The smell of flax boiling marked the end of the week, heavy, bitter, metallic. It seeped into clothing and the corners of the byre. Women scutched in rhythm: three strokes, a pause, another. When men passed close, voices stopped. The younger children, still clumsy, were told to leave. Older ones learned to stay still and act unnoticed …
…. There were lines in the land. Some were visible, walls, ditches, hedges. Others were felt. A child might know not to speak a surname in a certain place, not to walk between those two trees, not to ask why the old stone was never moved. If a girl from one side married a boy from the other, it was discussed in a careful way ….
aletheus; a compendium 