It was a small wooden contraption, no longer than the distance between Yanta’s wrist and the tip of her middle finger, and no taller than her hand span. It was a dull, barely sanded wood box, stuck together by long pieces of scrap metal that Yanta jammed in with a rock, since her father wouldn’t let her use the hammer. She held it up in the light from the window, balancing it in her calloused fingers. The sunlight bounced off the metal that was formed around each bottom corner of the box to keep the wood from scraping.

Yanta put the box back on the table, smiling at her creation, brushing off her hands on her pale tunic. Her brown hair fell around her face messily, but she let it hang. Her fingertips were too sore and scratched from the rough wood for her to use them to fix her hair.

Something furry rubbed against the back of her leg. Yanta picked it up, forgetting her aching fingers.

“Do you like it Rana?” she said. “It’s still quite plain. It’s no sort of great achievement or breakthrough discovery—just something to keep these in.”

She held out an open palm to the cat, showing him a handful of bent, dirty nails and metal scraps.

“They’re so hard to find, and Father won’t let me use them if he knew I had them. ‘They wreck your fingers,’ he says, ‘and no man wants a wife with wrecked fingers.’ He completely disregards their creative value. See, Rana?” She held out the box to the cat. “These metal corners protect the bottom and make it a bit less boring. Just wait until I sand it. It will be beautiful. I might just engrave something in it.”

Rana sniffed the box, then jumped out of Yanta’s arms and back onto the floor without making much more than a padded thump. He turned his green eyes up to the girl.

Yanta laughed. “Yes, I know,” she said. “You don’t care at all. Are you hungry?”

He licked her scabbed and scratched fingers. She picked him up again and left the small, sunny room and descended the tile stairs to the main room of the house.

The main room was always filled with people. Even without all the friends and associates, Yanta’s huge family would take up the entire room. Fortunately, they were never all there at once. They were either out or in their respective quarters that all attached to the main room.

Families in Rhundor were big, as everyone made it a point to have at least ten children who, if they didn’t die in childhood, married and had ten more.

“Yanta! Put on some clothes!” Yanta’s mother glared at the girl who stood in the doorway in her tunic, a loose white cloth that went over both her shoulders, around her torso, around her hips and hung down to mid-thigh, then wound back up to tie around her waist. “And fix your hair. You’re a disgrace.”

“Rana’s hungry.”

“Your cat can wait,” her mother said. “Or better yet, I just saw a rat. He can catch that.”

“But he hates rat.”

“Then he’ll have to be hungry.”

Yanta sighed exasperatingly and put Rana down. She climbed the stairs back into her room and slammed the door, nearly crushing Rana who leaped in at the last minute. Immediately, a pang of regret crossed her face. Father would punish her later for showing anger so openly.

She looked down at herself, her loose tunic, her pale legs, her bare feet on the wooden floor. She picked at her tunic, which billowed gently in the breeze from the window like a wispy cloud. It was the middle of the summer, and the air was humid, and a skirt and shawl would just make her stickier and sweatier. If men would not marry a girl with wrecked fingers, would they rather one that smelled of sweaty clothes?

Not that she would ever marry a man who cared about either, if she had a choice.

Yanta rested her palms on the warm windowsill. Boys in loincloths and not much else chased each other around in the courtyard of her family’s house, their tanned bare backs shining in the afternoon sun. The dirt kicked up by their racing feet stuck to their legs and hands. Their shouts carried up to Yanta’s window. Again, she picked at her tunic.

It had been almost a decade since she had played outside like that—she had been too young to truly realize how valuable it was. One day her father sat her down and told her firmly that she was not allowed to play like that anymore, that she had to start wearing skirts and shawls over her tunic to hide herself, that she had to stay out of the sun to keep her skin pale and dry, that she could not play outside anymore.

She saw her father’s stern face, a memory that was still true, telling her what she could not do anymore, and she hid her own face in her hands. It was better not to look at the boys outside, some her own age, doing what she was not allowed to do, than to wish she was there doing it with them.

“It’s already the year 287 after the founding of Dor Lorelin, Rana,” she said, “after Aglarnen became a country. Why can’t I go outside without being wrapped up as if it was winter?”

She sighed and picked up the black cat, cradling him in her arms like a baby. “I shouldn’t complain. It’s better than it was a hundred years ago. At least now I can speak in public.”

The cat didn’t reply. Why would he? He blinked his pale green eyes in the reddening sunlight. Yanta buried her nose in his thick fur and did not join her family again for the rest of the night.