"We are all someone's monster." Leigh Bardugo, Six of Crows
Author's Note: This story contains war scenes and some violence.
Uhrs Nolan checked his answer against the key in the back of his math book. Correct. He looked out the cellar window, but the sun was too far down to continue studying. He shut the book. He missed the entire spring term but with his mother's tutoring continued studying during the war against the invaders from Makarstan.
He put boards over the window, shutting out the fading daylight. He turned on the one small light they used, which could not be seen from the street with the window boarded over. His stomach growled. He hadn't eaten since breakfast, two slices of bread, and a third of the last piece of cheese. The other two pieces went with the bread eaten by his mother and younger brother, Georg. Water boiled for safe drinking was their only beverage.
For some reason, the small cellar room still had electricity, probably because the town of Zbor had been fought over by the home army and the Makarstans on their advance to Broma, the capital of Bromarsk. The home army kept them from advancing along the river route to Broma. There was a ceasefire, badly kept, so that gunfire and shelling occurred every two or three days, instead of every day.
There wasn't much to fight for, anymore. The 12-story apartment building where his family had lived, with balconies and elevators, near a park, was a two-story mound of gray rubble. The park was bomb holes, shattered trees and homeless people.
The door opened and his mother came in with Georg. She carried a small sack. Uhrs hoped she'd found food. Since the patriots hadn't retaken the town, and the Makarstanis had destroyed must of the infrastructure, there was little to scavenge. Most of the townspeople had either fled or been captured and deported to Makarstan by the invaders.
Ada Nolan and her sons missed the evacuation because Georg had been in the hospital with pneumonia. When the battle reached the hospital, doctors sent him home with medicine. Georg recovered, but was too sick to travel. Ada told Uhrs to leave and meet them in Broma, to find his father who was a nurse with the Home Army. He refused, to her relief. She depended on him to keep them fed.
Gerhold Nolan had been a nurse at the hospital until the war started. He left to join the home army, kissing Ada goodbye, hugging Uhrs, and lifting Georg up to hug him before he left. They'd gotten a few letters and calls from him, then nothing, after the phone system was destroyed and the postal service stopped.
She put the sack on the table, and from it put a few cans of beans and a small can of chicken on a shelf by the single unit burner Uhrs had found. Meat! They hadn't had meat in six days, since he'd caught a pigeon.
"Did you study this afternoon, Uhrs? Did any troops go by?"
"Yes, Mama, I finished history, and the last of the math problems."
She nodded. "I'll look over your work in the morning. Watch your brother while I check the garden."
Uhrs found this small house on the edge of the city. It had been bombed, but the cellar was livable. There was electricity and a sink. Soldiers and looters had gone by and ignored the place, so it was relatively safe. The house had a small garden in the back. Someone had planted potatoes, perhaps anticipating food shortages, and there was an apple tree with fruit beginning to ripen.
Ada went into the garden, returning with an armful of potatoes. She put two large ones and a small one on the table and the rest in a closet. Uhrs estimated there were two potatoes a day for each of them for three of four days. Some of the potatoes weren't very big.
"Mama, I'm hungry," Georg said.
"I know, Georg, we'll have potatoes and beans soon. Chicken tonight, too." She smiled at her sons. "I picked some ripe apples."
