One Crow Alone Read Online Free

not know what else she could do.
    A log cracked in the stove. She pressed the buttons, but the radio would not come to life again.
    She took a piece of paper and laid it on the table.
    Wrote a message and weighted it down with a cup:
    I have been left behind in the village. The weather is very bad. I will take Bogdan Stopko’s pony and try to reach the village of Mokre. If there is no one there, I will go to the road and try to find the others.
    God help me.
    Magda Krol
    10 January 2039
    She looked about the kitchen. On a high shelf by the window was Babula’s small Bible. She took it down. Old and worn, the Bible was inscribed on the first page:
    Agnieszka Maria Krol
    1958
    And written below that in a child’s hand:
    In the fear of the Lord is strong confidence and his children shall have a place of refuge.
    Magda took out the faded piece of paper with her mother’s address and telephone number on it, folded it very carefully, and put it in her shirt pocket. Then laid the Bible back on the shelf.
    She took a deep breath and looked about at the familiar walls. The clock ticked loudly on the shelf.
    There will be no one to wind it until you return.
    She wrapped some bread and the remains of a ham, filled a bag with oats, took a sliver of soap from the sink, then rolled the blankets from the bed and tied them to her bag.
    At the door she turned, glanced one more time at the scrubbed wooden table and worn floorboards, at the mugs hanging above the sink and the photographs on the wall.
    She pulled her hat tight over her ears. What use was there in crying over yesterday’s burnt kasha?
    *   *   *
    The dog was sitting by Stopko’s fence.
    â€œThere is nothing for you where I’m going, Azor. No kasha, no meat. Nothing.”
    But there was nothing for him in the village either and he stuck to her ankles like a tick.
    The pony was well fed, a little round in the hindquarters even, his dun-colored winter coat dirty and unbrushed. He hung his head low as Magda threw the rope over his neck, a dark wiry mane falling this way and that. She grabbed a handful and scrambled onto his back. The pony flattened his ears and twisted his neck and nipped at her leg. She swiped it away and buried her gloved hands in the tangled mane and kicked him on into the weather, with Azor trotting at their heels, down to the icy riverbank and the blizzard still graying the big, wide sky.
    It was no day to make a journey.
    *   *   *
    A mile or so later the pony snorted his way up the bank between the low, shuttered houses of Mokre.
    Every house was shut and empty. No need to knock on doors. There was no smoke, no nothing.
    She turned her head, looked out at the snow-covered hills all about, the dark of the forest traced on the skyline, the distant mountains looming over the empty village with intent.
    You are just a speck on this earth. Who will care if you sink in the snow and are covered? These mountains won’t care.
    The wind gusted, unrelenting. Maybe she should take the low road to Karlikov. There might be other people there. Just maybe.
    She clucked at the pony and retraced her steps down the slope, the dog following close.
    When she had gone as far as she could along the riverbank, she headed up to where the road should have been. She stared at the deep white all about. Slid off the pony’s back. A freezing wall of wind took away her breath.
    If you had been beating against the winds high above, you would have seen the tiny figures shrouded in the storm, bending against the weather: struggling and sinking and sweating and freezing. Drowning in the snow like ants in a puddle. And Magda, shielding her face, breathing hard against the upturned collar of her coat, looked up at the hillside—still visible through a haze of snowflakes—and managed to cajole the sweating pony; up to that bush there, the top of a rock jutting through the snow, a little higher to that sheltering