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worked up a froth getting to the top of the hill in the deep snow, and I felt sorry for them.
    Tinker pushed past me and whispered, “Stay here!” He stomped out across the snow with a heavy wrench in his hand. It looked like he was prepared to use the thing as a weapon.
    Then, as the carriage got closer, I was disturbed to recognize Analyn and her husband. I immediately began to panic. Had Analyn betrayed me? Had she brought others, perhaps a sheriff or even an angry mob? My mind went to the trees, asking them if they’d seen more people coming. The response was a lethargic drone that I couldn’t understand. I persisted, trying to rouse the trees from their slumber and eventually got a “no,” though I couldn’t be sure if it was an answer to my questions or just an attempt to shut me up.
    Analyn and Daran spoke to Tinker in hushed voices for several minutes. The tone of their conversation changed as they spoke, but I could scarcely hear a word of it. Their voices were somber at first, then after a few moments, they started to rise in anger. Then they got themselves under control, and managed a civil “farewell,” before leaving. Then the carriage went rolling back down the hillside, and silence blanketed our homestead once again. Tinker came plodding back to the barn with his eyes downcast.
    “What did they want?” I asked as he entered.
    Tinker went over to the table, and slumped down on a stool. He sat there for some time, fiddling with our motor. He tightened up a few bolts with his wrench and polished the brass and copper pipes with an old rag. I asked him again, and still he ignored me. I was starting to get angry. “Why won’t you tell me what they wanted?” I shouted. “Did they come to tell me to leave? Are they going to kill me?”
    “No one’s going to kill you,” he said. He tossed the wrench down on the bench. He still wouldn’t look me in the eyes. “Breeze, your father is dead. He was killed in an ambush six weeks ago.”
     

Chapter 7
     
     
     
    I felt a chill moving across my skin as I heard those words. It had been close to three months since I’d seen my father. In the life of a Tal’mar child, that might as well have been three years. I had grown in that time, enough that Tinker had started stitching together pieces of his old clothes to make dresses for me.
    My father had been absent from my life for so long that I could hardly remember what he looked like. And yet, there wasn’t a day that passed in which I didn’t think of him, where I didn’t dream of his return. I felt my chest tightening as Tinker spoke, and my breath caught in my throat. Tears came to my eyes and I tried to choke them back.
    What did it mean, my father being gone? That I’d never go home? That possibility wasn’t frightening, not anymore. I had learned to love Tinker’s quiet little homestead. What it really meant was that Father would never be there. He’d never tuck me into bed and read me a story; he’d never hold me so tight that his beard made red marks on my face. Never, ever again.
    No, it wasn’t just that he was gone forever. We were gone. That magical spark between two people who love and understand one another explicitly was gone forever from my life, and it left me less than whole. My father, the only person I had in the world, was gone.
    I realized suddenly that I was bawling. My body was shaking, my breath coming in short gasps as tears streamed down my face. I felt a painful twisting in my chest, like a knife inside of me, and I got the powerful feeling that I just wanted to die.
    Tinker lifted me up and held me, and I pressed my face into his shoulder. He whispered to me quiet comforting words, but all I heard was the low drone of his voice. It helped, somewhat. It helped to know that he was there.
    I cried for a long time, even after my voice fell to a whimper and my heaving sobs gave way to a slow, steady breathing. The tears came until it didn’t seem there could possibly be