Kyle let go of his bucket and said, “Liza found a firestarter.”
How had Mom and Kate ever kept magic a secret with Kyle around? I hooked my bucket onto the rope and lowered it. “A boy,” I told Seth. “Found him just outside of town. Water’s to get his fever down.” Liquid sloshed into my bucket. As I started cranking it up again, I watched Seth’s half-lidded eyes, gauging his reaction. Like me, Seth had once helped turn strangers away from our town.
“Firestarting. That’s rough.” Seth reached out a hand, and the tension left the crank. My bucket rose out of the well to hover in front of me. I nodded my thanks as I unhooked it. The bucket drifted gently to the ground.
Kyle grabbed his bucket and held it out to me. I sighed, took it, and lowered it into the well. I lifted the full bucket out—Seth helped again—and set it down in front of Kyle. He’d see soon enough that he couldn’t carry it.
Kyle pressed his lips together, looking determined, and reached for the bucket with both hands.
It came up easily in his hold. Kyle grinned. So did Seth, who had his arm stretched toward it.
I rolled my eyes. “He’ll never learn that way.”
Seth shrugged. “Why make things harder than they have to be?” He hefted his own bucket without magic. “Come on. Show me this firestarter. Chores can wait—I’ll haul what I can. We Afters have to stick together.”
Afters. Those born since the War. Seth and Kyle followed me back to my house. Outside, we met Matthew, who was frowning as he carried another bucket toward the well. I went inside ahead of Kyle and Seth. Kyle insisted on “carrying” his bucket all the way up the stairs behind me.
Like all the upstairs rooms, the bathroom was cold, because houses built Before had fireplaces only on their lowest floors. Ethan lay naked and shivering in the claw-foot tub, his eyes squeezed shut. Mom rubbed his forehead with a damp cloth while Kate wrapped bandages around his blistered hands. The rest of Ethan’s body wasn’t burned, not even his chest, in spite of his charred sweater. That made little sense. Did magic somehow protect firestarters from their own fires?
I was staring. I looked away, resting my bucket beside the tub, while Seth and Kyle waited in the hallway. Kate finished wrapping his hands and nodded at me. I began pouring the water in.
Ethan screamed at the touch of cold water on his fevered skin. I drew the bucket back. He jerked upright, huddling over and glaring at us all through wild eyes.
The bandage on his left hand had come loose. Kate tightened it and gently took both his hands in hers. “Keep going, Liza.”
I poured the water more slowly this time. Ethan rocked back and forth, shivering still. “Not my fault,” he whimpered. “Not my fault.”
No one said anything wasn’t their fault unless they feared it was. I took the empty bucket into the hall. Kyle walked past me, head held high, hands barely touching his own bucket as it floated in front of him. Seth followed close behind him.
With three of us working—four, counting Kyle—it only took a few trips to fill the tub. Somewhere in the cabinets Kyle found a trio of faded green rubber frogs and balanced them on the tub’s edge. Ethan didn’t seem to notice. He stopped whimpering and stared, wide-eyed, at the ceiling.
“It’s all right,” Mom whispered to him, over and over again, just like she had when I was small.
Like me, this stranger knew better. “Not all right. Never all right.”
I thought of Ben’s burned body. “What happened?” I asked him. Mom gave me a sharp look. “We have to know,” I said.
“Time enough for that later.” Kate still held Ethan’s hands, keeping them out of the water. “Fever’s already down a little,” she said.
Ethan moaned. Mom made shushing sounds. “You’re safe here.”
The boy frowned, as if safety were a child’s tale he’d long ago stopped believing.
Once we got Ethan into bed, he fell into a fitful sleep. Mom kept watch over him while Matthew, Seth, and I headed off to other chores. Kyle followed me into the forest to gather acorns hidden beneath the snow. I let him. Gathering was a task a child could help with, now that the trees slept. In years past the oaks had held their acorns close or else flung them at passersby in hopes they’d root in skin and bone, but this autumn they’d fallen like rain from the trees—not only small acorns, such as those Hope wore, but larger ones as well. Soaked, acorn kernels made a bitter flour, one that had gotten us through a couple of hard years when I was small. Famine food, Kate called it. I didn’t look forward to eating such again, but if the spring crops didn’t come in, the acorns would give us a little more time, until they ran out as well.
Kyle really did help with the gathering, at least until he found a glowworm melting a trail through the snow and stopped to talk to it.
“Don’t touch it,” I warned him. Usually glowworms didn’t hold much heat, but with so much leaf litter for them to feed on this winter, they were burning hotter than usual.
Kyle gave me a long look, as though he couldn’t believe I’d think him so stupid, and turned back to the worm, leaving me to finish filling the acorn sack myself. When I was done, the worm was gone, but Kyle’s name was spelled out in worm trails in the snow. My stomach ached with hunger by then, and I wished I’d eaten before heading out after all.
As we returned to town, Kyle’s mother marched over to us and grabbed his arm. “What trouble are you making now?” Brianna demanded.
Kyle stared at the ground. I pointed to the acorn sack. “He wasn’t any trouble. He was a good helper.”
Kyle’s mother gave me a smoldering look. “You’ll do well not to tell me when my son is and isn’t making trouble, Liza.” She dragged Kyle away. He didn’t protest, just kept looking down with a sullen frown as his mother began muttering about what a useless child he was. I winced, though they were only words. I knew well enough that words could cut deep as blows.
I brought the sack home and set it down on the couch along with my scarf, hat, and gloves. Before this winter, I wouldn’t have dared bring acorns within walls until they were soaked and ground into meal, but I felt no more life in these seeds than I’d felt in the others.
The morning’s fire had burned down to hot coals. I unbuttoned my coat but kept it on as I set yesterday’s cornmeal mush over the heat. There was some squirrel left in the mush, and my stomach grumbled as it simmered. I took the pot from the fire, filled two bowls, and brought them upstairs along with a couple of spoons.
Father’s—no, Mom’s—door was open. I stepped into the chilly room. Ethan slept on the feather bed, more easily now, his bandaged hands resting loosely atop the covers. Mom sat in a chair beside him, darning holes in old socks. I handed her a bowl. From the dresser, a small oil lamp added its light to the sun shining in around the nylon-tacked windows.
“Lunchtime already?” Mom set the mending aside and took the bowl absently into her lap. She tilted her head toward Ethan. “Kate gave him something to help him sleep.”
I put a spoon into Mom’s bowl and sat beside her in the room’s other chair. Mom sighed and swallowed a mouthful. Once she ate, I did, too. My stomach’s grumbling eased.
Too soon, Mom stopped and handed me her bowl. “You finish it, Liza.”
I shook my head, though my bowl was empty and I could easily have scraped Mom’s clean as well. “I’ll save it for later.” Mom was eating too little as it was. I took both bowls downstairs and spooned the cornmeal back into the pot. Grabbing the acorn sack and a nutcracker, I headed back upstairs, where Mom was wiping Ethan’s face with a wet cloth.