Overcrowded

[Dove Brown]

70 Winter 515

Nine people crammed into one small cottage, Dove decided as she spread her spare pants across her left palm to examine the tuft of thread left by a button that had come off, was eight people too many. It wasn't as if she'd had a choice in the matter either. You didn't say no when the knights wanted something, and they'd wanted everyone who'd survived the collapsing cottages under shelter. Which was - fair enough. She didn't want children left out in the snow, didn't really want anyone left out in the snow, and her cottage was still standing. If she'd been asked... but she hadn't, she'd just been assigned two families, and that was that.

The toddler pulled himself on the edge of the bed Dove was sitting on and Dove hastily snatched button and needle out of his reach. The small boy pouted, then opened his mouth to wail a protest. His mother snatched him up, gave Dove a wry smile, and carried him a few paces away across the room. Dove smiled back, tried not wince at the loudness, and used her needle to pick out the scraps of thread. She rolled the fluffy scraps together and set them aside to use as tinder next time she needed to light a fire. Threading her needle with new thread, she made two small stitches on top of each other, tugged the thread gently to make sure it was securely fastened to the pants (it was), and picked up the button.

She brought the needle up through the sturdy fabric, threaded it through the loophole in the button's shank, then back down through the cloth - almost pricking her finger in the process - and pulled the stitch tight. She checked that the button was in the right place to match the buttonhole opposite it, then brought the needle up again for another stitch. As she pulled the thread through, she became aware of eyes studying her and looked up to see the oldest of the five children watching her.

[Dove Brown]

The girl watching her was about 10 years old, from the second family, not the one with the toddler, and something about her expression reminded Dove painfully of her own childhood. She'd watched everything as discreetly as she knew how - which wasn't exactly discreet at all - trying desperately to learn everything she could in the vain hope that if she learned enough, if she was good enough, she'd earn a precious scrap of praise for her efforts. "What do you want," she asked the girl, but her question was interrupted by the toddler's twin siblings bursting in through the door with armfuls of firewood. They sounded as if they'd raced each other back from the outposts communal woodpile, and talked over each other at the tops of their voices as they narrated the entire trip and argued over who had cheated in the race back. Their mother raised her own voice over theirs, directing them where to stack the wood they had brought.

The girl dropped her gaze to the stone floor. "Nothing," she muttered.

Dove raised an eyebrow. She was sure that wasn't the case but outwardly she took the girl at her word and went back to her own sewing. Up and through the loop and down, up and through the loop and down, each stitch securing the button a bit more firmly to the cloth. When she looked up again, needle poised in mid-stitch, the girl had crept closer and was watching again. Dove looked at her and raised her other eyebrow. The girl flushed red and flinched back as if she expected to be hit.

Dove sighed and made room on her bed. "If you want to see that badly, come up here beside me. I'll show you."

[Dove Brown]

The girl froze for a long moment. Dove dropped her own gaze back onto her sewing, and watched her only with her peripheral vision. The needle went up and through and down again, and the girl climbed tentatively up beside Dove and hugged her knees. Dove tried to watch both the girl and the needle, and only succeeding in pricking her finger. She winced, sucked it for a moment and went back to work. Instead of trying to watch both, she gave a running commentry in a low mutter. "Two more straight stitches should be enough to hold it, then I have to wind around the shank so it stands up enough to be fastened..."

She sensed the girl creeping closer still and managed not to flinch when they touched shoulders. She made one more circle around the button shank, and then three small crooked stitches on top of each other so that the thread would stay fastened rather than just unravelling and dropping the button again. That was it, until the metal button shank wore through the thread again. A more experienced sewer would have covered the metal before sewing it on, making the repair more enduring, but Dove hadn't realised why it came off so often.

Dove slid off the bed, picked her way through the crowd to her storage chest, opened the heavy lid with a practised heave, and placed pants and needle in safe keeping away from the toddler. She lowered the lid back into place and stood up. "The snow's stopped. I think I'll go out for a bit, check on some things."

The girl's mother looked up. "Take Rosa with you, would you?" she said pointing to the girl. "She ought to get out more, she knows it's good for her."

Dove bit back a sigh as she grabbed her cloak and sling. She wanted time alone, away from the crowded room. The girl - Rosa - slid off the bed and stood warily watching. Dove said curtly, "Come if you're coming then," and left without looking back to see if Rosa did.

[Dove Brown]

Outside the remaining cottages stood in gap-toothed rows against the sky, although now figures swarmed over the mounds in between. Between the skilled architect assessing places and the labourers rebuilding, outside was as full of people as inside. Dove threaded a course through it to the gate. The more rebuilding, the sooner it would be done and the sooner she'd have her home back.

A whimper and running feet made her whip round, hand on her sling, but it was only Rosa. "That was our house!" Her voice was rough with unshed tears. "Da was - was still in it..." She trailed off.

"He wasn't the only one caught," Dove said, drawing the girl on away from the houses with rough sympathy. It wasn't a night she was going to forget easily either, not the sounds or the sights, or the sheer flood of relief she'd felt coming home to find her cottage still standing. Or the guilt for thinking more of her home than the people living around her that followed on the heels of that relief. "Come on, let's get out to the fields..."

"I thought he was going to come back." Rosa winced away from Dove's hand. "But he isn't is he? He's not going to crawl out of the ruins and hit me again..." She stopped speaking abruptly and fled ahead of Dove to the gate. There she had to wait until Dove caught her up.

After the knight on duty checked Dove was armed and let them out, Dove looked at Rosa and said briefly, "No. He won't be back." She said nothing about the hitting. Clearly she and Rosa had even more in common than she'd first thought. She slipped out her sling and moved quietly down a path between fields. "Walk quietly, there may be birds or rabbits around. I want to see what I can catch."

[Dove Brown]

Rosa gingerly touched Dove's left elbow and pointed. Dove followed the pointing finger to several pigeons and a partridge pecking around in the winter stubble, and grinned her thanks. She wound one end of the sling through her fingers, slid a bullet into the sling pouch and gripped the other strap. She turned to face the birds, and swung the sling in a circle. It hummed at her side as she aimed at the partridge in the middle of the crowd, released, and fumbled another bullet into place.

The bullet hit with a puff of feathers, and the other birds took to the air. Dove tried to hit a second one, but missed the moving targets. Once they were all gone, she ran across the field to fetch the injured partridge. She finished it off with a quick twist of her hands to wring its neck, then loped back across the uneven field to the path.

Rosa took it from her, freeing her hands as the pigeons settled out of the sky like a cloud of wings and crooning. Dove set her feet down slowly to reduce the soft creaking of the packed snow underfoot as she walked towards them. This time she picked one on the edge of the flock to aim at. The other birds fluttered and settled faster after she took it down and she managed to take out a second pigeon this time.

[Dove Brown]

She ran over to fetch the birds she'd hit. They were still twitching, so she wrung their necks to make sure that they were fully dead and came back more slowly. Rosa watched from under her eyelashes, eyes bright with restrained curiousity, and her hands folded around the partridge. "How do you do that?" the girl asked timidly. "It isn't like a big bow or anything, but... you got so much so fast!"

"It's a sling," Dove explained, unwinding the strap from her fingers and straightening it out. "You put a bullet in the wider part here, the pocket, and hold the straps at the ends. Then you whiz it round a time or two and let the bullet fly. If you're good enough..." She held up the pair of pigeons in demonstration. "I'm better than I used to be, but I'm no expert - yet. It's a good weapon for a farmer to have though, you can take it anywhere and it doesn't get in the way."

Rosa nodded, though her gaze fixed on the sling as if absorbing every inch of it through her eyes. "Can I learn too, do you think? I'd - I'd like to be able to hunt like you. Da won't be bringing food home any longer, and I don't want my little sis going hungry." There was something uncomfortably like hero worship in her eyes as she looked hopefully up at Dove.

Dove took a slow breath, and tried not to notice the hero worship. She really wasn't worth it, she was just a farmer. Not again, never again, memory whispered. No, she wasn't going to put someone else in the position she'd once been in - trapped by a mob, not knowing how to fight back and unable to hide or run. She took another breath, glad that her hands were full, or they would be creeping up to touch the scar on her jaw. "Of course. I'll show you if you like." She set the birds down, and gestured for Rosa to do the same. "You wind one end through your fingers," she said, matching action to word as she talked. "Pick up the other end and just hold it while you slip a bullet in the pocket." She showed Rosa the oval bullet before it went in the sling, then looked round for a target. The grass on the headland ruffled in a slight breeze, and she caught a glimpse of pale fur. She kept talking softly as she spun the sling in a circle at her side and let go of the loose strap so that the bullet flew forward. It hit with a crack and a thump, and Dove offered the sling to Rosa. "Want to try?"

[Dove Brown]

Rosa set the bird down and reached tentatively for the sling. She stroked it, and lifted it close to her face to examine every scuff and crease in the leather. Dove tried not to wince at the thought of how many there were since she started to use it up close as well as for missiles. Though she'd only used it for real on the wolf - she hadn't had a chance to do more than make it yelp before Ferrin stabbed it - the practice had cleared enough snow off her roof that it was probably one reason why her cottage still stood. She bit her lip to give her something to visibly wince about. Which in turn was why she was so over crowded in there. She took herself off to the fur to give herself a moment to pull herself together and discovered it was a weasel in winter coat. If she could get the fur off in one piece it might be worth something. Stoats were actual ermine, but weasels were close, if a bit smaller.

She added it to the pile, then bent to show Rosa how to wind the strap through your fingers. "Otherwise the whole sling goes flying when you let go," she explained. "And then it doesn't hit very hard, and you don't have your weapon any more." Rosa nodded solumnly and followed Dove's instructions. Even with the strap wound through her fingers the sling was a little long for her and would hit the ground if she wasn't careful. Dove moved down the path a bit and made a ball of snow for Rosa to aim at - snow wasn't going to move suddenly, unlike a live target. Then she trotted back and gave Rosa a bullet. Rosa put it into the sling and whirled and whirled and whirled - and finally let go. The bullet flew through the air and Rosa punched the air with glee, not noticing that the bullet had gone a long way off target. "I did it!" she yelled. "I did it!"

Dove decided not to spoil the moment and just made a mental note of where the bullet was so that she could retreive it. "Yes," she agreed. "You did it."

[Samuel Longwell]

Grading Complete Name: Dove Brown XP Award: Planning 1 Sewing 3 Childcare 3 Socialisation 2 Weapon: Sling 2 Hunting 2 Stealth 1 Teaching 2 Leadership 1 Lore: Time alone can be a valuable commodity Childcare: Getting the child involved Rosa: Inquisitive child with a violent father Notes: I enjoyed the the thread, an interesting read. Please edit your grade request so it's obvious that's it's been graded.