It was appropriate, in a foreboding sort of way, that the day Donal Cervoni left Trishenko, a lone dark figure on the road, the weather had turned to a sudden snowstorm, rendering the greening-grass ground white, and the air a translucent gray.
“You can’t go, Donal!” Whiny pleaded.
“Who’ll go exploring the old ruins?” Tiny asked.
“Who’ll sharpen Ma’s knives?” Shiny insisted.
Donal shrugged. “My Da’s not going anywhere. He’ll still sharpen knives, between trying to grow what can still grow.” He waved a hoof-nailed hand vaguely toward the outside world and the faltering fields around the tiny village. It had been a bad harvest this year, after that unexpectedly early cold snap.
“But there are only strangers in New Thule,” Shiny retorted. “And they say you can’t grow squash because of the bugs. And the elves won’t let anyone in the forest. And the folk who went there from Lost Thule smell funny.”
Donal snorted. “Least they grow food. And I won’t be the only one going … eventually. People are gonna have to leave here, sooner or later, if the ice keeps coming.”
“Leave … Trishenko?” That was Tiny, but all three brothers started at him, wide-eyed.
The deerkin scrambled to his feet from the shack floor. Erect, he towered over the brothers, small antlers scraping the ceiling, though his frame was slender, almost delicate, his fine fur totally unsuited to the increasing cold. “There’s not gonna be a Trishenko if it keeps getting colder, if the ice gets closer, if the snow keeps falling.” Donal’s ribs were visible on his sides. “I just – I need to take this chance, get to someplace warm.”
“What did your Da say?”
Donal shrugged, folded himself back to the floor to be more on a level with the brothers. “He don’t say much since Ma passed. Eleen tries to get him to open up, and sometimes he hugs Josh, and Della’s jokes sometimes get him to smile. But … he just keeps sharpening knives, as folk bring them, and putting on a coat to poke at the crops.”
The brothers looked at one another. The thought of losing their Ma was nearly incomprehensible in its awfulness.
“But we might not see you again. Ever.”
The smile on Donal’s face was small. “Sure you will. I’ll come back soon as I learn the lay of the land there. Maybe put lie to some of those rumors.”
“Like the tigers that prowl the fields?”
“And the lightning storms every day?”
“And the Ghost of the Archmage walking the hills?” The brothers all shuddered at that one.
“Yeah, like that.”
“But what,” Shiny asked in a small voice, "if they’re true?"
Donal shrugged again. "Beats being hungry here. "
The lone figure, now just a dark shadow, continued down toward the shore where, sometimes, boats still came. Behind, on the edge of town, a cluster of dark shadows, tall and small, all bundled against the storm, watched, until it vanished.
“We gotta do something,” Shiny said.
“What?” Whiny asked.
“Maybe … figure out some food that can grow on ice?” Tiny suggested.
“Something.” Shiny looked after Donal’s figure as it dwindled and faded. It seemed to pause for a moment, then was gone. “Whatever it takes. He’s the first, I think, but he won’t be the last.”
The remainder of the Cervoni family left for New Thule six months later, in a wan, cold springtime, after the death of their father. The Trimaldi Brothers never knew how he’d died, just that people whispered about it a lot.
No word of the Cervonis ever came back to New Thule, though sometimes traders who had been there passed through, telling stories of a harsh land of wild rumors, but where it didn’t snow quite as often.
The Cervonis left behind the better of their Da’s knife sharpening tools. “He’d have wanted that,” Eleen said. They were kept at the village hall, and people came and sharpened their own blades. Nobody could do it as well as Bentil Cervoni, though, so the knives were never as sharp.