[This is the notebook in question]
[It’s very wee.]
***
“No.”
For a moment, nobody moved. No-one inside the abode seemed to even recognise that simple, two letter word. It had been a long time since anyone had dared to utter it to a Scarlet Soldier.
As if the boy had in fact spoken in a foreign tongue, the soldier tried again, only louder and slower than before. “You will show us where you are hiding the excess grain, and stand outside. You will relinquish-”
“No.”
With the second utterance, the word cast a spell of fury on everyone in the room.
“Danila, do as he says!” The boy’s mother rushed forwards to try and grab his ear, a lever of delicate flesh to force him out through the hole and canvas sheet that made up their door, but he dodged out of the way. There was a shout from outside, a demand of what was taking the men inside so long to intimidate a few peasants in a dustbowl.
“It’s your stupid fault there’s no grain!” the boy yelled. “No water, no fish, it’s your fault!”
His mother leaped on him and tried to clamp a hand over his mouth. Whatever power the simple word had bestowed made him slippery and lithe, and he twisted from her grip with a jump and a spin. She barely managed to get a hold of his ragged tunic before he batted it out of her grip with the ridge of his hand.
“Control your child!” the scarlet-armoured man bellowed, though neither of the two interlopers went for a blade until the boy snatched up a sling from the shelf built into the curving, battered hull of their home.
The harsh ringing scrape of fury and threat bounced around the tight, rusty space, making the walls tremble.
The mother screamed. The soldiers tried to drown her out with their anger. “Put it down!”
The boy popped a stone into the leather pouch, the sharpest missile he could find, and he began spinning it. Quickly, it gained momentum, the woven hempen rope whistling and whooshing, creating a gust of wind that ruffled the boy’s dirty, unkempt hair, casting it about his neck as if he was summoning a storm.
“Drop it, now!” the soldier bellowed again … but there was a hint of something in his voice now. Was it fear? Some uncertainty?
“What’s the hold up in here? Do your jobs, get the grain!”
The new voice wasn’t that different to the voices of the people in the dustbowl, in tone at least. The accent may have been different, but the inflections reminded Danila of the fishers and the farmers, the traders and the builders. When he bashed his way through the canvas door, he appeared to be an ordinary man, as Danila’s father had been. Unlike the other two, he wore no helm, and his armour had black bands across the shoulders and down each arm.
An evil man? In his heart? To Danila, in that moment, it seemed so.
“Bloody hell,” the grunted. “Drop it, lad. We’re just here for the grain.”
The word didn’t need to be said this time. It was communicated by the furrow of the boy’s brow and the swoosh of his sling through the air.
“We’ll just come back with more men. You can’t win.”
The rope continued to swing.
“We’ll kick you out of this boat. You’ll be out in the bowl with the bones, your mother and you both. That what you want?”
The thought of stopping flashed across the boy’s mind, just for a second. Then he heard the sound, deep in his memory, of his father’s rake clattering against the dry ground.
Then, the thud of his body.
Then, his own desperate, plaintive wails.
“Either way we’d starve.”
The man stared at him. His lip curled. “You sure about this, lad?”
For the first time, the answer was not ‘no.’
The soldier on the left took a step forwards. The boy prepared to fling the stone. His mother screamed.
The one in charge stepped forwards, and dragged the other one back. “No.”
The soldier looked around, dumbfounded. “But the grain…”
“Leave it.” The soldier met the boy’s eye. The defiance didn’t budge an inch. “Come on.”
The two soldiers left first, then the leader followed, casting one last glare at the still-swinging sling.
Very short and very, very good. I salute the noble tiny notebook that sacrificed its falling-out pages for this gem.