I was immediately assaulted by two small, human-shaped projectiles when I closed the door behind me. Jaq and Jacie slammed into my legs as soon as I turned around.
"Have you got anything to eat, Ellie?" Jacie asked with the loudness and fervour of children, and both looked up at me pleadingly and with hungry eyes.
"You know not to call me Ellie," I admonished automatically, careful to keep my basket out of their reach. It physically hurt to see them like this. The twins were much smaller and skinnier than other kids their age, and because I was often from home they had to help out in the house, wasting their childhood away and frequently acting beyond their years.
I looked around the single room of the house. The inside walls were just as dingy as the outside ones. On the right hand side were a large set of doors, which when opened up revealed a sort of bed closet. The bed filled the entire space behind the doors and was shared by all four of us. At the back of the room was a small hearth, fireless, with an empty cooking pot over it, and on either side the walls were lined with shelves that contained a mixture of herbs, spices, and a host of pots and jars whose contents could only belong to a healer's lab. On the left hand side of the room was an undrawn curtain revealing a tub, for bathing. It wasn't used as much as it should be, at least not in this weather when the cold made taking a bath in cold water even more unpleasant.
There was one wobbly wooden table in the middle of the room, with three equally wobbly and worn chairs around it. Normally, a small wooden stool also sat next to it, to replace the chair that had been used for firewood in a particularly tough winter, but I found the stool when I found the last occupant of my house.
My mother was sitting on the stool in the corner under our single window. She hadn't acknowledged my presence at all, and she showed all the signs of the final stage of her condition, the one that preceded another disaster.
I cursed to myself as I rushed to her side, kneeling before her and lifting her face to check her. Sadie was hugging her knees, rocking back and forth continuously. Her eyes were large and round and empty, directed at my face only because I had positioned myself in front of it. Her dark hair, once so similar to mine, hung in clumps around her face, dirty and uneven where she had torn out fistfuls out of sheer anguish.
I bit back the tears, even though seeing her like this made another piece of my heart break off, and turned away. I set my basket on the table and fished our last remaining coals from the container next to the hearth.
"DON'T even think about it," I hissed sharply at the twins who had been inching towards the basket on the table. They flinched and backed away. I lit a fire with a combination of coals and wood, and hung the pot over the fire. Taking a jar from the shelves beside the hearth, I emptied its contents in the pot and shredded the willowbark into it. As it was heating up, I took the bread and tore off a few hunks, giving one each to Jaq and Jacie. They devoured it within the few seconds it took me to pour milk in some rudimentary wooden cups.
"That's all for today," I warned them when handing them the cups, ignoring my own growling tummy. The contents of the pot were sufficiently warm now, and I placed the aetherfrond inside it. The potion hissed and turned an eye-watering shade of sky blue. I gave the mixture a final stir and then dipped a cup into it, filling it to the brim. It was when I turned to take it to my mother that I noticed the beam of weak daylight cast on the floor, and the eyes peering through the gap between curtain and window frame.
