Chapter 4: Bread for the Cave

Lois crawled into the hole with a loaf of bread inside her coat and a thermos of soup in her fist.

It was the stupidest thing she had done in fifty-eight years, and she knew it with every scraped inch.

"Ilu," she hissed. "Ilu, slow down."

The girl scrambled ahead of her on hands and knees, quick as a fox, dragging a canvas tote bag full of rolls.

She kept looking back with a face so bright Lois could not stay afraid.

The tunnel was barely wider than her shoulders.

Dirt came off the ceiling and went down the back of her neck.

Then the warm air thickened, and the tunnel turned, and the stone ahead glowed a dim orange.

Ilu stopped at the edge of the glow and held up a hand.

"Shh," she said, in the one word that every child on earth seemed to share.

Lois peered past her shoulder.

The tunnel opened into a long cave, black at the edges, with the gray light of morning leaking in from far away.

In the middle of the floor, a handful of coals glowed in a ring of stones.

An old man lay beside them on a heap of furs.

He was so thin that his face looked like a skull with skin pulled over it, and his breath rattled.

Next to him sat a boy of about ten, his back against the wall.

One of his legs was bent wrong below the knee.

He was feeding the coals with scraps of bark, one at a time.

The boy raised his head, and he saw them.

He saw Ilu first, and his mouth fell open.

Then he saw Lois, and he scrambled backward on his hands, dragging the bad leg, and snatched a stone from the floor.

"It's okay," Lois whispered, putting her free hand up. "It's okay, I'm not going to hurt you."

Ilu was already talking, soft and fast.

She pointed at the tunnel, and at Lois, and she patted the tote bag.

The boy kept the stone raised.

Ilu took a roll out of the bag and walked right up to him, small as a mouse, and held it out in both hands.

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