I promised you a sneak peek from the story that I needed to build the Murderboard for. You may remember the timeline Murderboard had three rows. The top timeline is for Roman. This is the opening of the book, and when we meet him for the first time.
The woman knelt on the loamy earth, staining her skirt at the knees. Her son stood before her, his large gray eyes level with her dark blue ones. She clasped his small cold fingers in her rough hands and studied him, wanting to remember every detail of his dirt-smudged face. His platinum hair had started to darken this year and was now the color of wheat blowing in the fields. I wonder what color it will be when he is a man? She pulled him to her chest, holding him near to feel the beat of his small heart. Closing her eyes, she tried to preserve the memory of his face.
Even with her eyes closed, the ramp was still there, and in this instant she knew this is how she would see him forever—her boy, Roman, at eight years old, hidden in the shadows of the rock and mortar that led to the high-road. The mountainous climb to the gray skies above had been cobbled together by unknown men, in a time when the ramp’s purpose was known. Leaving their mothers or grandmothers or aunties in the loam, children embarked on their journey in groups of seven—no more, no less. At times, one of the soldiers who stood sentry would have to hold a woman back, to keep her from following the little one they had released to the road far overhead.
“He doesn’t have to go.”
Her eyes flew open, the boy still clutched to her breast.
The soldier stood still, but his eyes met hers. And this she had not expected.
Her son had been the second to arrive. A matched pair was deposited at the guard’s feet late the same evening, a brother and sister whose guardian didn’t wait to see them off. The woman watched the guardian until the horizon swallowed his shrinking form. He never once looked back at the twins.
For two days the soldier’s words haunted her. Hunched over the flickering fire that warmed their small breakfast she heard the gravelly voice, he doesn’t have to go. Roman reached for his portion of the grisly blackened meat and huddled close to the flames as he chewed with slow deliberate bites.
He was such a good boy. She caught his gray gaze and knew his stomach was far from full. The gnaw of hunger always had a seat at their dinner table. Even when he had suckled at her breast her son was merciful, never making her say, “We have no more.” He ate what they had without complaint, and when there was nothing it was without complaint as well.
Across the clearing, the twins shouted, pointing toward the mountains. Holding her hand to shield her eyes, the woman looked, hoping it was a small band of travelers, and not another soul to deposit at the foot of the ramp. As the forms came closer her heart fell, two children and their escorts. He doesn’t have to go.
Now there were six. She turned to the ramp so her son would not see the tears in her eyes. He doesn’t have to go.
On the fourth day, storm clouds hung above the mountains snagged on the jagged peaks. The ragged camp watched the horizon, weary of the sleet the clouds would bring. At the mouth of the ramp the earth stretched flat, with no shelter for the children and their guardians. A rough canvas tent housed the soldiers when they slept—but it was barely large enough for two men. Tall grasses bent in the roar of the gale. With each frigid gust, the clouds threatened to escape the grip of the mountaintops.
The woman threw more wood on the fire. She knew keeping a flame going with the wind whipping at her back was reckless. But she wanted to give her boy comfort, and warmth was the only solace she could still provide. If the rain arrived it would douse her final gift to him.
Roman slid his arm about his mother’s waist, and she pulled him in to her familiar warmth. As the clouds escaped the mountains and trudged toward camp, the crisp scent of rain mingled with campfire smoke. It wasn’t until the storm crossed half the distance from the mountains that the woman realized the full severity.
A step ahead of the rainclouds ran a lone figure, too small to be a grown person—the seventh child.
A surge snuffed the flames. Her boy shivered, and the woman pulled her thin shawl tight about both of them. They faced the squall, and cheek-to-cheek they watched the final figure advance.
The child picked its way through the rough brush with the speed of a winter hare. How could one with such short legs stay ahead of a storm moving so fast? A hop over a large rock followed a sharp twist to avoid a particularly thick tangle of bramble. The urgency of the movement cut to the woman’s soul. Every year at the burning of the fields she saw it in the animals tearing from flame, as their dens turned to cinder behind them.
Howling wind could not cover her son’s gasp when the child in the field fell. Mother and son held their breath as one, waiting to see if the figure would recover. But this was not the time for recovery. It was the time of survival. The child rolled into the fall, turning the sky toward the earth before landing on both feet, in one instinctual movement, running as if their energy would never flag, and the storm would never win.
The woman buried her head against her son, unable to watch any further. She shook, but not from the cold that ripped through her bones. She trembled through her core, because the very child that would take her son from her was the best hope her son had to survive.
Rain fell in icy pellets stinging her skin. She turned from the draught, but the boy refused to follow, his shoulders squared against the cutting breeze. With his chin raised, he stayed fast, bracing for whatever the mountain would send to him.
He doesn’t have to go. She knew as she studied his face in this moment he was already gone.
The child broke through the brush and went straight to the smoldering logs.
The woman studied the layers of rags. Dirt painted every speck of skin a reddish clay color where long limbs poked into view. A tangle of black curls spilled from beneath a thick hood. When the child removed the cowl, the woman gasped.
Wilderness herself stared back. The girl’s wide-set amber eyes swirled to a pool of green at their center. She wore the rain as if they were longtime companions, and the ice pellets sting had long ago faded to an expected annoyance, much like hunger or exhaustion. Panting, she crouched by the pittance of warmth.
Roman went to the girl and pulled a piece of meat from his pocket. He held his offering to the waif. “You are seven.”
The girl studied him for a moment and unearthed a bag hidden beneath her rags. Picking a flint arrowhead from the sack she exchanged it for the food. Nodding as the transaction was complete, she said, “I am Seven.”
When the final heat from the meager fire dissipated, she stretched her spindly legs and looked to the rest of the group huddled near the guard’s tent at the base of the ramp. “Why aren’t you with them?”
The woman opened her mouth to speak, but it was Roman who answered. “I was waiting for you.”
Seven nodded. Surprises were something she had given up long ago. “Suss?”
The woman looked at the girl, too surprised at the formal address to reply.
“It’s time for us to go,” Seven said.
The woman nodded. “Yes.” She would save her tears for her empty hovel. Her boy’s last memory would not be of her crying. “Seven?”
“Yes, Suss?”
“From this day on I take you as my own. You will both come back to me.”
White teeth flashed in a smile as quick as the lightening overhead. “I’m not one to be taken. But him—I will keep him as my own[JC2] .”
“Thank you, child. Thank you.” The mother pulled her son to her one last time before she watched her boy follow Seven to the base of the ramp. The other children joined forming a small band. And one by one they began the long sloping ascent.
The woman watched until she could see Roman’s blonde head no longer, and then she stood alone shaking in the wind, unable to make herself turn from the stones and mortar that led her son farther and farther from her.