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just a dog skull—aint gonna do you no harm. Just on my way somewhere but I got stuff your mum or dad gonna want on my sled if they got something for me to eat.”
    I don’t know why I say that, cos if the girl is anything to look at, then her mum and dad aint gonna have nothing to give me. I look around me. The dog tell me I been a bit stupid shouting out all the nice things I got on my sled. I pull back a little from the house which aint too easy with my heavy sled which don’t want to turn around in a hurry.
    “He isn’t here.” It’s the girl. She’s saying something through the door. “He isn’t here.”
    I drop the rope on the sled and look around again. “What, your dad aint here?”
    “He went outside.”
    “Well I’m gonna be on my way cos it’s too cold to stand around waiting aint it?”
    “Have you got any food for us?”
    I don’t know what to say cos I don’t know who’s listening now and I got a bit jittery about this strange place. I start thinking that thin girl in rags look fresh out the city. I never heard of no one living out this side of the Farngod and the graybeards are gonna know about anyone so close to us, I’m sure of it.
    I take my knife out my belt then, real slow and steady. The wind blow up eddies of snow and whip them around the front of the house. I’m gonna talk to the girl like I don’t know nothing.
    “I aint got no food,” I say. Then I step along the front of the house to where the shed is. It’s all broken down but I can see that one time it probably been a good strong little barn. But that was a long time ago and now the walls are all pitted where the stones fallen out and the roof aint been fixed up too good either.
    At the front is a low opening musta been a window. The ledge
is deep in snow. I got my back to the wall and the knife in my hand. That knife that Geraint got me, it got a good long blade that go right up in the handle and it’s made of proper Chinese metal so I can sharpen it easy. Which I done a lot, which make me feel better standing here like this, not knowing what gonna be in that shed. Maybe that girl aint really on her own and her dad or someone waiting to get me. Cos hungry cold people aint the nicest. That’s true for sure cos I seen it with my own eyes.
    But I got to look inside now and my mind racing all over the place, and I feel like I got myself in a Broogle picture where everything got a reason to be in it.
    “Have you got any food for me and our kid?”
    I can hear the girl’s voice shouting through the cracks in the door back there but I don’t say nothing, just lean around into the shed and look through the window. It’s dark inside, and the floor is covered in ridges of snow that blown through the open door at the end. Cold and dark.
    Then I see something. In the corner. And I see it’s a person. A pair of bony feet sticking out from under a pile of rags, the toes all black.
    And the feet aint alone. They been attached to a body covered in rags.
    On the floor of the shed.
    All twisted.
    There’s an arm upright, the fingers sticking out from under the rags too. Dead body just thrown down on the floor by the looks of it.
    I pull my head back and lean against the wall.
    I tell you my heart beating like a drum now.
    The girl’s voice come from the house. “Have you got any food? Just a tiny bit of food.”
    I’m still leaning against the wall. “Where’s your dad?”
    “He went out after the woman to get some wood, but that was two days ago. I’m waiting for him to come back and make it warm and get some food. Have you got a bit of food? It’s just me and our kid Tommy who wants a tiny bit of food. Please.”
    I hear the door open, and her head peek out, staring along the front of the house at me leaning back against the wall. And hanging around her legs is a little kid. A boy. He aint no more than about five and he got the same white face and green under his eyes and he got his little bony hand sticking out the door