Pryska is a sturdy, weather-browned woman whose movements have the measured economy of someone who has spent decades leaning into a millstone. Flour settles in the creases beside her nose and in the fine lines of her palms, no matter how often she washes. She breathes through her nose in short, dusty sniffs; when rattled, the breath catches in a dry little click before she speaks. Her wool sleeves are patched at the elbows with cloth of three different browns, but she keeps one small copper button polished bright on her collar, a childishly neat point amid all the workwear.

She is practical and compassionate, but her care becomes bossiness when she is afraid. In ordinary work she is brisk and dryly funny; among hungry neighbors she is generous to the point of risking her own livelihood. Around the last sheaf, she turns rigid and speaks as if every question is an accusation. She can admit when she is wrong about millwork, but not about her father's warning.

Pryska learned the mill from her father, Dargan, who taught her to judge a harvest by its smell before he taught her to read. When she was a girl, a late frost ruined the village crop. Her father cut a last sheaf from the field and tied it above the mill door, saying it would keep the hunger out. Years later, after another poor harvest, he took the sheaf down and walked alone into the standing wheat to bind a new one. He did not come back. Pryska found his knife and a strip of his coat at the field's edge, but no body. Since then she has forbidden anyone to cut the final sheaf, claiming the old binding must not be disturbed. She keeps the mill running, quietly gives flour to families who cannot pay, and argues with the reeve over the village's dwindling stores. Her niece, Tekk, helps with the accounts and thinks Pryska is protecting a superstition rather than a person. The harvest is nearly in, and the field has begun to rustle on windless nights.