A Surface of Pressure and Burden

Chapter 1: A Hut of Cold and Hunger

"Wow, sorry I'm the only one who's willing to get my hands dirty," Feyre replied, apparently oblivious to her own double entendre. She grabbed one of Elain's fresh-baked loaves, ripped out a huge bite with her teeth, and tossed it back on the tray. "I've never been able to decide whether you lot actually don't understand that we are truly poor or if you just refuse to accept it."

This was the sort of thing I had learned it was better not to reply to, so I said nothing.

"Feyre," my father said, hobbling back to his seat as there was clearly no chance of dinner any time soon, "what luck you had today - in bringing us such a feast."

Look at that, the old man could be sarcastic once in a while.

"We can eat half the meat this week," Feyre said, pacing around the deer carcass - and what I now saw, underneath, was some kind of wild dog pelt. Cauldron help us if that thing had been rabid. "We can dry the other half, or should I say I can, while you all fix your hair or something. And I'll go to the market tomorrow to see how much I can get for the hides."

No one replied at first - we had long since stopped trying to explain to Feyre that in a territory like this, where every boy was trained to be a woodsman since he could hold an ax, her crudely prepared hides stood no chance in the market next to the stalls run by the Woodsmen's Guilds, groups of men who hunted in packs and brought piles of hides back to town in a single day, then cleaned and polished them to a luxurious shine. Last summer, Elain and I brought home more coppers from our strawberry sales in the market than Feyre's still-bloody hides had ever fetched.

Sometimes when I thought back over the past year I couldn't believe we were still alive. After we lost our fortune and were exiled to this miserable hovel in the woods, Elain and I learned too quickly what our new lives really meant - that now, there was never going to be a day that we weren't working from sunup into the night. That survival now meant never not working. Planting, weeding, harvesting, cooking, cleaning, doing dishes, filling in holes in the floor, patching holes in the roof. Burying our waste. Carrying water almost a mile from the village well after the creek water made us sick for a week. Trying to keep the bugs out of the flour and the foxes out of the henhouse. The work it took to do just one basket of laundry - only for Feyre to grab the warmest cloak off the line and head off to the woods or for a roll in the hay with Isaac - and return hours later without so much as a thank-you for the dirt stains I would have to scrub out again the next day. "All you think about is clothes," she would say.

I remembered the first morning waking up in our communal bed, ice-blue with cold and hungrier and thirstier than we'd ever imagined we could feel. How did you start a fire? Where did you get food and water, if no servant was there to bring you a tray? We didn't know. With our father too injured (or so he claimed) to seek employment, we girls would shiver our way into town each morning and knock at the doors of the village women, offering them our last remnants of finery - a silver spoon, a red hair ribbon, anything we had - and begged them to teach us what they knew. I'll never forget how much they laughed at us, saying things like, "not so high & mighty now, are you?" Elain crying on their doorsteps, me wanting to slap their mocking faces and punch those of their lecherous husbands who leered at us over their wives' shoulders.

I don't know what we would have done if the Widow Maykre hadn't taken pity on us and taught us what she knew - how to start a fire in the stone hearth, what to do when I fell while cleaning the chimney and broke my arm, how to plant potatoes that would feed us through the bitter winter. In exchange for these lessons, in any spare time we had after doing our own backbreaking work, we would go back to town and help the widow with hers. It was through her gentle words and tales of her life that my anger against the villagers began to melt a little. I'm sorry for before, I wanted to say to them. I'm so sorry. I didn't know that real life was like this. I used to try and get Feyre to come with us, but she would only reply with another one of her signature eye rolls. "I don't know why you have to go to town all the time," she would say, "all you do is gossip and chat about hair ribbons with that old lady. I'd rather be in the woods, or with Isaac." Most days I no longer had the heart, even if I'd been able to, to try and get Feyre to understand everything that had to be done at the cottage so we wouldn't freeze or starve or rot to death. A part of me felt sorry for her. She was so young. I wished that Elain and I could still be so innocent, to roam freely through the forest and hook up with a local hottie, believing that he actually cared about her.

"I said, I'll go to the market tomorrow to see how much I can get for the hides," Feyre's voice broke into my thoughts.

Elain the peacemaker was willing to play along. "I'd love a new cloak," she said at last with a sigh.

"Nesta?" Feyre asked. I was sick of the way she would do this whenever she came back with something from the woods she thought was worth anything. She would ask us again and again what we wanted to buy and get mad if we asked for something she considered too nice, mad if we didn't ask for anything. "I don't know, new boots or something," I said finally, just wanting this little game to be over.

"Woooow," Feyre said again, peeling off her own crappy boots, which were falling apart, and setting them on the floor to make a point. Would she think to ask Widow Maykre how to tan the hides she'd gotten today, so she could repair the boots herself for free? No, of course she wouldn't.

"I'm freezing with my raggedy old cloak," Elain said, trying to douse the fight she saw coming between Feyre and me. "I'll shiver to death. Pleeeeease, Feyre!" I had to laugh in spite of myself - she was doing a perfect imitation of Bess the apple-seller in the market - "Apples, apples, pleeeeeease try them!" - and Feyre clearly wasn't getting the joke.

"Give it up, Elain," I grumbled. The soup was ready, and we needed to deal with the carcass-and-pelt-on-the-table situation. Of course Feyre should be made to clean up her mess - but most days it took less energy to just do it myself, and energy was always in short supply in our new life. "You know good and well we'll be lucky to get a new handkerchief."

"Oh come on, it will be different this time!" Elain replied. "Feyre found two beautiful hides. She'll get a good deal for them." Why did she always have to prop up Feyre's stupid fantasies? I shook my head and got out an old sheet, thinking that I could wrap the deer in it to minimize further blood spill as I dragged it out to the shed. Elain came over to help as Feyre chatted with Dad, the only one of us she even slightly respected.

It took several minutes, but we finally got the pile of deer and dog hide wrangled where we could move it to the shed. We lifted it together and started heading towards the door - when I tripped over the boots that Feyre had left in the middle of the floor. Slimy, bloody, freezing cold animal viscera poured over me as I crumbled to the floor beneath my heavy load.

"Caldron damn it!" I yelled, wincing as Elain helped me back up, "Caldron damn it to the Night Court and back! Of all the nastiest, foulest-"

Feyre noticed what was happening and laughed hysterically. "Guess I'm finally not the only one who's willing to deal with a little blood and guts," she guffawed.

"You stink like a pig covered in its own filth!" I snapped back. "Can't you at least try to pretend that you're not an ignorant peasant?" I don't know why I said that - some silly schoolyard jest from our childhood. It wasn't kind, I know, Feyre was just a child, but everything hurt and I was so tired and hungry and she'd just dumped her boots right on the floor like she'd dumped the stupid carcass on the table - "Take these disgusting boots out of my way!" I finished, blinking back tears.

Feyre rolled her eyes again. "God, drama queen much? Just add some wood to the fire and make a pot of hot water to wash yourself up." Her eyes darted to the woodpile by the hearth. "I thought you were going to chop wood today."

Damn it, I knew we'd forgotten something. How many times had Widow Maykre said that - "If you don't have firewood at the ready, girl, you don't have anything" - but it had taken longer than usual to get everything else done this morning and Dad always insisted on telling us long-winded stories when we were trying to make our chore plans for the day - we'd forgotten the damn wood. I stood there with the guts dripping off me, feeling ready to drop dead. "I hate chopping wood. I always get splinters." I knew I sounded petty and petulant, but I was too tired to care. "Can you get it for once?"

"Get up at dawn to chop that wood," Feyre replied, talking slowly to me like you would to a small child, "or we'll be eating a cold breakfast."

That was the last straw. "I will do no such thing!" I yelled.

Feyre glared at me and turned to my dad. "Get the knives ready," she said, pointing to the deer oozing on the floor. "I'll be back soon." With that, she grabbed another loaf, flung open the door again, and charged back out into the woods.

The icy wind that flooded the house in her wake blew the fire completely out.