The afternoon light was soft, the air warm, and Shikainci's father taught him to graft trees in the spring, when the petals were white and the air smelled of earth. The boy's hands were too small to hold the knife steady, but he watched, and he learned, and he waited for the fruit to come. He did not know that in the hills beyond the valley, something with black teeth was drawing closer.
His mother sewed by the window, her needle catching the afternoon light. He sat beside her in the evenings, learning to mend his shirts, his fingers clumsy but patient. The house smelled of bread and dried herbs, and the warmth of the hearth made the small room feel like the whole world.
"You have your father's hands," she said, watching him struggle with a patch. He looked at his hands. They were still small, clumsy, and covered in small cuts from the grafting knife.
"They're still small," he said.
"They will grow," she said.
"And one day, you will graft trees and sew shirts and do a hundred things you cannot yet imagine." He smiled. It was a small smile, but it was his.
On the third evening, the birds stopped singing. He noticed it first, because he had been listening to them while he worked, a steady chorus of sparrows and thrushes that filled the orchard with sound. Then, between one moment and the next, they were silent. He looked up from the branch he was tying. His father's hands had paused on the graft, his eyes fixed on the ridge where the hills stood dark against the fading light.
"Father?"
His father did not answer. He was staring at the ridge with a look Shikainci had never seen before, not fear exactly but something close to it, recognition.
"Inside," his father said. His voice was low and steady, but there was an edge to it that had not been there before. "Go to your mother. Tell her to lock the door."
"What's wrong?"
His father's jaw tightened. "Go."
Shikainci ran. He burst through the door of the house, his mother's name on his lips, but she was already standing, already moving toward him, her face white. She had heard the silence too. "Lock the door," he said, breathless.
"Father said to lock the door."
She did not ask why.
She slid the bolt, pulled the shutters closed, and took him by the shoulders.
"Cellar," she said.
"Now."
He looked at the window, at the light that was already fading, at the ridge that was dark against the sky. "What about Father?" Her hands tightened. "He will come. Go."
She pushed him toward the stairs, and he went, his feet stumbling on the worn wood, his hands reaching for the darkness. Behind him, he heard her voice, low and quick, calling out to his father, and then the cellar door closed, and he was alone.
He pressed his back against the cold stone wall and listened. The house groaned. The shutters rattled. Above, his mother's voice rose, sharp and sudden, and then it stopped. He waited.
The silence that followed was not empty. It was thick and heavy, pressing against his ears like water. He could hear his own breathing, too loud and too fast. He could hear the blood in his veins. He could hear something else, a sound that was not a sound, a weight that pressed against the walls of the cellar, against the door, against the place where his mother had been standing.
Then the fire came. He felt it through the stone, through the roots of the house, through the bones of the earth. The world shook. The walls groaned. Above him, the house began to burn.
He did not know how long he stayed there. Minutes or hours. The fire did not stop. The smoke seeped through the cracks, thin at first, then thick, and he pressed his face into his mother's shawl, the one she had left on the cellar stairs, trying to breathe, trying to wait. When the fire died, when the smoke cleared, when the world outside went silent, he crawled up the stairs and pushed the door open.
The village was gone.