“An Olders’ thing,” Impiri said, pursing her lips. She looked up from it and met his eyes. Standing, he was taller than her, but the force behind her gaze made her tower in his imagination. He looked at his feet.
“You know better than to bring something like this here,” she said.
“It could have been food,” he muttered then snuck another covetous glance at the box. His stomach was aching, but he ignored it. He caught a glimpse of more plastic inside. Impiri snorted, and his cheeks flared hot.
“Ma,” Sabelle murmured.
“It’s a wonder you haven’t brought the Calamity in before now. All that junk. That… bicycle. Devil’s work,” Impiri said. She scowled down at the box as if it held a particularly offensive insect.
“Illya!” His ma was sprinting toward them down the path. His aunt, Ada, followed close behind her.
“Your boy was outside the gates Grenya. Brought in another Olders’ thing,” Impiri said, her lips and nose wrinkling up as if she had smelled a skunk.
“In the dark?” His ma’s eyes were wide and bright with worry. She gripped him by the shoulders, looking him over.
“Illya, you’re bleeding!” There was a rip in his pants, and through it a deep scratch was visible, cutting across his calf. A line of blood was trickling down his ankle and soaking into his boot.
“It’s nothing, Ma, I caught it on a branch,” he said. She knelt and ripped a piece of cloth from her skirt to bind it. He winced. Their clothes were a patchwork of animal skins and salvaged remnants of the finer cloth of the Olders. There was less and less Olders’ cloth around these days, and he knew that skirt was one of his mother’s favorites.
Ada came up behind him and flung a fur over his shoulders, cutting off the sharp chill of the wind.
“He’s alright now,” Ada said. Grenya stood. Her eyebrows gathered together in a reproachful cluster. She licked her fingers and began to wipe some of the mud off his cheek.
“Ma!” Illya squirmed away, horrified that Sabelle had just seen his mother clean his face as if he was a kid. He shrugged her off and edged closer to the box. Impiri was picking at the plastic inside it.
“What is this?” she muttered, tearing through the top of the wrapping. Gingerly, as if she was holding something that could burn, she lifted a floppy object out and let the plastic drop to the ground.
It was not food.
“It’s paper!” Illya blurted, shaking again, this time not with cold but with excitement.
He had seen a few pieces of paper before but never so much at once. It was bound together along one side.
“A book,” Impiri said. She narrowed her eyes at it and ran her finger down its smooth edge.
Illya wanted to grab it right out of her hands to get a closer look but held himself back.
“I found paper one time. Turned to dust when I touched it,” Grenya said.
“When we were girls, our pa had some he used to start the fire,” Ada said to her. “Worked pretty good.”
Impiri looked up at her. “Pa had the right idea about this sort of thing,” she said.
“He just liked it for kindling,” Ada said and shrugged.
“You don’t know everything,” Impiri said, sniffing.
“What’s it for?” Sabelle asked.
There was silence for a moment, filled with nothing but the crackling of the distant fires and the wind howling through the slats of the palisade.
“It has stories marked down on it, and they say you can hear them in your mind when you look at it,” Ada said.
Impiri shuddered. “It’s the worst kind of Olders’ magic,” she said.
Sabelle frowned and glanced at Illya, meeting his eyes for a brief moment. He wasn’t sure in the dim firelight, but he thought that she blushed. His heart skipped, and she looked away.
“Oh, leave off that talk, Impiri,” Ada said, sighing.
“What good have Olders’ leavings ever done us? You know Pa always said—”
“He just liked to hear himself talk.” Ada cut her off.
“Did you find any roots, Illya?” Grenya asked.
Illya’s heart dropped. He tore his eyes from the book and shook his head. Grenya smiled, a little sadly.
“Tomorrow then,” she said.
Illya took a deep breath. “No,” he said. He swallowed then went on. “Won’t be anything tomorrow either. I went farther downstream than we have ever dug before, and there was nothing. The roots are gone.”
The women’s chattering dropped off abruptly. They stared at him.
Impiri broke the silence, “They can’t be.”
“It’s true. There’s nothing out there,” Illya said, looking up to meet the challenge in her eyes. His legs shook as the realization of it hit him in waves. There was no food tonight and none to come soon, likely nothing before spring. His head spun. How many of the villagers would starve before the snow melted?
Impiri’s eyes flared hot. She gripped the book as if she would rip it apart.
“You bring this thing into the village, and now you tell us the roots are gone,” she said. “I think it’s no coincidence.” Her grip tightened on the book as if she could strangle the life out of it.
“Impiri—” Ada started to speak, but Impiri turned and stormed down the path toward the fires, clutching the book to her chest.
In moments, she had reached the roaring fires beside the stone farmhouse in the center of the village. Illya ran to catch up, passing rows of mud and thatch huts that were ringed around the stone house like a legion of devoted worshipers around a god.
It was growing late, but there were still people at the fires. In better times, the villagers would gather here in the evenings to tell stories, dance, and even share in feasts when food was plentiful. Now, knots of waif-like people huddled together, trying to forget their hunger in the warmth of the fires. The air was thick with desperation. Lately, it had not been unusual for bitter fights to break out over the little food that they found.
Impiri headed directly for the largest fire. Illya caught up to her and grabbed her arm, pulling her back.
“You can’t burn it,” he said.
“Let go of me.” Impiri jerked out of his grasp. By now, they had attracted the attention of the other gathered villagers. People started drifting over to see what the commotion was.
“That boy of Grenya’s,” he heard someone whisper nearby. Illya’s face burned.
“Don’t interfere with things you don’t understand,” Impiri said, sniffing. She turned back to the fire but stopped when another hand descended onto her shoulder. Illya looked up and saw the wrinkled face of the village Healer, Samuel.
“What is this?” Samuel asked. Impiri tensed against his hand then relaxed, letting her breath out long and slow. Samuel was one of the oldest people in the village. He taught the smallest children about edible plants, and he was old enough that nearly everyone could remember learning from him as a little themselves. Because of this, the entire village carried an awe of him and a peculiar fear that he would catch them out in their mischief, even if childhood was long past. They may not even be engaged in wrongdoing at all, but it still seemed to be necessary to stop and check.
“It’s nothing.” Impiri tucked the book inside her patchwork jacket.
“Nothing?” Samuel raised his eyebrows. His stern face relaxed into a smile, and he lifted his hand from Impiri’s shoulder.
“You won’t mind if I have a look then,” he said, shrugging. “Humor an old man.”
Impiri pursed her lips then glanced around at the growing crowd of people. Finally, she pulled the book out from her jacket and held it out to him.
Samuel took the book from her gently. He cradled it in both of his hands, and Illya finally got a good look at it. The paper was brown, like dry leaves. It seemed fragile, as if it could crumble away in the Healer’s fingers.