Her stomach clenched as she strayed further from the road.

"Stay on the path." Cocot's mother had told her often enough. She took each step up the stairs carefully, not making more than whispers of sound with her feet. It was day and if she wasn't on the road, at least she was on a path.

She frowned, shaking thoughts of her mother from her head. Her fingers reached up to take the silver, heart-shaped locket hanging on her chest and squeezed until it hurt.

It wasn't her fault her mother was dead. At worst, it was an accident, but most likely just a coincidence. She hadn't killed her mother.

But it was after the bright bit of crystal had fallen out of the locket and disappeared in her hand that she had begun to see the field fairies, and sometimes other things among the trees. Faces. Hands. Skittering movement. Today, she saw nothing. There had been a drop of blood and a pin prick on her palm where the shard had landed.

The locket's sides bit into skin. Trees loomed high above and the foot path wound between them, hugging the steep side of the hill.

They had only come one time this way and Cocot had never ventured into the forest alone. Not that she remembered, anyway.

Nothing would harm her if she stayed on the path and it was day. She repeated it and believed it until she reached the last bend before the fields. This final curve around the rocky face of the hill had been difficult for her mother. She had been coughing despite the heat of the end of summer, had drawn her hood far over her face. It had saved them so much time, though, to take the shortcut.

Her mother's hand had been trembling in Cocot's. "Only during the day," she had said.

To reach the field, Cocot had to walk past an ancient spruce growing from a crevasse in the cliff – a lichen covered evergreen with great, drooping branches and deep shadows at its roots. Next to it was a mountain stream that cut the path in two.

The wind whispered among the needles, making sounds that could almost be words. She thought she understood the word lonely.

Heart racing, she sprinted past the tree and across the fallen trunk that made a bridge to the fields. She only slowed when she reached the sunlight.

Squaring her shoulders, she marched across the green field.

The farm house was a large building standing two stories high; the front part was of stone with wooden beams and served as the home, while the larger, wooden part in back was the barn. She knocked at the front door and when no one answered, decided to check the barn. As she rounded the corner, she nearly bumped into the farmer; a grumpy old man, gnarled and grizzled with age.

"Oh, I'm sorry! Excuse me," Cocot apologized. "I came here to ask if I could purchase a few—"

The man continued walking brusquely past her, not even looking at her. Cocot fell against the barn to get out of his way.

"Excuse me!" she called, after recovering from her surprise. Maybe he was going blind, she thought.

He kept walking away as though he didn't hear her, grunting some with the effort of carrying two heavy pails of milk.

Maybe he was hard of hearing, too. She huffed in frustration. Last summer, the farmer had employed a couple of farmhands; she would look for someone else to sell her what she needed.

She walked up the hill past the barn and finally spied a boy on the other side of the pasture repairing a wood and wire fence. Filing past huge cows with their faces buried in the grass and bells clanging loudly, she finally reached him.

The boy didn't stop pounding a post in the ground when she approached and asked if he could sell her a few eggs, but at least he looked at her briefly.

"Eggs? You want eggs?" he asked.

"Yes, and flour, oil, cream or milk, candles, dried pasta if you have some," she said in a rush. What was she forgetting? Not that it mattered much, she could see he wasn't listening.

He raked his fingers through his sand colored hair that fell in clumps in his eyes again afterwards and finished wrapping wires around the middle and top of the post. That done, he gathered the posts from the ground and started walking further up the hill.

"I have money," she called after him. "I'm not begging."

"No?" he asked, not turning. "I'm busy, go ask the old man to sell you what you want. It's his stuff, anyway."

"The farmer, but he..." she started, not sure how to explain the way he had ignored her completely.

"What? He's too busy?"

She nodded hastily. It wasn't quite true, but it wasn't really a lie, either.

The boy grunted, dropped the fence posts and stomped towards the farm house, Cocot scurrying to keep up. He was a good head taller than she was, with wiry, strong arms and tanned skin from the sun. She had never seen him at the farm or at the market before.

"Is the old farmer your grandfather? Have you come to work for him?" she asked.

"He's no family to me," he said, not turning or slowing.

The anger under his words was a warning, but she was too curious not to ask more questions.

"How old are you?" she asked.

"None of your concern."

"I'm not trying to be rude, I was just wondering. You must be about my age. I'll be fourteen this summer," she said.

"Yeah? Well, I'm staying until the end of winter, then I'm old enough to leave and work for myself. No more orphanage, no more farms," he said.

"Oh," she said, not understanding his meaning, except that he would be living here for a year. "My name is Coquelicot." She would have extended her hand for an introduction, but he was opening the front door.

"Take off your shoes or stay outside. How much money do you have?" he asked.

"Enough for what I need," she answered, slipping off her oversized, leather shoes without undoing the laces.

"So?"

"So, I have enough," she repeated.

"So, what do you want?"

"Oh," she said. He was frowning down at her, his stringy hair partly covering his bright blue eyes. She tried to remember all that she wanted to buy. "I'd like some eggs."

"How many?"

"Ten?"

"We have seven," he said, finding the eggs and counting them.

"I'll take seven, then."

"The old man will want one for lunch."

"I'll take six?" she asked.

He put the basket in front of her and she transferred six of them, hoping the other items would be a little bit easier to come by. Fortunately, as she listed what she wanted, they appeared on the table; a small sack of mill flour, sugar, and pasta, a bottle of olive oil, fresh milk with the cream on top, large chunk of (tasteless) serac cheese and a cube of yeast. He didn't have any cinnamon to spare and he had to poke around in several cabinets to find some candles.

"How many?" he asked, kneeling.

"A dozen."

"Here," he said with no ceremony and passed a handful to her.

She spotted a jar of vin cuit over his shoulder, the tar-black pear juice concentrate that people cooked in the fall from baskets and baskets of fresh pears. Her mother used to always keep some on hand for sweet treats, especially to make a delicious, creamy pie through the months of winter. Cocot had never made it herself, but her mouth started watering just thinking about it. How difficult could it be? The recipe was in her mother's cookbook.

"Can I also have a jar of vin cuit?"

The boy grunted and put one on the table.

"That it?" he asked.

She hesitated. The wood pile at the chalet was down to one or two rows of logs and wouldn't last much longer.

"Can you deliver firewood?"

"The cart's being repaired. Have your father come by and pick it up," he said, walking to the door.

"Oh, then never mind," she said, picking up her overflowing basket and hurrying after him. "How much for all this?"

"You don't want any wood?"

"It's not that, I don't have a..."

"A truck?"

"No, I, it would easier with a delivery. Mother used to—anyway, how much for this?" she asked and hefted the basket high enough to partly cover her face. She would not show tears, she had already said too much.

He stared into the basket for a moment in silence and then began ticking off the items and prices under his breath. "Not sure how much he would want for the candles, but five francs thirty-five should cover it more or less," he told her.

"Five thirty-five?" She counted out her coins, proud to have exact change and still have several of the largest coins left over. She even had paper money back at the chalet which was worth much, much more than the coins. No one could call her a beggar.

The boy cleared his throat. "The farm down the road delivers firewood, the Barras family, with the goat herd."

"I see. Thank you," she said, following him outside. "Goodbye."

He nodded, eyes scanning the fields where his work was waiting for him.

Cocot wished there was more to say, more to talk about, but he clearly was not interested. She adjusted the heavy basket in the crook of her elbow and set off on the path along the edge of the lower field towards the woods.

"Hey!" the boy shouted.

She turned just in time to catch an apple he tossed to her. Fumbling to hold the basket and the wrinkly fruit, she tried to smile, wave and thank him at the same time.

"For the road home," he said, still not looking at her, but past her where the forest slumbered.

It wasn't until she reached the first trees and the moist earth dappled with shadows that she realized the only question she should have asked was his name.

*** We will have to wait to find out the boy's name! Will he play a roll in Cocot's life or is he too wrapped in his own problems? ***