This week, Lyle was afraid he was going to be as useless as his father.

He worried about it as he slipped out of bed and into the cold darkness of the house, moving slowly to avoid waking his brother who slept in the bunk above him.

Though he was blind in the darkness, Lyle easily found the dresser and his clothes for the day--long and loose fabric to shield him from the sun, for he would be out in the rocks for hours. Before leaving the room, he touched the cool metal whistle that hung around his neck, just to make sure it was still there—though it always was.

As he softly closed the door to the shared bedroom behind himself, he heard his father snoring from somewhere in the living room, but no longer made any attempt to be quiet. He went to the cold fireplace, pulled four pieces of wood from the pile beside it, and stacked them neatly inside. After struggling with flint and kindling for a few moments, a little orange flame bloomed to life. Gently he blew on it until it could sustain itself, then stood up and looked around.

The soft glow of the fire revealed his father passed out in his chair not far from the fireplace, snoring like a sick goose. Something glinted under the chair—Lyle swallowed back the distaste in his mouth as the growing fire illuminated an empty liquor bottle on the floor.

I’ll do better. His father’s empty words from the day before burned into his mind.

After staring at his father’s limp form for a few moments, Lyle knelt to grab the liquor bottle and tossed it into the back of the fireplace, so maybe his brother wouldn’t see it when he woke.

Around his father’s shoulders hung a heavy bear-skin blanket, the one they had covered Lyle’s mother with while she shook with fever, for almost a week. Uncle Roderick had wanted to bury her in it, but Lyle’s father had refused to part with it.

As an afterthought, without even looking at what he was doing, Lyle pulled a stray end of the blanket back over his father’s shoulder.

The snores stopped, and Lyle quickly went to the door to avoid having to speak with his father if he had woken him. He shoved his boots on, then spared a glance at his wool-lined coat hanging by the door—but on an impulse decided he did not want it, and stepped out into the frigid morning.

As he walked, he listened to the gentle rustle of the tall grass, like a thousand whispering voices all around him. This entire valley grew the same kind—thin, yellow stalks that were as tall as himself. The only path through it was the overgrown, wagon-rutted road. Every one of his steps left boot prints in the thin layer of fresh snow, glowing white against the darkness.

As he opened the gate to the tall wooden fence that guarded the house, he glanced up at the stars that blinked down at him, as cool and white as the snow, then closed it behind himself.

He shivered as he went on, already regretting leaving the coat, but rubbed his arms and shook it off. He was trying to increase his resilience to the elements—and besides, the cold was a good distraction from his gnawing worries. With his usual job taken by his cousins this week, would he be stuck at home in the evenings?

A rustle in the grass to his left made his feet halt. Heart pounding, he lowered into a crouch and listened. The grass swayed and sighed in the ear-biting wind.

He waited for a long minute, shivering but forcing himself not to rub his arms or chatter his teeth. The only movement he made was to raise his hand to touch the back of his neck, feel the deep scars there, and remind himself not to be afraid.

When he finally heard the noise again, he could identify it as a smaller animal—a raccoon, most likely. They had been into the grain storage this week, and if they tried it again he would have to find their nest himself and put an end to it. Though, to be fair, it was as much his father’s fault as the raccoons’, because his father had left the storage shed unlocked.

He shook off his thoughts as they soured and continued walking. He heard no noise for the rest of the walk other than the soft whisper of the grass, which was as normal to him as his own breath. There was always wind in this valley, so the rustle of the grassland was such a prevalent sound, and so loud when the wind gusted through the valley, that he could usually hear it even when inside his house. If he did not love it so, it might have driven him insane.

He reached town as the eastern sky blushed with the promise of sunrise. The little creek that ran parallel to the town was aflame with it. Lyle took a deep breath of crisp air, let it out in a plume of white steam, and smiled at the beauty of the morning.

The town was called Ene, declared officially by a little sign on the single entry by road, but referred to primarily as ‘town’ by its forty-three residents. It was comprised of twelve thatched houses in rows on either side of the road and four farms outside the town.

While other small, isolated towns might be run down, nearly every house in Ene was regularly repaired and repainted. They had to keep up appearances for the many guests who came through, and the town certainly had the income to do so.

As Lyle opened the gate to the tall fence that surrounded the town, three large white dogs came running at him, barking ferociously.

“Just me, kids,” Lyle called, crouching and holding out his hand.

The dogs were suspicious at first, circling warily until they came closer and recognized his scent. Then all three whimpered ecstatically, wagging their long, heavy tails and licking his hands. This was the routine every single morning, so he wasn’t sure how they hadn’t figured it out by now—but he, like everyone here, had great respect for the dogs who helped protect the town.

As the dogs barreled into him, Lyle stood up and closed the gate behind himself. The dogs happily escorted him to his destination: his aunt and uncle’s house. He could smell the eggs and toast long before he reached it because the front door was propped open, spilling light out into the snow. The dogs smelled it as well, and he saw them drooling, but all three stopped at the doorstep. Lyle gave them each a final scratching behind the ears, then entered the house that was already bustling with activity.

Aunt Mary was working over the stove. Her brown hair was neatly tied up, and she was dressed for the day with trousers and a blouse. A thin film of smoke hung in the air from the candles and the stove, hovering over the crowded table where Uncle Roderick was explaining to their newest clients, two Northmen, what would occur during their week of stay.

The strangers looked like all other Northmen Lyle had met: twice the size of a normal man—though the heavy furs they wore over their shoulders likely exacerbated this—with pale blond hair pulled back into intricate braids and pale eyes and skin.

On either side of Uncle Roderick sat his daughters Beth and Isabel, dressed like their mother and eating their breakfast ravenously. Four other children sat around the table: two of Lyle’s cousins and two boys from the nearest town, Brey, who helped them out during the season.

Lyle went straight to the stove to help his aunt flip eggs and add just the right amount of her homemade seasonings. “Thank you, Lyle,” she said breathlessly as she piled the finished toast onto a plate, not surprised by her nephew’s silent appearance at her elbow.

When they had plates heaped with eggs and toast, Lyle and Aunt Mary served the group what he gathered to be the second or third helping, by the number of empty serving plates they had to remove from the center of the table, and then they both sat down to eat.

Aunt Mary took her place by Uncle Roderick, while Lyle was left to take the only remaining empty seat—the one between his cousins Raven and Gendry. He knew he would regret it, but he had no choice.

As he slid into his seat, Raven leaned in close to say, “You’re late. Get lost on your way here?” He ignored her and took a piece of toast from the stack, but while he reached for the eggs, she snatched his toast off his plate and took a big bite out of it.

Lyle stared at her, then motioned to the stack of toast right in front of them. “You can get your own.”

“I wanted yours,” she said through a mouthful of his toast.

He determinedly stuck a fork into an egg on her plate and tried to drag it over to his, but she stabbed her fork into the middle of it and it ripped in half. Bright yellow yolk oozed onto her plate.

“You ruined my egg,” she complained.

“That was your own fault!” he whispered, trying to keep it down while the adults spoke on the other side of the table. He locked elbows with her to keep her greedy hands away as he reached for more toast.

“Stop being so mean,” she whined.

“Yeah, stop being so mean, Lyle,” her brother Gendry said from his other side, and grabbed the piece of toast Lyle had just managed to put on his plate.

“You two have already eaten!” Lyle hissed as his cousins snickered on either side of him.

“Ah, here he is,” said Uncle Roderick in his voice that filled the whole room, apparently just seeing Lyle for the first time. “This is my nephew, Lyle.”

The two Northmen turned deep-sunken, pale-blue eyes on him. Lyle watched their gazes move immediately up to his hair, for it was white-blond like theirs, while everyone else’s was brown. He tried to ignore the sharp pang of shame in his chest. Every stranger did this—he should be used to it by now. It wasn’t like they knew what it meant.

“Normally he would be guiding you,” Uncle Roderick went on, “but my daughters fought him tooth and nail to lead this week. They’re saving up their money for a trip to get out of this valley for a little bit.” Beth, the older of his daughters, waggled her eyebrows at Lyle.

Lyle rolled his eyes and went back to piling food onto his plate and guarding it with his elbows. He’d let the girls have it. He had been in the lead all season, and they needed some experience guiding for when he aged out and they took over.

“We’ve got a couple of mothers with cubs on the western ridge,” Uncle Roderick continued, “close to where you’ll be. Lyle will be keeping an eye on them and making sure they don’t wander too close. You don’t want to get between either of those girls and their cubs.”

The two Northmen exchanged a look, and then one asked in a clipped accent, “What are the chances of buying a live breeding pair off of you, Roderick, or maybe a couple of cubs? These bears could fetch a mighty price on any market. We would pay you well in turn.”

Lyle and Raven exchanged a look. This was the third time in a row a client had asked this question. The week before, a Northman had offered them a land title in Slovland, or his three best horses. The time before that, a man offered his own daughter, presumably for Lyle to marry, which had concerned Lyle on many levels.

The bears here were unique to the valley, so their hides were spectacularly rare and expensive. One might therefore think to breed and slaughter them, but no one who lived in the valley had the outright disrespect for the animals to attempt such a thing. It was one of the reasons hunters were always guided, and were limited by strict regulations set down by the people of Ene.

“None,” Lyle said, speaking up before his uncle had the chance. He was tired of people asking this, and since he wasn’t going to be guiding these men, he didn’t have to be nice to them. He switched to the Slovish language, the Northmen’s native tongue, to say, “You get one bear while you’re here, and that’s it.”

The two men looked more angry than abashed at Lyle’s words, which made him dislike them more. He returned their gazes with a cool one of his own. Strangers to this valley had been killed for trying what they had suggested, and he had no qualms about that. They must have read this message in his eyes, for they both looked away and did not speak of it again.

Lyle focused on putting his eggs between two pieces of toast and biting into it like a sandwich, holding all of it in one place as Raven eyed it hungrily.

Uncle Roderick interrupted the tense silence with, “The rest of our workers will be making sure that you get what you are guaranteed on this trip: one bear. For you, we’ve chosen an older female who isn’t having cubs anymore. You will also, if you desire, have the chance to hunt antelope, bison, and any other animals in the grasslands that you would desire. The children will also be keeping you from being eaten by other bears.” This last part had an edge to it, and made Lyle smile behind his sandwich. As polite as Uncle Roderick was, he very much shared Lyle’s opinions on how men who were disrespectful to his bears should be dealt with.

“Why children?” one of the Northman asked gruffly.

“Good question,” Roderick replied, looking around at all of them seated at the table. All were between the ages of twelve and sixteen. “Children are less of a threat to the bears, so they are less likely to be charged. They are also shorter than the grass, so bears can’t see them as easily. And a good portion of the mountains surrounding this valley are steep banks of loose rock. We survey the location of the bears from above, so we have to get high up there. An adult could not make that climb.”

“Any of ‘em ever get killed?”

Roderick’s eyes slid over Lyle, and Lyle had to restrain himself from touching the scars on the back of his neck.

“Not one,” Roderick answered confidently. That wasn’t exactly true, for this town had been running the bear-hunting business for at least a hundred years, and there had certainly been some deadly incidents in that time. None in recent years, though, mostly because they had perfected their system.

“They are all trained for years before we let them out there,” Aunt Mary added. “They know what they’re doing. They will make sure the bear comes to you, and will help you skin it and cure the meat, but you’ll be doing the killing on your own. Everything you’ll need to do so is out at the cabin already.”

The Northmen exchanged a look between themselves, then nodded. One of them caught Lyle’s eye once more. Lyle knew it was supposed to be intimidating, so he ruined it by stuffing the rest of his egg sandwich in his mouth and chewing aggressively while keeping eye contact. The man raised an eyebrow and looked away.

Lyle found Raven watching the interaction with interest. When he glanced at her, she said calmly, “You’re weird.”

“Runs in the family,” he said, and cuffed the side of her head.

“Ow!”

She was about to hit him in return, but just then Uncle Roderick stood up from the table. He slipped a dagger from his belt, flipped it, caught the hilt mid-air, and slammed the blade into the table. It stuck in the wood with a threatening thump.

The two strangers twitched, and this time Lyle didn’t hide his smile. He loved that trick, and had almost mastered it himself. The table they sat at was riddled with holes, on one end from Uncle Roderick passively threatening clients, and the other from Lyle and his brother trying to learn the trick on their own. They’d both gotten a few cuts on their hands before Aunt Mary caught them and made them stop. Lyle still had scars.

“Let’s get going, shall we?” Roderick boomed.

Ten chairs scraped as one as they all stood, and on his way up Lyle got smacked in the back of the head by Raven.

While the two men and the crew of children packed all the supplies that they would need for the week’s trek into the grass, Uncle Roderick took Lyle aside in the house.

“I’m going to go with them, this time.” His eyes were on the window, from where he could see the two Northmen. “Just to the cabin, for the girls’ sakes.”

Lyle nodded once. It was a precaution against the men, not the bears. The girls knew how to hold their own against bears, and men, too—part of their training was hand-to-hand combat—but sleeping in a cabin alone with them miles from home was not ideal.

“They’ve agreed to it, they don’t like them either,” his uncle went on. “And I would send you instead, but I really do need you to watch Tanter and Lili—I’ve seen them roam as far as the second creek even with cubs at their heels. But the hunting won’t start until around noon today, and since I’m going with them I’ll need you to do some things for me today in town, all right?”

Lyle nodded again.

“Mary has a basket of food for your grandmother, and give her some company while you’re at it. Torsten’s family is leaving today, so Mary is going to make them an early lunch before they head out. If you could help with the food and the talking, she would be very grateful. They might need help loading up as well. Throughout the week I’d like you to go between town and the cabin when you get a chance, and let me know what’s happening here. If there’s anything I need to do myself, I can head back and we can switch places for a while. Can you do that?”

“I can do that,” Lyle confirmed. It sounded like he wasn’t going to be useless at all, this week. The thought relieved him—he hated the idea of sitting around at home with his father.

“Thank you.” His uncle seemed on edge, his hands moving restlessly and his eyes tired.

“Something else happen?” Lyle inquired, wondering if the men had already shown themselves to be untrustworthy in action as well as word.

“No, no,” Roderick said aimlessly, “I just have a bad feeling about today, Mary agrees. Something feels off.” He put his hand on Lyle’s shoulder and looked him in the eyes. “You’ll be safe, won’t you? I know that you know what you’re doing, but please, stay away from those cubs. Don’t take any risks that you don’t have to.”

“Of course,” Lyle said, a half-lie. He had recently started testing the limits of his skills and his luck, getting too close to bears when he was on his own, to see how they would react—they usually ran anyway—and walking in the dark through the grass with no coat, often unarmed, to practice controlling his fears. He had become so good at what he did that he had become a bit reckless, but he had not told anyone this.

Perhaps, today, he would not give in to such temptations, for his aunt and uncle’s sake. And his brother. His father would probably take a week to notice he was missing, and then blame it on himself and wallow ever deeper into self-pity.

Lyle banished the bitter thoughts because he knew they did him no good, and when he said them aloud his aunt and uncle always reprimanded him.

His uncle's brow creased as he watched Lyle’s expression, but it seemed he didn’t know what to make of the dark thoughts behind his nephew’s eyes, so he said the same thing he always said as advice or comfort: “Listen to the grass, Lyle.”

“I will,” Lyle said, quite truthfully. He listened to no one as closely.

His uncle nodded his satisfaction, then pulled some coins from a pocket and dropped them in Lyle’s hand. “Here is last week’s wage, by the way. Thank you for all of your help.”

Lyle deftly counted the coins, then looked up at his uncle. “This is more than I earned.”

“For the gods’ sakes, Lyle,” came Aunt Mary’s exasperated voice from the other room. “Just take the money.”

Lyle clenched his jaw and handed back the extra coins. “This is more than I earned. It’s not fair to everyone else.”

“You helped me and Mary out in the house,” Uncle Roderick replied calmly.

“That’s family favor, not work for wages.”

His aunt appeared in the doorway, eyebrows raised high. She pointed to the coins in Lyle’s hand. “That is what you earned in honest work. This,” she added, taking the extra coins from her husband’s hand and slapping it back into Lyle’s, “is money for food.”

When Lyle continued to look defiant, she added, “For your brother.” She closed his hand with the money in it, then took his face in both her cool hands. “Lyle Jennings, you do not have to support a family of three on your own, you are fifteen. I do not want to hear another word of defiance against our help, is that understood?”

Lyle looked into her vehement gaze for a few more moments, and when he was sure she was finished, he pulled away with, “Yes, ma’am.”

As he left the house, which he did rather quickly after taking the basket of food for his grandmother, he had to turn his face away from the group packing outside because his eyes were hot and threatening to spill over. Even leaving the house, his deftly trained ears heard his uncle say from the open window, “Did you have to yell at him? I could have talked him into it.”

“He needed to hear it,” his aunt replied. “Pride won’t help him now.”

Lyle walked hastily away, working hard to compose himself before he reached the third house on the east side of the road, the one with a porch that wrapped around the whole house. It was one of the only buildings with multiple stories. While he stood on the porch for a minute to catch his breath and wipe his eyes, one of the town’s dogs, Bruno, came bounding up to him. Lyle gratefully knelt to meet him, receiving a face full of happy slobber.

Bruno had once been Lyle’s family’s dog, but when his mother died and everything fell apart, they’d given Bruno over to the town to take care of. Lyle had many memories of cold winter nights in which Bruno had slept between him and his brother, keeping them warm but often waking them up by hitting them in the face with his huge paws, because Bruno always slept on his back. Lyle often considered taking Bruno back to their house now that things were a bit better, but he would feel guilty about it now that Bruno had become so close with the other town dogs.

Lyle buried his face in Bruno’s soft, smelly white fur for a long moment. He burned with shame from his aunt’s words—it had been the unfairness that had bothered him, not his pride. They shouldn’t have tried to trick him into taking money by giving him wages he hadn’t earned. It was also the fact that he did make enough money to feed his family, and that any time he struggled to, it was because he was keeping some of it saved up in a box under his bed for a plan he hadn’t told them about. He didn’t need their help.

He took a deep breath and stood up, then knocked on his grandmother’s door. “Go on,” he told Bruno, pointing him back toward where the other two dogs were circling the group packing, trying to be helpful and only managing to get in the way. Bruno crouched into a playful stance and barked at him. “Go on,” Lyle laughed, chasing him down the steps of the porch. Bruno bolted back over to the other dogs and started play-fighting with them.

The door opened behind him, and Lyle turned to find a tired smile welcoming him—not his grandmother, but Jessica, a girl a few years his senior. She had only lived in town for five or six years, since her parents moved here from the Outside. They had lived in some city or other and wanted peace and quiet. Though they were such a hard-working family that they were allowed to stay, anyone who did not have four generations of ancestry here was considered an outsider. The town was still warming to them.

Their daughter, however, had been training to be a healer in the city, and the town needed a healer to replace Lyle’s grandmother soon—so she was more readily accepted. Jessica was helping take care of the elderly woman while continuing to learn the trade from her.

Jessica opened the door all the way to let Lyle inside, even though she was still only wearing her thin, rather revealing sleepwear. He carefully avoided looking too closely, and after laying the basket of food on the table, politely made to leave.

She touched his arm, her long auburn hair tickling his skin. “Oh, no, stay a while, Lyle. Your grandmother will want to see you. She just woke up.” She left the room without waiting for an answer.

Lyle watched her go, then sat down at the kitchen table and began unloading the food piece by piece. He glanced at the hook by the door and saw a coat there. He found himself smiling—she had purposefully not covered up before opening the door because she’d seen that it was him. He knew why.

There was a small pool of girls here who were near his age and not related to him; he had little doubt that he would marry this girl one day. She knew it, too—the whole town assumed it—and from a certain night of the winter festival in which they had been giddy with the festivities and found a dark place between houses to be alone, he knew she was all right with the idea.

Though Lyle had little choice in the matter of who he would marry, he did not mind. He figured it was far easier to be assigned a match than to chase girl after girl and never know if you would end up with one. He’d gotten lucky, anyway—Jessica was the prettiest girl in town, at least he thought so, and they got along well. Granted, they hadn’t spent any extended amount of time alone together, but he couldn’t see any problems arising between them when they did.

Though the winter festival had been months ago, and they had both been too busy to spend much time together since, she never missed an opportunity to tease him.

Lyle’s grandmother hobbled out of her room with the aid of a cane, her hunched back hindering her movement. He jumped up to help her. “Thank you, Lyle,” she croaked as she relaxed into the cushioned chair at the head of the table.

Jessica returned in a real dress, colorful as always—it was the orange and red one that she had made herself last month. It was something he respected about her: anything she could manage to do with her own two hands, she did. She was resourceful and didn’t mind things to be a little run-down. This eased his mind about his future, because if she had been like other women from cities he had encountered, who bought a new dress for every public event and turned their noses up at the reality of life, he might not have been able to afford to marry her.

It had been dawning on him recently that he might have to keep supporting his family even after he had begun to make one of his own. Even if he eventually took his uncle’s job as head of the bear-hunting business, that would still run funds thin. And though Jessica would be the healer of this town, she would not be paid—not in money, at least, but with free food, repairs, and supplies from the townsfolk. That would certainly help, but would it be enough?

Jessica came to sit beside his grandmother, and as she leaned over the table to take bread from the basket, she made no effort to hide the open top of her dress from Lyle’s view. He hid a smile and looked down, feeling the heat rise to his cheeks.

“Lyle,” said his grandmother as Jessica put together her breakfast together before her, “how is your father?”

“Same as always,” Lyle replied, folding his hands in his lap.

“Ech,” she spat, “I told my daughter he’d be no good, I told her. He’d be just like his father, one day, I said. She never listened to me.”

Despite the cruel words, Lyle and Jessica exchanged an amused look, for his grandmother said this exact thing every time Lyle’s father was brought up.

His grandmother pointed a crooked finger at Lyle, closing one of her foggy eyes. “Mind you keep your brother from going the same way. He gets too much from that family. Looks just like his grandfather, he does. Unlike you, child. You don’t have a speck of your father in you, and that’s good for you.”

Lyle chanced a glance at Jessica, but she didn’t look over. He often wondered whether anyone had told her the truth about his parentage. Perhaps she already knew, and was waiting for him to tell her himself. He shifted uncomfortably in his seat at the thought.

“How is Brandon doing?” his grandmother asked. “He never visits anymore.”

“He’s all right,” Lyle said evasively. “Reading lots of books, you know how he is.”

“He’ll muddle his brain with all those stories of the Outside,” his grandmother muttered. “Tell him to work on a trade, or he’ll be lost in useless fantasy all his life. I’ve seen it happen. Completely useless person is what it makes. Useless.”

Lyle felt the need to defend his brother, who was very intelligent and had learned more from books than Lyle thought he ever would from his own life, but refrained because he knew she wouldn’t listen. “I will,” he assured her.

Jessica gave him a soft look, and that was all he needed to feel better.

Lyle listened to his grandmother’s antics for another ten minutes, occasionally answering a question that she didn’t really want an answer to, all the while entertaining himself with fantasies of finding a time to be alone with Jessica again.

Finally, he politely excused himself because he had work to do before noon. His grandmother griped about how he didn’t visit often enough, so he apologized and promised to visit more, which was true because he was remembering how much he enjoyed even the sight of Jessica. He wished he didn’t have to work so often, so he could spend more time with her.

Apparently, Jessica was thinking something similar, because she walked him out to the porch and closed the door behind them. They weren’t exactly hidden, since they were steps away from the road and the town was awakening, but at least they were out of earshot of anyone. “You’re very patient with her,” she said, standing close.

“You’re the one who manages to live with her. Honestly, how do you do it?”

She shrugged. She was a little bit taller than him, and he longed for the day the quick growth of his age hit and he would be able to stand close and loom over her, the way she was doing to him now. “I just remember that she’ll be dead soon,” Jessica said sweetly, “and I’ll get her house.” She grinned. “I’m joking.”

“I know,” he said, smiling with her. “But I wouldn’t blame you if you weren’t.”

She shrugged. “It’s easier when other people visit, and she can gripe about them instead of me. You should visit more often.”

“I know. I’m sorry. I just have to work so much during the season, I never get the chance.”

She looked him over with kindly, mature eyes. Sometimes he worried that she was too mature for him, for she was practically a grown woman, and he had not even hit his growth spurt yet. But there were many years ahead for that. “Are you not guiding this week?” she inquired, for he would usually be gone by this hour if he were.

“No,” he said, about to slap himself in the forehead. Of course. This week he would have free time.

“Then you’ll have to come visit,” she said smoothly.

“I will,” he promised. “I’m actually free tonight, if . . .”

“Sounds like a date.” She leaned in and pecked him on the cheek once, then winked at him and opened the door to slip back inside. “See you tonight,” she whispered, and closed the door behind her.