to."
Alec stared at him, open-mouthed. After a long silence he said quietly, "I'll get you a chair tomorrow. And some blankets. And a pillow."
Chapter Seven
Alec didn't own much to cook with. A couple of plates. A handful of utensils. Three cups. A pot.
A tin. A saucer. Everything except the saucer was chipped or dented.
The saucer was painted all over with roses and if you held it up to the light it was made so finely, so delicately, that you could see right through it and the roses looked almost real, shed red light.
It was beautiful. David found it in the very back of the cabinet one afternoon and set it out that night, put it on the table with a piece of gingerbread resting on it and wondered what Alec would say.
Alec didn't say anything, not at first. He stared at it when he sat down, no expression on his face, but David saw a muscle jump in his jaw. Then he picked it up and dumped the gingerbread onto the table, holding the saucer gingerly, like he feared it might break or didn't want to touch it or both.
"Where did you find this?" he said, and his voice was so quiet it was barely a whisper.
"It was in the cabinet," David said. "Way in the back. I thought maybe the people who lived here before left it but--it's yours, isn't it?"
"No," Alec said and pushed away from the table. "Get rid of it. Don't--I don't want to see it again."
David looked at his still face for a moment. "Okay," he said, and took the saucer. He went out into the hallway and knocked on Gladys's door. She didn't answer but he heard her inside, coughing as her bed squeaked over and over. He left it on the floor.
Alec was sitting by the fire eating the gingerbread when he got back. David looked at him, his carefully blank face, his still shaking fingers, and didn't say anything. He knew what it was like to have a memory you didn't want to own.
***
The day David bought the chicken started well enough.
The night before Alec had said, "Potatoes again?" and then, "David, do you know how to make anything else?"
"Well, I can make--"
"Besides gingerbread."
"Then no." He waited for a second, wondering if he should say something else, but Alec was shaking his head and smiling.
"Tomorrow," he said, "when you go to the square, get a chicken. Just put it in the pot with some potatoes--make sure you pluck the chicken first, okay?--and let it cook for a few hours. Maybe throw an onion in or a carrot. Easy enough. Right?"
David nodded. It sounded easy.
He bought the chicken from a girl in the square. She was tall and thin with ale-brown hair and painted patterned hands like women in the castle used to have, decorations to show their fingers, highlight the curve of their wrists. But when she said, "Want me to do the butchering for you?"
He realized what the dark spatters on her hands were. He looked at the chicken. It stared placidly back at him from the crook of her arm.
"No," he said faintly.
She gave him a look. "Just a quick chop to the neck if you can't wring it yourself. Sharper the knife the better, and mind you, make sure you've got space, because they do like to run around a bit after." She clucked her tongue at something she saw in his face and said, "You sure you don't want me to do it? Won't take but a moment."
David shook his head and took the chicken home. When he got there he put it on the floor and got out the pot. The chicken looked at him, looked at the pot, and went back to wandering around the floor, scratching at it occasionally.
By mid-afternoon David had learned that chickens didn't like being put in pots, that they scratched, and that when they had to go to the bathroom they went, even if the spot they'd picked was in the middle of the floor right where you'd left a plate of cooling gingerbread.
He picked up the chicken as the sun started to set and looked at it. He put his hands around its neck. It flapped its wings uselessly, trying to move away from his suddenly very cold hands. Its eyes were
C.S. Friedman
Bonnie Edwards
Ann Tatlock
Geralyn Dawson
Amber Kell
Ella Vines
Louisa George
Sandra Martin
Frieda Wishinsky, Laliberte Louise-Andree
Darrin Mason