The ditch is a small river that forgot its job. Water should run along the headland and keep the winter strip from drowning. Instead a snag of willow and last year’s reeds have made a dam the size of a dog. The winter ridges shine with a puddle that does not belong.

Meg’s father is already there, hat in his hand, not from manners but from wanting to throw it.

“Hallmoot,” he says. “If we pull it and say nothing, next week someone else’s sheep or someone else’s stick will do it again. Law is remembering in public.”

Meg looks at you. “Two kids can pull a snag. A court can write that we pulled it, and whose strip is whose, and that water is not a toy.”

You think of Hew’s letter, of Steward Aldith who hates being called a queen, and of a millstone singing wrong. A blocked ditch is not a monster. It is still an emergency if bread lives in that dirt.

A neighbor arrives, already composing a speech about whose fault the willow is. Meg rolls her eyes in a way that is almost a prayer.