Free Nothing in the World by Roy Kesey

waiting, and the two of them would walk the tide pools together again. He would find shells for her, the most beautiful shells she had
     ever seen.
    He took a step, and the spines of the tallest agave caught at his shirt. He pulled, and the agave held him; he jerked away, and his shirt tore. Holding
     the two tattered edges, he felt no longer whole. He searched through his things and found a small plastic bag that held a needle tucked into a spool of
     white thread. He pulled the needle out and attempted to thread it, but could not see the needle’s eye. He took a deep breath, tried to focus on
     the tiny hole, but his hands were trembling, everything blurred and spun, he dropped the needle and fell to the ground.
    For a time there was nothing in his mind but flecks of brown and white that moved like iron filings drawn by a magnet. The flecks were on the verge of
     forming a pattern, of showing him something, when the magnetic field collapsed and the flecks scattered and swirled, a tiny sandstorm, and he was
     nothing inside of it. He could not remember what he had been doing, could not remember anything he had ever done, was certain only that none of it
     mattered, that nothing he could do would make it matter.
    Then sifting through the sandstorm was a noise. Joško opened his eyes, and the world spread out away from him, and the noise became a song. He did
     not understand the words, but it was the voice of the girl, and it was coming from far to the north.
    For a crippled moment he considered ignoring her altogether. He already had a mission. The girl had abandoned him once, and might do so again. But her
     voice rose in pitch and volume, rose until the sound was more a scream than a song, and Joško knew there wasn’t much time.

What happened was this: There was once an old woman, many years a widow, who lived—
    I know. But this is a different story. Just listen.
    There was once an old woman, many years a widow, who lived in a village called Otok, east of Sinj. She was a good-hearted person, and the war made
     her feel, more than anything, very, very sad—sad for the dead of her country, and for the dead of those who attacked her country. She was one
     of those rare spirits who feel all the pain in the world, and choose to go on living anyway.
    She did what she could for everyone around her, baking loaves of bread with flour she could not spare, and leaving them on the porches of the
     houses whose doors bore the black ribbons that speak of death. Then one afternoon as she was returning home, artillery shells began to fall, and as
     she opened her front door there was an explosion that threw the old woman off her feet.
    ‘My!’ she thought. ‘That was close!’ She got up, straightened her clothes, went into her house... and found that it had no
     roof. The shell had struck her very home.
    Late that evening the enemy was driven back and Otok was saved. And strange though it might sound, the old woman learned to be thankful for the
     shell that had taken away her roof. In the daytime, sunlight poured through the hole and warmed her face, and at night she could see the stars and
     hear them singing, precisely as God intended.
    Then the winter came.

Part 4

10.
    J oško spent the night curled up in a bare vineyard outside another dust-sotted village. At sunrise a woman came out of the house, walked to where
     he lay, stood over him. He told her that everything was okay, that he had a vineyard too, and had always taken good care of it. The woman said nothing.
     He got to his feet, brushed the soil from his clothes and gathered his belongings.
    He climbed a low promontory, and below him was a road and a wide, sullen river. Fifty meters away both the river and the road swept to the north. He
     stumbled down the incline and across the road to the riverbank, and followed the water upstream.
    Whenever he heard a car coming he hid in the reeds that grew tall and full along the bank. Kilometer after kilometer, and through