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apples and some stalks of rhubarb. Santa chopped them up as well.

  "There's more," said Forest. Forest had read the signs and knew that the coming winter would be a hard one. The more food they could stockpile now, the better.

  While Santa cooked, Forest and Jelly returned to their foraging. Bull and Jones came back and plucked two of the birds and gutted them. Their innards squelched as they dropped into the empty wooden trough just outside the barn. Bull threw hay over them to mask the smell of blood. Santa would collect the offal after breakfast.

  They heard a crash from somewhere inside the barn and rushed to the sound. It seemed to take forever for them to reach the back corner, as though they were running in slow motion. Finally, Forest, Jelly, Jones and Bull arrived to find Porkchop standing Mixer up. Mixer promptly fell onto his rump, twisted over and crawled away.

  "Wow! Look at this!"

  Narrow pawed through the heap of busted up cardboard boxes that Mixer had fallen on. Out of them spilled a treasure trove: dishes, cups, cutlery and utensils, pots, pans, a small grinder, a battered metal urn. That was only what the children could see; dozens and dozens more cardboard boxes and wooden crates were stacked along the barn's walls, two and three deep in some cases.

  Porkchop's stomach rumbled and she ordered everyone to gather up the dishes and help with breakfast.

  "Plenty of time to go through this later," she said, gesturing at the boxes.

  When the others turned back towards the stove, Porkchop reached down and fished something out of the heap.

  The smell of roast pigeon wafted into the loft and finally roused Titania. She gracefully descended the ladder and joined her siblings.

  ___

  Porkchop wanted to get this right. Despite a howl of protest from Narrow, Porkchop decided that they would eat only the birds for breakfast. They'd give Pater the hare. She took Bull with her. He was a good person to have in a fight. Not that Porkchop thought it would come to that, but it wouldn't hurt to have him there, she thought. And she had the knife. She'd recognized the pocket knife in the heap. Pa had had a similar one, although his had a crudely-drawn four-leaf clover carved into the handle. He always carried it. He must have died with it in his pocket.

  From the base of the porch Porkchop called out. There was a slight shift in the front window curtain. Porkchop introduced herself and Bull.

  "The rest are in the barn," Porkchop said loudly. "Just as you asked," she added.

  Nothing.

  "We know how to farm. We could work the fields for you in the spring. Lot of good land back there."

  Silence.

  "We got a hare for you," Bull called.

  The door was flung open and the old man shuffled out. He had put a pair of pants over top of his long underwear and wore a thick flannel lumberman's jacket. He straightened up and spat. The gob landed just in front of Porkchop's boot. He snatched the dead animal out of Bull's hands and sniffed it.

  "Fresh. Good." He laid the animal on the porch. "I got some rules you gotta follow. First off, this is my land. My prop'ty. My rules. You live in the barn and you don't bother me."

  Porkchop and Bull nodded.

  "You're a hunter, eh boy?"

  Bull nodded.

  "Well anything you guys catch, I get dibs on the best parts, unnerstand? That's called paying rent. I don't care if you farm or not but I get dibs on the best stuff. It's my prop'ty, my land, my rules. Unnerstand?"

  They nodded again.

  "I may think up other rules," he said. "Let's get this over with." He made a shooing gesture at Porkchop and Bull. Confused, they backed up. Pater pointed to the barn. "Might as well get this over with," he said again.

  Pater followed them back. The others quietly assembled into a line. Porkchop and Bull stayed to one side as Pater walked up and down, peering at each of them. He looked only briefly at Santa but his gaze lingered on Mixer in her arms. Mixer waggled his fingers at him. Pater frowned. He turned to Titania on the end. As always she wore a shawl over her head to cover part of her face.

  He stared at her. Her eyes were an instant reminder. They were a painting thrown up in his mind of the girl who had tried to trap him. His misjudgement had caught up with him and now the grandchildren of that misjudgement had found him too.

  "I got rules," he said to her.

  "Rules," she repeated.

  ___

  Spoon Valley was quiet. Splayed face down on a thick bed of moss at the base of a cliff was a man. He was covered in mud and grass and his hair stood out in wild knots around his head. His arms and face were covered in welts. The only thing in his pocket was a small, fold-up knife.

  Winter

  True to Pater's word, so long as the children stayed out of his way, he stayed out of theirs. During the first days on the farm Porkchop worried that Pater would change the rules; that he would suddenly want to tell them what to do and how to do it. But as the days progressed and Pater ignored them, she relaxed. Bull often smelled Pater slinking off. He was gone once for three days.

  In the weeks before the snow arrived, the children made themselves at home and the days were spent investigating the fields, the woods, the creek and the barn.

  The loft was empty of furniture, tools or anything else except a good store of thick wool blankets and dozens of hay bales stacked against the wide doors that faced the fields. Porkchop and Bull dismantled two bales to use as bedding but left the rest against the doors to block the wind. The only addition they made was a gate at the top of the ladder that they latched closed each night at bed time. Jelly had almost fallen off the opening to the wood floor, fifteen feet below, on their second night. Narrow fashioned a gate from an empty crate and attached it to the thick railing that ran the length of the open loft.

  Titania slept in most mornings, climbing down only after everyone else had eaten their breakfast and only Santa was around. Sometimes, she would get up and sit quietly by the railing, watching her sisters and brothers from above. At others, she would move a hay bale to one side and peek out through the crack in the loft doors. She could see the fields beyond and the creek and, looking down along the side of the barn, a tall wooden ladder leaned up against the right side loft door.

  They slowly made their way through the boxes and crates that lined the walls, finding tools, clothing and equipment, some of which even Narrow couldn't identify or figure a use for. Santa tailored the clothing to fit her siblings. For the first few weeks, they found new things about the barn almost every day, including six cold storage dugouts that were hidden beneath floor boards and were filled with seed potatoes, onions, bags of salt and ears of dried corn. The barn was cavernous and as they slowly emptied the crates, they found themselves having to shout to be heard from one end of it to the other.

  Narrow, Porkchop and Santa spent a day shearing off the kernels and grinding them down for meal and flour. Forest and Jelly foraged as much as they could. Roots, tubers and apples were tossed into the dugouts and dozens of bouquets of wild herbs and greens were hung to dry across the hayloft railing. At the front of the barn they hung a bell they found and Santa would ring it at mealtimes. Bull and Jones hunted almost every day and were successful more times than not. Nevertheless, Porkchop knew that game would become scarcer as the temperatures dropped and had Santa salt some of their kills.

  They didn't starve but having enough food for all of them plus Pater was a challenge. Everyone but Mixer lost weight. Jelly and Santa kept the family healthy. Jelly combined herbs into teas that they drank daily and Santa began to experiment with the food they had at hand. The two of them would gather round the wood stove sometimes, their heads bent over a steaming pot filled with all manner of roots and dried plants. Ma would never have let them do this.

  Porkchop kept an eye out for the Constable but he never came. And when the snows began she put thoughts of him out of her head. He rarely traveled this far in wintertime.

  The children spent their evenings planning. They would gather at the table near
the wood stove, two oil lamps burning, and talk about what needed to be done and when; what tools they had and which they might need. Santa would tend the fire. She kept a crate full of shorn corn cobs beside her and would toss several into the woodstove at a time. Conversation would stop for a moment if they heard the pop of a missed kernel.

  Ma and Pa had talked like this at this time of year. Over dinner, or doing chores, or in bed they would talk and talk, filling in the gaps, building up the next year's orchard plan in their minds. The routine was familiar.

  Pater fell ill shortly after the first of the winter storms. The storm had first spattered cold rain, covering everything with a fine coating of ice then the snows had arrived and covered the ice. Bull found the old man sprawled on the floor one afternoon when he'd brought him his dibs. The pickings were slim that day: one scrawny rabbit and three black squirrels that looked like they had mange.

  Jelly tended him as best she could. She forced a tea of steeped yarrow, chamomile and mint down his throat, with Bull and Narrow sitting on him as he squirmed. The tea would help with the fever. Pater raved incoherently but eventually fell asleep.

  The one plant Jelly wished she had was cure-all. It was one of the first plants Ma had taught her about, telling her that it was the single most important plant in her medicine box.

  It's very strong, Ma had warned Jelly. Too much could stop the heart but in the right