Free Parvana's Journey by Deborah Ellis

cover a little and placed the plate underneath it.
    Parvana watched closely. Eventually she saw slow movements under the cover as the old woman lifted morsels of food from her plate to her mouth.
    Through it all, Leila talked and talked. Words spilled out of her like she was a pot boiling over.
    “I know I’m talking a lot,” she said, “but it’s been such a long time since I had anyone to talk to, especially children. Of course, I have Grandmother, but she doesn’t talk much.”
    As far as Parvana could see, Grandmother didn’t talk at all.
    “Was she always so quiet?” she asked Leila.
    “Oh, no. She used to talk all the time. All the women in my family are big talkers. She didn’t go quiet until my mother wandered off.”
    “Mothers don’t just wander off,” Asif said.
    “Well, really she went looking for my brother and father. Someone came by and told us they were killed in the fighting, but she didn’t believe them and went off to look for herself. She hasn’t come back yet. I sit up on the hill every day and watch for her, but she hasn’t come back yet.” She looked confused, Parvana thought, as if she couldn’t understand why her mother was taking so long.
    Asif asked the question Parvana was almost too afraid to ask.
    “How long ago did she leave?”
    Leila seemed puzzled.
    “Did she leave before last winter?” Parvana asked.
    “Yes,” Leila said. “Before the winter. The nights were still warm when she left.”
    That was months and months ago.
    “You’ve been alone all that time?”
    “Not alone,” Leila insisted. “With Grandmother.”
    Asif and Parvana exchanged looks. Being alone with a grandmother like that was as bad as being all alone.
    “Go ahead and talk all you want,” Parvana said. “We’ll listen.”

TWELVE
    They spent the night in the little house. Leila shared her mattress with Parvana, and Asif slept next to Hassan. Parvana slept deeply and did not dream.
    The flies woke her up.
    We’ll have to do something about that, she thought as she scratched at the flea bites on her ankles. They would have to do something about the bugs in the beds, too.
    She realized she had decided to stay for a while.
    The others were still sleeping. Parvana gently lifted Leila’s arm from where it had fallen across her chest and went outside.
    The clearing was a little world by itself. The way the hills surrounded it, it was hard to tell there was a world outside at all.
    Parvana walked around the little house. In the back was a patch of dirt that looked as if it might have been a vegetable garden at one point. There were sticks in the ground that could have staked tomatoes, like the ones she had seen in gardens in the villages she had passed through with her father.
    Near the garden was a rusty wire cage full of pigeons. The cage was taller than Parvana, but the perch had broken and was lying on the ground covered with droppings. Most of the pigeons hopped around in the muck on the bottom. One was trying to work its way through a hole in the wires. Parvana put her hand against the hole and felt the bird’s soft head butt against her palm.
    “We ate one of those last night,” Leila said, coming up behind her. “We eat some, and they keep having babies, so we have more to eat.”
    Leila took Parvana on a tour of the clearing. “These are apple trees,” she said, pointing to two scraggly trees with shiny green leaves and little green apples on the branches. “The apples will be ready in the fall. They’re good, but you have to eat around the worms.”
    In another part of the yard were sacks of flour and rice. Parvana could see mouse holes in some of the bags.
    “Come and see my treasure house,” Leila said.
    The treasure house turned out to be some boards leaning up against a rock. Leila pulled one of the boards away. Parvana peered in and saw cans of cooking oil, several bolts of cloth, a box of light bulbs, cooking pots, sandals of many sizes, men’s caps, lengths of rope,