The Wild and Hungry Times

The Wild and Hungry Times

By Patricia Russo

It was a gray day in summer. (Gray days were not confined exclusively to winter). The wind, sharp as a rasp, laden with grais of calcite abraded from the ruins of the Resennan lighthouse (the people of the coast has dismantles most of it, using the stones to repair walls and outbuildings, leaving the sailors to their own devices – but them sailors had been left to their own devices ever since the last lighthouse keepers had departed, taking the lamp oil with them) (delete comma.) blew strogly from the north. The north winds were the worst. His father, sitting by the fire, said nothig. His mother looked grim. His sister, pretending to be busier than she was, wiping her son’s chin when the boy’s face was clean enough, taking the spoon out of her daughter’s hand and stirring the porridge in her bowl after the child had already started to eat it, muttered, « it’s gray today. »

« It is, » Peero said. The kerchief tasted of old sweat; that bastard Bairen had probably borrowed it, as he had borrowed so many things, sneaking it bacl into Peero’s clothes-chest before slipping away. Peero supposed he should be glad Bairen had returned it at all.

The Wild and Hungry Times. Photo by Elena

Baby brother Bairen, with his hooded eyes and his liar’s tongue. He had started filching as a toddler – scraps of food, their mother’s thimble, a button from their father’s coat. And when he was caught, he would laugh, even when father beat him laugh like the very devil, though his eyes remained cold. As he grew older, he stopped being caught so easily; eventually he stopped getting caught at all. But this time he had been seen, in a public place, ripping a chain from a woman’s neck, then dragging her off who knew wheere, to do who knew what. The shame of it had struck his father speechless, until Peero had gone to the old man and said, « I will find the woman and make compensation to her. »

His sister stopped fussing with spoons and bibs and stray bread crumbs. « You don’t have to go today. »

« And what if it’ gray tomorrow, as well? »

« You can wait. »

Science Fiction and Fantasy 2015, edited by Rich Horton, Prime Books, 2015.

Being wild. Photo by Elena