Shay leaned down and filled her fist with fresh earth. It felt cold, and damp, and absolutely awful. She almost opened her fist, almost let the earth drop again. It wasn’t real that she needed it, wasn’t real that she stood in front of her whole village by her mother’s grave with a fistful of dirt. She was going to wake up any minute and hear her mom searching through the shelves in her apothecary for moonflower or homemade tinctures or bandages.
“No, now. Go on.” The voice belonged to the innkeeper, who had gotten her in trouble for climbing in his barn rafters to watch the horses from Haven just yesterday. Only now his voice was soft and sweet, almost wheedling. “You can do it.”
She shook her head. She needed to think. It was so hard to think.
“Shay. Throw the dirt.” the innkeeper repeated, a little more firmly this time.
She took a close look at her surroundings, the cold hole in the ground just big enough for the slender wooden coffin, the winter-bare trees, and the shivering townspeople.
She raised her fist above her head, gripping so hard the dirt became a wet, hard ball, bits of it falling through her fingers like everything she knew about life. She threw the mud onto the coffin, watching it smear across the top and stain the clean white pine of the lid.
She backed up, slowly, one foot at a time, trying not to be noticed, letting others come in and throw their own dirt on her mother. A few adults hugged her as she went. She stiffened, their touches feeling more like fire than help. The children and teenagers ignored her, which was better than usual.
As she finally got behind everybody and could turn and walk away, the first strains of a funeral song began to fill the air. The song seemed to be for her as well as for her mom. After all, she had to leave. No one would want her here.
At their house, Shay stopped outside and gazed at the dark windows. Shay wasn’t smart enough to manage all the things her mom did. She could have been her mom’s helper until her mom died, years from now. But there was nobody else in town who would be patient with her.
She didn’t go in.
She pulled the kitchen knife she’d hidden from the woodpile and tucked it in her belt, the blade long enough she felt it with the top of her thigh. The water jugs swung easily over her head, but when she shouldered her pack, she had to work to get the whole assemblage adjusted. The water pouches hung on a leather strap sized for her mom, and Shay had to tie a knot in them.
At fourteen, Shay was nearly her mom’s height, but she was all bones while her mom was soft. Had been soft. She couldn’t remember what she’d thrown into the old pack, but surely it had been the right things. She’d been filling packs for her mom since she was seven, and for the last two years she’d even been allowed to go along when the farm or homestead a call for healing came from was close enough for the trip to be safe. Surely even this new empty person she had become knew what to do.
Shay turned away from Little’s Town. She didn’t look back, couldn’t bear to look back. No one would notice her missing until after the funeral or even, with luck, after the funeral feast. By then it would be dark.
Little’s Town sprawled across a meadow, surrounded by more meadow and low hills in three directions. Cold, harvested hayfields alternated with sheep pens, full now since the sheep wintered near town. They were quiet today, huddled together for warmth, heads down as they tried to find fodder in between feedings. Shay went in the fourth direction. Up. The same way her mom had gone, toward a homestead on the top of the cliff that looked down on the town from the north. She wound up a forested path that wasn’t straight up but rather a series of nasty switchbacks with a few good breaks of flat trail. They’d found her mom on one of those trails.
Cold wind drove at her back, helping her up.
The sounds of the town faded, replaced by birdsong and the rill of water running thinly down cold stream-beds, just fast enough that only the very edges froze. Her thighs started to hurt, but she drove them up and up anyway. If she could do this climb in summer, she could do it now.
Her mom would have liked to meet the women from Haven, especially the one in green. The Healer. Healers came through about once a year, sometimes more often, sometimes less. Her mom and the Healers would usually take tea together and talk, maybe sit by the fire if it was winter. Too bad there was no fire here. Shay was getting cold.
Shay never talked to the Healers, or anyone from Haven. By definition they were the best Valdemar had to offer, and Shay had nothing to offer them. She was always scared she would say the wrong thing. But there had been no tea this time. Her mom had been off getting killed by bandits, and the women had been gone before anyone knew that. No reason to call a Healer for the dead.
She stopped at the first flat place, looking for signs of struggle. She spotted a few broken twigs by the side of the path and the footprints of the townsmen who had gone looking for her mother, both going up and coming back. Here and there, the mark of a horse’s hoof going toward town.
The fresh human tracks kept going, so Shay took a long drink of water and followed them. She should eat, she knew she should eat, but she couldn’t remember if she’d brought food. She didn’t want to stop long enough to dip into her pack.
Night had started lying cold along the trail when she stopped at the next flat place. The signs she’d been looking for were here, even bigger than she’d expected. Bushes lay flat. Footprints went every which way. It seemed tainted by people and hurt. She found a few spots of what looked like black liquid on sticks and rocks. Her mother’s blood. Cold now, gone back to the forest already.
She’d overheard one of the men say her mom hadn’t been given a chance to fight, but had been killed from behind, and quick. There was nothing for bandits except a pack full of herbs and bandages. They should have left her alive and asked her to help them heal their hurts. It would have been better for them, and her mother would be alive.
Shay’s pack did yield food: Bread that had been fresh the day before lay squished in the bottom on the pack beside five apples. Shay ate the bread and one of the apples. She should have taken more. Her mom would have patiently helped her lay out what she needed, but no one would talk her through plans any more, help her survive in a world that demanded more ideas than it had given to Shay.
She felt sure it wasn’t smart to stay here, where she could see her mother’s blood and the tracks and everything, but it couldn’t be smart to keep walking either. Shay looked around for a place to build a bed, careful not to step on any healing plants and careful not to step into anything with thorns, settling for a flat place made soft with old pine needles. She pulled down blue-pine branches thick with cold needles until she had enough to make an even softer spot to lie on, and then twice as many more branches to put over her and hold in some of her body heat.
She did all of this slowly and steadily, careful to focus on her task.
She climbed carefully in as the dark took the last of the light away, and she lay still under the boughs, her knife right in front of her in case any night animals came sniffing around. She tucked her pack under her head so nothing could steal it. Tomorrow she’d have to keep going as fast as she could manage and still be steady. More snow could come before winter was over.
She was going to need something to do. She had tried to help the innkeeper clear dishes, but he had yelled at when she was too slow for him. He’d told her no when she asked to work in the stable, mumbling something about not wanting the horses let out. Her mom had refused to let her try to herd sheep with the other children after they threw rocks at her one day. She knew all of her mom’s herbs, and how to count them, and how to hold a crying child while a bandage went on a knee or a splint on an ankle. Maybe she could pick plants for people and trade them for food. She wondered how far the next town was down the track. Too far for common visiting in winter. She wasn’t too dumb to know that much.