Ashen Winter

“C’mon,” Earl said. It was an order, not a suggestion.

I leaned against the roof of the cab, ignoring him. My mind whirled around the idea Earl had planted, that Darla was dead. I kept approaching the concept in my thoughts and then skittering away from it, like trying to catch a porcupine bare-handed.

“Let’s go see the mayor,” Earl said.

I didn’t respond.

Earl’s hand pressed against my back between my shoulder blades. “Look, son. I’m sorry ’bout what I said to you, ’bout Darla being dead and all. I know it wasn’t Christian of me to put it that blunt. But lyin’ to you wouldn’t be doing you no kindness, neither.”

I whirled and whipped my left hand toward his neck. I grabbed the collar of his coat and shook him so hard his head nodded involuntarily. “Darla is alive,” I growled.

“Okay, okay. Let go of me.”

I released my grip on his collar.

Earl said, “If she’s alive—”

“She is—”

“Let me finish,” Earl said. “If she’s alive, how are you going to find her? You’ve got no pack, no food, no weapons—nothing. You leave the city walls like that, you’re going to die.”

“So help me. Gather up some men, and let’s go get her.”

“I can’t. Not without the mayor’s say-so. I can’t even let you stay inside the city walls unless she okays it. Things are tough. We’re not taking in refugees, much as some might want to.”

“Fine,” I said. “Let’s go see your mayor.”

“That’s all I was trying to do in the first place,” Earl grumbled.

He led me through the middle door of the building labeled CITY HALL. My gut clenched with a fear as visceral as any I’d ever felt. I had to convince these people to help me. To find Darla. My Darla.

Chapter 30

Inside City Hall there was a reception room with a desk. One wall was completely covered in a mismatched patchwork of every imaginable type of bulletin board: cork, cloth, framed, unframed, tan, white, red, and black. A crowd of people pressed around the boards, reading the hundreds of handwritten notices posted on them.

Earl led me deeper into the building past a row of office cubicles. One of them was occupied by an elderly woman doing some sort of paperwork. Three others contained people listening to radios through headsets. They had sheets of copy paper beside them, which they were filling with tiny, neatly handwritten notes.

We stopped at a door at the back of the room of cubicles. Earl knocked once and, without waiting for an answer, opened the door to usher me through.

We interrupted a discussion so heated it seemed likely to ignite. A tiny, elderly woman with a huge flare of crazed white hair stood with her back to us. She was gesturing forcefully at a much taller, regal-looking woman, her steel-and-salt hair tied up in a bun.

“. . . have to supply more lamp oil, Kenda,” the shorter woman said.

“We don’t have any to spare,” the taller woman said.

“Then at least cut some more windows in the walls.”

“I already told you, Rita Mae. All the window glass is allocated to build cold frames. You’ll just have to read your precious books outside.”

“It’s not good for the—”

Earl cleared his throat. “Excuse me.”

Rita Mae spun and glared at Earl. Then her gaze skipped to me. I recognized her—she was the librarian who’d helped me and Darla last year. “You,” she said, leveling a finger at me. “I’ve met you. Alex, right?”

“Yeah. Alex Halprin,” I said. “How’d you remember?”

“I never forget a patron. Or their questions. You asked about rabbit diseases.”

“I found him on the road,” Earl said, addressing Kenda. “Or he found us. Couple a’ bandit trucks took a potshot at us as we were getting set up to dig corn. We chased ’em, but they were trying to lure us into an ambush. He,” Earl nodded my direction, “saved us.”

“Hmm,” Kenda said, “guess we owe him, then.”

“Owe him a place in town, you ask me,” Earl replied. “Would’ve lost a lot of men without his warning.”

“Why not?” Kenda frowned. Then her words turned bitter. “What’s one more soul to starve to death with the rest of us?”

“I’m not staying,” I said. “I need help to rescue Darla.”

“I was about to ask if she was with you,” Rita Mae said.

“She was . . . she fell. Got shot, I mean, then fell on the roof of a truck.” I bit the inside of my cheek hard enough to taste blood. Rita Mae looked away.

“She fell on one of the bandits’ trucks,” Earl said. “If the bullet didn’t kill her, they probably have.”

I turned to glare at Earl, fists balled. He held out his hands in a gesture meant to be placating and said, “I’m sorry to keep offending you, son. But it’s nothing but the unvarnished truth.”

“Much as we’d all like to,” Kenda said, “we can’t spare anyone to go chasing after Darla.”

“But—”

“We’re having a hard enough time keeping everyone safe and fed without risking a rescue mission for a girl who might already be dead.”

“Darla is not dead!” I let my voice get louder than I’d intended. But I was sick and tired of everyone assuming she was dead. They couldn’t know that. They were just guessing. She was alive. She had to be.

Kenda stared at me—the turn of her mouth and droop of her eyes made her look tired. “I’m sorry.”

I swayed, sidestepping to stay on my feet. “Maybe the mayor will have a different opinion. Can’t I at least ask him?”

Kenda’s frown turned to a scowl and her eyes narrowed. “You just did.”

“Oh, you’re . . . sorry. I mean, sorry Mrs. Mayor. Um, I mean Madame Mayor? Um—”

“Just Kenda will be fine.”

I jammed my hand into my pocket and ran my fingers over the broken necklace I’d stowed there. “Please help,” I whispered. “I know Darla’s alive. We can save her. Please?”

“I’m sorry,” Kenda said, her own voice low. “We’re barely digging enough corn to fend off starvation. I need everyone we have to defend the town and the corn-digging expeditions. We can’t afford to risk anyone in a rescue attempt.”

My legs felt weak. I fell, my butt thumping onto the hard floor. Something trickled along my cheeks.

“You need anything else from me, Kenda?”

“No, Earl, thank you.”

“I’ll go see about putting another corn-digging expedition on the road, then.” Earl left the office.

Kenda knelt and laid her hand on my arm. “I wish we could help. But it’s impossible. No matter how much you love her. I couldn’t send a rescue mission after my own daughter.”

“I can pay,” I said through my tears. “Seventeen packets of kale seeds—3,400 good seeds. Grows even in cold greenhouses, and it cures scurvy.” I reached into my jacket pocket and pulled out the pouch holding the seed envelopes.

Kenda looked at Rita Mae. “Would that work? Is kale better than dandelion greens?”

“Let me check.” Rita Mae left the office.

“Dandelion greens?” I said.

“Yes,” Kenda replied. “When the first cases of scurvy hit, we built greenhouses and planted every kind of seed we could lay our hands on. Nothing survived but weeds. So now we cultivate dandelions. They’re the only source of vitamin C we have.”

“I didn’t even know you could eat those.”

“Sure. They don’t taste bad. Bitter sometimes if you don’t pick the leaves young enough.”

“Where do you grow them?”

“Cold frames on the roof of the school.”

“What’s a—”

“A cold frame is sort of a really small greenhouse. We heat ours using power we’re generating with old windmills.”

“And grow dandelions.”

“Yes. But if kale has a higher vitamin C content than dandelion, those seeds could be a huge help.”

Rita Mae walked back into the room, carrying a fat, well-used paperback: The Nutribase Nutrition Facts Desk Reference. She was flipping through it as she walked. “Kale . . . kale . . . here. Well, break my bindings—80.4 milligrams per cup. That’s, um . . .” she flipped through the book, “more than four times as much vitamin C as dandelion greens! Probably tastes better, too.”