Defective

dried up and its seed scattered. He wasn't sure if they would still be any good but he dug up three of them to bring back to Jelly.

  ___

  Pater was on Honey Hill that day as well. He'd crept out of the house while it was still dark and reached the summit just as Narrow and his brothers were waking up. He squatted down on the edge of the cliff, lit a hand-rolled of dried herbs and grasses and watched the sun rise. Pater wasn't a complicated man. He preferred to be alone. His happiest moments were those when he didn't think at all.

  But the children had made him start thinking of the past, and he didn't like that. Years ago, he'd fallen for a woman. When she told him she was pregnant he got scared and accused her of sleeping with someone else; that she was trying to trap him into looking after her and her bastard. He'd run away and found work at a lumberman’s camp as a cook but she eventually tracked him down.

  She’d walked quietly into the mess hall, her hand clutching that of the boy beside her. She told him that she was dying, that a healer had told her she didn't have long to live. She had coughed a lot.

  His name, she’d said, is Hap. As though she had rehearsed it, she continued. He's your son. You have to take him. You must. There is no one else. He'll get sent to a camp. He's too young, he's only five. You have to take him. He’s a good boy.

  Good boy, my arse, thought Pater. Nine! If there's one thing he learned at that camp was how to avoid that and he goes and has nine of 'em. He spat herb-flecked sputum over the edge of the cliff. He wondered what his son looked like now. Sometimes he thought he saw traits of him in some of the children.

  He'd been trying to avoid thinking about Titania, too, but her sharp-nosed face kept rising up in his mind's eye. She looked so much like her.

  ___

  Porkchop walked the furrows for hours. They were muddy and slushy and icy all at the same time but she didn't care about their current state. She was imagining their future. Methodically, she walked and walked, looking down at her boots, listening to her feet as they sucked and squelched through the mud.

  Soon, the field would be filled with corn and potatoes and onions. On top of what they had brought with them they’d found all kinds of seeds in the barn. Jelly and Forest had been plotting the vegetable grid for weeks.

  When the clouds parted to let in the late afternoon sun, Porkchop raised her head and looked about. She whipped around as a flash of light caught her peripheral vision. She scanned the horizon, left to right, and caught sight of PC Pierre on top of the hill in the distance. She raised her arm in greeting but he had already turned away.

  ___

  PC Pierre waited to see if any of the children would appear but none did. All seemed quiet on the farm; there were no obvious signs of trouble. The boys were probably out hunting and the rest were either in the barn or out back where he couldn’t see. He began his descent. Josephine was grazing a ways down the road and he let her eat for a while longer before harnessing her to the cart and continuing to the farm. He had brought gifts for the children.

  ___

  Bull and Jones had been out for several hours without success. Bull had scented a few animals but most had been too small to bother with. They had decided to go back to the barn and try again after dusk. They were almost there when Bull suddenly stopped. His nostrils flared.

  "Deer," he said quietly. "Off that way. Might be a bit."

  Jones slid his large hunting knife from the holster strapped to his thigh and cocked his ear. After half an hour a stag appeared, its antlers ripping apart the lower branches as it strode through them. Bull looked back to his brother, but Jones had already disappeared.

  He reappeared on top of the animal, grabbing it around the neck with one arm, the other gripping its antlers. He yanked its neck sharply and brought the deer down so hard it shook the ground where Bull stood. There was a single, strangled sound and it was over. The stag’s throat was slit. Bull was impressed by his brother's skill. It would feed them for weeks. Bull congratulated his brother.

  "We’re going to need help with this one," said Jones, wiping his knife clean with leaves.

  "Go and get the others," he said. "I’ll stay and make up a stretcher."

  ___

  PC Pierre had heralded his arrival and as he and Josephine made their way across the yard to the barn, the door swung open wide and Jelly, Jones, Forest and Narrow came out running. They stopped when they saw him. As the door was swinging shut, Porkchop emerged. She looked like she had lost a little weight.

  At first no one said a word but Porkchop soon took charge and told the others to go, she’d be right behind them. Her sisters and brothers followed Jones into the forest.

  "You’ve got good timing," Porkchop said to the Constable. "Bull and Jones got a deer. A big one. We need all the help we can get."

  "I’ll follow you," he told her.

  He steered Josephine around to the back of the barn. He left her harnessed to the cart then ran after the children.

  ___

  When they reached Bull, he’d already fashioned a stretcher by twining thin branches and saplings together. Jelly lined it with the blanket she'd brought and the boys rolled the animal onto it; Narrow swatted away clods of snow and debris from its hide. The Constable arrived and helped tie the animal to the stretcher.

  PC Pierre and Porkchop hefted the front of the stretcher, Bull and Forest the back. Jelly guided their steps back to the barn. Santa was waiting for them; Mixer watched as they lugged the huge animal into the yard.

  They all pitched in, gutting, cleaning and salting. In the afternoon sunshine they worked and talked. They filled the Constable in on what had happened since they’d last seen him. Without Ma to shoo him away, the children were more talkative than he’d ever known them to be. He was surprised to hear Titania join in as well.

  Narrow retold the story of their arrival, exaggerating Pater’s movements for laughs.

  "How is Pater?" he asked. "Where is he?"

  "He’s fine. Out somewhere," said Porkchop.

  "He was pretty sick this winter, though," said Jelly. "Bad fever."

  "And raving like a loon," Titania added.

  "He’s going to miss out on some great eats," said Jones, sniffing the air.

  Santa had started to cook. Titania’s goose roasted over the fire pit outside and chunks of deer meat slowly stewed in a huge pot on the wooden stove. Stomachs rumbled at the smell of meat and onions. PC Pierre washed his hands of the deer's blood before he tended to Josephine.

  They were soon all gathered around the table. The children were too busy eating to hold a conversation over dinner but when they were done and Santa had made raspberry mint tea, Narrow took up where’d left off in his tales of Pater and the farm. He even ran to his pack in the loft to dig out the drawing they’d found tacked to Pater’s door on their first day.

  "We stay out of his way and he stays out of ours," Porkchop said with a shrug.

  "So far, so good, eh?" PC Pierre smiled.

  Porkchop smiled back, caught herself and looked down at her mug.

  "Well then," said the Constable, "since you didn’t get one, you deserve a proper welcome."

  He put the box of gifts he’d brought on the table: large cloth bags of salt and flour, two jars of honey, three large rounds of goat cheese, a slab of pork fat, and a large glass jar of cider vinegar.

  Santa and Jelly immediately thanked the Constable. Jelly was thinking of the tinctures and marinades she could make with the vinegar; Santa hefted the slab thinking of tomorrow’s breakfast, frying in pork fat. Narrow opened one of the jars of honey and dipped his finger in then passed it around. Santa dipped in hers and brought it to Mixer’s mouth. His eyelids were beginning to droop but he accepted her finger and sucked on the sweetness.

  All evening he’d flitted from one sibling’s thoughts to another but in the jumble of mixed conversations and the sleepiness brought on by a busy day and too much food he wasn’t able to separate things out.

  While th
e rest of them cleaned up, Porkchop took PC Pierre on a tour of the farm.

  "It’s going to be a lot of work," said the Constable as he surveyed the fields.

  Porkchop nodded.

  "Forest says there’s some winter left but we’re ready for an early spring planting. We’ve done just fine up to now."

  PC Pierre looked at his feet.

  "I’m sorry I didn’t come. I checked on you from the lookout post at the cabin a couple of times. I didn’t see any cause for worry."

  Porkchop thought that she would have done the same thing if she had been in his shoes.

  "But there is something I need to tell you. It’s about Pater."

  "I thought that wasn’t your place."

  The Constable blushed.

  "This isn’t just about him. You said he was sick this winter and if something were to happen to him, well this would concern the farm and me. But it’s more complicated now that you’re here."

  Porkchop stopped at the far end of the field and looked expectantly at him.

  "A few years ago, long before you came here, Pater got sick. It sounds like what he had this time, fever, delirious. He probably would have died if I hadn’t shown up. I stayed with him for three days. One night he started screaming and screaming and he wouldn’t calm down. He kept saying that he didn’t want his boy to have his farm if he died."

  "You mean Pa?"

  "Uh huh. On the day that his fever broke he got angry at me, accused me of knowing his secrets. Wanted to know everything he’d said to me so I told him what he’d said about the farm and