
“In my dream,” said Rigg, “the cavity behind the wall under the window had already been dug out to receive the body before she died.”
“You can’t know that!” shouted the man. “He doesn’t know what he’s talking about! And even if it’s true, somebody else could have done it!”
“We would have known,” said a woman, “if a man started digging in another man’s marriage house.”
The assent was resounding.
“Will you give him a night to pack his things?” asked his wife. “The man who did this murder deserves nothing, but my children will be uneasy if their father goes away empty-handed, with winter coming on.”
“You can’t believe I did this!” the murderer cried to his wife.
“I know she was the only girl you ever loved,” she answered him. “And never me. Even when you built a house for me, your heart belonged to her. I’ve seen you staring at this house over all these years and I knew who it was you had built it for, even though she was still too young. I knew who you were thinking of. But it never crossed my mind that you were looking at her grave. Her clothes were torn off. Did you have her the once before she died?” The wife was taking no pleasure in this. She was being more ruthless with herself than with the murderer. “When you stare at this house of a night or of a morning, are you grieving for her? Or remembering that you were the only man ever to possess that beautiful child?”
There was a growl of rage now among the men. Not at the wife, but at what the wife had seen and what her words meant.
Ram Odin strode to the murderer and put an arm across his shoulder. “Let me take you back home, sir. You have some work to do tonight, I think.”
He wasn’t out of earshot when other women offered to take in the children and the wife herself for the night. The murderer would have his own house to himself.
This much goes to his credit: He did not kill himself inside the house, or in any other place where it would be one of his children who found him. He went into the smokehouse during the night and hanged himself from a short rope tied to one of the hooks.
Rigg and Ram Odin left the next day, walking on toward the next village. “We thought you’d winter here,” said Onishtu’s father.
“We owe you much,” said Onishtu’s mother. “Winter with us.”
“We have a place farther on,” said Ram Odin, “but your offer is kind.”
Rigg silently agreed, for he could not bear the thought of staying in this place. Justice had been served, he believed. But he also knew the repercussions would be long and hard. He had spared the lives of the murderer’s children by not changing the past in such a way that they would never be conceived, but their lives would be forever altered by the knowledge of what their father did, and that it was their mother’s testimony that condemned him in the eyes of the village.