Marta left the house at a quarter past three, when the village was completely still and the road outside her gate was dark between the houses. She had set no alarm for many seasons now. Her body found the hour by itself during the picking weeks, surfacing from sleep at the right time with the same regularity as the birds that began outside her window every morning before she rose.
She dressed in the kitchen, where the light would not disturb her husband. The heavy cardigan first, the grey one with the long sleeves, and then the jacket over it because the valley in the pre-dawn hours was cold in a way that the heavier garments alone could not entirely manage. The cold at that hour came up from the ground as much as it came down from the sky. The valley floor sat between two mountain ranges, the Stara Planina to the north and the Sredna Gora to the south, and the cold air that drained off both slopes overnight pooled in the flat ground between them and lay there through the dark hours, dense and still, until the sun began to move it.
She pulled on her boots by the door. The pair she had worn yesterday was still slightly damp from the dew and she had set them near the stove to dry, but they were not yet dry enough. She wore the older pair, the ones with the seam that leaked when the dew was very heavy. She had been meaning to replace them for two seasons. She would replace them when the season ended and she had time to go to the proper shop rather than buying whatever was available quickly.