The Last Stars in the Sky by Kate Hewitt

Author:Kate Hewitt [Hewitt, Kate]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Storm Publishing
Published: 2024-01-24T00:00:00+00:00

The next morning, I’m ready to work. To try. I make oatmeal—half a cup each, with water, which feels like nothing—and I smile at Mattie and Ruby as I give them their breakfast. To their credit, they don’t turn their noses up at the watery gruel, sprinkled with a scant quarter-teaspoon of brown sugar. They simply reach for their bowls and start eating.

“We’re going to do stuff today,” I tell them, and Mattie looks instantly alert, Ruby wary. “We need to figure out a way to find more food,” I continue. “Darlene is going to show us how to set traps.”

“Traps,” Mattie repeats thoughtfully, and Ruby’s eyes widen.

“Trap animals?” she asks in a horrified whisper, and belatedly I realize that my animal-loving eleven-year-old—last year for her birthday she asked for a donation to be made to the Worldwide Fund for Nature—might not take kindly to the idea of trapping animals and then eating them.

“We have to, Rubes,” Mattie says before I can think how to reply. “Because we need to eat. It’s quick and painless, I promise.” I’m not sure it actually is, but I certainly don’t say that. Mattie gives Ruby a reassuring smile, but my youngest child doesn’t look convinced. She eats the rest of her pathetic breakfast in silence.

“Does Darlene have, like, actual traps?” Mattie asks curiously once we’ve washed and dried the dishes. Neither Kerry nor Darlene have made an appearance yet this morning, but it’s not yet eight o’clock. For some reason, we’ve all become early risers. I was up at six, hauling water from the lake; the ice is thick enough now that I need an axe to hack through it, and there are several inches of snow, dusting the trees, softening the stark and leafless branches, the hard, frozen ground.

“Yes, I think so. She said she had some back at her place, and we brought pretty much everything she owned from there.”

“And she knows how to set a trap?”

“I hope so,” I reply with a smile, “because I certainly don’t.” Along with a lot of other things. “I don’t know how to skin a deer or weave a basket or can fruit,” I tell Mattie wryly. “Or…” I try to think of some other skill that belongs in Little House on the Prairie. “I don’t even know what I don’t know,” I finish on a sigh. “But if I did, I’d try to learn it.”

Mattie smiles back at me, and I’m heartened, but then Ruby makes a sound like a small animal—something between a gasp and a squeak—and runs out of the kitchen.

I sigh, trying to curb my worry. Mattie glances at me, a frown settling between her brows, a question in her eyes. What now? In response I give a little shrug. I don’t know.

Then Ruby returns, holding an ancient-looking book, its cover and its pages tattered, almost falling out. It’s a paperback, the size of a textbook, and as she comes closer, I realize I recognize it—it’s been on the bottom

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