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In the bleak midwinter, Stahl’s littlest brother Boq was born. He had come early and was breathtakingly small. Despite his size, he wailed so loudly that the whole of Rush Margins could hear him. He refused to sleep in his bassinet or in the pile of blankets next to Ma. Ma barely got out of bed since Boq was born, leaving ten year old Stahl and his nine year old sister Catta and eight year old brother Pon to take care of the two room shanty, Ma, and their grandfather while Pa patchworked a living from odd jobs he took in the fishing village they lived in.
Grandpa loved holding little Boq. He came out every morning to sit in his rocking chair in front of the cookstove and waited impatiently for one of his older grandchildren to bring Boq to him. The baby slept soundly on the withered old man’s chest, and even when he woke he quietly stared at everything with his big, gray eyes.
“Inquisitive little chap, aren’t you?” Grandpa chuckled, nuzzling Boq’s little pink nose with his large, gnarled one. “What are you seeing, sweetheart?”
Stahl sat on a stool and rested his head on the old man’s blanketed knee, tired and cold and hungry. It had been such a miserable winter, but Boq’s birth was a bright spot. Grandpa hadn’t been this energetic and hopeful in months. Stahl wished he felt the same.
“I hope he doesn’t die,” Stahl whispered.
Grandpa tore his eyes away from Boq and frowned at Stahl. “You mustn’t worry. He’s got good lungs and a strong heart.”
“So did Nell.”
It was a little over two years since his baby sister had died in her bassinet. She had only been a week old and no one knew what had happened. She was born in early summer, when the larder was full and the weather fair, and she came right on time and was just the right size, then she simply went to sleep and didn’t wake up again.
Grandpa kissed the top of Stahl’s blonde head, gray whiskers pricking his scalp. “He will survive the winter, I know it. He’s already two weeks old, can you believe it? Should we do something special when he turns three weeks old?”
They didn’t, for Grandpa died the next afternoon. His heart had simply given out. Now Ma wailed as much as Boq did, because Grandpa was her Pa, and her Ma lived too far away to visit. Pa couldn’t stay home all day because they needed money, so Stahl had to comfort his distraught siblings even though he wanted to cry himself because Grandpa was being stored in a stranger’s house until spring came and the ground was thawed enough to bury him. He took over the cooking and the cleaning so Catta and Pon could play. He tried not to snap at them when they asked him to play with them, but couldn’t they see that he had to make sure Ma ate a little and that Boq’s diaper needed to be changed again and why were there always dishes in the sink?
Exhausted, Stahl decided to take a break while the potato soup simmered and sit next to Catta and Pon as they played cat’s cradle. The screeching wind barely muffled Boq’s withering cries. He hadn’t heard Ma grumble or cry in some time. Any other day, he would have figured that she was asleep, but he felt a prickle along the back of his neck, like when Grandpa used to tickle him with his long finger nails. He pushed himself up and went to the bedroom.
Ma sat up in bed, her long, black hair strewn over her careworn face. She clutched her pillow in her lap. Boq writhed between her legs in nothing but his diaper.
“Ma?”
Her amber glare cut through him. “Go play with your brother and sister, Stahl.”
His body went numb. His voice didn’t even sound like his own when he said, “I needed to get Boq first.”
Her gaze softened. “I’ll take care of him. You do so much already, love.”
Stiffly, Stahl picked up Boq and placed him in his bassinet. He turned to his mother and pulled the pillow out of her weakened grip.
“You need to rest, Ma,” he said as he put the pillow back on the bed where it belonged. “You’re tired.”
“How can I sleep when he never stops crying?” she whimpered, curling down on her side.
Stahl tucked her in and kissed her cheek. “I’ll take care of him. I love you, Ma.”
“I love you most, sweet boy.”
Stahl scooped the still crying Boq up with his blanket and carried him out of the bedroom. His siblings had abandoned their game, staring at him as he walked to Grandpa’s old rocking chair by the cookstove. The moment he sat down, he burst into tears. Catta and Pon hugged him, careful not to crush little Boq. In their embrace Boq stopped crying, only snuffled like a piglet against Stahl’s throat.
“What happened?” Pon asked.
Stahl shook his head. “Nothing.”
Catta and Pon stared at him like he was crazy, but it was the truth. Nothing had happened, but something deep in Stahl’s gut told him something terrible was about to happen. Ma couldn’t be left alone with the baby anymore, at least not during winter. He’d have to talk to Pa about it when he got home.
“I miss Grandpa,” Stahl said.
Pon’s face burned as red as his curly hair. Catta’s dark eyes welled with tears. Boq started to wail, his pink fist gripping Stahl’s collar.
Pon sniffled, “I think he misses him most.”
It was the first time Stahl laughed in a long while.
Grandpa was right: Boq would survive that winter. The bassinet was moved away from Ma’s side of the bed to Pa’s. Catta stayed by the threshold whenever Ma fed him. When he wasn’t being fed, the three children took turns holding him outside of the bedroom while Ma slept.
Spring finally came. Grandma and Aunt Jessup could finally come stay with them and help. Grandpa could have his final rest.
Life wasn’t easy, but it would be eighteen years before Stahl felt that same bleak feeling of fear and despair again like he had Boq’s first winter.
Dear Ma and Pa,
Lurlinemas break is coming up but I will be staying here at Shiz. I’m sorry. I’m sorry for disappointing you. I’m sorry I ran away. I’m sorry that [————]
This will be my last letter.
I love you.
Boq
Stahl barely breathed as he read Boq’s letter in his trembling hands, the rest of the mail he picked up for his parents littered over his feet.
Boq was alive.
When Stahl had gotten the telegram from Catta that Boq had disappeared, he nearly lost his mind with grief. Thank Oz his wife Nimmie Amee was there to help keep his head on straight. They agreed to leave their home of two years in the Corn Basket and return to the Pine Barrens to help search for Boq, but when they finally reached his family’s cabin in those dark, old woods, his parents had long since given up the search. They insisted he ran away, though he left no note and told no one where he was going.
Stahl combed through the woods, revisiting old haunts and trails, praying he’d find his baby brother alive if hurt. He went to the village and asked if anyone had seen him. No one remembered seeing him recently except for the tabby Cat who remembered that Boq had bought a couple of suitcases from him in his swap shop, but had no idea where he was going. Boq could be anywhere, but at least he wasn’t dead in the woods.
That just left the rest of Oz to search for him.
Nimmie gently reminded Stahl as she washed his tears away that Boq was a man now. He could come and go as he pleased and not have to tell anyone. It hurt Stahl that Boq wouldn’t even tell him. He should have brought the then sixteen year old Boq to live with them on Nimmie’s family farm. Boq had wanted to go, but Pa said he couldn’t lose another pair of hands at the mill. Selfishly, Stahl felt a little relieved when it was just him and Nimmie on the road. Of course he loved his brother, but he had never lived away from his family before, and the thought of having his own homestead excited him. The devastated look on Boq’s face when Stahl agreed with Pa broke his heart. He tried not to dwell on it; disappointment was all part of growing up.
Stahl gathered up the rest of the mail and marched to Catta’s house.
“Did you know about this?” he demanded the moment Catta opened the door.
“What are you on about?”
The blood from Catta’s face drained as she read Boq’s letter. Her fingers curled over her narrow mouth as she looked at Stahl with tears in her dark eyes.
“He’s okay?” she whimpered.
Stahl’s throat tightened. “He’s okay.”
Catta sank to her knees in her dark gray dress. He knelt next to her and held her as she cried, slowly realizing why he’d only seen her wearing only gray since he moved back.
“There has to be more letters,” Catta stammered once she caught her breath. “Were there any more?”
“No, this was the only one at the post office. Ma and Pa must have the others.”
“Unless they burned them.”
“For their sake, they better not have,” he said darkly.
Catta nodded, her cheeks coloring with burgeoning rage. That didn’t surprise him. When she first moved out at nineteen to live with her mysterious Quadling partner, she had cut her thick black hair into a bob and bleached it white so she was no longer their mother’s twin. Six months later after she and Ma had furious argument, she shaved her head and wore fanciful wigs for the couple of years they didn’t speak to each other before deciding to let her hair grow out again. Before all that, though, Catta often vented to him about how Ma would never give her a moment’s peace.
They both knew why: Ma was incredibly lonely. It was hard to keep friends when they lived so far away from the village. Stahl felt bad for her. Catta had long lost her patience with her.
“It’s Pa’s fault too. He never wants to go to the village,” she had told him once. “But she’s not very nice either. I don’t know.”
He didn’t have an ounce of sympathy for either of them as he drove Catta back home. His anger built with each passing mile, but he had to stay calm. Catta was already ready to burn everything don’t without him throwing more gas on the fire.
That resolve lasted until, after Catta’s threat of knowing where Ma kept her most private things, Ma pulled out the thick pile of Boq’s letters tied with twine and dropped it on the dining table.
“You knew all this time,” he said, keeping his voice low, “and you didn’t tell us?”
Ma kept tight lipped, her hands folded neatly on the table. Pa rocked uneasily on the balls of his feet. It was only the four of them; Nimmie and Pon had ushered the younger siblings out to their uncle’s cabin about a stone’s throw away once they saw the letter in Stahl’s hand.
Pa shrugged. “It was fer the best.”
Catta scoffed, “For who?”
“He abandoned us,” Ma huffed. “We can’t let him just waltz—”
“Who’s this—”
Stahl cut Catta off, “I was searching in the woods for days. Alone. Preparing myself to find him rotting in a ditch and you knew he was safe and you let me think he was dead!”
Ma’s eyes brimmed with tears. Pa jabbed his thick, calloused finger at Stahl.
“Now look here, we never said he was dead, only that he was gone!” Pa bellowed. “It’s not our fault you took it that way.”
“How else were we supposed to take it?” Catta snarled.
“That he turned his back on this family.”
Stahl scoffed, “Can’t imagine why he’d want to do that, after how you two have always treated him. I still haven’t forgiven you for throwing Boq in the lake and then laughing about it when he almost drowned.”
Catta curled her fists, and he knew the memory was still fresh in her mind. She was the one that dove in after him and pulled him out. Stahl turned to his sulking mother and his vision went red.
“And you,” he spat, “I haven’t forgotten. You were going to smother him, weren’t you?”
She gasped like he hit her. Tears spilled over Ma’s weathered cheeks.
“That isn’t fair,” she rasped.
“Neither is keeping this from me.” He snatched the letters and held them tightly to his chest. “From the rest of us. If you two didn’t want a relationship with him anymore, that’s your business. I will never, ever forgive you for trying to take that choice away from us. And once I move my shit out of here, it’ll be a cold day in hell before you see my face again.”
Ma wailed as Stahl stormed out towards his uncle’s cabin while Catta jogged to catch up with his long strides. He calmed down a little when sat down at started to read Boq’s first letter aloud to his wife and five siblings—only to see red again when Boq mentioned sending money with the letter and that money was noticeably absent.
They all took turns reading except for Leek, who was only three, and sixteen year old Tolah had to help nine year old Lus the bigger words in Boq’s letters that described the mundanities of academic life in romantic detail. Leek squealed with delight at every mention of Boq’s close friend Fiyero, a prince of all things, and it shocked them all to hear of his close friendships with Governor Thropp’s daughters.
After Stahl read the very last letter, the first to start this whole unraveling, he put his head down on the table and sobbed. He was inconsolable. How could their parents have done this? How could they have been so selfish and cruel? He felt sick to his stomach with guilt over bringing up that hard winter when Ma had not been well. It really wasn’t fair to her.
Stahl stayed up late with Catta, Nimmie and Pon in the living room, sipping whiskey their Uncle Olam poured for “stressful times.” He promised to talk to Ma and Pa after taking the younger siblings home, as he had no idea about the letters either.
“It’s good to know he’s doing well, now that we, well, know,” Pon said, draining his glass, “but what do we do about it now?”
“We have to write him back,” Stahl croaked.
“And tell him what?”
“The truth,” Catta said bluntly.
“And if he wants someone to answer his letters,” Nimmie added quietly, rubbing slowly circles over Stahl’s back, “he needs to address them to the people who truly care about him.”
Pon held up Boq’s last letter and sighed. “You can tell he was tore up over this one. Poor kid.”
They settled into bed shortly after. Catta took the sofa while Pon pushed two chairs together, but Nimmie and Stahl lay side by side in front of the fireplace on the braided rug and covered with his great-grandmother’s quilt. She ran her fingers through his hair, trying to nudge him to sleep, but he couldn’t get the horrified look of his mother’s face out of his head.
“We should have brought him with us, Nimmie,” he whispered, his eyes stinging again. “I thought I was doing the right thing for both of us but I was…I was selfish. He thinks I abandoned him. That’s why he didn’t write.”
Nimmie cupped his raw cheek with her soft hand, her dark brown face outlined with the gentle glow of firelight.
“Boq left for himself, like you came with me for yourself. It’s not wrong to want to leave home when you’re old enough."
Of course, she would know. Nimmie had left home at eighteen to travel Munchkinland as a teacher. They met when she was Boq’s new teacher and he had never believed he had such luck that she wanted to talk to him, much less marry him a couple of years later. They lived together in his parents’ attic until Ma’s bullying became too much and he couldn’t stand watching his wife wilt before his eyes. So he took her back to the Corn Basket to live with her favorite aunt. He would have left her there too when he decided to go home to search for Boq, but she insisted to come with him.
He was forever grateful she did, because he felt like his world was falling apart at the seams.
“What if I never see him again?” he rasped.
“Don’t go thinking that,” she warned, her tone stern but comforting. "Boq may never want to come back here again, so we’d need to meet him where he’s at. We’ll go to Shiz and find him so he knows he’s not without family who love him.”
Stahl splayed his hand over her thickening belly. She was a couple months along already, but they had told no one and nobody asked because to them Nimmie looked and acted no different than before. Stahl caught the hitch in her breath as she climbed up the attic ladder and the sag in her shoulders as she picked at dinner.
“We might have to wait before we make that trip so he can meet all of us,” Stahl said.
“It might be safer not to wait,” she murmured, then kissed his lips. “We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.”
In the morning, he was barely in a better mood when Pa and Ma came over to talk to them all. They apologized for keeping the letters a secret, and if it meant that Stahl and Catta would not cut off all ties with them (she had apparently told them she would after Stahl stormed out), then Boq would be allowed to come back home if he wished.
Ma glowered in her chair as Pa said, “We won’t be happy about it, nor pretend to be, but I don’t want this…mess…be the reason this family breaks apart.”
Stahl wasn’t happy about it either, but he wasn’t going to take away Boq’s choice to try and keep his relationship with Ma and Pa. So he agreed and wrote Boq back, paying extra to mail his letter express. Within the week, Boq sent a telegram back stating he would come home and bring the governor’s daughters with him. This time it was his turn to be a weeping puddle in the foyer of Catta’s home.
It had snowed heavily the night before Boq was set to arrive. Stahl stayed over at Catta’s so he could get to the docks early and wait for the ship. When it did arrive and the passengers flooded out, he spotted Elphaba Thropp first. Even though Boq had mentioned in his letters that she was green-skinned, it still shocked him to see her in person. She stood next to another young woman sitting in a magnificent wheelchair that looked more like a throne than the wicker basket Grandma rolled around in.
His heart leapt in his throat when he saw Boq. He huddled next to the girls, and despite hunching against the wind, Stahl could tell he had grown a couple inches taller since they’d last seen each other two years ago. Boq nodded his head towards the village, but the girls shook their heads, so he sidled closer to them.
Stahl snuck behind Boq and said in his ear, “Cold enough to freeze corn whiskey, isn’t it?”
Boq whipped around and gaped slack jawed at Stahl. Stahl’s throat warmed as he could see through the many layers he wore that he was hale and hearty. Boq burst into tears and Stahl gathered him up and held him tightly.
“I missed you too,” Stahl murmured.
He kissed Boq’s temple as his baby brother snuffled into his neck.