Given our situation, I should’ve gotten a job a long time ago, when I turned fourteen and school ended. Or at least at age sixteen, when most guys do, after they’ve had their two years of fun. So why am I seventeen and wasting my life away? I wish I knew.
My little sister, Jolie, is staying with a neighbor down the street until my mother can pull it together. The way things are going, she might be there forever. Although I’ve had a pretty shivvy day, not seeing Jolie’s smiling face at home is the worst part. She’s only twelve, and yet, I swear she’s one of the only people who really gets me. Her and Buff, that is.
I leave my mother babbling to herself about how the Cold is growing wings and flying above the clouds, or some rubbish like that. The warmth of the fire I made chases me out the door.
It’s colder than my ex-girlfriend’s personality outside. Even with my slightly-too-small double-layered bearskin coat that I won playing boulders when I was fifteen, and the three thick shirts underneath it, I’m instantly frozen from head to toe. When the wind blows it goes right through me, like I’m naked and made of brittle parchment, and I find myself running just to keep warm. My bruised skull aches with each step.
Before heading to meet Buff, I stop at our neighbor’s place to see Jolie. Although not rich by any stretch of the imagination, Clint and his wife, Looza, are better off than us, which I’m glad for. It means Jolie gets a decent place to stay, three warm meals a day, and a taste for what it’s like to be part of a real family. Selfishly, I want my mother to get cleaned up so my sister can come home, but I know that might not be the best thing for her. Either way, I’m glad she’s close by.
I rap firmly on the door, feeling every thud echo in my head. On the third knock the door opens and Jolie pokes her head out. “Dazz!” she exclaims, breaking into a huge smile that instantly warms my frozen body and soul. Her dark brown hair is in a long, tight braid down her back, almost to her waist. It’s not done exactly like how I would do it, but it’s close enough. When my dad died and my mother lost herself, I had to learn how to braid real quick, because Jolie wouldn’t have it any other way.
She rushes out into my arms and the cold. As always, she stands on the tops of my snow-capped boots, her socks getting soaked through. She’s getting so big that my toes get crushed under her weight, but I can’t bring myself to tell her. “You’ll catch the Cold,” I say, walking us both inside where I can feel the tempting heat from a crackling fire.
Face smashed against my chest, she says, “Are you staying for a while tonight?”
I can hear the memory in her voice, a desperate longing for another time, when life was simpler and nights were spent listening to Father’s stories by the fire, or playing sticks and rocks on the big bearskin rug between our beds.
But those days are long spent. “I’m sorry, Joles, there’s something I have to do.”
She steps off my feet and looks up at me all pouty mouthed. She calls it her sad sled dog face. “Fro-Yo’s,” she says, accusation in her voice.
“Uhhhh…” I wish? I can’t tell her the truth—about my fighting and getting banned from the pub. I hate lying to her, but I can’t let her down, not now when she needs a big brother to be proud of. “Nay, nothing like that. Actually, I have a job.” As if. The words just pop into my head, like my heart wished them into existence. But even just saying the words makes me feel a little lighter, like even pretending to be respectable in front of my sister makes me a better person.
Jolie’s eyes widen and her smile returns like a flint spark. “Really?”
I nod uncertainly, on an angle, like I’m not sure whether I’m saying yah or nay. She takes it as a yah. “That’s wonderful, Dazz! Does that mean I can come home soon?” Her hopeful words are like ice daggers shoved between my ribs and I find myself breathless.
She senses my hesitation. “Mom?” she says.
“She’s still pretty bad,” I admit. “But maybe soon,” I say, unable to resist giving her a small measure of happiness, even if it’s as false as the so-called job I have to do tonight.
“What’s the job?” Jolie asks, which is the natural question that I’m totally unprepared for. I’ve got to come up with something, and fast, because she’s looking at me with that cocked-head snowbird expression that usually makes me laugh.
“Master of Chance,” I say, once more going with the first thing that flashes to mind. Technically I won’t be the Master of Chance tonight, but I will be a master of chance of sorts as I participate in a few rounds of boulders-’n-avalanches.
“Congratulations,” she says, giving me another hug. Hopefully her congratulations will still be appropriate tomorrow, when I’ve quadrupled my tiny pouch of silver.
“Thanks, Joles,” I say, giving her a final squeeze. “See you tomorrow?”
“Promise?”
“Yah, Joles, I promise.” This one I’ll keep.
“Will you at least stay for supper, young man?” Clint says from across the room. I didn’t even notice the thin sandy-haired carpenter and his wife, silently preparing dinner and listening to us.
“Evenin’ sir and ma’am. Sorry, I didn’t see you there. I’d love to, but I really must be on my way. First day and all.” More like last night. If I’m not lucky, that is.
“Are you sure, sweetie?” Looza says, chiming in, her wide waist swinging from side to side as she mixes something in a big pot. “There’s plenny of soup.” As if to illustrate, she scoops up a ladleful of hearty stew, letting it slowly drip back into the mixture. My stomach rumbles as the delicious aroma of tender bear meat and winter vegetables fills my nostrils.
“I’ll take it with me, if that’s all right with you,” I say.
She sighs, but nods and begins filling a largish pouch.
“Bye, kid,” I say, kissing Jolie lightly on the forehead.
She steps back up onto my boots and I lean down so she can kiss my cheek. “Bye, Dazz. I’ll miss you.”
“I’ll miss you, too, Joles,” I say, clenching my stomach around the empty pit that’s forming. I take the pouch from Looza and open the door. “Thank—” I start to say, but she muscles me outside, still holding onto her half of the pouch. She pulls the door shut on my sister.
I look at her face, which has formed a question mark out of her eyes, nose and mouth. “Don’t do anything to hurt that little girl,” she says, her eyes as iron grey as the clouds were earlier.
“I won’t, ma’am,” I say, unsure of what she’s getting at.
“Well, then you might want to turn around and go right back home,” she says, firmly but not unkindly.
“But my job,” I say, knowing how weak it sounds.
“Yah. Your job,” she says.
Easing the stew pouch from her grip, I say, “Thank you, ma’am. For the stew and…well, for everything.”
Chapter Three
I take the trail to the lower Brown District, where Buff lives. The further you go down the mountain, the less silver people have and the shivvier their jobs are—if they have work at all. Buff’s father’s a treejacker, earning a sickle a day from backbreaking work that supplies all the timber to the White District and the palace. There’s not much new construction in the Brown District, so little of the wood is sent our way. By the time Buff’s father gets home he’s so bone-weary that it’s all he can do to take dinner in bed and go right to sleep.
Buff’s younger sister, Darce, is a pretty little thing of all of twelve years old, like Joles. After their mother died of the Cold three years ago, she took over the motherly duties of raising all six of Buff’s other little brothers and sisters, as well as feeding Buff and his father. She’s a woman trapped in a girl’s body. The exact opposite of what my mother has become.