Chapter 3 - Survival at Any Cost
 
It was mid-winter before Rin felt her first hunger pangs, with nothing at all to satisfy it. The potatoes and onions had long since been devoured, as well as the last of her fall vegetables. Even the rice she had earned from one farmer was completely gone. She had eaten the rest of it the day before. It had been barely enough to make one very tiny rice ball. She put on her mother’s heavy shift over her old, torn kimono and went knocking on doors. She was turned away time after time. Even the old man’s wife turned her down. She was pregnant with her fourth child and could spare nothing for the little girl.

Rin pulled the heavy shift up to her ears as she stood on the old man’s property and gazed around her. The fish reserve and the hard-looking man there that ran it was her last option. The reserve had been placed there through Princess Aara’s generosity, with the intention of allowing all the villagers ample meat during bad times and good. However, it quickly became clear that the elders had decided to make it as prosperous as possible. They fenced it off with wood and wire mesh and started charging villagers for fish. They accepted almost anything of value in trade. Rin had nothing.

She knocked on the fish-keeper’s door. When no answer came, she knocked again.

This time the door was yanked open by a sour-faced man. “Whaddya want?!” he barked at her. She pointed to the water behind the shack. “Eh, you want a fish do you? Well, it will cost you. What do you have?” He stared intently down at her, glaring by the light of the half moon.

 
 
When she said nothing, only continued to point at the pond, he snorted in derision. “Go away and do not come here again!” With that, he slammed the door in her face. She shivered in the cold. Hungry and sad, she trailed slowly home. Sleep was all she had to look forward to tonight.
The next night was silent and still. Snow had fallen all day and there was a blanket more than four inches deep over everything in sight. Rin had tried once again, to no avail, to beg food from the villagers. Her stomach was rumbling and she was very weak. She made her way to the edge of the wooden fence surrounding the reserve. It was not necessarily to keep people out so much as it was to keep poaching animals and demons out. At least, that is what the elders had said. But in between the wooden slats of the fence a wire mesh had been nailed. No one could get under the fence. She was five years old now, though still too small to climb the high fence. She let loose a guttural sob in frustration. She could speak, but she chose not to. It was easier when people thought she was mute. They discussed things in front of her they never would otherwise.

Shaking her head to clear her thoughts, she turned and walked the length of the fence. The reserve was a long, deep ravine, though not very wide. It gave the fish room to swim without making the humans have to go too far out to get the fish it contained. When she reached the end of the fence on one side and turned the corner to go around to the back, she looked back at the low lights of the village. A few people still had their lamps lit, but most of the houses were dark. If only she could find a way in…

As she rounded the end corner and started back up the other side, she saw what she had been hoping for. There was a hole in the wire! She quickly scrambled to it and hunched down, peering intently at the hole. It was not quite big enough for her. She searched the area for a stick and found one the perfect size for her needs. She pushed it through the hole and began working it back and forth. It took her half the night to enlarge the hole in the tough mesh, but she finally succeeded. She bent back the wire and started to slither through the gap. When her mother’s shift caught she had to turn back and remove it. She was very cold. She had been out in the snow all night. She didn’t care, though. She was almost to her goal and she KNEW she had to have some fish if she were to survive. She carefully scrambled through the hole. She had made it! Now if she could catch a fish she would be happy indeed.

It took her a few minutes of studying the water to determine what she had to do to get the fish. She had to wade into the water and scoop one out. She had no net and no line with which to fish. Even if she had, there was no bait. Gritting her teeth against the frigid water, she silently thanked the gods that there was as yet no ice covering the pond. At least not all the way. Her tiny legs were numb almost from the time she stepped into the water. As she did, she felt movement underneath her. She knew the pond was very well stocked. She wasn’t sure what to do, so she let instinct take over. She reached both hands down into the water and waited, motionless, for something to happen. Then it did! A large salmon swam lazily in between her palms. At first she was so fascinated by it that she forgot what she was doing. Then she remembered in a jolt of clarity. She slammed her palms together, trapping the fish, and flung it as high and far as she could. It landed on the flat part of the embankment, where it flapped this way and that. She was ecstatic! She scrambled out of the water, almost losing her footing more than once due to her numb legs and feet, but she made it. She pushed the wriggling fish through the hole in the fence, and then followed. As she shoved her arms into her mother’s shift she silently thanked whatever gods were looking out for her. That night her trek home was a happy one.

Behind her, snow began to fall once again, obliterating her tiny footprints.

At home, Rin cooked the fish as best she could over her wood-burning stove. As warm as it kept her, she could not gather enough firewood to make it last very long. She could not use an axe to chop large pieces into smaller ones, and couldn’t drag home larger pieces anyway. So, she had to make do with fallen tree limbs and branches, which were few and far between. Every time she lit the stove she had to go further and further away to find suitable wood. This night, however, she had enough already stocked to burn long enough to cook her prize. She gorged herself on half of the fish, wrapping the rest in cloth and burying it in the snow just outside her door. She smiled in satisfaction that night as she fell into a dreamless sleep.

The very next night the temperature dropped rapidly until there was a solid layer of ice over the pond. The caretakers, as instructed, punched many large holes all along the pond’s edge. They noticed nothing out of place as they did so.

Rin continued her theft all winter, lying on her belly with her hands sticking through the hole the caretakers had thoughtfully placed.

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