The boy who brings the bread is Willem Verheyen.
This is not true.
His name is Pieter Geerts, but neither he, nor his mother, nor anyone in the world has used that name in so long that it is just a distant reflection of a life that once was.
Willem was born on the first day of the first month of the new century. When he was just seven years old, he saved the life of a village girl from a bloodthirsty raptor.
There are many dangerous animals in the forests of Europe, wolves, bears, and boars among them. But these animals have learned to fear man and do not attack unless threatened. Only raptors—large, meat-eating saurs—regard man as prey. Of all the raptors, the largest and most terrifying is the firebird: a huge, vicious beast, feathered like a bird. When stretched to full height, it is almost as tall as a man. Few people have faced a firebird and survived. It can kill with its teeth, its talons, or the terrible claws on its strong hind legs. But seven-year-old Willem, alone, faced such a creature to save the girl’s life. That is a secret he keeps to himself.
Today, eight years later, Willem will again face a firebird, but he does not know that yet.
Willem quietly opens the gate to the house of the village healer, Madame Gertruda.
The girl he saved, Héloïse, is sleeping in the garden. She uncoils herself at the base of a tree and hisses at Willem as he shuts the gate behind him. She is a scrawny thing with wild brambles of hair, wearing just a plain woolen smock despite the chill of the early spring air.
He steps warily. She once launched herself at him without provocation, scratching and biting, spilling his breads in the herb garden.
Héloïse does not attack. She crouches in the garden as he knocks on the door of the cottage. He waits. Madame Gertruda is old and slow.
It is his second-to-last delivery. Only the schoolmaster’s house remains, then Willem will be free to go and practice his act for the fête.
The basket is mostly empty and so is his purse. Those who cannot afford their morning baguette get one anyway. Those who can pay will do so when they have money. Those who cannot are still human beings, according to his mother.
A cat emerges from the side of the house and curls around his legs, rubbing its face on his shins. Two nervous microsaurus skitter among the herbs of the garden. Madame Gertruda is a magnet for sick and homeless animals.
Shuffling footsteps sound behind the door. The moment it opens, Héloïse picks up the cat and slips past him, past the healer, into the house.
Madame Gertruda is old, far older than any other person he knows. Her face is ridged as if worms have nested under her skin. Her hair is thin and white.
She glares and spits at him as she opens the door. Madame Gertruda has good days and bad days. This is clearly a bad day. Last night was no better, if Héloïse was sleeping in the garden.
Madame Gertruda is Flemish, like Willem, a minority in the village. But her position in the village is secure. The villagers cannot live without their healer.
She offers no coin for the bread. She never does. But nor did she demand payment when Willem’s mother brought him to her, blue in the face and gushing green phlegm. She asks for nothing, and wants for nothing.
He hands the healer a baguette.
“I do not want your filthy crust,” she says, in French. Some days she remembers that he speaks Flemish, but most days she forgets.
“Good morning, madame, and good morning also to the mademoiselle,” Willem replies.
Héloïse’s face appears in a wisp of morning twilight dancing in the shadows inside the house. She snarls at him like a dog.
Madame Gertruda snatches the bread out of his hands and slams the door in his face.
Today is definitely a bad day.
Willem passes the church on his way to the schoolmaster’s house, across the road from the schoolhouse in the far corner of the village.
The village is old. It is small, just a strip of stone cottages alongside the river with some newer, larger houses around a communal square. It is surrounded, to the south and east, by fields of rye, oats, and barley, from which the village derives most of its income. To the north and west march the tall, dense trees of the vast Sonian Forest.
The saur-fence that protects the village is also old, and in need of repair: a series of high wooden poles, crossbraced by diagonal supports with sharpened ends that protrude through the fence to discourage nosy or hungry raptors. In more than one place the fence sags where the supports have cracked or rotted and have not been replaced.
Outside the saur-fence, in the narrow strip that runs between the fence and the river, are long patches of lavender that, on humid spring days, waft a heady scent over the entire village.
Some say that lavender keeps saurs away, and that might be true, because there have been no raptor attacks in the village itself. But that might also be due to the fact that there are very few dangerous saurs left in Wallonia.
Jean and François are waiting by the gate of the schoolmaster’s house. Cousins who look like brothers, with thick necks and arms from countless hours of cutting wood (François) or hammering in his father’s smithy (Jean). Jean is the younger but larger of the two.
François looks as though he is ready for work, with a heavy ax across his shoulders, hooked with both arms. Jean carries a crossbow in a sling on his back. He made the crossbow himself, hammering the tempered steel of the spring on his father’s anvil.
“You march to war?” Willem asks.
Jean laughs. “Of a sort.”
“We’re hunting eggs for the fête,” François says.
“Saur eggs?”
“No, hens’ eggs,” Jean says, placing his hand on the stock of his crossbow. “But we are ready lest we encounter any angry chickens.”
Willem laughs.
“Come with us,” François says.
“Pierre says there is a raptor nest by the waterfall,” Jean says.
“Maybe even a firebird,” François adds, with a gleam to his eye.
“A firebird!” Willem says.
“You sound scared,” François says.
“You should be,” Willem says.
“Scared? We have ax and bow,” Jean says.
“And that is what scares me the most,” Willem says. “And I need to practice my act for the fête.”
“Ah, the soon-to-be-famous magician.” Jean laughs.
“The festival is a week away. Perhaps it is courage that you need to practice,” François says.
“Come with us, Willem. You can practice on the way,” Jean says.
“This is my last delivery,” Willem says. “Let me think on it.”
He pushes open the gate. The door of the schoolmaster’s house opens and Angélique Delvaux emerges—seventeen, bleary-eyed, tumble-haired, still in her sleeping frock. She comes down the steps with her arms wrapped around herself against the chill and presses a coin into his hand as she takes the last baguette.
She smiles through sleepy, blinky eyes, and the touch of her fingers lingers. It is no accident, but nor does it signify anything deeper. Angélique simply knows, and enjoys, the effect she has on men, on him.
She turns back at the top of the stairs and waves.
Jean and François wave back in unison, gawking, a pair of fairground clowns.
The door closes, but Angélique appears a moment later at the window, opening the shutters to let in the morning sun.
“It seems only a few months ago that she was but a skinny sapling, all branches and twigs,” François says.
“Now the trunk is full and well formed,” Willem says.
Angélique shivers and wraps her arms around herself again. The action presses her breasts against the fabric of her thin frock.
“And the fruit is ripe,” Jean says.
Willem laughs but François says, “Take care of your tongue, cousin, lest it catch the ear of God.”
“I am sure He has more pressing concerns,” Jean says.
“Still”—François claps his cousin on the shoulder—“you would not want to reach the afterlife to find there is no place for you in His kingdom.”
“A god that would punish me eternally for a few words in jest is no god of mine,” Jean says.
François laughs, but Willem sees him make the sign of the cross behind his cousin’s back.
They cut across the school yard, back toward Willem’s house.
“So come hunting with us,” Jean says.
“Have no fear, we will protect you from any dangerous saurs,” François says.
“Or any chickens,” Jean says.
“I will meet you at the river bridge,” Willem says, making up his mind. “If you two fools do find a firebird, someone will have to protect you.”
The cousins laugh loudest of all at that. Willem laughs along with them. But his words are not spoken in jest.
Jean and François are big, strong, and well armed. But that will not be enough. Not against a raptor.
If they find one, they will need Willem.