Nathan didn’t open the door.
The pounding came again.
“Cole!”
A second voice joined the first.
“Open this door!”
Nathan slid the heavy wooden bar into place.
Then he looked at me.
“How many?”
I listened.
Boots shifted outside.
At least three people.
Maybe four.
“I don’t know.”
“Recognize the voices?”
“The first one.”
“Who?”
I swallowed.
“Elder Warren.”
Nathan’s expression changed.
The same man who had traded me away only hours earlier had followed us into the mountains.
Nathan moved toward the window but stayed out of sight.
Outside, Warren shouted:
“There was a mistake in the agreement!”
Nathan almost smiled.
“You hear that?”
I nodded.
“Apparently I’m a clerical error.”
His eyes flicked toward me.
“You’re not anything they own.”
Then he raised his voice.
“You sold me a contract. I destroyed it. Business concluded.”
Warren hit the door.
“We need the girl.”
My stomach tightened.
Not we want her back.
Not she belongs with us.
We need the girl.
Nathan heard the difference too.
“Why?”
Silence.
Nathan waited.
“Why do you need her?”
Warren answered:
“Town matter.”
“Then go back to town.”
“She has to come with us.”
“No.”
One of the men outside shouted:
“You don’t know what she did!”
I stepped toward the door.
Nathan put out an arm without looking at me.
“What did I do?”
Nobody answered.
I raised my voice.
“What did I do?”
Warren finally said:
“You know.”
But I didn’t.
At least, I didn’t think I did.
Nathan looked at me.
I shook my head.
Then something returned to me.
A memory from three nights earlier.
A lantern.
A wagon.
Men moving through the snow after midnight.
I had seen them from the loft above the storehouse.
At the time, I thought they were hiding food.
The town had been rationing grain all winter.
Children were eating watered soup.
Families were burning furniture because firewood was scarce.
Yet I had watched four men load sealed sacks onto a wagon and drive them toward the old quarry road.
Warren had been one of them.
My face must have changed.
Nathan noticed.
“What?”
I whispered:
“I saw something.”
The men outside became quiet.
Nathan lowered his voice.
“What?”
“A wagon.”
“When?”
“Three nights ago.”
“Whose?”
“The town’s.”
“What was on it?”
“Sacks. Crates. I couldn’t see everything.”
“Where did it go?”
“The quarry road.”
Nathan stared at me.
Outside, Warren said:
“Don’t listen to her.”
That confirmed more than anything I could have said.
Nathan turned toward the door.
“I didn’t ask you.”
Warren’s voice sharpened.
“She steals. She lies. That’s why nobody wanted her.”
I felt those words like a slap.
They were familiar.
Too familiar.
Every time food disappeared, someone blamed me.
Every time a tool went missing, somebody asked where I’d been.
When winter supplies became dangerously low, the whispers became louder.
I was an extra mouth.
A girl without parents.
Someone easy to accuse.
Nathan looked at me.
“Did you steal?”
“No.”
“Then we’re done with that question.”
He said it so simply that I almost didn’t know what to do with it.
No interrogation.
No demand that I prove myself.
He had asked.
I answered.
For now, that was enough.
Outside, Warren tried again.
“Cole, you’re protecting someone who helped rob us.”
Nathan’s eyes narrowed.
“She just told me she watched your wagon carrying supplies away from town.”
Silence.
Then Warren said:
“She doesn’t know what she saw.”
Nathan glanced at me.
“Interesting.”
“What?”
“He didn’t say there was no wagon.”
The pounding stopped.
For several seconds, all I heard was the fire.
Then Warren spoke again.
His voice was calmer.
“Open the door. We’ll explain.”
Nathan’s hand rested on the wooden bar.
“No.”
“Cole.”
“Explain from there.”
Another long silence.
Finally:
“We moved emergency supplies.”
“Why?”
“For safekeeping.”
“From whom?”
No answer.
Nathan looked at me.
I understood.
From the starving townspeople?
That made no sense.
Unless the supplies weren’t being protected for them.
Nathan asked:
“How much food did the town claim it owed me?”
Warren didn’t answer.
Nathan repeated the question.
“How much?”
“You know the account.”
“I know exactly what the account says.”
He looked at me.
“Your elder told me the town couldn’t pay its supply debt.”
I nodded slowly.
That was why they’d offered me.
At least that was what they’d said.
Nathan turned back toward the door.
“But apparently you had enough supplies to move wagonloads in the middle of the night.”
Warren’s voice changed.
“Those goods aren’t yours.”
“I didn’t say they were.”
Nathan paused.
“Whose are they?”
Nobody answered.
I stared at the door.
Suddenly the cold town I’d spent years trying to survive in looked different.
We hadn’t simply run out of food.
Someone had been moving it.
Hiding it.
And I had seen them.
Nathan looked toward the back of the cabin.
“Put your boots on.”
I blinked.
“What?”
“Boots.”
“Why?”
“We’re leaving.”
I stared at the door.
“They’re outside.”
“I know.”
“Then how?”
He pointed toward a narrow door beside the pantry.
I had assumed it was a cupboard.
Nathan opened it.
Behind it was a passage leading into a small storage room built against the rear of the cabin.
A second door opened toward the trees.
“You have another exit?”
“I live alone in the mountains. Of course I have another exit.”
Despite everything, I almost laughed.
He noticed.
“Good.”
“What?”
“You’re still capable of that.”
The pounding began again.
Nathan pulled on his coat.
Then handed me a heavier one.
“Where are we going?”
“To see what they’re afraid you’ll find.”
“The quarry?”
“Yes.”
My stomach dropped.
“You believe me?”
“I believe Warren is standing outside my house in the middle of a snowstorm trying very hard to make sure you don’t talk about a wagon.”
“That isn’t the same as believing me.”
“No.”
He looked at me.
“It’s believing the part I can verify.”
Again, I didn’t know what to do with his answer.
The people in town demanded trust.
Nathan demanded evidence.
There was something safer about that.
He extinguished two lamps but left the fire burning.
Then we slipped through the rear door.
Snow was falling hard enough to cover our tracks quickly.
Nathan led me through the trees.
We could still hear Warren shouting at the front of the cabin.
For several minutes, neither of us spoke.
Then I asked:
“Why did they call you a monster?”
Nathan kept walking.
“Long story.”
“They said you killed people.”
“I have.”
I stopped.
He turned.
The town’s stories rushed back.
Nathan Cole.
The mountain butcher.
The man who came down twice a year to trade medicine, salt, tools, and ammunition.
Children were warned not to look at him.
Women crossed the road when he passed.
Men insulted him only after he was out of hearing distance.
“You killed people?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“War.”
I stared at him.
“That isn’t what they said.”
“I know.”
“They said you enjoyed it.”
“They say many things.”
“Is that why you live up here?”
“Partly.”
“What’s the other part?”
He looked back toward the distant town.
“I don’t like people deciding what the truth is because enough of them repeated the same lie.”
Then he started walking again.
That sentence stayed with me.
We reached the quarry road after nearly an hour.
My feet were numb.
Nathan stopped near a ridge.
Below us stood an old stone building I had thought abandoned.
Light leaked from one window.
A wagon was parked outside.
My heart started pounding.
“That’s it.”
“The wagon?”
“Yes.”
Nathan crouched.
“Stay behind me.”
We moved closer.
Through a gap in the building’s wall, I saw sacks stacked nearly to the ceiling.
Grain.
Flour.
Dried beans.
Salt.
Crates marked with the names of families in town.
I recognized one immediately.
Mrs. Hale.
Her youngest boy had cried from hunger two nights earlier.
Yet a crate bearing her family name sat hidden in this building.
I whispered:
“They told her nothing was left.”
Nathan’s jaw tightened.
There were more than food supplies.
Medicine.
Lamp oil.
Blankets.
Tools.
Enough to change the winter for dozens of people.
I stared through the gap.
“Why would they hide all this?”
Nathan pointed toward several crates near the back.
Those weren’t marked with family names.
They carried trade symbols.
“They weren’t hiding it,” he said.
“What?”
“They were preparing it.”
“For what?”
“Sale.”
I felt sick.
The town wasn’t starving because every supply had been consumed.
At least some of the supplies had been diverted.
The people who controlled them had apparently intended to trade them elsewhere.
I looked at Nathan.
“And your debt?”
“They claimed they had nothing left to pay me.”
“But they have this.”
“Yes.”
“Then why offer me?”
Nathan’s face hardened.
“Because you were cheaper.”
The words hurt.
Not because he intended them to.
Because they were true.
The elder had looked at a human being and a debt and decided one could erase the other.
Then I saw something else.
A ledger lay on a table inside.
I recognized it.
“That belongs to Warren.”
“You’re sure?”
“He carries it everywhere.”
Nathan studied the building.
No one seemed to be inside.
We entered.
The ledger was open.
Nathan didn’t immediately touch it.
He looked around first.
Then he read the visible page.
His expression darkened.
“What?”
He turned the book toward me.
I couldn’t read every entry quickly.
But I recognized names.
Families.
Amounts.
Rations.
Beside several names was a second number.
Smaller.
“What is that?”
Nathan pointed.
“This column shows what the town recorded as distributed.”
“And the other?”
“What was actually given out.”
The difference had gone somewhere.
Here.
The hidden building.
I turned pages.
Then I saw my own name.
My breath caught.
There I was.
A line of ink.
WINTER BOARD — FOOD / LODGING.
Below it:
TRANSFER TO COLE — DEBT SETTLEMENT.
I stared.
“They wrote me down like a sack of flour.”
Nathan closed the ledger.
“No.”
I looked at him.
“The ink says they did.”
“The ink shows what they tried to do.”
He tore neither page nor book.
Instead, he tucked the ledger beneath his coat.
“We’re taking this.”
A voice came from the doorway.
“No, you’re not.”
Warren stood there.
Two men were behind him.
Nathan moved in front of me.
Warren looked furious.
“You should have taken the deal and stayed out of this.”
Nathan’s voice was calm.
“I did take the deal.”
Warren frowned.
Nathan continued.
“I paid your price. Then I destroyed your claim on her.”
“You had no right.”
I stepped around Nathan.
“He had more right than you did.”
Warren looked at me.
“You ungrateful little—”
