The Bowl on the Sill

He has kept the long house longer than the timber: a hill-one who chose a single roof and stayed. He mends what breaks in the night and turns the luck of the place a hand's width toward warmth, and asks one small thing in return. A bowl on the longest night, the butter not forgotten, which is the only way a house has to say we know you are there.

Then the old woman who understood him dies, and a counting man inherits, and the porridge is called waste. But a gift cannot be commanded. When the hard winter reaches for the least counted thing in the house, one keeper of faith is left: a small watchful child with nothing to give, a spoon cleaned bright, and the courage to leave the door unbarred.