The darkness could be hard to deal with, especially in winter, when it appeared to come suddenly and so completely that it felt like a hood had been pushed down over your face. Still, the darkness was little compared with the cold. The long summer evenings, with their soft light filtering through the gaps in the planks, were a relief when they came after the torture of the sunny days, which transformed the tin-roof shed into a small hell for anyone who deserved it—and many did, it seemed, on a regular basis.
The cold in winter, though—the numbing cold that drained all the life out of one’s body—that was the worst of all, and it was reserved for those particular days when the offense had been of outstanding malice and thus needed the cold to purge it out of the sinner. Samuel sat in the lonely place—he could only sit or stand because the hut was too small for any other kind of physical exertion. He couldn’t remember how it came to be named the lonely place. It was what everybody had always called it—even his younger brothers and sisters—and for a reason he couldn’t explain, it made him achingly sad when they did.
The punishment had come, as he knew it would, and he had been inside the hut for hours. Incapable of stirring to keep himself warm, except for the most basic of movements, the boy opened and closed his hands and shifted his feet against the dirt floor.
He had not eaten all day, he had not drunk since noon, and he had on his back only what he had been wearing when his father had woken him up and sent him out into the forest for the hunter-and-prey practice.
The offense had been serious because not only had Samuel been caught by his brother Luke, but he had also lied about the circumstances of his capture. He had been hunted and captured and had tried to escape the consequences of his mistakes. No one, his father had said, escapes the consequences of their mistakes. And he was there to teach them that some mistakes were more serious than others, and lying was the worst.
Samuel had understood too late that his fate had been sealed the moment his father had seen him in Luke’s grip, that nothing he could say would have changed the man’s mind. He wondered what lesson his father was trying to teach him. What was the good in being stuck in the lonely place for a lie he had not told? Samuel wiped his nose on his sleeve.
Cold and hungry and weak as the boy felt, Samuel thought of Cal, and the mere notion of his brother being free somewhere out there in the world was a warm spot in his chest, under all the layers of chill. Cal had explained to him that the best way to get through the lonely place was to make sure his body didn’t become too rigid in the winter and too parched in the summer.
He always had to be prepared for a stint in the hut and must keep himself strong in order to withstand it. “There will be hours when there’s nothing but the cold trying to hurt you. So you forget about the lonely place and think about walking in the forest, think about going for a walk in the woods with me. What we would see, where we would go. Can you do that?”
Samuel had been twelve at the time—the age when grown-up punishments had begun—and he had nodded. His first stay in the hut had been a nightmare: ten hours one April. He had come out at the end with shaky legs and hollow eyes.
Though Samuel’s body was bound to the inside of the hut, his mind was not, and it kept traveling back to Luke’s words and the leer in his voice. What had he meant? Cal had run away one night after their father had put him in the hut for a particularly long spell. It had been months earlier: last spring, just before the thaw. When his father had gone to release him at dawn, he found that Cal had disappeared. And from that day on, the boy’s name could not be uttered in his presence. Something uncoiled in the back of Samuel’s gut, a nameless dread that he could not and would not face. He stood up suddenly, feeling a bite of damp, freezing air deep inside each breath and reaching into the middle of his chest.
There was a rustle close by and Samuel stood still. Hardly any light filtered through the heavy drapes in the main cabin across the clearing and Samuel’s eyes blinked in the gloom. Had his father come to let him out? No one else was allowed to come close or even talk to someone when they were in the lonely place.
A soft step creaked behind him and the boy whipped around. Something scraped at the wood, at the planks that had been hastily nailed together. It could have been an animal, it could have been anything. Samuel backed away from the wall as far as he could, flattening himself against the door.
“Samuel . . .”
It was barely a whisper and he leaned into it, praying it would come again.
“Samuel . . .”
The boy reached forward. His hands were on the rough, plain surface, on the gaps between the planks. He felt it immediately, and his numb fingers caught hold of it. Bread. A slice of bread first and then a hunk of cheese. The smell of both flooding the darkness of his senses.
Samuel held both in one hand and waited with his head leaning against the wall, afraid to make the smallest sound in case anyone in the cabin heard him.
Nothing more came for him through the gap, and after a few minutes the boy sat back down and devoured the food. He honestly tried to eat slowly and make it last, but it was entirely beyond him. He was famished, and the fresh bread and tangy cheese tasted wonderful.
Who could have done such a thing? He himself had never dared. As far back as he could remember no one had ever dared to bring food to someone in the lonely place. The food made him giddy. That’s why it was called the lonely place, silly, because no one could talk or give food or water to anybody in it. Could it have been one of his younger sisters? Would any of them have been so brave, so reckless? What would it take to go against his father’s will? Only a strong heart would dare, only someone who was not afraid. Samuel shivered in the shed as the icy breeze found all the openings and the slits in the walls around him.
He was not entirely alone, he thought, someone out there was on his side. It was the first spark of hope in months, and it made him feel all lit up inside: he could get through the night, he could survive being hunted and Luke’s clasp around his neck, because he was not alone. In a way, he had always known that Cal would not leave him—not entirely—and he would be watching over him, somehow.
Samuel stood, stamped his feet, and ran his hands over his wiry arms. His head felt warm now, like his chest. When his father came to let him out—hours and hours later—Samuel wobbled his way back into the cabin and curled up in front of the wood stove without a word. None of his siblings looked at him and he didn’t even try to meet their eyes.
The boy bolted down the half bowl of stew he was given, but it didn’t taste as good as the bread and cheese had. What a strange day it had been: so dreadful and yet so good. There was the wolf pack out on the mountain and the wolf pack on the wall of his cave—and he had managed to protect both.
The mouse had saved the wolf.