The dens that had held her through the worst of it had a spare bed and a look that said they would fight if I made the wrong shape with my mouth.
I sat on a crate so I was not towering. I asked the child her name.
"Nora," she whispered, and looked at the bread as if it had betrayed her.
"Which bed did you sleep in last night?"
She pointed, without lifting her eyes, at the holding dens' doorway—the one that still had a child's mitten drying on a peg by the latch.
"You don't choose dens," I said, soft enough. "I do. You choose whether to eat that before it goes hard."
She ate. The adults waited.
I gave Nora to the dens that had held her through the fever winter, with visiting rights for the blood-mother written and witnessed so they could not be "forgotten" into another quarrel.
The blood-mother cried without sound. The holding dens only nodded. Hermine stood at the back and did not interfere, which was her way of approving.
