The wagon rocked on. Alexander had stopped counting the rocks. He had stopped counting anything. The hunger was a hard knot in his belly now, familiar as breathing. The pain in his ear had settled into a dull throb that he only noticed when he moved too fast.
He lay in the wooden cage and watched the light change through the bars. Bright through the slats meant daytime. Dim meant evening. Dark meant night. He had seen the cycle three times now, or maybe four. Time moved strange when you had nothing to mark it with.
The wagon stopped.
Alexander's body tensed before his mind understood why. Stopping meant something. Stopping meant people. Stopping meant men with hands that grabbed and voices that shouted.
The man with the beard—the driver, the seller, the one whose name Alexander did not know—walked to the back of the wagon. His boots appeared beneath the door. Heavy boots, worn at the heels. Alexander looked at the boots. Boots were safe.
"Out," the man said. The door unlocked. Light flooded in, painful after the darkness. "Now. I need help."
Alexander crawled to the door. His legs were stiff. His body hurt in places he couldn't name. He climbed down from the wagon and stood in the mud, blinking in the grey light.
They were in a village. Small. Poor. The buildings were wood and stone, patched and sagging. The road was mud. The people they passed had the look of those who had nothing—thin faces, worn clothes, eyes that looked away from strangers.
The man grabbed Alexander's shoulder and pushed him toward a building at the end of the street. "This way. Don't talk. Don't look at anyone. Just do what I say."
Alexander nodded. He knew how to not talk. He knew how to not look.
The building was a tavern, he thought. Like the one picture in the book he had found once at the orphanage—the book with torn pages and a drawing of men drinking at long tables. This place smelled like that picture might smell. Spilled drink and old smoke and too many bodies in too small a space.
The man spoke to someone at the door. Words Alexander didn't catch. Then they were inside, then through a back room, then through a door to a yard behind the building.
In the yard were things Alexander did not understand.
Crates. Barrels. Bundles wrapped in cloth. And in the corner, another wagon—smaller than theirs, older, with one wheel propped up on stones to keep it level.
"Load those," the man said, pointing to the crates. "Stack them by the gate. I'll bring the wagon around."
He left.
Alexander stood in the yard. He looked at the crates. They were heavy—he could tell just by looking. He was small. He was four. He was hungry and hurt and so tired his bones ached.
He walked to the nearest crate. He grabbed the edge. He pulled. The crate did not move.
He pulled again. Nothing.
He tried pushing. The crate scraped forward an inch. Then another inch. The wood bit into his palms. Sweat came to his forehead. His ear throbbed with the effort.
It took forever. It took all the time there was. One crate, then another, then another. He dragged them across the yard, one inch at a time, his small body shaking with the strain, his breath coming in gasps that he tried to keep quiet because noise brought attention and attention brought pain.
By the time the man returned with the wagon, Alexander had moved three crates. The man looked at them. He looked at Alexander. He said nothing.
They loaded the rest together. The man lifted, Alexander guided. The crates went into the wagon, stacked and tied. Then the bundles. Then the barrels—small ones, heavy ones, ones that sloshed when they moved.
The man worked fast. Alexander worked as fast as he could. Faster meant fewer hits. That was still the goal. That would always be the goal.
When the loading was done, the man wiped his face with his sleeve and looked at Alexander with an expression that might have been something like approval on a different face, on a different man, in a different world.
"You work," the man said. "Good. Most your age cry. You don't cry."
Alexander said nothing. Crying never helped. Crying never changed anything.
The man turned. He walked back into the tavern. Through the door, through the back room, gone.
Alexander stood in the yard. He didn't know what to do. Stay here? Follow? Hide? Hide was always safest. Hide was always what he wanted to do.
But hiding here meant being found by strangers. Strangers were worse than the man. The man他只 hit sometimes. Strangers might do anything.
He stayed by the wagon. He sat in the mud with his back against the wheel and waited.
The waiting was long. The sun moved across the sky. The shadows changed. People came and went through the tavern door—men mostly, some women, all with faces that looked through him like he wasn't there. Like he was nothing. Like he was air.
He knew that look. He had seen it all his life.
The man came back when the sun was low. He was not alone.
Behind him walked another man—tall, thin, with a face that reminded Alexander of weasels, though he had never seen a weasel, only heard them mentioned in stories the older boys sometimes told. This man carried something in his arms. A bundle. A small bundle wrapped in cloth.
No. Not a bundle.
A child.
The man carrying the child walked to the wagon. He set the child down on the ground. The child stood there, small and still, not moving, not speaking.
Alexander looked at the child's feet. Small feet in shoes that were too big. Laced wrong. Worn at the toes.
The child's feet did not move.
Alexander looked up.
The child was a girl. She was small—smaller than him, maybe, or the same size, it was hard to tell. Her hair was the color of old metal, like the spoons in the orphanage kitchen after they had been used too many times. Long hair, down past her shoulders. It shone in the low sun like something alive.
Her skin was pale. Not the grey-white of sick children, but pale like cream, like milk, like nothing Alexander had ever seen. Her face was small and delicate, with features that looked like they had been carved by someone who cared about the carving—a small nose, high cheeks, a mouth that was pressed into a thin line.
And her eyes.
Green. Bright green. Not like pond water—like nothing like pond water. Like gems. Like the picture in the book the matron kept on her shelf, the book with the shiny cover that Alexander had once touched when no one was looking. Emeralds, the book had called them. Bright green and glowing.
The girl's eyes were like that.
She looked at him.
He looked away.
The weasel-faced man was talking to the driver. Words passed between them. Coins changed hands—Alexander saw them glint in the light. The weasel-faced man counted, nodded, spat on the ground, and walked away without looking back at the girl.
The girl stood where she had been put. She did not move. She did not speak. She did not cry.
The driver looked at her. Then he looked at Alexander.
"Watch her," he said. "Don't talk to her. Don't touch her. Don't take that thing out of her mouth."
Alexander looked at the girl again. Her mouth. There was cloth there—white cloth, wrapped around her head, tied at the back. A gag. He had heard of gags. He had never seen one before.
She couldn't talk. She couldn't cry out. She couldn't call for help.
He understood. That was how it worked. That was how they kept you quiet.
He looked away.
The driver went into the tavern again. He came out with bread—real bread, brown and crusty—and a piece of dried meat. He gave half the bread to Alexander. None to the girl.
Alexander took the bread. He ate it fast. He didn't look at the girl while he ate. He didn't think about whether she was hungry. Thinking about things like that was dangerous. Thinking about other people's pain meant feeling things. Feeling things meant weakness. Weakness meant you would not survive.
He had learned that. He had learned it well.
The driver climbed onto the wagon seat. He gestured to the back. "Get in. Both of you."
Alexander climbed into the cage. The girl stood where she was, not moving.
The driver said something sharp. A word Alexander didn't know. The girl still didn't move.
The driver got down. He grabbed the girl by the arm—hard, the way they always grabbed—and lifted her into the wagon. He threw her into the cage. She landed hard, her head hitting the wood, the same way Alexander had landed.
She made no sound.
The driver closed the door. Locked it. Climbed back onto his seat.
The wagon started to move.
Alexander sat in his corner of the cage. The girl lay where she had fallen, curled on her side, her bright hair spread across the dirty wood. She wasn't moving. She wasn't crying. She wasn't making any sound at all through the cloth in her mouth.
He watched her for a moment. Then he looked away.
He didn't know her. He didn't know where she came from or why she was here or what would happen to her. He didn't know if she had a family somewhere, people who loved her, people who would come looking. He didn't know if she was scared or sad or angry or nothing at all.
He didn't want to know.
Knowing was dangerous. Caring was dangerous. He had learned that lesson in the orphanage, learned it in bruises and hunger and the cold that never went away. The only safe thing was nothing. The only safe thing was not feeling.
He closed his eyes. The wagon rocked. The darkness behind his eyelids was the same as the darkness in the cage.
After a while, he heard movement. The girl was getting up. He opened his eyes just enough to see through his lashes, not enough to show he was watching.
She had moved to the opposite corner of the cage. She sat with her back against the wood, her knees drawn up to her chest, her arms wrapped around them. Her green eyes were open. She was looking at him.
He closed his eyes all the way. Let her look. Let her see nothing.
The wagon rolled on.
The light through the bars changed. Dimmed. Darkened. The wagon stopped once—Alexander heard voices, the driver speaking to someone, then the wagon moved again. He didn't open his eyes. He didn't move.
When he finally looked again, the girl was still there. Still in her corner. Still watching.
Her eyes caught what little light there was. They glowed in the darkness, green and strange and beautiful in a way he didn't have words for. Like the pictures in the book. Like something from somewhere else.
He looked away. He looked at the floor. He looked at his hands. He looked anywhere but at those eyes.
"Don't talk to her. Don't touch her." The driver's words. He would obey. Obeying was safe.
The wagon moved through darkness. Alexander felt the change in the air before he understood what it meant—dampness, cold, a smell like wet earth and growing things. The forest.
He had never been in a forest. The orphanage was in a city—grey streets, grey buildings, grey sky between roofs. Here there was no sky. Here there was only dark and more dark and the sense of trees pressing close on all sides.
The wagon slowed. The wheels moved differently—mud, maybe, or roots. The driver's voice came from up front, speaking to the horses, low and urgent.
Alexander pressed his face to the bars. He could see nothing but shapes—darker dark against the dark. Trees. So many trees. And mist. Mist that curled between the bars, cold against his skin, smelling of things he couldn't name.
The girl made a sound.
It was small. Muffled by the cloth. But it was there—the first sound she had made since they put her in the cage.
Alexander looked at her. She was staring at the mist, at the trees, at something beyond the bars that he couldn't see. Her eyes were wide. Not scared, exactly—something else. Something that looked almost like... knowing.
She knew this place.
He understood suddenly. The forest. The mist. This was where she came from. This was home.
And they were taking her away from it.
He looked away. He looked at the floor. He didn't want to see her eyes. He didn't want to know what was in them.
The wagon moved deeper into the forest. The mist grew thicker. The cold grew deeper. Alexander pulled his knees to his chest and wrapped his arms around them and tried to be small, tried to be nothing, tried to disappear into the dark.
He thought about freedom sometimes. He didn't know what it looked like—he had only the word, heard somewhere, understood somehow. Freedom meant not being in the cage. Freedom meant not being sold. Freedom meant no hands that grabbed, no voices that shouted, no pain that came for no reason.
But freedom was impossible. He knew that. He had always known that. Some children were born to be free and some were born to be nothing, and he was nothing. He had known that since before he could remember knowing anything.
The girl shifted in her corner. He heard the rustle of her clothes, the soft sound of her breathing through the gag. She was still watching him. He could feel it, even with his eyes closed.
He didn't look. He wouldn't look. He would not care.
Caring was dangerous. Caring was weakness. Caring was how they got you.
He had learned that lesson well.
The wagon rolled on through the mist, through the dark, through the forest that swallowed all light and all sound. Alexander closed his eyes and let the rocking take him. Not sleep—he didn't sleep, not really, not anymore—but somewhere else. Somewhere empty. Somewhere safe.
Behind his eyelids, the grey light of morning. The cold draft. The ache in his empty belly.
The memory always started the same way.
He was four years old. He had always been four years old. He would always be four years old, rocking in a cage in the dark, with nothing and no one and no hope of anything different.
The girl watched him from her corner. He didn't watch back.
That was how it would be.