Winter fell around us with all its usual drama. The air grew colder, the trees naked and dumb, and snow flurries worsened our days. And that’s when it wasn’t raining. Not much happened besides camping in the wilderness and constant hunger. We had no food other than pickled green carrots and whatever else we found on the turf: winter berries, edible roots, soggy mushrooms. And the trees weren’t much help.

You shouldn’t eat that, one told me. The mushroom season has ended—it’s maggot country now.

I caught a spike-mouse once. Not much meat, but it was something.

Mom suggested crossing the border. But why should we? One side would consider us traitors and the other spies.

As the days dragged on, Mom got weaker. My stomach gained a life of its own, clawing at my abdomen and lungs. The pickled green carrots didn’t help much. They were only slightly worse than eating live, vinegary slugs.

Sometime later, we came across a village, if one could call it that. Its name was Leftover, as faithful a name as any place could ever hope for. Leftover consisted of a dirt road with about twenty houses lining each side and a tavern that was part grocery, part butchery, part bakery, and part barbershop—a very Leftover-y mix.

“Sir, I beg of you,” Mom said to the man in a white apron and white hat behind the tavern counter, his hands powdered white, clunks of dough clinging to his fingers and fingernails as he received money from another customer. “I can do anything—bread, stew, pies. I can clean, and I ask only for some food for my son and me.”

The man regarded Mom from the corner of his eye and jutted his chin out to another customer. The customer pointed at the rack of bread loaves.

Mom waited while the shopkeeper fetched the bread, chunks of dough flaking off his hand, and extended it to his customer. She laced her hands. “Anything you need, sir. My son can help, too.”

“Lady, do you know how many refugees have gone through here asking for work? If what I heard about the refugee camp in Alturin is true, soon, there will be hobos begging in every corner of the kingdom. And this business up north—Northern Death, they’re calling it. Keeps me up at night—I’ll tell you that much. With the mountain, so went the north’s future.”

Another man entered the shop and took a seat by the barber’s chair.

“I’ll be with you in a minute, Lorik,” the barber-baker said.

“But surely, you could—” Mom began, but the barber-baker cut her off.

“You see that man?” he said. “He wants his hair cut. Leftover’s a small place. As you can see, I do pretty much everything around here to make ends meet. I’m sorry, but you came begging to a town of beggars.” He covered the dough with a wet towel, rubbed his hands off most of the dough, and snatched a pair of scissors, heading for the barber’s chair. “Will it be the usual, Lorik?”

We knocked at every door. The village, however, had a severe case of refugee fatigue, and we were met only with “scram,” “get on with ya,” and shaking heads.

One of the doors we knocked on did not shoo us away. There was no one inside to do the shooing. It was way down the road, at least half a league from Leftover. We peered through the windows like stalkers. It looked like no one had been there in months. I wondered briefly if something awful had happened to the owners. Then I remembered that something awful had happened to all of us and was still happening, and it wasn’t like we were going to destroy the place. Right?

So I broke a window with a rock. Inside, it smelled of dust and mold. But it would do. I helped Mom in, and we made ourselves at home. There were mattresses and blankets in the bedroom, which we dragged in front of the hearth. And there was some food in the pantry, not much, and mostly pickled nastinesses. But beggars can’t be choosers, so we ate nastinesses with the appropriate delight.

As night approached, the wind pushed wandering flakes of snow through the broken window. I went out to gather deadwood and started the hearth, and there was even a flint over the mantle to start the fire.

I watched the flickering flames, warming my hands and face, my stomach rumbling like a wild beast. “I’m going for a walk,” I said, but Mom was already fast asleep. I skulked in the cover of the night. The shop was still open, the dim light from the oil lamps shining on the unsold bread loaves. I sneaked closer, observing the barber-baker’s every move. He turned his back and went inside the kitchen. I skipped across the street, heart lodged in my throat, slid behind the counter, and snatched a loaf right off the shelf. I even grabbed a couple of honey-apples from the stand on my way out. A manic grin crossed my lips as I hopped back to Mom like a little shortnose-bunny.

“We are not thieves, Ludik,” Mom scolded me after I woke her up and told her what I had done.

“This is not our house, either.” I wasn’t going to apologize for trying to survive. Mom was getting ill, and I needed to do something.

Reluctantly, she ate. “What has become of us?” she asked, while we stared at the flickering flames of the hearth. She sighed. “What will become of us?”

I scooched closer to her. “It’s going to be alright, Mom. I’ll grow faster.”

“I don’t want you to. I want you to have your childhood back.”

“But I can’t have it, can I? The mountain made sure of that.”

Mom averted her eyes. “If anything happens to me,” she began, but I would not listen and shook my head.

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“Nothing is going to happen to you—I won’t allow it.”

She cupped my face in her hands. “You have to forgive the mountain.”

Rancor brewed in my heart, feeding on the grief that kept me company. I clenched my jaw.

“I’m too weak. I need to know that you will be alright if I… Just tell me you’ll forgive it.”

“Stop it. Nothing bad is going to happen to us.” I pointed to what was left of the bread. “See, I got bread. I’ll find more.” Mom took me in her arms, but I pushed her away. “I’ll gladly steal all the loaves in the world.”

“Ludik. Anger, grudge, revenge. They won’t suit you. They will bring you nothing good.”

I looked away. How could she ask that of me? How could I forgive Aureberg after the misery it had plunged us into? Wasn’t it enough that it could not be stopped nor reasoned with, now I had to forgive it, too?

But as I looked into Mom’s beseeching eyes, the lie slipped my tongue, “Fine. I’ll do it. But that doesn’t mean anything will happen to you.”

***

The next morning, I walked the two leagues that separated Leftover from Bastards Bank. I sat by the crossroad, right at the center of the village. An improvement over Leftover but not by much. Maybe three times bigger, judging by the number of shops on the main road. There was a tavern and a bakery (two distinct establishments, not one) and a pawnshop.

I observed the pawnshop, wondering what it was all about. Heaps of junk piled outside, and through the window, I could only see more garbage.

A pair of honey-apples appeared before me, and I followed the arm holding them.

“Do you not want them?” the lady asked. She had a kind face and a fancy dress. Well, maybe it was an ordinary dress. After seeing nothing but rags for so long, it looked like the best tailor in the kingdom had sewn it.

“I don’t have any money,” I told her.

She set the bag in front of me and took a step back. My voice has that kind of charm. “You are begging, are you not?”

“Begging?”

“Oh, sweety,” the woman said, pity in her eyes. “You’re slow, aren’t you?”

“Lady, what’s a pawnshop?” I asked, ignoring her stupidity.

“It’s where you buy and sell used items, of course.”

I squinted at her. “Will it sell shoes?”

“I don’t see why it wouldn’t. You have a fine day now, you hear?”

I watched her stride away, almost giddily. I bit into one of the apples and decided to beg for the rest of the day. All I got was the tiniest little coin, dropped in front of me like someone tosses away a peach pit after eating.

I walked back to Leftover and the barber-baker. His apron was a plethora of brown handprints, dough, and human hair. I showed him the coin and asked, “Could I have a loaf of bread, please?”

The barber-baker looked at me as if looking at a dead mouse rotting on the floor of his shop.

“That’s a half-guilling,” he said as if that would clarify something for me.

“It’s all I have.”

“A loaf is three guillings,” he explained. “Come back when you have five more of those.”

“Is it enough for a pair of shoes?”

The man stood motionless. “Shoes? Even the cheapest shoes would be two gollings, at least. That’s thirty guillings. Get out of here, you rump. Go on, shoo.”

I waited for nightfall, and when the barber-baker went into the kitchen, stole another loaf.

That night the temperature plummeted, and in the morning, it was like waking up to an alien world. From the window, the light reflecting from the ice-covered view hurt my eyes. I used to love winter mornings like that. Mom and Dad would throw me outside, and we’d play in the snow for hours. Now the sight was but an echo of another life.

“I’m going out.”

“Ludik,” Mom began, but as she rolled on the bed to face me, she fell back asleep.

I kissed her forehead, her skin cold and wrinkled against my lips. I added a couple more logs to the hearth and grabbed my Alturin sword.

The snow-covered road was a chore to walk on, but I reached the pawnshop with my feet still attached to my legs.

The pawnbroker eyed me with discontent at first, then with slight amusement as he prepared to shoo me away. At the same time, I navigated around the tables, chairs, lamps, sculptures, rusting farming equipment, brooms, mops, cutlery, and pottery, among hundreds of other items.

“Young man, please be careful on your way out,” were his first words to me.

I smiled and, from my cloak (which was nothing more than a blanket covering my shoulders), produced an Alturin sword still in its simple blue scabbard and belt. I unsheathed it halfway and presented it to the pawnbroker.

“Where did you get that, you little thief? Come here, I’ll have you arrested,” were his last words to me.

I knocked more than a few items over on my way out and fled the village so fast that I barely touched the frozen road—so much faith in my plan, so foolish and so naive.

Back at Leftover, people reinforced their windows with iron bars and wood planks. These people are so weird, I thought. Would the barber-baker be interested in the sword? It was a risk worth taking.

I found him busily lugging produce inside the shop, yet it was only the middle of the day. Perhaps he needed a day off or something. He looked me up and down. “Did you find the other five half-guillings?”

I shook my head. “I found this. Can we trade?” I presented the sword somewhat cautiously.

He looked at the sword with disgust. “Hide that thing away. Don’t show it to me; don’t show it to anyone. Are you daft? If they find you with it, they’ll cut your hands off. Did you know that? Do you want to be both deaf and handless? Aren’t you miserable enough?”

I hid the sword. “Then what? Tell me, what can I do? Should I just die and be done with it?”

The barber-baker sighed, slumped his shoulders, and motioned for me to come closer. He grabbed a loaf of bread and handed it to me. “Here, today, you don’t have to steal.”

The compounding shame bore a hole in my heart and called it home. “I—”

The barber-baker held a hand up, and I watched him stuff vegetables in a bag: potatoes, green carrots, kaffom-plums, and sweet beans. He looked from side to side as if he was doing something illegal and slid jerked meat into the bag. “Stay out of trouble, kid. The winter is still long, and this one will be longer. If you want to make it, you’d better start getting smarter. And don’t go anywhere for the next few days. In case you haven’t noticed, there’s a storm coming. It’ll be here by nightfall. Without the mountain...” he trailed off. “May the Bastard help us.”

“Thank—” the barber-baker stopped me again and used his eyes to indicate the way out.

***

“Look, Mom,” I said after gently pushing her awake. “The barber-baker knew I was the one who stole from him before, yet he still gave me all of this. Here, have some meat.”

“It’s a small village,” Mom’s hands toiled the signs. “Everyone knows everyone; it doesn’t take long to know who did it.”

I fumbled with my thumbs. “Should’ve thought of that.”

“We either learn from others’ mistakes or our own. I hope you learned not to steal again.”

“Unless I’m starving,” I added.

Mom tried to sigh but fell into a coughing fit instead.

I helped her find a better position and brought her a cup of water. “I am going to find deadwood for the hearth.”

It’s easy to find deadwood. All I had to do was ask the trees, and they would tell me where to go. They preferred it; even welcomed it. It was better to see their dead limb and friends turn to ash and have that ash fertilize new soil than to watch them decompose, eaten by creepy crawlies or funky fungi.

I roasted some vegetables in a skillet over the fire. We ate well that night, though our shrunken stomachs couldn’t fill up with much. After dinner, we watched the wind build up outside, so I pushed a tall cabinet in front of the broken glass and stuffed a blanket in between.

The night would prove long, so we snuggled by the fire, covered in blankets, and waited for the storm to pass.