Chapter 6: Ugly Dumplings

Freya's POV

By the fifth day I could say good morning in Czech without anyone laughing.

"Dobré ráno," I told the cat on the kitchen windowsill.

The cat blinked at me and went back to sleep.

"Better," Hana said from the stove. "Now the dumpling. Hands in the flour."

"I've never made one."

"Everybody never made one. Then everybody makes."

She slapped a ball of dough into my palms and showed me how to flatten it with my thumbs.

Mine came out lopsided.

She held it up to the light and sighed.

"Ugly," she said.

"Thank you."

"Ugly dumplings taste the same. Eat."

She put it in the pot with the others.

I had paid my first month in advance from the cash in my bag, and Hana had counted it twice and given back half.

"You are a guest," she said. "Guests do not pay for dumplings."

"Then I'll draw you a new sign for the door."

"I have a sign."

"It says POKOJE and it's peeling."

She glared at me, and then she gave me a pencil and the back of an old menu.

I drew the pension's front door, with its geranium and the cat in the window.

She looked at it for a long time and pinned it above the stove without saying anything.

That was the first time I felt at home in a week.

Jakub came in at six, stamping snow off his boots, in his depot jacket with the tram company's badge on it.

He did not say much when he came in.

He never did.

He put a loaf of bread on the table, looked at my hands and at the flour on my sleeves, and one corner of his mouth went up.

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