Gretel, a young woman in a barbarian tribe

With the ease of long habit, you awaken a little before dawn. You climb out of your bed, little more than a pile of blankets in one corner of the main room, and make your way to the door by the dim light that filters in. Behind you you hear your mother's feet on the floor, as she emerges from the bedroom she shares with your father, at the rear of the house.

Outside, you take a quick look around the ring of houses that make up the center of the village. Several other girls are emerging from their houses or already in the front gardens, running the same errands as you. You quickly gather eggs from the chickens in their little hutch. It's still too early in the year for the vegetable garden to yield much of anything, but you have plenty of vegetables stored up from last year.

Eggs gathered, you make your way back inside the house. By now the entire house is awake: your parents, and your younger brother and sister. Your mother has started a fire in the firepit, and is cooking griddlecakes. By the fire-light, your father's straw-blonde hair looks almost red. Your younger siblings have the same hair, though you inherited your mother's black hair instead.

You offer the eggs to your mother, who takes them and cooks them alongside the griddlecakes. The family starts into breakfast.

"Marta," your father says after a few minutes. "Don't forget, Rolf the smith is coming over for dinner this evening. We'll want this place cleaned up before he gets here, and we'll be having pork tonight. And Gretel, once you've finished your chores for the day I want you to bathe yourself and dig out your good kirtle. This is going to be an important dinner."

You flinch slightly. Rolf the smith has been unmarried since his wife died two years previously, and your father has been maneuvering to get you married to him for months. The man scares you: he's almost twice your barely-eighteen, and it's an open secret that he beat his first wife when he thought she was flirting with other men. You can't be certain, but you suspect that's what she really died of. Still, he's the wealthiest man in the village, so you can see why your father wants the marriage.