The boy did not answer to the name I gave him.
I called him Little One because it was easier than asking. He sat under the roof of the empty coach stop with a bag held between his knees. When I offered him bread, he took it. When I asked whether he meant to sit there all day, he looked down the road.
My name is Drus. I had once driven a passenger wagon through that country. In the fires after the roads closed, I left a stopping place without three people who had paid to travel. I was afraid the fire would reach us while they were gathering their things.
It did reach the place. I did not go back.
I tell you this now because it was in my head when I found the boy. I did not think it then became somebody else’s fault because the roads were broken.
I was heading north to a depot that still traded tools and food. The small cart held my blanket, water and bread, and the last money I had kept for arriving somewhere useful. Cold weather was coming. I wanted to reach the depot before it did.
“Who are you waiting for?” I asked.
“My aunt.”
“Where is she?”
“South Quay.”
“That isn’t this stop.”
“I know.”
His bag was made from two kinds of cloth. One handle had been repaired with red thread. He kept a thumb over the repair while he spoke.
“Did she tell you to wait here?”
He shook his head.
“The coach went. I was under the bench.”
“Why?”
“They said everyone had to help push. I was asleep when they stopped. When I woke up it was leaving.”
He had come with neighbors after his mother died that summer. The coach had been carrying the group north. His aunt lived south. He had wanted to tell someone that, but nobody had asked where he needed to go.
“How long ago did the coach leave?”
“Yesterday morning.”
I looked into the buildings beside the road. Two houses and a small shop stood with their doors open. Nobody answered when I called.
“I’ll ask around,” I told him. “Come with me.”
We walked through all three. There was no one to ask. In the shop, the boy found a chair and stood it upright. He said his aunt always put chairs straight before leaving a room.
“What’s her name?”
“Vala.”
“And yours?”
He looked at me properly then.
“Uren.”
“Uren,” I said.
He picked up his bag.
Two traders came by before noon, pulling a cart with one loose wheel. They had passed no coach on the road south. One knew South Quay. She said the bridge on the short road had gone, but the longer road over the hill was still open.
“Two days on foot,” she said. “Less if you meet a wagon.”
“Are you going there?” I asked.
“East.”
“Could he go with you?”
She looked at Uren.
“What would we do with him in the east?”
I had wanted a person who would say yes before asking that question. Her partner checked the loose wheel and told me no other coach was due. The old service had stopped. The one that passed yesterday had been hired by a group moving their own people.
Uren stood beside my cart. He had not agreed to go east.
I asked the traders for food. I had enough money for a little more than two days for both of us. I bought it. That money had been meant to buy time at the depot while I found work. Now it bought two people a road in the wrong direction.
The woman sold me another water bag as well. She knew where the ordinary roadside wells still worked. She named them, and I marked them on my map. She did not promise there would be someone at each one.
We left Uren’s name and Vala’s town written on the coach stop’s board. The traders said they would repeat it at the next market in case the group came looking for him. Then they took their cart east, and we took mine south.
At the hill, Uren wanted to hold the cart’s handle.
“I can push,” he said.
“Keep your bag. Walk beside me where I can see you.”
He did. I had not earned the right to make his whole journey into work because I had agreed to change mine.
We ate under a stone wall that evening. He took the bread apart and put the softer middle back in his bag.
“For tomorrow?” I asked.
“For Vala. She doesn’t like the hard bit.”
“She’ll have bread.”
He kept it anyway.
I slept badly. Once I woke thinking I heard the old wagon’s wheels moving away without me. Uren was asleep with his face pressed against his bag. The cart stood where I had left it.
By the next afternoon, we could see South Quay. The town was smaller than I remembered. There were still roofs, people, and a place beside the square where wagons stopped.
We went first to the board outside the common kitchen. Among the notices was Uren’s name. Vala had been asking for him since the neighbors left with the northbound group. She had drawn his bag beneath his name, including the red handle repair.
Uren touched the drawing.
A man at the kitchen showed us her street. Before we reached the last house, a woman came out carrying a pan of water. Uren shouted her name. She set the pan down hard enough to spill it and ran to him.
I let go of the cart handle. He let go of the bag.
For a while I stood in the street and watched the two of them hold each other. Then Vala looked at me.
“Where was he?”
I told her about the stop, the empty houses and the road over the hill. She asked Uren whether he had eaten. He nodded. He remembered the bread in his bag and began trying to explain why he had saved it.
“Thank you,” she said to me.
I nodded. She did not know the three people I had left behind. Her thanks could not bring them out of that fire.
She asked whether I would stay for supper. I did. Uren fell asleep before finishing his bowl, with his hand on her sleeve.
The next morning I bought a place on a northbound wagon. My depot was still north. I had spent most of the money that should have made arrival easier, but I could not make the town my new home by waiting for more thanks.
Vala asked Uren whether he wanted to come to the square to see me off.
He said he wanted to stay at her door. He waved from there when I passed. I waved back.
At the square, the driver had finished loading. Two passengers were still coming down the street with a heavy bundle between them. He looked at the sky and put his hand on the reins.
“There are two more,” I said.
“I can see them.”
I stayed beside the wheel. We waited while the pair set their bundle down and climbed in. The driver checked the people against the places he had sold.
When he reached my name, I got in too.
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