Winter Rose by Rachel A. Marks Page A

he emerged from. His beard is trimmed, his lips chapped and red. He has a small grain sack in his hand, no bigger than a mouse. A smile tugs at the side of his mouth. “You Rebecca?”
    I shake my head and clutch the ax tighter.
    “You might do well enough.” He leans down to my level, the white puff of his breath coming at me. “You’ve got ice-eyes, Little One.”
    I take a step back and the door creaks open behind me.
    “We have nothing you’d want,” Becca says from the doorway.
    “Ah, well, not so sure ‘bout that, now. Town’s been shut up a month past—us miners are the only souls left ‘top this cursed mountain.” His brow goes up a little, like he’s enjoying the idea. “Your Pa came to us, says you’d be needin’ help. He says you’d be needin’ grain and meat.”
    My heart lurches at the mention of Pa. This can only be more of his madness coming to haunt us. I hear it in this miner’s voice, slow and heavy with drink.
    “Go away!” I shout.
    The man just smirks at me and looks back to Becca. “You’ve got plenty of what I’m needin’, I think. Plenty to trade. We got a deal?” He watches my sister with hunger in his eyes.
    “No, Becca! Tell him to go.” I lunge at the wall of flesh in front of me and push with all my ninety pounds.
    He laughs and pulls me up close, his grip digging into my arm, my feet nearly coming off the ground. The smell of his breath tastes sour and rancid in my mouth. He licks his cracked lips, the sound of teeth and tongue and what’s to come filling my ears. “You’re a fine pile a rags. I should teach you some manners.”
    The ax falls from my grasp; my heart pummels my ribs.
    “No!” Becca says. “Please, let her go. I’ll take your deal.” Her face goes white, and thick tears streak down her cheeks, freezing at her chin.
    He looks back at my sister, then at me, like he’s trying to decide, but it’s Becca he settles on. “One pound of grain per visit,” he says, and then pushes me hard into the snow. “Half for this lump, if you’re willin’.” And his smirk returns.
    I spit at his feet and scramble up to get further away, shivering in relief and hating myself for it. The lingering feeling of his fingers on my arm burn terror and rage into my skin. No control. Always at a man’s whim.
    He moves forward and takes Becca in hand. He tugs her to him and smells her neck, then looks over her shoulder at me, daring me with his hard eyes to try and stop him.
    Becca goes still until he moves back, then she shoos me away gently. “Chop the wood, Rose,” she says, voice weak and tired. She backs through the door, and the miner goes with her, his tiny bag of grain in hand.
     
    *
     
    More miners come every week, sometimes two at a time, emerging from their holes in the rock, trailing up the road, to darken our life with their shadow and put their blackened hands to my sister. It’s like I’ve entered my own personal Hell, and I can’t think how to stop it.
    We can’t leave. Mamma’s too sick to travel and even if she could, where would we go? It took Pa a month to move us up this beast of a mountain and stake a claim—hoping to win his fortune—hoping to escape some trouble he’d left behind. We’re surrounded in dense forest, riddled with wolves, paths that lead only to sudden drops. And as you descend, the main road becomes all crags and crevices to fall in—a death-trap in the mellowest of weather. And now, with Winter settling her thick, white arms around us constantly, we’re trapped.
    In a slow smothering of the soul.
    Becca cries in the night like a babe. She prays to God and speaks of sin and torment in judgment and fire. She’s in pain, I know. She’s in sorrow. And I understand that pain from inside, deep down—at least a part of it—but still, somehow, I hate her. If she’d only resisted with me.
    If she only said no.
    I know, I can’t blame her. She was trying to save me. But because of her sacrifice I have no