by Cat Rambo
In the morning, my nose was cold like ice, but I knew better than to complain. The oatmeal Da made was thick and full of horrible lumps. I didn’t say anything, but when he went to open the store, Aisha scraped it all into the compost bucket and made me a jam on bread.
The second night, we heard a loud crashing bang as a door upstairs hit the wall. Thumps and then the sound of something breaking. Heavy footsteps. Like there were a lot of people in the house, all of the sudden. I poked Aisha. She put her hand over my mouth, mashing my lips into my teeth. “Ssh,” she whispered. “Keep quiet.” I could feel her shivering.
Down there in the dark, I could hear men shouting at my father for a long time, the noise rising and falling as they waited for him to answer. It was like listening to thunder rolling just over our heads, but the storm wouldn’t end. We waited, huddled under our blankets, listening for the bolt in the cellar door and footsteps on the stairs that would be the end of us. We waited.
In the morning, when Da gave the secret knocks, we came up to find the store in pieces. Boxes upended on the floor. Bolts of fabric unwound and thrown about. A barrel was on its side, leaking honey in a large, sticky puddle. Things broken or ripped apart, muddy footprints everywhere. Da looked very tired and very sad. The table in the kitchen was overturned. One leg of the rocking chair was broken. Aisha pressed her lips together and started picking up pieces of our plates.
“Why don’t they leave us alone?” I asked Da, watching him as he tried to fix the rocking chair.
“I don’t know,” he said, but he wouldn’t look at me.
“When will they go?”
“Hush up,” Aisha told me.
“When your mother turns,” he said, “they’ll leave.”
I wanted to ask if that was when she would come back to see me, but I knew Da would just tell me I couldn’t hold her to it. “What is she turning?”
“When you’re older,” Da said, “you’ll understand.” He put the pieces of the rocker on the floor, very carefully, stood up and walked out of the room.
I followed him. “I want to know,” I said. “Mama was supposed to tell me something, and she didn’t, and nobody else will tell me anything.”
Aisha pinched me, hard, and when I opened my mouth to tell on her, she gave me a look and her eyes moved over to Da. He sat down on a cushioned chair that had been ripped open by something sharp, and he put his head in his hands. “I should have sent you away from this. I was stupid to think they’d leave us alone,” he said.
“We’re safe with you,” Aisha said.
“I don’t want to leave,” I said. “Why would...”
“It’s too late anyways,” Da sighed. “The roads aren’t safe. We had the chance and I wasted it.”
Jos came when we were still cleaning up. His face was all black and blue, one eye swollen and squinting. His lip was split, and he walked very slow, holding his side. He came in through the kitchen, and he sagged down into a chair and told Aisha to go and get Da. I was scared to see him like that, and he didn’t tell me to not be afraid like a grown-up was supposed to.
“Did you see my Mama?” I asked him. “Is she turning?”
He shook his head. A tiny sound of hurt escaped from him. “I didn’t see her.”
Da came into the kitchen, and he got a funny look on his face when he saw Jos all beat up. He reached out to hold onto the back of a chair. “What happened?” He forgot to send me out. I went back to wiping the floor, not doing a good job but staying very quiet.
“They came up to the farm,” Jos said. The words came out slow, like he was pulling them out carefully because they hurt. “Somebody talked.”
“Somebody...” Da couldn’t finish what he said. The chair creaked under his hand.
“They knew, Pat. They said I had to tell them or...” He stopped, put his hand over his eyes. His shoulders hitched like he was going to throw up.
There were bright spots of red on Da’s cheeks. A vein in his forehead bulged out, thick like a piece of string. “Did you tell them about Darla?” That was Mama’s name. My hands held onto the cloth so tight that water squeezed out between my fingers. “Jos? Did you tell them about Leah?”
“Do they know where she is?” Aisha said.
“I tried, Pat. I’m... I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” Jos started to cry. “They were at the byre looking for Darla and Ren. And the others. I came as... fast as I could. Maybe they saw them coming and hid, Pat. I’m sure they did. I didn’t want to tell, but they said they’d take my Anneke and use her to bait Ren out if I didn’t...”
“You fool,” Da said. “You’ve led them right back to her. To both of them.” Da turned suddenly, staring at me. “Get upstairs,” he said. He sounded like he was choking.
“But we’re supposed to go to the cellar,” I said.
“Change. Your warmest clothes. Both of you. They’re going to come here next.”
“Who?” I said. Aisha pulled me upstairs with her. “Who’s coming?”
“Don’t be an idiot,” she hissed. She threw my trousers at me, then a shirt and a sweater. She opened the drawer on the dresser so quickly that it almost fell out. She banged on it to get it to close. “Put those on.” She was braiding her hair so quickly that she didn’t see that bunches of it were hanging around her shoulders. “Quickly! The soldiers, Leah. They’re coming back for you.”
I started pulling the trousers on, leaving my skirt on the floor. They were coming back. My heart thumped hard, and I kept thinking about that broken rocking chair and the sounds of men yelling at my Da. Aisha tossed me the thick woollen socks Mama knit for me and pulled her own on. When we came clattering back downstairs, Da had our sheepskin coats and scarves in his arms. Our boots were by the door, and two satchels. He put his hands on Aisha’s shoulders. “Take her down the valley. Stay off the road. Hide if you see soldiers, no matter what you see. Go to the caves and wait there. I’ll come for you.”
Aisha nodded, pulling on her boots.
Then he turned to me. “You have to be brave, pet,” he said. “Listen to your sister.”
“What about Mama?” He pulled my arms roughly through the sleeves of my coat. Everything was happening so quickly. Jos sobbing in the kitchen. Aisha pulling on her mittens. Da turning me around again and doing up the buttons on my coat, even though I was big enough to do it myself. He kept missing the holes. “She won’t know I’m there. When she comes back, she won’t be able to find me.”
“Don’t worry,” he said. It wasn’t a very good answer. “I love you. Both of you.” He was crying now, too. There was a shout outside, on the road. His head swung sharply like a dog getting a scent, and he shoved me towards my sister. “Go out the back,” he said to Aisha. “Run as fast as you can.” She grabbed my hand and jerked me down the hallway towards the jacks, out the door through to the garden and the compost pile. There was more yelling behind us, and I heard Da shout back. Aisha’s grip on my hand was so tight that I couldn’t get free. The chickens scattered, cackling and flapping their wings, scolding as we ran out the back yard.
After so many days inside, the fresh air was colder than I remembered. It was raining just a little, the hills thick with fog and low cloud. There were more sounds behind us—somebody screaming, then the temple bell ringing out. We kept running. I looked over my shoulder and saw smoke beginning to rise, heavy and black. I was so afraid that I nearly fell in the mud, my satchel thumping my ribs. Aisha kept me from going all the way down, catching me. “There’s a fire,” I cried.
“We can’t stop,” she said. “We’ve got to get to the caves.” She took us into the tall grass, towards the forest, following the narrow track the hunters used when they went out for deer. My trousers got wet as we ran. “Don’t go in the mud,” she warned me, “you’ll leave footprints. Stay on the rocks.” Aisha let go of my hand so she could push through the holly bushes that marked the village, holding them back for me. On the other side, we stood, panting. She waited for me to catch my breath. I had such a
stitch in my side that I was bent nearly in half.
There was a scuffling noise behind us, and Aisha whirled, a knife in her hand. I didn’t even know she had it. I was so surprised that my mouth fell open. “Get behind me,” she said. Her jaw was set. The holly bushes shivered, twigs snapping as something came closer. “Get ready to run,” she told me. She raised the knife, holding it awkwardly. The point danced around in the air.
But it wasn’t a soldier that came bursting through. It was Niko. He came tumbling out of the waxy green leaves, a long angry scratch on his face, cuts on his hands. He was crying, and his hair was filled with muck. “Aisha?”
“Where’s Maren?” Aisha said, the knife clenched in her hand.
“They took her.” A long bubble of snot dripped out of his nose, hitching back up as he sniffed. He didn’t wipe it away as it came sliding back down again.
“We’re going to the caves,” Aisha said, putting the knife back into a sheath on her belt. “Come with us.”
“My Da said they knew about the caves. He said I should go up to the byre.”
“Our Da said not to.”
“Your Da’s dead.”
It hit me in the middle like a punch. Aisha shook her head and looked away, up at the trees, blinking quickly. I couldn’t catch my breath. “You’re lying,” I said. “You’re a stupid liar.”
“Am not.” He gave a cough that ended in a painful hiccup. “I saw it. They started a fire inside your house and they hit him and pushed him inside. I ran away.”
“Then you don’t know for sure,” Aisha said. Her voice shook. The temple bell stopped ringing, cut off suddenly with a sharp clatter that echoed. “We have to go.”
“To the caves?” I asked.
She took her coat off and put it around Niko. He was shivering and wet, wearing his inside clothes. There hadn’t been time for him to get warm things, I thought. It scared me to think that. Niko’s Da wouldn’t send him without his own coat if there was time.
“When did your Da tell you about the caves?” Aisha asked him. She rolled the sleeves up for him.
“When he told me to go.”
She wrapped her scarf around his neck. “Are you sure, Niko?” He nodded.
Aisha bit her lip. The wind came down the slopes in a gust, and the trees sighed and rubbed against each other like old ladies murmuring questions. The sky was swollen with clouds, the smell of wet dirt and old leaves close and heavy.
“How many soldiers did you see?”
“A lot of them. A lot.”
She nodded to herself. “Then we’re going to the byre.”
I protested. “But Da said...”
“He didn’t know, Leah.”
“He won’t find us,” I wailed. “He won’t know where we are!”
“Mama is up by the byre,” she said. “The soldiers probably all came down from Jos’s place. They’ll be gone. We’ll go up and find her. She’s with all the others. Nobody’s turned yet, he said, so we’ll get to her before she does.”
I wanted to see Mama so badly. She could tell me her private talk. But Da told us to stay away from the hills and the soldiers. The soldiers hurt Jos. Maybe they hurt Da. If they found us, they would hurt us, too. I knew it.
“I’m in charge,” Aisha said. “I’m the oldest.”
So we went up into the hills. The rain came down heavier, and the clouds grew so thick that we couldn’t see down into the valley. I couldn’t see the village. I kept turning back to look for it. Aisha told me to stop.
We made our way up, slipping in the wet grass, bruising our knees as we climbed over the rocks. Aisha’s hair was plastered to her head. She’d given her hat to Niko. The rain began to change to snow the farther up we went. Our breath came out in plumes.
When we stumbled into the sheep, it terrified me. They baaed frantically and scattered away. The snow whipped around us, blindingly white and bright. My feet were like ice. Niko started crying again, asking to stop and saying he was tired, but Aisha drove us on until we found the byre: a dark, low shape in the snow.
We staggered inside. The gloom was a shock; I couldn’t see anything. The byre was empty and smelled strongly of dung, but it was warmer to be where the wind couldn’t tear at us. We stood there, the three of us. I expected Aisha to say something. She didn’t. I could hear her teeth chattering.
Niko spoke first. “W-where are they?”
I wanted to know that, too. Mama and Ren were supposed to be here, hiding where Jos could bring them food and tell them when the soldiers were gone. It only made sense for them to live in the byre. There wasn’t any other place for them to go. But they weren’t here. Nobody was here.
“Where are they?” Niko asked again.
“They’re probably hiding,” Aisha said. She sat down heavily.
I sat down, too, and leaned against her. She was too tired to push me away. “Will they come back soon?” I asked.
“I don’t know.”
Niko went to the entrance and looked out. “It’s still snowing.”
“We’ll wait here,” Aisha said. “They’ll come.”
It might have been worse if it was night. In the dark, everything is scarier and nothing is the way it is during the day. It was a long time that we sat there, waiting, the wind howling through the cracks in the roof and throwing ice pellets and snow inside the door. Aisha gathered up some of the old hay left in the byre and heaped it around us to stay warm. I thought about Da. He would have got out, I decided. He was strong. He won the wrestling contest at the midsummer festival. Nobody could push him out of the circle. Niko fell asleep, and Aisha and I waited. She took the knife out again and held it. It was from our kitchen, the wooden handle worn smooth. It was the one Mama used to chop potatoes and onions. “When did you get that?”
“Da gave it to me,” she said.
“Mama’s coming, isn’t she?”
“I don’t know.”
“Do you think she turned yet?”
Aisha shook her head. “You don’t even know what that means, Leah,” she said.
“I do too,” I said. Maybe she wouldn’t know it was a lie.
She put her arm around me. “It’s okay that you don’t know. She was supposed to tell you.”
“She can still tell me. I don’t mind if it’s after she’s turned.”
Aisha hesitated. “Leah, if she’s turned, it means she’s gone away.”
“Where?”
“Far off,” Aisha said. “Too far for you to go,” she added, before I could ask.
I had a sudden scary thought. What if Mama wasn’t coming back? What if she couldn’t? I didn’t want to say it out loud. It would make it true, somehow, a real thing. I tried to bite it back, but the question came out of me, small and scared. “But... what about our private talk? She said there were things I had to know. What’s going to happen if I don’t know them?”
Aisha didn’t answer me for a long time. She sniffled. “I don’t know.”
“Do you know it?”
Her arm around me tightened, like she was afraid, but her voice was gentle and sad. “No. It’s something for you,” Aisha said softly. She looked down at the knife in her hands. “Not me.”
I worried about it for a long time. Niko slept on, his breathing deep and slow, one hand tucked under his chin. “Why doesn’t anybody come back after they go away?” I asked.
“Because they can’t,” Aisha said.
“They don’t want to?”
“They don’t know to.”
Her words felt like heavy stones dropping into a well, knocking hard against the sides and falling into a dark place.
* * *
After a long time, it started to get darker. The sheep came, looking inside the byre anxiously. Eventually they crowded in. It was warmer with them inside, but it smelled terrible. I felt around in my satchel. Da had put bread in there, and cheese, and apples. Aisha told me to just eat one apple and save the rest. I fed the core to an ewe who thrust her face into my lap. Then I
wrapped my hands around my legs and rested my head on my knees. I was so tired. I closed my eyes.
I woke up in a panic, thrashing around. Something had a hold of me. I tried to yell for Aisha, but there was a hand over my mouth.
“Quiet,” somebody said. “Shut her up.”
“Leah,” said the first voice. “Ssh, quiet. It’s all right. Be quiet.”
It should have been my mother waking me up, smoothing the hair away from my face. Not my cousin Ren. He pushed the sheep away. They muttered at him as he pulled me to my feet. In the dim light, I could see somebody else standing with Aisha, somebody picking up Niko. The grown-ups. They had come for us, just like Aisha said they would. “Mama? Mama?”
“She’s not here,” Ren said. “Quiet now. Can you walk?”
Of course I could walk, I wanted to say, but the way the grown-ups were looking around, skittish and nervous. I nodded. We came out into the night. The snow had stopped. The sky was pink, the way it looks before more snow comes. The ground was covered. The first snow of the year, I thought. The first one to stick, to count. It was cold, and I thought about Aisha not having a coat. She’d get sick.
“Come on. Quietly. We have to go.”
The sheep had trampled a path in the snow, and we followed their tracks higher, into the hills. Up here, it was fir trees, and when we stepped into them, the ground was drier and needles crunched underneath my feet. Tamrin, the baker, walked with Aisha. The smith’s brother carried Niko. Nobody offered to carry me. I was too big for it, I told myself. My legs were tired and wobbly. I stumbled.
“Just a little further now,” Ren said. “We’re almost there, Leah.”
“Is Mama there?” He didn’t answer me, and worry made worms in my stomach. I could feel them twisting themselves around, making knots, chewing on my insides. Nothing felt right. Not a thing.