Forest Mage

Without asking her I added the last of the hot water to the uncoiled tea leaves in the bottom of the pot. It made a final pale tea. I divided what remained of my sugar equally among the five bowls and carefully dippered the weak tea over it. The children watched me as if I were stirring molten gold.

“What happened?” I asked as I put Amzil’s cup into her hands.

“Rig had an accident. A heavy stone fell off a wagon and crushed his foot. He couldn’t work anymore. So even though his time wasn’t up, they let him stay at home here with us all day. I was glad to have him here at first. I thought he could help me a bit, could mind the children while I tried to make things better for us. But he didn’t know how to do anything around a house and his foot wouldn’t heal. It only got more painful, and he had a fever that came and went. The pain made him mean, and not just with me.” She glanced at her elder daughter and old anger flashed in her eyes. She shook her head. “I didn’t know what to do for him. And he hated me by then anyway.” Her eyes went past me to the fire and all feeling emptied out of them.

“Two days before he died, the guards said it was time to move camp. The prisoners who had worked off their time and their families could stay here and build a new life, they said. A lot of them decided to move on with the work crew anyway. But those who stayed got a shovel, an ax, a saw, and six bags of different kinds of seed. And they gave us what they said was two months of flour, oil, and oats. But it didn’t last our family more than twenty days.” She shook her head again.

“I did my best. I dug holes and planted those seeds. But maybe it was the wrong time or maybe the seed was bad or maybe I did something wrong. Not many plants came up, and a lot of the ones that grew got eaten by rabbits or just died off. I wasn’t the only one who didn’t know how to grow vegetables. Before too long, people just started to leave. Nothing here to hold them, I guess. Some of them lasted the first winter. Others didn’t, and we buried them. When spring came, pretty much everyone who could got up and left, heading back west, trying to get back to a place where they knew how to live. Some of us couldn’t go. Kara might be able to walk a full day, but Sem and Dia are too small to walk that far, and I couldn’t carry them both. I knew that if I started walking, at least one of them would die on the way. But maybe that would have been better than staying here. Here we are, winter’s closing in again, and we have even less this time than we had last year.”

A long silence fell and then she said, “I fear we’re going to die here. And my biggest dread is that I’ll die before my children do. And there will be no one left to protect them from whatever comes next.”

I had never heard such black despair. Worse was to see in the children’s eyes that they fully understood what their mother said. My heart spoke. “I’ll stay a day or two, if you want. I can at least help you make this place tight for the winter.”

She looked at me flatly and then asked with acid sweetness, “And what will you want from me in exchange?” Her eyes traveled over me disdainfully. I knew what she thought I would ask of her, and that it disgusted her. I also read in her eyes that if that were what I demanded, she’d give it to me, for the sake of her children. She made me feel like a monster.

I spoke slowly. “I’d like to sleep in here, near the fire instead of out in the shed. And I’d like a day or two of rest and grazing for my horse, and some time out of the saddle. That’s all.”

“Is it?” She was skeptical. Her mouth pinched again, bringing out the cat in her again. “If that’s all, I’ll say yes to that, then.”

“That’s all,” I said quietly, and she nodded sharply to the deal we had struck.

She and her children slept in the only bed, across the room from the fire. She put herself between me and her children, and her pistol between her and me. I slept on the floor by the fire.

The next day, I built a wood crib for the firewood, so I could stack it so it would stay dry. It was crudely built from salvaged wood and nails, but it worked. I put a roof over it to keep the snow off the firewood. Amzil and Kara stacked the wood between the supports as I showed them while the other children played nearby. I found good thick logs and cut them into stout chunks. “These will burn a long time, once you’ve got a bed of coals going,” I told her. “Save them for the worst nights, when the snow is deep and the cold hard. Until then, use up the small stuff, and whatever else you can forage for yourself.”

“I’ve had one winter here. I think I know how to manage,” Amzil said stiffly.