12/21/11

Our mother had told us to go find berries in the woods, because she was going to make a pie. We had gotten our baskets and our hats, and then we headed into the woods. Two hours later we returned, baskets full of berries, to find our whole village smoldering. Some of the houses were still burning.
We looked at each other. We knew who had done this. Our village had rivals; they were not above acts such as this one. Things like this happened all the time. Several of the villages we traded with had been burned in our lifetime. We were only lucky, I suppose, that our village lasted as long as it had. We were even luckier that we had been out picking those berries when they had razed the place.
It took me a while to notice the boy standing in the middle of the main road. I was too shocked by the smoking, burning buildings. I did not know how long he had been standing there, absorbing our ruined village. He had not moved a muscle since we arrived, but he had noticed us. I nudged my sister, and we walked towards him.
That night the three of us ate our berries for dinner and slept in the town square, around a fire built from the burning buildings. We did not want to go into our houses. We knew what we would find inside, and we did not want to see it.
The next morning, however, it became clear that we were going to have to go into the houses. We had eaten all of our berries. We were going to have to go somewhere, and we had no supplies to take with us. So over the next two days we did go into the houses, and we did get some supplies—food out of people’s cellars, and sometimes clothes out of their closets. Those who had razed the village had mercifully not razed everything. It would have been stealing, but we doubted our neighbors would ever need those things again.
It was the boy who suggested hunting the shandavar. We all agreed that we needed to go somewhere; we could not stay in our village and let our rivals find us. But my sister and I were reluctant to hunt the shandavar. We knew about them from our father’s ancient tomes, but we had never considered hunting them. We knew it was a suicide mission. But when the boy talked about it, we saw fire in his eyes. He was excited about hunting these shandavar, and his passion infected us. When we were ready to leave, we agreed to go with him.