suzanna-kollinz-acliq-oyunlari-1-hisse-eng

of an old oak, hoping for game to come by. After several hours,
I had the good luck to kill a rabbit.
I’d shot a few rabbits before, with my father’s guidance. But
this I’d done on my own.
We hadn’t had meat in months. The sight of the rabbit
seemed to stir something in my mother. She roused herself,
skinned the carcass, and made a stew with the meat and some
more greens Prim had gathered. Then she acted confused and
went back to bed, but when the stew was done, we made her
eat a bowl.
The woods became our savior, and each day I went a bit
farther into its arms. It was slow-going at first, but I was determined
to feed us. I stole eggs from nests, caught fish in nets,
sometimes managed to shoot a squirrel or rabbit for stew, and
gathered the various plants that sprung up beneath my feet.
Plants are tricky. Many are edible, but one false mouthful and
you’re dead. I checked and double-checked the plants I harvested
with my father’s pictures. I kept us alive.
Any sign of danger, a distant howl, the inexplicable break of
a branch, sent me flying back to the fence at first. Then I began
to risk climbing trees to escape the wild dogs that quickly got
bored and moved on. Bears and cats lived deeper in, perhaps
disliking the sooty reek of our district.
On May 8th, I went to the Justice Building, signed up for my
tesserae, and pulled home my first batch of grain and oil in
Prim’s toy wagon. On the eighth of every month, I was entitled
to do the same. I couldn’t stop hunting and gathering, of
course. The grain was not enough to live on, and there were
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