Bread hung from the village gate—not an invitation to eat, but a warning to stay away.
Twelve blackened loaves, stolen from White Communion wagons and burned. Memory had not returned. Only calorie blasts scarred the wood.
A child cried inside, too softly to have much strength left.
The gate bore one sentence.
`We will not live by abandoning the dead.`
Cassian knocked.
"We do not eat the bread," a man said from within.
"I'm not selling it."
"Then we are even less likely to open."
Cassian's black feather caught in the crack. Everyone inside held their breath. They feared him more than the White Communion House.
Their judgment was accurate.
* * *
Rosamund's traveling oven stopped before the village. She rang no bell. She sent only the smell.
As it entered through the cracks, children's cries stopped one by one so they could breathe it in.
Rosamund opened a register.
"Forty-two adults. Nineteen children. Twenty-three likely to survive tonight."
"And the rest?" Ria asked.
"Already eating their own bodies."
She set a basket before the gate.
"The cost was disclosed yesterday."
"We refused," the man replied.
"Your share, yes. Do you own the right to refuse the children's?"
Silence.
"Parents decide," Adel said. "The children must be asked too."
"What does a starving child understand?"
"That is why you explain."
"And if they die while you explain?"
"Death does not replace consent."
"Nor does memory replace life."
Neither woman raised her voice. Parents inside shouted for them.
"Feed only the children."
"If we forget first, who protects them?"
"If we die, no one does!"
Family was no refuge for consent. Under hunger, the nearest person became pressure first.
* * *
The village leader appeared on the watchtower. Hern Vas held a spear in one hand and his son's wrist in the other.
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Emil was about ten, with darkness under his eyes.
"My son," Hern said. "I will not live by forgetting him."
"What does he want?" Adel asked.
"The same."
"I will hear him. Release his hand first."
Hern did not. Rosamund raised a piece of bread.
"Eat this and you forget one person. You cannot choose whom."
Emil's eyes followed it, then turned to his father. Hern's grip tightened.
"Do you want it?" Adel asked.
The boy tried to nod. His father's hand stopped him. That too was an answer.
"Take it away," Hern said. "The gate stays closed."
Before sunset, a small drain beneath the gate opened. Emil's hand emerged holding nine white stones and ten black ones.
"The children voted. White means eat. Black means refuse."
Nineteen choices split ten to nine. Adults shouted from inside that it was not a vote.
Hern's hand appeared around Emil's wrist. Adel did not grab the boy; that would turn protection into a tug-of-war.
"Why did you choose white?"
"My little brother hasn't spoken since morning."
"You may forget someone."
"If he dies, everyone may remember him, but he will still be gone."
Another child called from inside, "I'd rather die than forget Mother."
"That is why we couldn't decide together," Emil said.
Rosamund picked up a white stone. "Then feed ten."
Adel took a black one. "And protect the refusal of nine. Give each piece separately."
Hern shut the drain. The children's first decision was never carried out.
That night, one child who had chosen white died. His father reported that the boy had refused to the end.
Ria opened the corpse's fist. A white stone lay inside.
His mother tried to take it. "That isn't his."
"His name?" Ria asked.
The village register called him only `child of a refuser`.
Emil shouted through the drain, "Soren."
Ria carved: `Soren Bas. Chose to eat. Died before his choice was carried out.`
The white stone was buried with one uneaten piece. The village neither burned nor ate it. Soren became a person only after death, not his father's position.
Death did not replace consent. Neither did a parent's testimony.
Cassian walked beneath the tower. His right foot no longer resembled a foot and his neck remained open, yet he climbed.
Hern thrust down. Cassian took the spear through his right shoulder, pinning it to the wall, then used its shaft as a step.
Hern could not release it. Let go and Cassian climbed; hold on and his own weapon became a ladder.
Cassian caught the parapet.
"Open the gate."
"No."
"Then I make you open it."
* * *
Cassian killed neither Hern nor the boy. He stole a loaf from Rosamund's basket.
Hern shut his mouth. Cassian struck his jaw, forced the bread between his teeth, and pinched his nose.
"Don't!" Adel shouted.
Too late. Hern swallowed to breathe.
One meal entered his body. One person left.
His gaze slid off Emil.
"Who are you?"
He still held the boy's wrist.
"Father."
"Me?"
Hern looked at his own hand, released the stranger, and shook him off when Emil caught him again.
The boy called him father a second time. This time his voice emerged. It did not reach its destination.
Cassian took the gate key from Hern's belt.
"Now it opens."
Adel struck the back of his hand.
"You took his son from him. In front of the child."
"The gate opened."
"That does not answer me."
"No."
He offered no excuse. That angered her more.
Ria wrote:
`Hern Vas was forced to eat.`
`He forgot Emil Vas.`
`Cassian Crow fed him.`
The spelling remained. The relationship did not return.
Emil borrowed Ria's pen and wrote on his father's palm: `Emil Bas. The son you forgot.`
Hern tried to wipe it away.
"Then I'll write it again."
"What proves I am your father?"
Emil pointed to the spear on the tower. His height had been carved into the shaft every year in Hern's hand, most recently three days ago.
Hern could read the evidence. He could not feel his son.
"Isn't a record enough?"
"No. But it's better than nothing."
Emil did not recover his father. He gained proof with which to contradict him each time he denied the relationship.
* * *
The gate opened. The villagers did not run to the bread. They looked up at the tower.
Emil cried. Hern did not know why.
"Give us the bread," Hern told Rosamund. "People are dying."
Having forgotten the son who blocked his choice, the leader spoke with perfect reason.
"Do you know the cost?" Rosamund asked.
"One person. Cheap enough."
Emil watched his father. He had been the price.
Rosamund looked at the boy without pity, only checking a cost omitted from the calculation.
"Distribution begins."
Adel blocked the gate.
"I ask every child directly."
"Do so."
"Those unable to answer wait."
"And if they die?"
"I record it."
"Does a record fill a stomach?"
"Forgetting does not return a person."
The women faced each other across bread baskets, closer than the distance needed to draw a blade. Neither yielded.
Then Emil clutched his stomach.
Not hunger. Something swelled beneath his skin.
Flesh split beside his navel. Warm steam came instead of blood. Black roots wrapped his ribs, and white dough grew across them.
Emil screamed.
In the place where his father had forgotten him, a second loaf was baking.