Things improved from there. Our men caught trout in the streams, and soon the strawberry harvest began. We worked hard, but in my spare time, I washed and mended clothes; my father, Mikolai, and Marcus did what they could to repair the wagons; and Shawn and his boys cared for the horses.
Shawn’s two oldest sons, Orlando and Payton, soon became my main concern. They were eighteen and nineteen, and I had observed them more than once looking into other wagons at food and silver trinkets. I spoke to Aunt Miriam and asked her to give them a stern warning about the dangers of stealing from our own people. We could be banned from the meadow for life. Thankfully, the young men only looked and did not touch, and in the end, they caused us no trouble.
The summer weather was warm, and the harvest was plentiful, and by autumn, Mariah was running and laughing with the other girls and no longer hiding inside herself so much. I was glad to see this, for I remembered that at her age, I’d fostered great curiosity about the other families, especially the line of Fawe, who came every year. They were among the most prosperous of the Móndyalítko, as they tended to give birth to an unusual number of Mist-Torn seers. Some of their people had wheat gold hair, and their seers were always born with lavender eyes.
I was sorry when the harvest ended.
But for the last month of autumn, we headed back to Kéonsk.
By this time, my father and Aunt Miriam had no illusions regarding how far we’d fallen, and they didn’t argue or complain with Master Deandre when he placed us way at the back of the fair again.
We earned what money we could, and fool that I was, I assumed that now that my father and Aunt Miriam and the other elders had finally grasped our situation, they would be busy making a plan for winter.
We certainly couldn’t wander from place to place as we had last year.
But that’s exactly what we did, and the winter became a blur of cold and hunger. Although none of our people died, we arrived in the meadow of Yegor the following spring looking every inch the “filthy gypsies” we were so often called. Mariah had completely retreated inside herself and did not come out. She didn’t run or play with the other girls. Only one family took pity on us and brought us a few oats and eggs.
The strawberry harvest began, and we all did our best to work, but we were in a weakened state. Marcus and Mikolai both fished and set out snares instead of picking berries, and I thought that as with last summer, a bit of sunshine and decent food would put us all to rights soon.
Then one night, just as the raspberry harvest began, Orlando and Payton were caught red-handed stealing from the wagon of a Mist-Torn seer from the line of Renéive.
My father and Aunt Miriam begged, but the rules of the families were clear and no exceptions could be made. We were told to leave and not to come back.
I was numb. We had lost our last place of true safety.
Worse, I experienced a moment of irrational fear that Marcus might leave us. Any of the groups would have taken him. But of course he didn’t, and I don’t know where that fear came from.
We wandered again until the last month of autumn and then headed back to Kéonsk. At end of that year’s fair, my father and Aunt Miriam announced that something drastic must change and that they had come to a decision. I felt a single moment of hope that they’d found us someplace safe to spend the winter. Then, when I heard their decision, I bit the inside of my mouth. Their plan was . . . uncertain at best.
“We’ve heard that the House of Äntes is more accepting of our people,” Aunt Miriam announced, “so we will travel north and west, to Enêmûsk. We can find a place inside the city to set up and put on our shows. We should at least be able to earn enough to feed ourselves and the horses.”
While this sounded far better than the hardships of last winter, I wondered where they’d heard of this tolerance of the Äntes. I’d never heard such a thing. Also, the winters in the northwest provinces were much colder than those in the east, and should this plan fail, I feared we would be wintering in ice and snow.
Marcus caught my eye, and I knew he was thinking the same thing.
But neither he nor I had a voice in these decisions, and so we headed west first and then north, arriving at Enêmûsk just as the weather began to turn.
To this day, I don’t know who had given my aunt and father such foolish advice, but the Äntes soldiers guarding the front entrance to Enêmûsk looked at us with such disgust that I put my hands over Mariah’s ears to stop her from hearing whatever was about to come from their mouths.
It was vile.
In the midst of their insults, they made it understood that we would not even be allowed to roll our wagons inside the city. They informed us that the Äntes did not suffer any vagabonds or beggars and that we’d best be on our way if we knew what was good for us.
I’ll never forget the look on my father’s face. Some of the life went out of him that day, but I was beyond pity, and for the first time I felt anger toward my mother. Had Great-Uncle Marten been right? Had she intentionally made the rest of us dependent upon her? Had she enjoyed feeling so necessary? Why had she never tried to teach Aunt Miriam or me how to read palms? I had no answers.
That winter almost cannot be described.
We were driven away from every place we tried to make camp, and Marcus found it difficult to hunt in the snow. By midwinter, four of the horses had died. The men managed to butcher a bit of stringy meat from one of them, but we were driven off in the morning by a group of soldiers, forced to leave the other three lying in the snow. This was hard on Shawn’s younger sons, as they loved our horses.
Mariah did not mention her birthday. She was too cold and hungry to remember it.
About a moon later, poor old Leticia died, and I think Great-Uncle Marten was too hungry to mourn her. Within a few days, Micah and Katlyn’s youngest child died.
Mariah had become a shadow, and I feared she was next.
Then one night, we managed to make camp outside a village, and my father and Uncle Landrien went in to see what the prospects might be for us putting on a show. I found this rather a stretch, since few of us were capable of performing, and we looked like the walking dead. I wondered if the men simply planned to find a tavern and perhaps beg a mug of ale.
But when they came back, they gathered us together and delivered unexpected news.
“We were just told of an encampment called Ryazan, to the north, up above Enêmûsk,” my father said. “A prince of the House of Pählen owns a collection of silver mines, and there is a shortage of workers. The soldiers overseeing the mines have a large a provisions tent, and they are willing to sell food to anyone who mines for them. We could offer to work and buy food and at least have a place to spend the remainder of the winter.”
A chance at work and food sat well with the rest of us, and so we headed farther north and then slightly west. The going was slow, as only one horse now pulled each wagon. We rolled into the Ryazan encampment on the last dregs of our strength and spirit.
From the top of our wagon, I took my first look at what struck me as a sea of tents and men in brown tabards.
The Camp
At the time of our arrival in Ryazan, Aunt Miriam no longer even pretended to be our leader. She was barely able to rise from her bunk.
So it was my father, Uncle Landrien, and Mikolai who first spoke with Captain Garrett of the House of Pählen. He came out to meet us, and I stood in the doorway of our wagon, peering out and listening.
Captain Garrett was a wide-shouldered man, with silver hair and a proud bearing. But he was in need of workers, and he spoke to our men with respect. Unfortunately, the bargain he offered was a disappointment.