When the dead boy’s boot split at the seam running along the heel, Finn began to cry at last. The eruption was a long time coming, a tidal rush of everything his tired feet had worked to put behind him. Miles of distance, yet somehow the broken boot told him there hadn’t been any separation, not really. The heavy wool socks—full of holes, his only pair—soaked in rain water. His little toe went numb. He sat on a fallen tree and cried. The world did not stop; there was no one around to hear him or see him or rub his back and say, “there, there.” Soon it would be dark.

Finn was cold. He’d spent the better part of a week being cold, but it wasn’t something you got used to. It changed. Just as soon as you started to get familiar with the sensation, it moved on. And what it traded for urgency, what it sacrificed for painful, white-hot immediacy, was a secret pervasiveness, a chill that burrowed underneath the skin and sunk into the porous collagen tissue that was bone. His hands had gone numb in the beginning, the skin burning then aching then fading away. His dexterity was next to go. The fingers at the end of his ghost hands becoming useless, immovable blocks, things that he could see and understand but not control. He could generate a temporary reversal if he sat on them long enough, or on the rare occasion he found himself circling a fire, but the stabbing, pins-and-needles sensation as blood returned to his appendages was enough to make him wish them gone again.

First the hands and the nose, any exposed skin. Finn Murphy had no gloves at home, or he would have taken them when he left. At the start, he had a fur-lined cap, which he pulled down over his ears, and a heavy coat, much too big for his starved, adolescent body, which he closed across his chest, and a pair of corduroy pants that were beginning to break at the knees. All that remained from his last trip out his father’s front door were the pants. The hat had blown off his head as he sprinted, red-faced and wheezy, after a departing train. The cart Darren pulled him into had been warm, warm enough, at least, to make him forget the hat for the evening. It was easy to forget things on the rails—wasn’t that the point?

For three days they rode south, watching the gray countryside roll past through the crack in the heavy metal door. Three days and two nights without food, drinking only what rainwater they could catch in their open mouths.

Darren was Darren McCluskey of Gloversville, New York. He was eleven years old with thin blonde hair combed over the crown of his head that made him look like a baby. One of his front teeth was missing. In its place was a small white stump.

“Another baby tooth,” he said, late in the first night, sometime just before dawn. The rocking of their carriage roused them while it was still dark. “Should have been a big one up there, in me gums, but it’s another baby tooth. Don’t know why.” Then he stuck his black finger into his mouth and wiggled the stump of tooth back and forth and dropped a wink.

Darren had hitched from Gloversville to Saratoga Springs, where the GSMW stopped on its way down to Albany. He claimed the railway ran from Montreal to Florida, which was his final destination.

“Can’t ride one train all the way, never make it,” he told Finn. “They got these mean guys at the trainyards that come through and beat on the carriages with metal sticks, hoping to scare ya. If ya scream, they take you out and break your legs and leave you in the woods to freeze like an ice cream pop.” He smiled as he said it, his small tooth wiggling in the darkness of his mouth.

Finn liked Darren, and not just because Darren had been there to stick his pale hand from the opening of the GSMW cart as it rolled through Poughkeepsie. Darren was kind, willing to share what he had, even when his supply was as meager as Finn’s. He was excited, which made him exciting. Most of all, he was full of energy and hopes and aspirations, even though he was as sick as Finn. Maybe sicker. When Darren coughed, the sound from his chest was like marbles being shaken in a box, and his face turned a red so dark it was nearly purple. Twice Finn had to pound him on the back to make him stop, both times fearing his only companion in their dark carriage was soon to be a corpse. But after catching his breath, Darren would always say something silly, something like, “Kiss me, I’m Irish,” or “Tastes like momma’s porridge.”

People like that had a way of making things all right.

Sleep was hard to come by, but there was nothing else to do, so they tried. The carriage would shake back and forth, sometimes hitting a bump and bouncing their heads off the hard floor. They slept next to each other, wrapped in Finn’s father’s coat. That was another reason to like Darren: heat rolled off his skin in sick waves. It wasn’t pleasant, but neither was being so cold your bones ached.

The first night, before the carriage shook them awake, Finn dreamed of his mother and his sister. They were dead, in the dream and outside of it. In the dream, his father was also dead. He’d frozen to death while chopping wood in the backyard because he didn’t have his coat. The police found Finn in Newark in this dream, and told him the news. They told him that while discovering the body they also discovered his father’s hidden supply of cash that he kept buried under the porch. It was just enough to pay off the house—the house which now belonged to Finn. The cops offered to drive him back to Pleasant Valley in their warm car. When he got there, his mother and sister were on the porch, sitting in rockers, their gray, dead faces lightly coated with snow.

“They come with the house,” the cop told him. “Take it or leave it.” Then his mother’s corpse started coughing. 

He woke up to Darren’s face, his open mouth hacking and spitting on him. He remembered where he was, who he was. Mom and Quinn were still dead, probably not on the porch of the house in Pleasant Valley, the house he planned to never see again, and dad was still alive, and he certainly didn’t have a hidden supply of cash buried anywhere. Not unless he buried it while drunk and forgot about it. Of course, that would have required Patrick Murphy to have possession of two dollars at the same time even once in his life, something Finn couldn’t force himself to believe, not even in his wildest fantasies.

That afternoon, he managed to doze off again. He was hungry, hungrier than normal, and feeling weak. He dreamt of a wide field beneath a blue sky and golden sun. The field was covered in pink flowers—tulips, his mother’s favorite. When she died in her bed, he’d wanted to place tulips on her chest, but he had no money to get them. Quinn was very sick by then, feverish and weak, unable to leave bed, so Finn went outside by himself and pulled leaves off the shrubs that lined the sidewalk.

In the dream he walked through the flowers, ducking his head to enjoy their smell. The warm sunlight on his skin made him feel content. He smiled. There was a small stone house in the middle of the field, with smoke billowing from the chimney. The smell of burning wood and roasting meat drifted to him and filled his nose. He found the house getting closer without realizing he’d begun walking.

There was the high voice of a young girl singing a rhyme. He looked for the owner of the voice, but could not find it. It came from everywhere: all around him. Above, below, from left, from right, from inside his head.

Come with me, come with me
We saved you a seat
Come inside, come to stay
 Have some to eat

He woke to his stomach growling. His face was on the cold, wooden floor, and he was staring at Darren’s boots, at the seam running along the heel. The stitching was coming apart.

That was the evening they crossed into Pennsylvania. There was a sign, ghostly in the day’s dying light, welcoming them to the Keystone State, just before their carriage went bounding over the trestle bridge. The water below was as spectral as the sign: frozen at the banks, hustling white in the center. They’d been awake then, holding onto the door, looking down through the crack.

“Mighty cold, I’d say,” Darren whispered. “Turn you into an ice cream pop right quick, it would.” He coughed, hard, and sat with his back to the wall, trying to breathe. Finn coughed a couple breaths of his own through the crack, his life leaving him in steam, billowing out in hacks and dissipating as it was swept into unforgiving Pennsylvania air. His upper back hurt. It was itchy, like there was fuzz growing beneath his skin, tickling his insides with every breath.

“Pennsylvania,” Darren said. “We’re behind the grind. Thought we’d be getting to Virginia by now.”

There was total darkness inside the carriage except for the thin gray stripe bleeding through the open door. Finn kept his face to it a moment longer, watching the train bend along the bridge. They turned ninety degrees to the right and continued on after crossing back to solid ground. The track they followed cut through an empty field. Brown, winter-beaten grass stretched for acres before meeting the treeline. It was dark inside the trees. Very dark. 

There was a lonely farmhouse sitting close to the woods; a yellow light glowed from one of the windows, telling of warmth and comfort.

“Are we still going the right way?” he asked. “Train turned. Doesn’t look like it’s turning back anytime soon.”

His question was greeted by dark silence.

Eventually, he opened his coat and slid next to Darren’s sleeping body. Every inhale produced a grating wheeze that became a snore on its way back out. Finn stifled a cough and tried to sleep. There were no dreams that night or the next.

The day passed as all days seemed to, on the rails. There were shadowed corners; that paltry, gray line of daylight that snaked through the crack; the tinny pitter-patter of rain bouncing off the metal carriage. They coughed a lot, clapped each other’s backs when it seemed necessary. Finn heard more of Darren’s rasping bark in his own breath than the previous day and tried to swallow the unease that came with the realization.

“Thought the goddamn GSMW went to goddamn Florida,” Darren repeated from his dark corner. He was talking low, talking to himself—had been all morning.

“Maybe the train turned back when we were sleeping,” Finn said.

“Goddamn Florida. We’re still going west, Finny. I can feel it. You can’t feel it?”

“I don’t know.”

“Can tell by the way the light comes in. The sun is up there,” he cocked a thumb over his shoulder, toward the locomotive. “We’re running right to it. Probably going to goddamn Chicago. I’m not going to no Chicago. Chicago is cold. Turn into a goddamn ice cream on the sidewalk. Gotta get somewhere warm.”

Finn tried to picture Darren’s beach, the sun glinting off the Atlantic, the burning stretch of sand that would heat his soles, like walking on hotplates—

He saw a great pink field and a stone house. Smelled flowers, and the smoke of a slow-cooked meal.

“Would like to be warm,” he said.

“Next time train slows crossing through a town, we bail. Figure out where we are and hitch to the closest city. It don’t have to be no apple to have a railyard. Find one pointing south and we scram.”

“You think?”

“Yeah. Cinder dick will probably come knocking down the carts next stop anyway, we got lucky to make it this far in this shitbasket.”

Somewhere in the dark hours between a dream’s first turn and a nightmare’s final spin, a terrible screeching rose up beneath them and shouted to the sky. Darren was on his beach, wondering why the ferris wheel was producing that awful metal-on-metal scream, shielding his eyes from the sparks; Finn was mounting the first step of the wooden porch when his sister’s dead mouth began screaming, the sound like a steel rake being dragged in the road behind a truck. Then they were shaking, violently bouncing from side to side. Finn woke to the sound of Darren’s thin-haired skull bouncing off the metal wall.

“Gah!” he said, rubbing his head. The door had slid down its track and was now completely open, letting in gusts of chilly black air and that horrible grating scream. Finn watched as reality dawned on his friend’s face.

“Stopping!” They had to shout now to be heard. Darren repeated: “Stopping! Train stopping!”

He struggled to his feet, his arms pinwheeling at either side to maintain his balance; Finn thought he looked like a drunken sailor. Or a drunken insurance salesman—one with no job and a belly full of cheap hooch and red hands that were hard as bricks when closed for striking.

Darren grabbed the door and leaned out; at the same time the train lurched to the left, ejecting his body the way strong-armed men probably threw cargo from the very carriage he was standing in to idling trucks. Finn allowed himself a moment’s hesitation before jumping. He didn’t think about why he was doing it—didn’t think about anything at all, besides how dark the ground was, and how it seemed to be stretching up and away from him as he jumped, getting farther and closer at the same time.

His feet hit dirt; his ankle rolled; the remainder of his body followed. The darkness of the night robbed him of his vision, and the train’s howling brakes assaulted his ears. For a moment he simply lay on the cold, damp grass, trying to distract the pain in his lower leg by counting the array of ice chip stars that decorated the sky.

Darren stumbled to him, his pale face blocking the sky. He was still rubbing his head, although his fingers now massaged the side instead of the crown, just under the left ear. There was blood in that ear and running down his neck. In the darkness it looked black and viscous, like motor oil instead of blood.

“Yard is right yonder.” Darren pointed straight ahead, then slowly returned his hand to massage the bleeding ear. He looked at his fingers, staring cross eyed at the tacky liquid, then wiped it on his pants and said, “Come on, then.”

They walked. Darren’s gait looped at times, as if he were suffering from a dizzy spell. Finn hobbled behind him, trying to keep the weight off his right ankle. Both tried to quiet the rumbling in their chests when a coughing fit came on: the train had stopped, and the night was quiet.

“Might be other lines,” Darren said. Walking low, talking quietly; Finn felt like a marauder, stalking an enemy encampment to harry. He pretended he’d been born twenty years earlier and was somewhere across the pond, fighting the Great War. Giving himself purpose helped dull the pain.

“Find one pointing south and sneak on. Still the plan. Don’t feel so good, Finn. Still the plan.”

The tracks they were following descended into a narrow valley with thick scrubs of dying winter trees on either side. They could see light ahead now, and hear the voices of men, shouting to be heard over the ruckus of heavy doors sliding on rails. One of them had a dark baton, and he was walking slowly down the line, banging it against the carriages, shouting.

“There’s the dick,” Darren said. “Good thing we jumped, eh? Gotta be careful, now. Come on. In the trees.”

They crept quietly through the woods, making sure not to lose sight of the track. Soon they were close enough to see the men and hear their talk. Darren and Finn stayed low, watching.

“No other tracks,” Darren said. “Goddamn depot in the middle of the woods with no other lines. What’s the good in it? Come on, we should get walking. No chance we’re hopping back on this one. Not tonight. Gotta be a town close. Something close. What’s the good in stopping out in the woods, anyway?”

He stood and tugged Finn’s collar, but Finn stayed sitting. The men had moved farther down the line. It appeared they were simply checking that the carriages toward the front were closed and locked, not unloading any cargo. There were tall oil lamps burning every few yards, casting thick, shifting yellow light against the shadows. The train sat silently like some long, rusted worm. Each man produced a thick cloud of steam every time he spoke. They were smiling, joking, in high spirits.

There was a small wooden hut with a schedule pinned to the wall. The hut sat at the treeline, less than five feet from the dark cover they hid in. Next to the schedule was a map intersected with red and blue lines. Finn shot up, stumbled on his bad ankle, and shambled toward it.

“Finn! They’re gonna see you!”

Five feet became fifty. Finn nearly tripped and fell, dragging his right foot behind him. He thought about how quickly the cold took its hold; he’d been sitting in the carriage for days, and that had been cold, but less than fifteen minutes outside and his bones had become stiff, useless rods, his muscles screaming things that cramped and bit. The hand he used to rip the map from the wall was nothing more than a block of concrete at the end of his wrist. He thanked God in Heaven that his fingers had caught at the edge and his swipe, the only one he dared take, removed the paper without tearing it down the middle.

Once he was back in the safety of the trees, he held it up to Darren. “Now we can know which way town is.”

“You’re a wild man, Finn Murphy.” Darren laughed, and the laugh became a cough. He bit down on his sleeve and choked, his facing turning a glum shade of gray in the moonlight. When he managed to breathe again, he fell over. His eyes opened halfway; they were crossed and lazy. “Think I hit my head, Finny,” he said. “Don’t feel so good.”

“Here, help me read the map,” Finn said. “You’re better at direction. Just look at the map. We’ll be better soon. Somewhere warm. Point me somewhere warm.”

The first thing the map confirmed was that they were in Pennsylvania. The second, that they would die in these woods, freezing. Probably tonight. They were somewhere north of Pittsburgh, deep in western Pennsylvania, still fifty miles at least from the Ohio border. There were towns in the distance—New Bethlehem, Butler—but none close enough to walk. The closest was a small dot on the map called Harlow’s Ridge, but that was six miles east, at best. Nothing between the small black x marking their location and that dot. Not so much as a country road of hard-packed dirt. There were no other rail lines intersecting this depot, or within thirty miles.

They sat with the realization until the cold threatened to freeze them in place, to turn them into ice cream pops with marbled eyes and brittle ears and little dirty hands.

Ten minutes of walking into the woods—they moved to stay warm, telling themselves that their movement wasn’t aimless, no, they’d find something worth finding, something, anyone—and a flicker of orange stood out in the distance. It was a flame, dancing in the dark, licking at the crisp air that seemed to hang in sheets.

“Look,” Finn said, pointing. Darren leaned with one arm hoisted over his shoulders. He was stumbling more, muttering under his breath the way he had earlier that morning.

“Can’t see so good, Finn.” He coughed hard and this time made no effort to cover his mouth. His lanky arms hung limp at his sides as if the effort to lift them was beyond him.

“Think it’s a fire. Come on.”

Finn limped, dragging part of his own body and most of Darren’s, closer to where the enticing orange flame shifted and growled. He could hear it now, crackling. The sound was temptation; the smell like finding Heaven. Finn saw the barrel from which the tips of the flame protruded, and shadowed figures capering around it. There was singing, in his head:

Come with me, come with me

He paused, his heart beating against his sunken white chest, trying to escape from the sides of his neck. He squinted. There were three boys around the fire. They stood close together, their hands over the heat. From where he stood, the shadows under their chins turned their faces sour, made them look like angry marionettes, grimacing against their strings.

Then he heard laughter. Regular laughter. The sound of boys. They pushed on, snapping branches and rustling leaves, yet no heads turned, not until they entered the clearing and the warm glow of the fire. Finn assumed them distracted by the flames; it was not until later that he would think it was as if they’d been expecting visitors, completely uninterested in their arrival.

“Warm, Finny,” Darren said. The tallest boy turned his head, sneered, went back to warming his hands. Finn pulled Darren close to the barrel and helped support his weight.

“What’s wrong with ‘im?” the closest boy asked. He was smaller than the other two, round in the face. There was a tattered scarf wrapped around his neck and chin. His eyes glowed like hot coals, shifting with the reflected flames.

“Hit his head jumping from the train. He doesn’t feel so good.”

“Gotta stick the landing,” said the kid across the fire. His cheeks were red and chapped and his lips were broken, calloused pouches, like crocodile skin. The flames jumped in front of his face, intermittently blocking it from view. “I stuck it. Stuck it perfect.”

“How ‘bout your brother, then, nitwit?” said the tall one.

Darren barked a quick cough; phlegm flew from his mouth into the fire. It sizzled in the flames. He gasped for air, grabbing at his throat, and almost fell forward. Finn pulled him back before he could fall into the flames; instead, his head bounced off the metal barrel with a hollow thud.

“Lookit the stooge,” the tall kid said. “Half-dead and his little buddy dragging the corpse. Save your energy.”

“Just needs to get warm,” Finn said. He crouched and started beating on Darren’s back. After a moment the coughing fit passed. Darren lay in the dry, crunchy leaves, his floating eyes glazed. A harsh rattling wheeze slipped past his small tooth with every breath.

“Kid’s not getting any warmer,” said the small kid. “He’ll be cold as ice soon.”

“And about as useful,” added the tallest one. The way the flames twirled and manipulated the shadows kept changing his face. Finn could see how sunken his cheeks were. They were all gaunt, every hungry boy around the fire in the woods, but the tall one looked emaciated, like a skeleton holding on to the last bit of stretched, screaming flesh it had. His eyes were dark and mean, like trenches dug with angry spades.

Finn stood and held his hands over the fire—they were quickly becoming useless. He alternated glances from the three faces before him and the one beneath him.

“What’s your name?” asked Mr. Perfect Landing.

“Finn.”

“I’m Bobby,” he said.

“My name is George,” said the little one.

An owl hooted, three times, each call rising in pitch until it was nearly a scream; only Finn seemed to notice. The moon was visible above the break in the trees—round and silver, like a newly minted coin. Finn was warming up, the fire they stood around breathing life back into his beaten lungs. Darren was still fighting the air with every breath, shivering. Finn took his father’s jacket off and laid it on his friend, like a quilt.

“How did you get out here?” he asked, because it seemed like something needed to be said. The silence was heavy; he could feel it closing in on their small clearing. The tall one laughed.

“Train, same as you,” said George.

“No way else to get here,” Bobby added. “No roads, no towns, nothing. I was trying to get to Dayton, got family out that way. Jumped when the train started to slow. Stuck the landing perfect.”

“I didn’t jump,” George said. “Thought I could hide behind this old dresser and they wouldn’t notice me. The flatfoot pulled me out and smashed my leg real good, threw me into the woods.”

Finn glanced down and noticed George was leaning on a metal rod, using it like a crutch. His left pant leg looked messy and baggy, as if what was inside was boneless—putty to be shaped by strong hands.

“You guys are brothers?” Finn asked. George looked down.

“Will’s dead,” Bobby said. “My little brother.”

“Oh.”

“What about you, Finn, what got you out into this mess?” he said, quick to move conversation along.

“Same as everyone, probably. No money. No food. My dad’s a drunkard. Thought I might be able to go—”

“Same as everyone, you said it already, Christ. None of us want to hear it. Save your crying for your mom.” The tall kid had his long, bony arms crossed in front of his chest. Finn could see his hands were clenched into fists.

“Gosh, Jack, I asked ‘im. Just thought it—”

“Well don’t think!” Jack yelled. “Thinking got your brother killed, yeah? Maybe you should spend more time thinking about that.” He turned to Finn. “You left home because there was no money for food and what money there was was drunk straight to your daddy’s belly, yeah? Great. You’re not special. Not the first kid to end up here, and won’t be the last to drag dead weight behind you. We don’t need any more mouths fighting over the scraps the Joes leave behind at that there depot, so you might as well keep moving. And leave your friend behind, if you’re smart.”

“I’m getting him back on the train tomorrow. Schedule said one was coming.”

Jack laughed again. “You’re not getting on any trains, not out here. They hardly take anything off here, all they do is check the cargo and bang on the locks. That copper turned George into a cripple would be happy to take his stick to your head. You think we’d be standing around this trash fire if we could be on a train right now?”

“If I could find a road I’d hitch. Someone would stop if they saw how sick he was.”

“No roads, kid. Not out here. Just trees and dirt and one rail cutting through it all. We’ve been all around this place, walked miles in every direction myself. Always come back here where at least I can pick the trash for paper to burn and maybe something to eat. There’s never enough. Not for us, and not for you. So leave.”

“There has to be something,” Finn said. “Can’t be no people nowhere.”

“Bobby’s dullard brother thought the same. Started walking out that way with a bad knee from tumbling off that train. Said he’d walk a whole day and if he found nothing he’d walk back. He ain’t walk back. Great plan those two cooked up.

“You can stay till morning if you don’t want to walk in the dark. But you’ll only be hungrier. At least it will give your friend time to die so you won’t feel bad ‘bout leaving him behind.”

“I’m not leaving him and he’s not dying!” Finn backed over Darren defensively. He looked down. His friend’s eyes were still open, seeing nothing. The rattling sound had stopped, as had the motion of his thin chest, rising and falling beneath the jacket. “Darren?” He put his warm hands to his friend’s cold face. Darren shivered; his glassy eyes rolled. The blood in his ear was nearly frozen, thick like molasses.

Jack walked over and started removing Darren’s boots.

“Hey, quit!”

“He doesn’t need ‘em, kid. Lookit him. Here, I’ll even let you take the boots. Your shoes are falling apart, and you’re the one with some walking to do.” He threw a boot at Finn. It hit his chest and fell to the ground.

“I said quit!”

Finn shoved Jack, who landed square on his butt. His face twisted in rage, twisted the way it had under the moving light of the fire. Jack stood and grabbed Finn, spun him toward the barrel, held his face inches from the flames.

“Wanna be warm? You can be warm for the rest of your life.”

“Warm,” Darren said from beneath them. 

Jack let Finn go, threw him on the ground. He kneeled over Darren, pulled the jacket off him.

“Finny?” Darren asked the sky. “Warm, are we somewhere warm?” His pale arms hugged his chest and he coughed his dead man’s cough, shaking and rattling in the dirty leaves.

“That’s mine,” Finn said.

“Beat it! Be happy we three don’t kill you right here and take what you got on ya.”

“I’ll die without it.”

“You’ll die with it, too. Go do it somewhere else.”

“Finn?” Darren asked. Coughed until he gagged. “Think I hit my head.”

“Your head is just fine, pally,” Jack said, leaning close to inspect Darren’s shirt. “Take a rest. Take a rest.”

The other boys stood around the fire, watching. The moving shadows contorted their faces into devil masks. Their eyes glowed greedily, like vultures eyeing the reddest section of dead meat. Finn turned, walked, and only stopped once to swap his shoes for his friend’s, and only then when he could no longer hear Darren asking his empty question to the sky.

Now, sitting, crying, he felt the cold settling in, vibrating his bones, transforming him into a walking, aching tuning fork with human skin. Finn stared at the broken heel of Darren’s left boot: it hung agape like a slack mouth. Inside, he could see his dark sock, now darker with damp. His feet had gone blessedly numb.

He’d walked through the night, through dawn’s soft bloom and noontime’s meager appearance, straight in one direction. He thought—hoped—it was east, because the map had told him that was his best shot at finding people. The sky was dark and clouded; the same dull, insipid gray sheet that had hung over his head since leaving home. It was hard to track the sun’s path in a sky like that. Darren would have known which way was east.

He had no way to tell the time, but the lengthening of shadows told him evening was near. Beneath the trees the daylight left quicker. Soon it would be dark, and in the darkness, colder. Finn looked at what surrounded him, tried to decide if it was a fitting place to rest eternal. Thin trees that left wide gaps; russet, dehydrated leaves that broke underfoot; silence and solitude. It was as good a graveyard as any. He closed his eyes and leaned back.

What he saw behind the blank walls of his eyelids opened them back up: his father, red-faced and grimacing; his mother, blue-faced and dead; his sister, pale and sick; Darren, wide-eyed and questioning.

Not as good a graveyard as any, he decided. For five days he’d run from death, narrowly escaping its bony clutch; he wasn’t about to sit around while it crept up behind him. If it was to have him, he’d meet it halfway. Death would find him in motion. Let it still me, he thought.

Finn stood and coughed, choking on the cool air. His back burned and buzzed. His sternum strained against the pressure beneath it. He started again, continuing east.

Thirty minutes passed and the sky did not change. It was gloomy beneath the trees, but not getting any darker. Perhaps it wasn’t as late as he’d thought. A racking wind blew through on occasion, shaking empty tree limbs, doubling the dull ache in his chest. He’d given up hope that he would find someone, some kind-hearted savior; his only wish now was to walk as far as his tired legs would take him.

Or so he thought, until he came across the field.

Just past a strange outcropping of rocks and a feeble stream the color of cobalt, the trees began to open up. He could see the place where they ended. There was sunlight over the field. Inside the woods, all was gray; he could see color beyond the treeline. Goodness, and he’d thought it to be evening! The sky he saw beyond the canopy was bright blue—the color of spring! A yellow sun burned a hole through that spring sky, telling of warmth and flowers and picnics eaten on checkered cloths. He could smell the flowers now, as he got closer, their sweet, ripe perfume sweeping through the break on warm winds. And he’d almost given up!

Finn left the woods and entered the field. The golden heat from above blessed his chapped skin. As far as his eyes could reach stretched a pink field, punctuated with rows and rows of tulips. They swayed in the breeze and their aroma filled his nose, sickly sweet. He felt awash with comfort. A smile broke through his lips. His last thought, as he left the shadowy forest, was let death have another.

He moved without purpose at a restful pace. The comfortable numbness from his feet reached up and spread throughout his body. No longer did his appendages and limbs ache with the insidious penetration of cold; his red, ice-burned skin ceased its perpetual screaming. He followed the music of the wind and dipped his head to smell the tulips which danced to it. They seemed almost alive in the way they moved.

From within his head came a voice, high and lilting. It sang familiar words and bade him come forward. There was a house, farther on, surrounded by pink rises of flowers. He was walking there. It was made of stone, and its gray facade stuck out amongst the sea of vibrant color. The house was old but quaint, charming in its own rustic lack of sophistication. Well-maintained and composed. There was no reason the sight of it should cause him to shudder, to shiver as he had within the thicket, yet a penetrating disquiet fell over him, just for a moment. And then, like the yellow and blue butterfly his eyes were following, it left as quickly as it came, only stopping for a brief visit on the pink pedals before being swept in the golden breeze.

From the chimney rose a cloud of blue-gray smoke. The smoke told stories of home-cooked meals, plump delicious meats roasting over split logs. His stomach groaned; it seemed to twist beneath his skin, like a tightening vortex. There was a young girl outside—the owner of the voice from his dreams. He would ask her if he could come inside, come to stay, have some to eat.

Before closing the final distance he dipped his head again, inhaled deep, pulling the floral fragrance to the bottom of his lungs. He coughed, doubled over, coughed harder, listening to the scratchy rattle at the base of his throat. Finn coughed and gasped until his eyes watered, thinking this was fate’s final cruel twist, that he should keel over and die with the scent of fresh flowers and roasting meats in his nose. Through his wavering vision the sky appeared a faded gray; the scent in his nose was not of budding life but instead withering decay—dead leaves at the bottom of a well.

He caught his breath and straightened. The flowers bobbed in the wind, sighing at his feet. He looked down at the tulips and they seemed to be a thousand eyes looking back at him. The sky once again blazed blue above.

The girl was almost his age, perhaps a year younger. Her hair was the same golden color as the wind and her eyes were set in the same blue as the sky above them. She smiled shyly as he approached, and cast her face down while digging a foot into the dirt.

“Hello,” Finn said.

The girl did not reply. She kept her face turned down, continued twirling her foot.

“Do you live here?” he asked.

She nodded.

“I’m sorry to be a bother, but I’ve been lost for days and I need food.”

She raised her face and smiled, her mouth filled with the neatest, whitest teeth he’d ever seen. Her voice was soft and high as she chanted, “Bubblegum, bubblegum, round and sweet! Give me something pink to eat!”

 Finn looked away from her round face; glanced at the stone house before them. Again he felt a sense of dread, a pervasive, creeping sensation that crawled and tickled just beneath his skin.

Suddenly his hand was taken and the girl was leading him up the steps. They reached the door, a tall, heavy, wooden thing, racked with scars. He was surprised to see the girl knock, four times with her left hand. She turned and flashed him her toothy grin again as they waited.

The door opened. A woman stood in the darkness inside. It was as if the sunlight did not breach the doorway. She was mostly shadow; Finn had to fight the urge to turn and run. If not for the small hand holding his, he may have. Then the woman stepped into the light and smiled. She was of modest age and beauty, her face worn and wrinkled but pleasant. Her hair was dark black, laced throughout with strands of the finest white, tied behind her head and combed back from her temples. Her eyes—they were the same striking blue as the girl’s—swept the pair at her doorstep. Finn watched her smile grow, noted the resemblance—the neat white teeth, the deep blue eyes—and then she said, “Well, and who might you be?”

“I’m Finnegan Murphy, ma’am. I hate to be a bother, but I’ve been lost for days and—”

“And you’re hungry, of course you are, Finn. Come inside, then. Come on.”

The house was smaller than it had appeared. Finn walked beyond the doorway and found himself standing in the main room, a rectangular space that had no more than ten feet to any side. There were no doors and no halls leading elsewhere. His head spun for a moment; he reached out and grasped the back of a wooden rocker to steady himself.

“Goodness, poor boy,” the woman said, closing the door behind him. “You’re weak. Sit. Sit now.”

Finn sat, stifled a cough. His heart was beating hard and cool drops of perspiration were budding on his forehead. “I’m okay,” he said, “just, your house, I thought—”

“Didn’t expect to see such a place way out this way?”

The woman’s gaze was heavy. Finn felt it pinning him to his seat. Her dark blue eyes were darker inside the shadowed room. He felt beseeched to agree.

“Yes,” he said. “It’s very nice.” And it was; the room, although smaller than expected, carried an air of meticulous care. Everything was neatly set. The floor was long strips of some dark wood, marbled and veined. There were two other chairs, identical to the one Finn sat in. No table. In the corner there was an aged hearth and a breathing fire; sitting above the flames was a black metal rack, and on the rack were long strips of meat, bubbling. The aroma carried to him and he felt his stomach tighten once more.

“Well thank you, Finnegan Murphy. How polite of you to say so. Your mother must be dearly proud of your mature temperament.” She winked then, and parted her thin lips in a confidential smile. “It’s all I have, out here in the willywags. Takes a lot of work to maintain it, all by myself, but we do what we must to pass the time, aye, what we must. Not a lot of visitors I get, but some, yes, some. I like them to find a welcoming home—after all, ‘tis such a long journey here most have taken.”

She walked to the fire and adjusted the rack. Finn looked around, noticed that the girl from outside had not followed them in. He was alone in here with the woman. Again his head seemed to turn: it was like being on the merry-go-round at Filham Park, trying to keep sight of something outside the spin as your body went around and around and around. He felt as if his head were in one spot and his body another. There was a lightness in his chest that rose to the back of his eyes. He worried he might faint.

A coughing fit overcame him. He dipped his head inside his shirt and hacked, listening to the marble-box rattle inside, wondering if he’d ever manage to gain his breath.

“Sounds like a touch of croup,” the woman said, walking back to him. She carried an ornate white plate, rimmed with gold loops and pink flowers, on which sat two smoking strips of blackened meat. “Hopefully nothing worse,” she said, placing the plate on his lap. “There are many worse things, you know, out there. ‘Tis why I stay here, off the beaten brush. Eat, Finnegan Murphy, return your strength.”

Alarm bells sang inside his tired head. While coughing and struggling for air, just as outside, it almost seemed his head was clearing, like some dreadful veil had been cast aside. The smell from his plate was one of charred skin and burning hair. The woman’s voice lost its warmth, became the sound of a long-lost crypt sliding open. But then he breathed, and the aroma was too enticing to ignore. He tore a piece and ate greedily.

The woman sat in the seat opposite him, crossed her leg, began to rock back and forth.

“So you’re Finnegan Murphy of New York,” she said. “You can call me Mildred, if you like. I’m from the old country. You’ll notice in how I speak, I’m sure of it. A boy like you especially, a boy who sees well and listens close.”

Finn was too busy eating to reply. His dirty fingers had gone to work ripping pieces and shoving them between his teeth. He chewed long on the tough meat, savoring its rich flavor and the way it seemed to sate the deep ache in his stomach.

“I have something for you!” Mildred said suddenly. She crossed the room and returned with a pair of boots, so new they still held the shine of fresh leather.

“Can’t be walking long in those dread things, I’m afraid, and a boy like you has lots to walk. A long journey it is from the cradle to the grave, and you so fresh from the cradle as you stand. Yet you wear the shoes of a corpse! How they’d fit the bones of a starveling fresh beneath the dirt!”

She tossed the boots at his feet; dropped to her knees, started removing his shoes. Finn was licking the flavor from his black fingers, filling his mouth with the second flank. He wanted to stop and breathe lest he sick it all up on the polished floor, but he couldn’t. Mildred spoke from his feet as she fitted his new boots and her breath was the perfume of freshly cut tulips.

“Aye, better for my friend Finnegan Murphy of Pleasant Valley, I would say.” She patted the new boots hanging at the end of his legs. “A little present he’ll remember from his friend Mina! You can call me that, if you’d like: Mina. Or Gullveig, I’ve been known by many names, I have. But you know what they say! ‘A sweet by any name is still sweet!’ I’ve long been fond of that one. Do you like sweets, Finn?”

Finn nodded his head as he chewed. Juice dripped from the corners of his mouth, pink and runny. The woman at his feet tittered, the sound like wet fingers running along the rims of arranged glass, high and alien and musical.

“Of course you do,” she said. “Sweets for the sweet boy!” She grabbed the inside of his leg and her grip was the talon of some large, predatory bird.

“Sweet boy!” she cried. “Sweet boy!”

Finn chewed, swallowed, filled his mouth again. Tears ran down his dirt-streaked face, just as blood drooled from the corners of his mouth. The front door opened.

“Ah!” said the thing at his feet. “‘Tis my sister, back from the wood! Fetching my tools was she. You two are well met already; I’ll spare introductions.”

His mouth filled with the taste of iron, like drinking from the tap. Finn tried to stop eating; the best he could do was open his mouth and let the chewed meat fall into his lap. He looked down, saw bits of hair mucked in saliva and blood. Turned his head.

An old woman stood in the doorway, shyly grinning at the ground. Her hair was long and straw-colored, hanging at her waist. She twirled one foot girlishly and avoided eye contact. Finn forced himself to look at the voice kneeling in front of him.

With her glamour cast aside, he saw her as she was. Older than old, ancient, with jaundiced skin stretched tightly across bone like weathered parchment. Her hands were hooks that curled arthritically toward her wrists. One sat on his foot, the other high in his lap. She smiled at him and her teeth were brown and broken and few; her lips curled in like the lips of a toothless invalid. Her eyes had gone milky—no longer the blue of the sea but now the sightless, creamy color of spoiled milk. When she spoke her timeworn voice crooned as if from some forgotten hole in the ground.

“Of course, y’won’t be needing boots anymore, not as close to death as ye are, Finn Murphy.”

What he’d mistaken for boots were rusted iron shackles, gripping his legs to the chair, which wasn’t wood but metal, and bolted to the floor. The rustic, comfortable room faded, first from the corners of his vision, like a person on the verge of fainting, until he saw fully where he was: the floor was stone, old and wet. The walls were broken, the roof missing in wide chunks. Water dripped. The smell was of dank, forgotten years passed in the dark. The roaring fire in the corner was really a meager clutch of twigs burning. Through the window he saw not a sunshine-filled field of pink flowers, but thin, sickly trees, a gray-white sky the color of bones in a grave, and a ground covered with russet leaves.

He was inside a derelict stone structure somewhere deep in the woods and night was falling.

“Ye know that sure as I do, boyo. One listen to that bony little chest of yours tells all you need to know. Surely you know that sound, aye? The same one ye heard in your mother and sister before death came and wrapped his grisly hands round their necks, the same sound that came from the lungs of your poor friend, the one whose boots ye took for yourself, the one just now turning into a wide-eyed thoughtless ice cream pop in the dirt!” She threw her head back and cackled.

“I hope ye managed to enjoy your final meal—we’re not without our decency here are we? Are we?”

The witch in the corner lifted her head long enough to meet his eyes and shake it back and forth. She walked behind him and placed her cold hands on his shoulders, under his chin, rubbed his ears and played with his hair.

“Aye, she likes you, Finnegan Murphy! She always likes the sweet ones! Not like the last animal, the one ye just finished eating. I think it called itself Will. Tough little one he was, not sweet at all. But you! You look like you’ll be nice and pink on the inside, sweeter than a summer tulip. You like tulips, Finnegan? Would you like to see some more as you go?”

He found himself unable to move, unable to lift even his head.

“Aye, I think he would. Let’s give the lad some tulips then, Opal. Let him think of his dear mum one last time. And sing to him! He likes the singing, I see it in his head!”

An old, calloused hand swept over his face. It wiped from his hairline to his chin, and as it did he saw the stonehouse in the woods fade away. He was looking at the window in the back wall: there was a great pink field beyond it. The sky was cloudless and blue. He could smell the flowers.

As the ripping began, high on his leg, a feeling like dirty old nails filed to a jagged tip, tearing long strips of his thighs, his ears filled with the sweet, angelic voice of a child:

Bubblegum, bubblegum, round and sweet! Give me something pink to eat!