The anger washed away the last vestiges of sleep. Had she only ever pretended to love him? Had he only ever imagined that smile, the one that he had thought meant she loved him? And what of his father? He had spent years crying for him after he died—how long had he spent counting the coins he’d been paid to take Matt in?
“Ah. You’re awake then. Eat.”
Matt was pulled from his thoughts to see that Cutter had turned from the fire and was offering him a bowl of stew. It smelled delicious, and he was all too aware that the sun was beginning to rise on the horizon, meaning it had been nearly twenty-four hours since he’d last eaten, a breakfast he’d prepared himself and whatever talents his mother had when it came to cooking, he had, unfortunately, not inherited them. But of course I wouldn’t have, since she’s not my real mother.
As hungry as he was, he wasn’t yet ready to let his anger go, and he crossed his arms, turning away sullenly. For while his mother and father had been guilty of taking him on for money, it had been Cutter who had paid them to do it, dumping Matt off as if he were no more than some lost mongrel found in the street. “I’m not hungry.”
“Eat anyway,” the man said, reaching it out farther. “It could be the last meal you’ll have in a while. Animals won’t stray close to the Black Woods. Not normal ones anyway. Fact is, we’re lucky to have this squirrel.”
Matt studied the man’s eyes carefully. Cutter had always been kind to him, in his way, but the man always seemed to him to be on the edge of violence. Once, his friend Beldin’s father had bought a dog from a traveling merchant. The dog had seemed kind enough, gentle, even, lazing about mostly, and all of the village kids had loved it—in the outskirts of the world like Brighton, pets were a luxury few could afford. They had loved that dog, doted on it, right up until it had bitten Beldin one day. Matt had been there. Beldin had done nothing to deserve it, had only been walking by the dog, but it had been vicious, exploding at him like a beast, chewing and digging at Beldin’s leg. It had taken over a minute for Beldin’s father to rip the dog free, and Beldin had walked with a limp ever since.
Of course, Beldin would walk with a limp no longer, for he, like the rest of Brighton, was dead. Still, in many ways, Cutter reminded Matt of that dog. He could be kind, could be gentle, but there seemed to be a violence within him, one only waiting to erupt to the surface. His anger, he thought, was like a caged beast, calm and docile on the outside, but on the inside, waiting for its moment, the moment when some careless onlooker might draw too close, the moment when he would lash out. Beldin’s father had put the dog down, but, somehow, Matt did not think he would have found it so easy to do the same with Cutter.
He took the offered bowl.
Cutter studied him for a moment with those cold eyes, eyes that could have hid anything—or nothing. For a moment, Matt thought he might have somehow read his thoughts, thought that the beast might have worked its way free of its cage. The man, though, only grunted and rose, turning to stare back into the falling snow, back toward Brighton.
Matt released a breath he hadn’t realized he was holding, thankful that the big man’s attention was no longer on him, like a weight crushing him. Then, belatedly, he realized what he had failed to notice in his surprise. “You’re…you’re hurt.”
Cutter turned to regard him and, sure enough, he saw the cut on the man’s left arm, the bandage which had been wrapped around it stained lightly with blood. Not a deep cut, then, but a recent one. Cutter grunted again. “It’s nothing.”
“But…what happened?”
The man seemed to consider that, then. “I fell.”
It was a lie, that much was obvious, but it was just as obvious that the man wasn’t going to say anything more. Yet another lie, then, to add to the lies which had made up Matt’s entire life. “You’re not going to eat?”
“I already did.”
Matt frowned at that, glancing around the fire, but if there was a second bowl, he didn’t see it, and the small pot Cutter had used didn’t appear to be much bigger than Matt’s bowl. Had the man only eaten before him, or had he given it all to Matt? After all, one squirrel wasn’t much split between two people—wasn’t much for one, really, as Matt found that he was still hungry—but he thought there had been a surprising amount of meat in the stew, enough to account for a single squirrel, surely.
And there it was again—that kindness. The kindness he had seen from the man before, a sort of off-handed kindness which he never acknowledged, which he would have likely preferred no one acknowledge. Which was real, then? The anger or the kindness? Both?
“Do you think they’ll catch us?” Matt asked, following the man’s gaze. He could see nothing but snow, everything else more than a few feet ahead obscured from view by the heavy curtain of white, so that the men could have been less than a hundred paces away, and he would have never known it.
“Not before we reach the Black Wood,” he said.
Matt frowned. Yesterday, the man had been sure that they would be caught, but now he seemed confident that they would make it to the woods first. What
