Free Shattered Dreams by Rebecca King Page A

get
shawls and the like. Thieve it if you don’t have a penny to buy
anything. Once you have got something, you can trade it for the
things you need. Try to get something that you can spread out. You
know, break up. That way, one thing can be broken down into several
things you can trade.”
    Tilly
stared at him in horror as the realisation dawned of just how
desperate her life had become. Through the gloom, she watched him
nod toward the bag at her feet.
    “ If I were you, I would break that bag up,” he suggested
wisely.
    “ Trade my bag?”
    Zack
shook his head. “No, break it up. Sell the metal work. It can be
used for buckles and the like. Nobody around here has use for a
bag.” He grinned at her. “No place to go, see?”
    “ How long have you been here, Zack?”
    He
squinted and peered at the wall for a moment before he shrugged.
“Three summers, I think.”
    She
stared at him nonplussed for a moment. “Where are your
parents?”
    A shadow
immediately fell over his face, and he stared down at his boots for
a moment. “I don’t know my dad. My mama died a while ago. One
minute she was alright, then they wouldn’t let me see her because
she had taken poorly. They buried her within a week.”
    Tilly
shook her head in dismay. “I am sorry, Zack. So you are here all
alone?”
    She
frowned at that. Why hadn’t he been sent to an orphanage, or
something? Why keep a young boy, without parents, in a poor house?
He couldn’t have run up any debts himself. Surely, if his mother –
who owed the debts – was now dead, the debts died with
her?
    Although
the poor house provided Zack with a roof over his head; life here
was hard, and offered very few luxuries, if the lack of heating was
anything to go by. Someone like Zack should be in an orphanage at
least, where he could be with people his own age, and at least
learn the skills he needed to take him through his
adulthood.
    A shiver
of unease swept through her as she studied him carefully. In the
distance, she could hear the heavy thuds of doors being slammed
closed. Unless it was her imagination, they seemed to grow closer
and closer with each minute that ticked past.
    Zack
nodded into the corridor. “I have got to go now. It is lights out.
Keep the stub, if you like,” he grinned at her, and placed the
candle carefully onto the cold stone floor beside her
feet.
    “ Are you sure?” she asked.
    “ Yes. Besides, I nicked another one from the governor’s office
yesterday,” he added cheekily, without any hint of guilt or
regret.
    She
shook her head at the pride evident in his voice. “Thank you. It is
very kind of you.”
    “ Just tell them -” he nodded toward the door, “- that you
traded it for something.”
    He
studied her bag for a moment, then looked her up and down. He
tugged one of the buttons off her dress before he turned toward the
door. He grinned when she gasped and stared at him in
outrage.
    “ You have to trade,” he warned her in a sing-song voice
moments before he sashayed into the darkness of the
hallway.
    Once he
had disappeared, she stared down at her dress in disbelief; then
hurried to the door to call him back, and demand the return of her
button. To her consternation, apart from a warden, who was busy
locking all of the doors, there was nobody else around.
    “ Lights out,” the man growled when he noticed her.
    She
immediately ducked back into the room and closed the door behind
her. When the door suddenly rattled, she spun around, and stared at
it in horror as the lock was suddenly turned from the outside. She
could see the top of the warden’s head through the small bars in
the middle of the door, but he didn’t look at her as he secured her
into her cell-like room for the night.
    For the
first time in her life, she wondered if this was what being a
prisoner felt like, and suddenly wished that she hadn’t even
contemplated coming anywhere near this hellish place.
    Living
under a bush; even in the barn of the busy coaching