Free The Road of Bones by Anne Fine

man’s had been gleaming with tears, the glitter in hers was born of hatred and scorn.
    â€˜Sent by the commissar? Why? To see if you can find yet another way to make a misery of the last of our wretched lives? Isn’t it enough to herd my family onto a train going heaven knows where, and leave their poor boy broken-hearted?’
    The old man clutched her arm. ‘Maria! Curb your tongue.’
    She shook him off and pointed to the grave. ‘There he lies!’ she snarled. ‘Go back and tell that butchering commissar of yours he killed my grandson when he arrested his mother. Go tell that murdering thief that the very last thing left to us is safe from him now. Safe underground!’
    The old man was still trying to hush her. ‘Maria! Enough! Each word you say will be reported back.’
    She turned her fury on him. ‘What’s left to lose? They’ve stolen our land and taken the last of our grain. We’ve no seeds to sow, no fields to sow them in. We’ve nothing now but what’s around us. Igor, you know as well as I do that when the snows come we’ll be dead within a week – frozen or starved.’
    She spat on the ground. ‘So why should I worry what I say in front of whichever little worm the commissar has sent to torment us?’ She turned her scornful look back on me. ‘A boy so stupid he must have lost the path a dozen times to show up at this time of night!’
    But what sharp eyes hunger must give. The woman had no lantern. Only the moonlight shone on me. But still she’d noticed.
    â€˜Grain! You have
grain
?’
    I glanced down. Sure enough, not all the chaff from the sacks had blown off my work jacket.
    Pushing his wife aside, the old man gripped my arm. ‘What? Have you brought back some part of what you took?’
    I couldn’t bear it. I’d thought that we were hungry in the city. I’d heard the soldiers talking on the train,but hadn’t truly realized things could be so much worse.
    I hung my head. ‘I’ve a few hazelnuts in my pocket.’
    Again the old woman spat. But Igor asked, strangely gently, as if, now the damage was done, he was simply curious, ‘So why were you sent?’
    I gazed across the clearing at the pitiful hovel in which these two old scarecrows were scratching through the last of their days. The roof was sadly buckled and full of holes. Weeds straggled at my feet. I thought of the forest cottages my grandmother had told me about in her stories – homes that could stand firm against the worst of winter snows, with crocks filled to bursting: pickled lemons and cabbages, mushrooms and onions and plums; barrels of salted melons, pears in vinegar, soused apples; and loaves of rye bread sitting on every shelf.
    What had the old woman said? ‘Dead within a week – frozen or starved.’
    I was no good at hunting. So:
    â€˜I’ve come to help you fix the roof,’ I said.

C HAPTER N INE
    THOSE WERE STRANGE days. I knew the two of them would have found it a good deal easier simply to hate me. But I was young, and worked hard. Each morning the old man came with me into the forest and showed me which trees to fell – not so young they wouldn’t bear the weight of the brushwood we’d soon be spreading over them, but not so thick I couldn’t drag their stripped trunks back through the forest.
    He did his best to help. He tried so hard, I even teased him: ‘Igor, you’d strength enough to bring me down with that old stick of yours. How come you can’t replace your own rotten roof struts?’
    He growled at me, ‘Wait till your own bones crumble. Then you’ll not need to ask such half-witted questions.’
    Most of the time, though, he stayed silent. Silent and sour. I longed to ask him whether all the terrible things I’d heard on the train could really be true. But, like his wife, he treated me with deep suspicion, fearingthat