Caro had written her ribbon before leaving for the square.
A name, folded inward so nobody could read it. She'd blamed a girl who worked at her stall for money that later turned up beneath the cash drawer. By then the girl had been dismissed. Caro hadn't gone looking for her.
The ribbon would take care of the feeling. That was what the feast was for.
In the square, children sold sweet bread beneath strings of lamps. The man in the straw coat stood on a small platform, his face hidden behind a woven mask. White ribbons already covered his arms.
Last year the bearer had been a man from outside the valley. This year's was younger. Caro recognized his shoes: the gardener's apprentice, Simeon, who slept in the room above the toolshed.
"Does he know what he's doing?" she asked the woman beside her.
"They're paying him."
The band struck up. People formed a line, each holding a folded ribbon. They tied their regrets to the bearer and stepped away looking lighter. Caro had always loved that part, the change in people's faces. For one evening, neighbors spoke without the weight of what they knew about each other.
A butcher tied a ribbon around Simeon's wrist.
Under the straw, something cracked.
Simeon bent at the waist. The butcher stepped down from the platform and took a piece of sweet bread from his wife. He was smiling.
Caro moved closer.
The woven mask had slipped. She could see Simeon's lower lip. It was split down the center, bleeding onto the straw.
"He needs help."
The feast steward touched her elbow.
"Please don't interrupt the release."
Another person approached, a woman who owned several rental cottages. She tied her ribbon above Simeon's knee. His leg drew up as though the ground had become too cold to bear.
Caro remembered the family locked out of one of those cottages in February. The youngest child had lost two toes.
She looked at the butcher, then at the broken wrist beneath the straw. His apprentice wore a wrist brace. Everyone knew why. Nobody bought meat somewhere else because there was nowhere else.
The bearer began making a low sound behind his mask.
"I thought it was symbolic," Caro said.
The steward looked tired.
"It is."
The line moved. Someone behind Caro nudged her forward. She still held her own ribbon, damp now from her palm.
Simeon saw her through the mask.
"They said it would stop when the ribbons burned."
At the back of the platform, two men were stacking wood beside a burning brazier. Caro had watched the bonfire every year from the far end of the square. She'd never seen the bearer leave, but she'd assumed there was a moment when he did.
She reached for the knot around his wrist.
The steward caught her hand.
"That's been given. The coat must stay on until the last knot burns. You can't return what's in it without consequences."
"Whose consequences?"
He looked toward the butcher.
Caro pulled the knot loose.
Simeon's wrist straightened. Down in the crowd, the butcher dropped his bread and screamed. His hand hung at the wrong angle.
For a second the whole square was quiet except for the band, whose musicians hadn't seen what happened.
Then the steward shouted for someone to hold her.
Caro took the scissors from her market apron. She carried them to cut string and loose threads. She cut the ribbon above Simeon's knee.
The cottage owner fell against her husband. Blood darkened the front of her shoe.
People began pushing toward the platform, trying to stop Caro. The butcher clamped his good hand over the ribbon below Simeon's shoulder, holding another person's knot closed. Simeon pulled at the others with his freed hand.
The straw coat tore open.
Underneath, his skin was crowded with injuries that didn't belong together. Burns crossed bruises. A narrow line of stitches ran across his throat. With each ribbon cut, something healed on him and someone in the square made a new sound.
The steward seized the scissors. Simeon struck him with the wooden mask. Caro caught the coat as it fell and dragged it to the brazier. She pushed the hem through the bars.
The white ribbons curled in the heat. A knot flared. The stitches vanished from Simeon's throat. Beside the sweet-bread stall, a woman clutched her neck, blood running between her fingers. Caro kept the coat against the bars until she couldn't hold it any longer, then let it burn.
For years she'd heard the crowd cheering at this moment. Now she heard what the cheering had covered.
Simeon collapsed beside the platform, whole and shivering. The cottage owner called for a blanket. Her husband pulled a cloth off one of the stalls and wrapped it around her bare foot.
Caro helped Simeon stand. He leaned on her as they crossed the square. Nobody tried to stop them now.
Near the fountain, he noticed the folded ribbon still clenched in her hand.
"You didn't give me yours."
"No."
He waited. Caro unfolded it. The ink had spread, but she could still read the girl's name: Lena Bell.
"What did you do?" he asked.
She told him. He listened without offering her anything to make it easier.
At the edge of the square he took his arm from her shoulder. Caro wanted him to say she was different from the others. Instead he asked whether she knew where the girl had gone.
She didn't. She kept the ribbon open in her hand as he walked away.
