The farmhouse in which Otis and his family lived was colorful and bright and the ceilings were built very high which gave it a very spacious feel despite the amount of furniture inside, and it was clean and quaint and smelled of food. Snow wanted very much to go out and see the sun and sky and trees and all of the other wonderful things again but the scent of cooking reminded him of how hungry he was, too. He soon spotted a window with the curtains pulled aside through which he could see out and was content. It was only after he had seen the window and realized he could still see outside whenever he wanted that he really bothered to pay closer attention to the rest of the house.

They were standing in a kitchen -- a rather large one, for it was full of very large people. They were all women and the room was filled with the sound of voices; voices which died off quickly when the group by the door was spotted.

“Visitors!” Otis declared, “and we shall feed them well, a-yep we shall.” Then to Snow and La he said “go on and sit anywhere ye’d like while I give them a hand.”

La insisted on helping until she was finally shooed into a chair and out of the way but Snow settled himself quite comfortably on the little window seat where he could stare outside all he wanted. The barn was within view. Thankfully, he saw no men gathered around it.

“You’re a very odd looking man.” Snow started a little, having not realized someone was approaching. He looked over and down to a small and serious looking girl who was watching him thoughtfully.

“Am I?” he asked.

“Yes.”

‘Well then, I suppose I am. Is that a bad thing?”

There was a pause, and then she shook her head. “I s’pose not. My sisters say my doll is odd because she’s got only one eye but I still love her.” She held up the doll for Snow to see.

He surveyed the doll seriously, then nodded. “What happened to her eye?”

“Bessie ate it.”

“The chicken?”

She bobbed her head up and down so rapidly and with such enthusiasm that Snow wondered how it didn’t hurt. “I was mad at first but I love Bessie too so I forgave her.”

“I see. And what’s your name?”

“I’m Flicka. So is my doll.” She held it up again and Snow looked at it just as seriously as he had the first time. “It’s a good name so I used it twice.”

“A very good name,” he agreed. “My name is Snow.”

She tilted her head at him, frowning. “It’s not a good name for you. Snow is fluffy and you’re a very skinny odd man. Like a beanpole. I’m going to call you Beanpole.”

Snow, though he had no idea what a beanpole even was until she explained it, decided it was a good enough name and said that it was quite all right with him, though he denied her offer to stand in the garden and let beans grow up him. Fortunately, he was interrupted to go and bathe before she could try to continue to convince him. La went after him and, while she was given some hand-me-down clothes from one of the older girls, the farmer’s wife apologized profusely to Snow that she had nothing to replace his torn performer’s clothing. She did attempt to wash it and mend it while he bathed and that, he told her, was very kind and fine enough for him.

At first glance, their meal looked like quite a generous fare, yet it was carefully served to be divided between eleven people with not a single scrap gone to waste. Smaller portions were given to the smaller people, though La and Snow were given a little extra and when Snow gave the farmer’s wife a questioning look, she smiled at him.

“Otis tells me you haven’t eaten in a while. You may need your strength yet,” she said.

After that, most of the meal was eaten in silence. Eating was clearly serious business in this household (next to him, Flicka kept trying to share food with her doll) and Snow didn’t realize how hungry he was until he took that first bite and after that, nothing really mattered but taking the next bite, and the next, until all of the food was gone and he was finally satisfied. When they had all finished eating, they moved into the sitting room and settled in, and Snow sat on the large fur rug near the fire for he enjoyed firelight even when it was not too cold.

Smoke. So much smoke, and the flames! Insides burning, aching, the pain, the pain… and then nothing at all.

Startled, Snow shoved himself away from the fire and contented himself instead to lean against the chair that La sat in, comforted by her familiar presence.

"Do you need help with the clean up?". La spoke up from behind him. He could feel her shifting in the chair, a little restless, and he realized then that he rarely ever saw her sitting still like this. If she wasn’t working, she was always getting into some sort of trouble with Crow and him.

Crow…

Snow frowned, trying to ignore the sharp sting of worry that shot through his heart. Where was his brother now? Was he even alive? To think that he was anything otherwise was unbearable.

“No, we like to rest for a bit before we clean up after the meal.” Snow was so lost in thought that the sound of Otis’s wife speaking made him jump a little. Otis’s wife. He realized he didn’t know her name -- or any of their names, but for Flicka and Otis himself. Only just now he didn’t feel like speaking and instead stared soberly into the fire, listening to the voices of the others without paying them a lot of attention. He vaguely heard La ask them polite questions about their land and animals and children and so on but didn’t hear the answers, or at least not enough of them to understand fully what was being said. Right now there was only one name that mattered much at all.

Crow… where are you? I’m safe, I’m free, please come back…

“Where will you go from here?” That question, spoken by Otis, finally brought him back into the conversation.

La didn’t answer right away. Neither did Snow. But at last he broke the somber silence he had been dwelling in for some time now and spoke, his voice more serious than it had been for most of the day. “To find my brother.”

“And where is he?” Otis asked.

“The wildlands. I think. But I don’t know how to find him there.”

This time it wasn’t just Snow who was silent. The whole room fell into a hush and Snow shuddered a little, sensing their apprehension. Their fear. Close beside him, Flicka hugged her doll a little tighter and whimpered and he felt his heart sink with the noise. Was it really so hopeless as that?

Finally, Otis said, “This ain’t a topic to talk about with little’uns. It be best we all clean up and sleep on it and talk about it on the morrow, a-yep.”

“We haven’t any extra rooms for sleeping but we do have some extra blankets and we can make you quite comfortable by the fire for the night.” Otis’s wife smiled kindly at them.

“What if the men come back for La and me? I don’t want to put your family in danger.”

“You’ve done enough for us,” La agreed. “We really don’t–”

“Nonsense! You will stay the night and that is that. We all know how to handle ourselves well enough. I wouldn’t be afraid of anything going bump in the night and neither should yout.” Otis’s wife stood up and nodded her head firmly at them, then began to clear away the meal. One-by-one, the all got up and joined her until everything was cleaned and put away and the older girls started shooing the younger ones to bed. During the meal clean-up, Snow finally learned that the wife’s name was Leah and she named off all of the rest of their daughter’s names, too: Dahlia, Anneli, Ronja, Jytte, Ingrid, Flicka, and Agneta. Snow wasn’t sure he’d be able to remember all of them but he nodded politely at each one and tried to file them into his memory the best he could. He wasn’t used to having to remember names. The circus performers around him did change now and then, yes, but for the most part he had grown up with all of the same people.

When at last the house had quieted and La and Snow were curled under warm blankets near the fireplace, Snow found that he couldn’t fall asleep. Maybe it was because they had slept so late in the barn until those horrible men came; yet despite that long sleep, Snow felt very tired now and wished very much that he could sleep again with as much ease as he had earlier that day. No, it wasn’t that he wasn’t tired. He just couldn’t stop running through his head the fearful reaction he’d gotten from the family when he’d mentioned the Wildlands to them. He couldn’t stop thinking about what that meant for Crow, and for La and him in their attempts to find him. He couldn’t stop thinking at all, no matter how hard he tried, and it kept chasing the sleep away.

Only a foot or two away from him, La stirred slightly on the floor and he heard her softly sigh. He twisted his body to glance at her and their eyes met.

“Can’t sleep?” she asked.

He shook his head. “You?”

“No.”

“I’m worried about Crow.”

There was a long pause before he heard her answer, her voice barely above a whisper. “So am I, Snow. So am I.”

His hand stretched out from under the blankets and found hers and with that extra comfort, they finally fell asleep to the sounds of the crackling fire beside them.