In the blue-shadowed cold before dawn, the house looked more like a stubborn shed than a home. The roof, sagging under the weight of snow, shivered with every gust. Every wall confessed its hunger for paint, for repair, for any hand that might be gentle. Out back, blackened fencing ringed a patch of white-blanketed yard. There was no dog to bark, only the memory of where a dog might have paced—paw prints filled in by drifting powder.
In the front, two windows gave onto the lane. Only one still had its glass; the other was patched with a fraying quilt, now rigid with ice. From the solid window, golden light leaked out, forming a rectangle on the snow where footprints converged and overlapped, proof of life and of need.
Past the warped pane, the family clustered around their iron-bellied stove. The six of them: father, mother, three children, and the latest—a pink bundle in the crook of the mother's arm. The fire licked up through the slats, as if it too sought their heat.
Inside, the air was thick with a stew of pine pitch, scorched bread, and sweat. The eldest daughter was at the table with a knife and a stale block of cheese, slicing almost transparent wafers. She did not look up when her father coughed, nor when her youngest brother began to whimper and gnaw on his sleeve. She worked with a patient rhythm, placing a slice on each battered plate.
The mother rocked the baby, who was astonishingly still. Even asleep, the child seemed to listen for catastrophe, arms bunched at her chest like the fists of a boxer. The mother's eyes swept the table—counting mouths, subtracting years, calculating futures.
The father's hands were road maps of old wounds and calluses. He sipped at his tea (more water than leaf), then passed it to his wife, who passed it on without a word to the eldest, and so around until it circled back to him. No one drank deeply.
"It's not so cold this morning," the father ventured, which meant it was only just below freezing.
The eldest, whose name was Rose, snorted. "That's because the wind is dead. Wait 'til it stirs up again."
Beside her, the twelve-year-old boy—thick hair, thin wrists—looked up with hope. "Maybe we'll get more wood tomorrow?"
Rose shrugged. "If the sled can make it past the creek."
He nodded, satisfied, and resumed picking crumbs from the table.
The mother shifted the baby to her shoulder, exposing the tiny face, creased and red. "She'll need a name," she said softly, mostly to herself.
The father looked uneasy, as though every name in the world weighed the same as another mouth to feed.
"Give her time," he said.
"No sense naming a girl until she shows who she is."
The mother smiled, tight and quick. "She's here, isn't she? She's not going anywhere."
The youngest, a girl of six, leaned forward so sharply she nearly toppled off the bench. "Can I hold her now?"
The mother weighed the request, then patted the bench. The six-year-old folded her arms and cradled the baby as if handling a bird. She stared at her sister's wrinkled brow in deep consideration.
"She looks like a raisin."
"She is a raisin," said Rose, not unkindly. "That's what you get for being born in winter."
The father wiped at the condensation along the window, gazing out at the hollowed barn. "Maybe next year will be easier," he said.
No one answered. They all knew the truth of it: there was nothing easy about the next year, or the next. The stove's orange mouth gaped wider, the logs surrendering with a hiss. Their shadows lengthened, then melted into one another.
Later, as the wind found its teeth, the light behind the window stayed bright. The family made the fire last by sharing a blanket, breathing the same meager warmth, waiting for whatever came next.
Rose made herself as small as possible, back pressed to the wall beside the stove, knees drawn to her chest. On her lap, Daniel drooled into the crook of her arm. She stroked his hair—thick and wild, but dull as old hay, a mark of the times. His body was all bones and knees, yet he weighed as much as a calf. She supposed the body clung to what it could, even now.
The adults' voices from the kitchen floated in waves. Mama spoke in a hush, but Rose could hear the tension braided through every word.
"…need shoes, new ones, not these damned rags—"
Father's rumble: "If the snow keeps, she can't walk the three miles, no matter what's on her feet."
"She's nearly grown. We'll need her at the Guild, if the letter—"
"It won't come." Silence, a cup placed firmly on wood. "We wait until spring."
Then: the scrape of a chair, the slow draining of hope.
Daniel's breath hitched; he mumbled a protest and burrowed closer. He was three years younger, but had never quite learned the trick of sleeping through worry. Rose envied his softness, his unbroken trust. She pulled the quilt higher over his shoulders.
On the hearth, the six-year-old girl, Meg, arranged old nails into perfect lines. She narrated their imagined lives. "This one goes to market, this one to the miller—"
Meg's voice snapped Rose back. She watched the line of children: Meg, then Daniel, then the new baby. She looked to her own hands—stained from wood pitch, marked with little burns. In the window reflection, she caught the outline of her own face: fine and sharp, a little too hollow in the cheeks, but the eyes—everyone said so—had a gold fleck like sunlight on lakewater
Rose was not beautiful in the southern fashion. Her hair was too black, her nose too insistent, her brow too flat. But in these parts, that strangeness was a kind of currency, a thing men noticed and remembered. There was not much of value left in the house, save the hayloft and her own self.
Mama had spoken of this, once, in the barn when the first cow sickened and died. "If it comes to it, you go to the Guild. You tell them you can read and take sums, and you keep your head down. You don't have to let anyone—" But she hadn't finished, just held Rose's shoulders and looked at her with a wet, wild pride.
Papa never said such things. He'd rather die in the snow than sell a daughter. But when the ration ran thin or the debtman rode through, he watched Rose with a pained sort of calculation, like she was already half gone.
The baby, still nameless, whimpered from the basket. Rose shifted Daniel off her lap—he whined, but curled instantly on the hearth—and crossed the room. Mama was there, crouched over the basket, arms bare to the shoulder despite the cold.
"She wants you," Mama said, though the baby's eyes were shut tight and her fists hammered the blanket in blind protest
"She wants milk," Rose corrected, softly. She drew the baby out, cradled her. Even for a newborn, she was slight, barely more than a heatless breath. Rose remembered holding Meg for the first time, how solid and urgent she'd seemed by comparison. This child felt like something temporary, something the world might take back any moment.
Mama watched Rose closely. "You'll make a good nurse, one day."
Rose almost laughed. "If there's a world for nurses. Or children."
"There will be." Mama's certainty rang false; it was a mother's duty to make hope. She touched Rose's cheek. "You'll have choices. Don't let them take that away."
Rose nodded, because to argue would be cruel. She carried the baby to the hearth, rocked her gently, and watched the glow of the stove. The baby's eyelids flickered, then steadied. Even in sleep, the hunger showed: the tight jaw, the constant rooting for a teat.
Behind her, the kitchen had gone quiet. Papa must have slipped out for wood, or maybe to count the coins again, as if repetition might summon more
Rose set the baby back in the basket, tucked the blanket around her ears. Meg was now building a fortress of nails. Daniel, half-awake, blinked at her from the hearth, eyes huge in his pinched face.
"Are we going to make it, Rose?" he asked.
She crouched beside him, smoothing his hair. "Of course we are. You'll see."
He frowned, unconvinced. "But what if the snow doesn't stop?"
"Then we dig," she said, "and we hope the sun gets jealous and comes back."
He grinned. "You're clever. Cleverest in the whole valley."
She tapped his nose. "Don't let Meg hear you say that."
The day outside dulled into a relentless white. Rose's thoughts refused to settle, darting ahead to spring, to the work waiting at the Guild, to what she'd have to do if the letter never came, or if the money ran out. She ran her fingers through her hair, feeling the oily weight of it, the one thing that marked her as different, as valuable.
At dusk, the wind stilled. Papa came in with a single armful of wood, each stick counted and dry. "Sleep in shifts tonight," he said. "Keep the fire alive."
Rose volunteered for the first watch. She sat by the stove in darkness, listening to the even breathing of the others, the pops and sighs of the wood. When she could no longer bear the silence, she rose, careful not to wake the baby, and watched herself in the window. For a moment, she imagined what it would be like to step into the world alone—no family, no burden, no one watching.
She did not let herself think of what she might have to become.
She drew the curtain closed and returned to the stove, hands stretched out for any scrap of warmth. "Tomorrow," she whispered to herself. "I'll find something."
The logs burned down. She watched their embers drift to gray, then nothing, and braced herself for the day to come.
Morning came on the heels of a dreamless sleep. Rose woke with her jaw sore from clenching, eyes gritty from the stove's smoke. She watched the shadow of her own breath curling on the ceiling and forced herself upright, careful not to disturb Meg, who clung to her like a burr.
She dressed in yesterday's wool, the elbows shiny with wear. The hem of her skirt had been let out three times, so it wobbled, one side dragging on the planked floor. She tightened a strip of cloth around her hair, then stood at the table and finished the last crust of bread, holding it on her tongue like a coin she meant to spend.
The house was so quiet she could hear the ticking of Papa's pocketwatch, even though he had not wound it in months.
At the door, she found her boots—Daniel's old ones, two sizes too big—and the threadbare cloak she'd mended last week. She considered leaving a note, but there was nothing to say: she would be back if fortune smiled, or she wouldn't, and either way the family would find out soon enough.
She stepped outside, the shock of cold slicing away her doubts. The sky was already white, the road a rut of ice. No one else was out, save the crows, black against the drifts. She walked with small, careful steps, head bowed, eyes fixed on the way ahead.
She'd never been to the Guild alone. Papa had taken her, once, to fetch a medicine packet, but that had been summer, the market noisy and full of smells—onions, livestock, sweat. Today the world was silent, and every step echoed back off the empty fields.
With each footfall, her mind churned: what if they laughed her out, or worse, what if they took one look and named her for the blocky hands, the frostbitten nose? She pictured herself beside the others—girls with ribboned hair and round, pretty faces—then shook the thought away.
At the half-mile, her toes had gone numb. She stopped beneath a brittle hawthorn, let her breath settle, then pressed on. In the village, a few shopfronts held lights, but most were shuttered. Only the Guild building stood tall and proud, its sign freshly painted, the porch swept clear of snow.
She hesitated at the stoop, heart pounding so loudly she feared the men inside might hear. She closed her eyes and whispered a prayer—not the ones Mama taught, but something raw and private.
"Please," she said. "Let them see me. Let them give me something. I will do whatever it takes. Just let my family make it through the spring."
For a moment, nothing moved. The wind dropped, the street held its breath.
Then the door creaked open, and the Guild master—round and red-cheeked, eyes set deep in doughy folds—spotted her. "You there! Girl! You come for work, or you here to make trouble?"
Rose pulled herself straight, spine like a fencepost, and stepped inside.
"Work," she said, voice flat but steady. "Any you have."
The door closed behind her, and the world shrank to four walls, warmth, and the heavy gaze of those who might decide her future.
The inside of the Guild was loud and warm, so full of bodies and talk that Rose's ears rang. Sunlight struggled through the clouded windows, turning the dust in the air to rivers of gold. Half a dozen men leaned over the main desk, jostling for place as the Guild master shuffled through a stack of papers, licking his thumb after each.
She hovered by the entry, unsure if she should wait her turn or announce herself. A few faces flicked her way: two women sorting mail, a heavyset boy hauling crates, the Guild master himself, who, after a moment, bellowed, "You! Girl! With the hair. Over here."
She threaded through the throng, pulse pounding. The master's desk was stained with ink, and the blotter looked as if it had survived a decade of spilled stew. He studied her, eyes flicking up and down, then to the clock on the wall, as though measuring how much time she'd be worth.
"Name," he demanded, pen poised.
"Rose," she said, and then, after a pause, "Rose Abram."
He scrawled it down, not caring if she saw the spelling. "You read?"
"Yes, sir."
He grunted, unimpressed. "Figure numbers?"
She hesitated, then nodded. "Well enough."
He slapped the pen to the blotter. "Don't lie, girl. Either you do or you don't."
"I do," she said, stronger this time.
He grunted again. "Fine. Sit, wait."
She perched on a stool near the window, beside a slouching man who reeked of spirits and wet wool. Across the room, a group of women in better dresses than hers huddled around a notice board. Their voices were low, urgent, and every now and then they darted glances toward the master's desk.
A new sheet of parchment fluttered at the center of the board. Rose craned her neck to read, but the cluster of bodies blocked her view. She waited until two of the women drifted off, then slipped in for a closer look.
It was written in bold, almost showy script:
Wanted: Three Housemaids for Service at Northward Estate.
Steady wage, board and livery included. Discretion valued. Must be willing to relocate. Report to Guild in two weeks' time for screening and selection.
Rose's heart hammered. Northward Estate was the manor on the ridge—fifteen days by post, a place of almost mythical plenty. The notice said nothing of experience. Just "discretion," which she knew from Mama's talk was a way of saying: keep your mouth shut, keep your eyes down, and don't ask about the rooms you're not allowed to clean.
Behind her, a voice cut in. "They'll take you, if you can keep a secret."
Rose turned. It was the heavyset boy with the crates. He grinned, a broad gap in his front teeth. "That's what they said last year. But the girls who went? Never came back."
Rose studied the poster again, weighing the risk against the certainty of hunger at home. "It's better than nothing."
He shrugged. "Better than nothing for most. But I'd keep an eye out, if I was you."
She nodded and drifted back to the main desk, where the Guild master scribbled through a ledger. "The estate job," she said. "How do I apply?"
He didn't look up. "Put your name on the list. It's right there."
He jabbed a finger at a battered clipboard, already fat with signatures. She scrawled her name as neatly as she could. The master eyed it, then added a note beside it in his own cramped hand.
"Interviews in fifteen days," he said. "Someone from the Lord's house will come. They'll look you over. Pick who they like."
"Thank you," she said, but he was already on to the next person.
Rose edged to the wall, letting the chatter and bustle swallow her up. Her hands were sweating, and her stomach twisted, but beneath that was a flare of hope—thin and sharp, like the first green blade breaking winter's crust.
She stared at her name on the list. It was one among many, but it was there, black and permanent.
She left the Guild with a scrap of paper in her hand, instructions for the interview written in spidery script. The snow was coming down harder now, the village blurred and hushed by the storm. She clutched the note close, boots scraping the walk, and headed home to wait for her turn.
The snow was shin-deep by the time Rose made it home. Her feet stung from the cold, each step a jolt that rose through her ankles and up her spine. The house stood small and hunched in the dusk, chimney coughing out smoke that was already whisked away by the wind.
Inside, she shook the snow from her boots and crept in, hoping for a moment to gather herself before the questions began. But Mama was there by the stove, arms folded tight across her chest, and Papa leaned at the window, pretending to polish the glass.
"You went?" Mama said, voice thin and sharp as wire.
Rose nodded, then held up the slip of paper, the words already smudged from her hands. "I put my name in. It's a maid's job at Northward. They pick in two weeks."
Papa turned away from the window, his face unreadable. He looked at Rose, then at the note, then at her again.
"Northward," he repeated, almost to himself.
Mama stared at the slip, lips moving soundlessly as she read. Her eyes, when she raised them, were wet and wild, the same as the day she'd birthed the new baby on the kitchen table
"It's a good house," Rose said quickly. "They pay, and there's a place to sleep. Maybe I can send something back."
Mama's arms dropped. She crossed the room in two steps and pulled Rose close, so tight the air vanished from Rose's lungs. Mama's hand stroked her hair, all the way down, then back up, trembling the whole while.
"You don't have to do this," Mama whispered. "You're a child."
Rose shook her head. "I'm not. Not anymore."
Mama sobbed, once, hard and ugly, then held her even closer. "It's not fair. I wish you could—"
Rose waited, but the words didn't come.
"I know," she said. "But this way, we all get through the winter."
Papa stepped forward, slow as if the floor threatened to break beneath him. He laid his hand on Rose's shoulder, then let it fall.
"I'm proud of you," he said, the words rough and uncertain. "I wanted to keep you safe. That's all I ever wanted."
Rose looked at him, saw the way his jaw twitched, the way he bit back whatever else he meant to say.
"If it's terrible," he continued, "if you ever want to come home, you can. We'll always open the door."
Rose smiled then, for the first time all day. "I know," she said.
Meg and Daniel watched from the hearth, the new baby wailing with that newborn outrage Rose already envied. Meg came over, slipped her tiny hand into Rose's, and held it tight.
"Are you leaving forever?" Meg asked, eyes wide.
"No," said Rose. "I'll come back. I promise
They ate supper huddled together, sharing stories of the day. Papa told a joke about a merchant and a donkey; Daniel built a tower from bread crusts and tried to knock it over with peas. The baby finally slept. Even Mama smiled, a real smile, at Rose's clever retelling of the Guild master's red face.
After the meal, when the others drifted to sleep, Rose sat by the window. The sky was the color of iron, the fields stretching silent in all directions. Her thoughts turned to the manor, to the faces she might meet and the chores she'd do, to the possibility—distant, but shining—of sending money home. Of coming back, one day, and seeing the family whole again.
She let herself dream, just for a moment. Then she banked the fire, curled up beneath the quilt with her sisters and brother, and waited for morning.
She was the center of all eyes, radiant, burning; Rose hovered just behind the stage's velvet curtains and breathed herself into a different self, a gleaming self, her edges scoured of all doubt. The moment the lights swept across her, she stood perfectly upright, head high, each strand of hair arranged in a lacquered curl that swept and tumbled with every calculated gesture. The dream favored her: her hair, so often the dull brown of wet sand, now shimmered like auburn spun glass beneath the spotlights, alive and weightless.
Her dress—red, yes, but more than red—swallowed light and gave it back as something richer, almost edible. A high collar hugged her neck, the bodice pressed and cinched so perfectly that she doubted any human hands could have made it. In the dream, everything touched her with a softest-of-all touch, velvet crossed with cloud, skin caressed by memory alone. The skirt flared as she walked, swishing in a way that drew the gaze, and Rose turned her body to make the skirt ripple, again and again, a dancer's trick.
She could feel the warmth of the gaze from the rows below—hungry, expectant, almost impersonal in its mass. Some eyes wanted to see her fail; more of them, though, waited to consume her triumph. On a stage, she knew: no one wanted the performance to collapse, because everyone's time would then be wasted. She smiled for them, the smile she'd practiced as a girl in dark rooms, holding her face up to the bathroom mirror in the harshest light, curling her lips just so, softening the eyes, making herself into the creature everyone might wish for, if only for a moment.
A man with an expensive suit and a face like polished marble took the stage beside her, wireless microphone gleaming. His voice, amplified, was pleasant and low: "Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for joining us tonight. Up next, a rare opportunity." His hand circled, gesturing toward her. "Rose. Age eighteen. Full health. Top marks in general education. Please note her poise, her confidence."
There was a close-up camera, she realized—the tiny red light blinking above the crowd—and she tilted her chin to catch it. She had seen herself on screen before, but the dream made her perfect: cheekbones drawn higher, the eyes somehow deeper and clearer, all her flaws edited out by the hallucinated lens.
He began at a year. "Opening bid, one standard wage-year, and I remind the floor that Rose has signed a twelve-year servitude term. That's twelve years of exclusive rights." He smiled, predatory but not unkind. "Do I have a year?"
deep curtsy that made the dress blossom in a red corona around her. The camera light flickered, signaling a zoom, and she filled the entire screen, every pore and eyelash glistening with borrowed perfection.
There was applause, slow and deliberate, each clap a little dagger of triumph. The auctioneer repeated the number for posterity. "Sold, at fifteen years, to the gentleman in the mezzanine. Congratulations to our winner." His hand hovered at her elbow. "And congratulations, Rose."
For a moment, the world froze, all eyes on her, admiration washing over in invisible waves. This was the feeling she'd hoped for, the sense of having done something exceptional, even if only by existing in the right body at the right moment.
Then the lights shifted, and the dream warped into its next act. The applause faded, replaced by a softer, more mechanical sound—the gentle tread of shoes on carpet, then the chime of a door as she was led offstage. The man in the suit guided her by the arm through a corridor lined with mirrors, each one reflecting her new self back at her, flawless and artificial and upright.
She was led to a room whose dimensions made no sense, the walls too high, the air humming with an invisible current. A chair waited in the center, upholstered in the same color as her dress. Seated in the chair was her buyer.
He was older than her father, older than anyone she'd ever seen in the flesh. His skin hung in pleats at his throat, and his hands, resting on his knees, had a pinkness like raw veal beneath the liver spots. His suit was old-fashioned, double-breasted, and he wore a watch chain thick enough to serve as a leash. His eyes, though, were not kind. They moved over her with a patient, proprietary hunger.
He gestured for her to approach, and she did. The auctioneer faded away, leaving only the old man and the girl in the red dress. Rose smiled, soft and sweet, because that was what one did; she curtsied again, for him alone.
He beckoned her closer, and the smile on his face grew, slow and reptilian. He took her hand, his grip oddly strong, and drew her nearer still. She smelled cologne, and underneath it, the bitter scent of old sweat and decay.
"Turn around," he said, and she did, once, as though presenting herself for final inspection. She wondered if he would want her to sing, or read, or perhaps recite some piece of poetry, the way bidders sometimes did in the stories. Instead, his hands found her hips. The dream provided no warning; his grip was iron, unyielding, and he pulled her into his lap with a grunt. She landed delicately, but the softness of the dress was no match for the hardness underneath.
He ran his hands up her spine, fingers tracing the seams of the gown, then slid them beneath the fabric at her shoulder. With a practiced movement, he drew the zipper down, exposing the pale slope of her neck, her back, the trembling line of her spine.
"Beautiful," he said, and the word, in his mouth, was a verdict.
She felt herself shiver, not from fear, but a peculiar anticipation—like standing on the edge of a cold pool and knowing she must jump. She willed herself to relax, to keep the smile, to remember every lesson her mother had taught her about survival and grace.
The old man stroked her hair, the lacquered curls coming apart in his fingers, then pressed his mouth to the soft just behind her ear. His breath was wet and sour. "You belong to me now," he whispered, "and you'll do everything I tell you."
She nodded, once, twice. The dress slipped lower, catching at her hips, then pooling at her waist. He pawed at her, unhurried, taking time to explore her as one might a new possession—turning her wrist over to examine the veins, thumbing the sharp bone of her collar, lifting her chin with a finger to stare into her face.
He ran his tongue up her cheek, and she suppressed a flinch. His other hand slid between her thighs, and this time she could not keep the shiver from running up her body. He found the hem of her underthings and yanked, hard; in the dream, she felt the snap of elastic, the bare skin, the cold.
She wondered, in a strange, distant way, if the family would ever know how much she had brought in at the auction. She wondered if her sister would thank her. The old man bent her over his lap and spread her legs with his knees, grunting with the effort, and Rose let herself float upward, away from the sensation of his hands and his breath and the thing pressing at her.
He entered her with a groan, his hips rocking in a slow, methodical rhythm. She stared at the wall, blank and blood-colored, and counted the seconds between each of his movements. In the dream, it lasted forever. In the dream, she never screamed, not once.
When it was over, he wiped his mouth on her hair and buttoned himself back up, then patted her thigh as if she were a dog that had performed a trick. "You'll do very nicely," he said. "I'm going to get my years' worth out of you."