Past the fields of grain are farm houses. They are much larger than the cabins we have in the village. Most have two stories. Gardens are neatly placed in between the houses. Open barns hold horses. Large pens hold sheep and cattle. I’m near the first farm house. Its garden is filled with heads of lettuce and the tops of carrots. Vegetables have never looked so delicious. My stomach grumbles angrily. Should I take something? I could grab some carrots before anyone would be the wiser. Is it stealing if you really need it? I sway back and forth in front of the garden.

“Hey you!”

I turn around. A middle aged man with a rifle is watching me from the steps of his house. His unshaven face is on the verge of becoming a beard.

“What are you doing here, kid,” he asks. It takes me a moment to understand what he means. I realize now just how exhausted I am. His words blur together.

The man walks towards me, the rifle held casually by his side. “Are you alright?” He asks when he is closer. His voice is gentler now. Perhaps he realizes how sick I am. “You’re on my land, kid. What are you doing here?”

“Sorry.” My mind isn’t working fast enough to come up with some sort of story. I stick to the truth. It spills out of me in slurred sentences. “I’m from the Forsyth. A couple days ago my brother and I were kidnapped by some men and thrown into a train. I managed to escape, but my brother….Have you heard anything about this train? I’m trying to follow the tracks, but I hurt my leg.”

“From the Forsyth, huh? It’s not wise to go around sharing that information. You and yours were breaking the law. No wonder you two got picked up.

I lower my eyes. “I’m just trying to find him.” The man doesn’t respond. He wears a brimmed straw hat that throws half his face in shadow. “Didn’t mean to cause trouble,” I mutter. “I’ll get going.”

“Hold on boy. I’m not the sort to let a kid go hungry, no matter where he’s from. Come into the house. We’ll do what we can for your leg, give you a meal, get you some water. Then you’re back on the road. Sound fair?

“More than fair.” At the idea of food and water my exhaustion overwhelms me for a moment. I close my eyes and wait for my head to stop spinning.

“You can walk?” The man says.

I open my eyes. “Yes.” But I’m not totally sure. I walk slowly to the house and up the steps. When I reach him, the man sticks out his hand and grips my forearm.

“I’m Ryan.”

“Javin.” I follow Ryan into his house. It doesn’t feel too different from our cabin, just bigger. The walls are made of sawed wooden boards and the house is filled with plain furniture. Ryan leads me through a hallway.

“Abbey?” He says as we enter his kitchen. Standing at a table in the center of the room is a woman with yellow hair tied up into a tight bun. She wears a large apron, a sensible dress and a frown.

“Who’s this?” She asks, gesturing towards me with a potato. There is food spread out on the table in front of her. It’s hard to pay attention to anything else.

“His name is Javin,” Ryan tells her. “Says he’s from the Forsyth. He and his brother were taken from there and held on some sort of a train. He’s following the tracks.”

Abbey purses her lips at the word Forsyth. “Why is he here?”

“I found him outside barely able to stand. He hurt his leg. I thought you could take a look at it before he heads out again.”

I am sure she is going to refuse. Abbey stares at Ryan in silence for full minute. I’m too hurt to care about the tangible tension.

“Fine,” Abbey finally snaps. “Go get my kit. You, sit here.” She pulls a chair from under the table roughly. The legs bang on the floor.

I obey her and meekly go over and sit in the chair. She grabs my shoulder and pushes me against the back. Then she grabs my leg, raises it and puts my foot on the table.

Ryan returns with a wooden box which he places next to my foot. “I’ll get you something to eat.”

“Thank you,” I say, my focus completely on Abbey. For all her bite, she is gentle when she rolls up what’s left of the leg of my pants and unwraps my makeshift bandages. I hiss when I see the cut. It still hasn’t closed, the edges cracked with dried blood and the center yellow and green with puss. Thin red lines are just starting to creep up my leg.

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“It’s infected,” Abbey says, lightly touching the wound with the pads of her fingers. “Just stared though. You’re lucky. Another day or two and the infection would be too much for my drugs.” She takes the lid off the wooden box and rummages through it.

“Here.” Ryan puts down a glass of water and thick slice of brown bread. I guzzle down the water, some of it spilling down my cheeks. He refills my glass while I start of the brown bread. It’s delicious and soft, although I bet rock hard crust would taste like cake to me right now.

“Before I clean the wound I need to give you a shot,” Abbey says. She takes a needle from the kit and a small glass bottle filled with a silvery liquid. She inserts the needle into the bottle. “Are you ready?”

“Yes.” At least I think so. I’ve never had a shot before, just read about them. They are really only used in the eastern cities. In the Forsyth we use natural remedies, turning to modern medicine only when something is very serious. The sap of the ayeaanis root will stave injection. Ice mint numbs. I’ve had stitches before though. This can’t be any worse.

Abbey inserts the needle directly into the open cut. The needle is sharp and I can barely feel it go in. Whatever the drug is burns. I grit my teeth.

“Maybe this will help you learn not to break the law,” Abbey says, almost under her breath. She puts the needle back into the kit.

“Don’t pay her any mind,” Ryan says. He refills my glass again and guzzle it down as quickly as the others.

Abbey rubs a thick cream on my leg, numbing the skin, before she starts the stitches. The thread she is using is clear. I’ve never seen anything like it. The other time I got stitches my mom could only find green thread. When Abbey is done, she wraps a clean linen bandage around my leg, over lapping it several times. Then she grabs my heel and lowers my leg to the ground.

“Stand. See how it feels.”

I get up and take a few steps forward. “It feels like normal. Thank you.”

Abbey nods curtly and busies herself with placing the implements back into the kit.

“Dinner’s soon,” Ryan says. “How about you eat with us and the kids and then we’ll send you on your way. If your leg’s feeling up to it you can help me with horses. Earn your meal a bit.”

I don’t look at Abbey while Ryan speaks. I can feel her glaring at him. No matter her feelings about me, I’m not in any position to turn away a meal. “Thank you. I’d be happy to help.”

I follow Ryan out of the house and to the barn. It’s a half open structure right behind their house. I pass by a pen of chickens clucking wildly. Ryan is silent when we enter the barn. He points to several feed bags hung on the wall across from stalls with four horses in them. Two are large, strong cart horses. There is a small mare for riding and a long, legged gelding. I guess he’s for riding too, although he looks too tall for Ryan. He’d be perfect for my height. I copy Ryan, who is filling a feed bag from a barrel of oats. He takes care of the two riding horses, attaching the feed bags to their bridles. I work with the cart horses, filling up their water buckets and giving them oats. I’ve always been a fair hand with animals and the horses don’t mind my presence. Ryan hands me a pitch fork when I’m done. We get to work mucking out the stalls and filling them with clean hay. The piece of bread isn’t enough sustenance for this. I’m feeling faint by the time Ryan says to stop.

“Good work in there,” he tells me as we clean off by an outside water pump. “I’ve got two sons who are still too young to help out. Wish I could keep you on, at least for a bit. I could use the extra hand. But that would be asking for trouble.”

“I’m not sure what you mean.” I splash the cold water over my arms.

“You being from the Forsyth. Running away from the guards. I didn’t know anyone actually lived in that mess until the Kai issued the law. Your lot must be more savage than the westerners.” He laughs loudly enough to not notice I stay silent. “I’m sure you understand. Couldn’t let it get around that I hired a kid from the forest.”

“I couldn’t stay on either way. I need to find my brother.”

“Right. Right.” Ryan scoops up a handful of water and runs his hands over his hair. “You’ll be off to the capital then? You’ll do what you think it best, although I don’t really see the point. You and your brother were breaking the law. The guards had every right to take you.”

“They weren’t just taking us somewhere,” I tell him, forcing myself to speak calmly. An anger that I’ve become all too accustom to in the last few days is bubbling up inside of me. “They were hurting people, keeping them like animals. A man that was in the train said two of his sons were taken months ago and he never heard from them again. One of our guards said we were as good as dead.”

“The Kai wouldn’t do that,” Ryan says. “Sounds more like a western raid, though they wouldn’t be using trains.”

“A western raid?”

“You never heard of the raids, you’re kidding right?” Ryan smiles at me. It’s not a real smile, more of an expression of disbelief. “Guess not much news reaches the forest. The raids started about six months ago. Maybe five. The Kai has tried to keep this civil war from erupting for so long and the west clearly doesn’t want that. War is all those savages know. The entire flatlands are just filled with superstitious, ignorant, wild folk. It wasn’t enough that they’ve rejected all our help, wouldn’t take the Kai’s supplies, his offers to build schools. They don’t want his help. Want to be their own country. So they start coming into the east, raiding the villages, burning towns, kidnapping people. Trying to provoke the Kai into war. You sure you were on a train?”

“Pretty sure.” I manage to keep the sarcasm in my tone light enough so he doesn’t notice.

“Luckily we’ve never had a raid here, though we’ve had some close calls. About once a month the alarm blares in the city. We all have to leave our homes and head inside the walls.” He shakes his head. “Terrifying times, huh? Come on, dinner should be ready.”

I follow Ryan back to the house more confused than when I first entered it. I know that Kostos is headed for war, but what good would kidnapping a bunch of people from the Forsyth do for the westerners? Besides, I know I didn’t imagine the train. I guess it doesn’t really matter. I’ll just keep following the tracks, no matter what Ryan says. I don’t need answers to these mysteries, I just need Evan. At least there is something Ryan and I agree on. These certainly are terrifying times.