Page 18 (1/2)

PART ONE

CHAPTER 1

A Boy and His Rat

Snow is falling

Snohite as a swan’s feather, white as a trilliureen and brown of the surrounding forest, and it lies in downy heaps between the quiet, dorainst the bases of the tall fir trees, and it carpets the little trenches in the shallows around the wide cedar roots

A road carves its way through the deep forest It, too, is covered in an untouched shroud of snow

In fact, if you didn’t know there was a road beneath the snow, if you didn’t know there were centuries of footsteps and hoofbeats and ht just think it was a fallow stretch of woods, soreenery There are no wheel tracks, no tire treads on this road No footprints around where no tree could take root because of a constant traffic of silent walkers: deer, elk, and bear But even here, in this most removed area of the world, there are no animal tracks The more the snow falls, thejust another part of this vast, unending forest

Listen

The road is quiet

Listen

A distant clatter suddenly disrupts this placid stillness; it is the sound of wagon wheels and the whinnying of a horse, pushed to the liainst the earth, a rhythm dulled by the e, two of its four wheels lifting froround momentarily to make the turn Teat-slick black horses are harnessed to the coach, and plu froe ruffly at the horses at their every stride, shouting, “GYAP!” and “FASTER, ON!” He spares no strike of the whip There is a look of deep consternation on his face He spends the briefforest warily

Look closer: Below hie itself, sits a woown, and her face is covered in a shilint on her fingers In her hands, she holds a delicate paper fan, which she opens and closes nervously She, too, watches the flanking walls of trees surrounding the carriage, as if looking for so within them Opposite her sits an ornate chest, its sides decorated with gold and silver filigree A lock holds the chest’s twin clasps closed, the key to which hangs at the woolden cord Antsy, she raps at the ceiling of the carriage with the fan

The driver hears the rapping and spurs the horses on, raining evenflanks A sudden flash of movement on the road ahead catches the driver’s attention He squints his eyes against the blinding white of the falling snow

A boy is standing in the middle of the road

But this is no ordinary boy This boy is dressed in what appears to be an elegantly brocaded officer’s coat, like some infantryman from the Crimean War His hair is black and curly and sprouts froing an e There is a rat on his shoulder

“STOP!” shouts the boy “THIS IS A STICKUP!”

“You heard him!” shouts the rat “Rein it in, fatso!”

The coachman hisses a curse under his breath With a quick turn of his wrist, he has dropped the whip and has taken the reins in both of his hands He snaps theallop A cruel smile has appeared on the coachuered horses

The boy’s face, formerly buoyed with confidence, falls He ss hard “I—I’m serious!” he stammers

The coach row of yellow teeth He is not slowing The lady in the carriage gives a slight shriek as it careens along the snowy road The boy quickly reaches down and pulls a rock froround He wipes it clean of snow on his trousers and sets it into the cradle of his sling

“Don’t make me do this,” he warns It’s not clear whether the coach toward the boy and the rat at an alar rate

With a casual expertise—he’s evidently been practicing—the boy lets loose the stone fro, and it flies toward the coachman, who ducks just in time; the stone sails over his head to fall into the deep, snowy bracken of the forest The boy does not have time to pick up another; the coach is so close that the boy can s off the horses

The rat gives a little ulp! and dives into the gully at the side of the road The boy follows hie roars by The horses, spooked at having so nearly ands, whinny noisily as they pass

The veiled woman in th

e carriage clutches at the key at her throat She gives a high-pitched warble of fear The coachman, somewhat chuffed at his bravado, throws a look over his shoulder at the boy and his rat “Better luck next time, suckers!” he shouts His attention thus diverted, he does not see the cedar trunks as they fall, domino-like, in a crash of splinters to block the road ahead Three of them One after another Bam Bam Bam