Chapter 988 - 211: Whose Fault Is It After All?
"Lady, this is your share."
The man’s voice, as if heavenly, placed the bread exuding the scent of wheat into the paper bag she held in her arms, wearing a miner’s hat and leather gloves.
"Thank, thank you."
The man smiled warmly, "You’re welcome, this is what you deserve."
Anna had to admit, he was the most handsome man she had ever seen, even if his face was smeared with black ash, it couldn’t hide his striking features.
She hastily left the line, glanced at where Lugina was originally lying by the wall, only to find she was no longer there. After asking passersby, she learned that it was Lady Natasha who had saved her.
She couldn’t help but look back at Lady Natasha, who was still distributing bread. At that moment, she was speaking gently to those around her, "We are a team that stands up for the poor. Anyone in need can come to us. We have come so you no longer have to be bullied."
"There really is such a team."
Like a small piece of grass bathed for the first time in the faint light leaking through the gaps of towering trees, Anna’s heart was filled with warmth, as if even the bitter February wind no longer pierced her bones.
But then she worried for these kind-hearted people; the Tsar’s military police surely wouldn’t let them off.
"May the Holy Mother bless them."
She clutched the bag in her arms tightly, hurriedly walking home with quick short steps.
The shabby wooden door creaked as the wind blew against it.
Anna pushed open the door, cheerfully calling out, "Mom, sister, I got the bread, more than three pounds, and a kindly officer gave me a wad of rubles. I’ll be able to buy some good food on the black market later."
No one responded.
The home, only slightly warmer than outside, felt like a large ice cellar, deathly silent. Her sister’s once heart-wrenching cough was now absent.
Anna’s joyful heart suddenly sank.
She took a few steps into the narrow attic, the warmest place in the house. On the broken mattress stuffed with newspapers, her sister’s eyelashes were covered with a layer of ice crystals, her tiny body curled into a ball, her lips purple like frostbitten berries.
"Martha, it’s okay now, Martha, your sister brought back bread."
A sense of doom filled her heart as she called out to her sister, voice trembling, reaching out to stroke her face, which was as cold as floating ice in a water tank.
Only then did Anna realize that Martha’s eyes were half-open, her pupils dull, with no focus.
"No, no, please..."
A weak voice from a woman came from inside the house, "Cough, is that you, Anna? Anna, look at our poor Martha. She hasn’t coughed in so long."
Anna wiped her tears, forcing a smile as she walked into the inner room.
Their mother lay in a pile of straw, wrapped in a military coat sent back from the front by their father, which had two bullet holes revealing the thin cotton and straw inside. Her eyes opened with difficulty to look around.
Seeing the paper bag in Anna’s arms, there was finally a glimmer of light in her cloudy eyes.
"Martha is fine, Mom, I brought back bread. I’ll go make some porridge right away."
She tried to smile, but her face almost frozen stiff was stuck with dried tears and snot, unable to form a smile.
She quickly turned around to fetch the axe.
She chopped up a one-legged chair, stuffing the wood into the stove, striking a match to light a fire with newspaper, and then used the axe to break the ice in the water tank to scoop a pot of icy water.
Only then did she take out the bread from the paper bag, splitting it with the axe.
Crumbs flew as the axe blade caught on a stone, unable to split the bread, and she hammered at it with all her might.
Once, twice, until she was exhausted.
She gathered the bread crumbs mixed with sawdust and threw them into the pot that hadn’t boiled yet, stirring it constantly with a bent iron spoon she once used to chip floating ice.
The water in the pot took ages to boil, only emitting faint steam. Anxiously, Anna knelt by the stove, blowing into the stove door.
Sparks and soot flew onto her face, but she hardly noticed.
"Mom, the porridge is almost ready, almost there."
She murmured continuously, tears she had held back for so long finally spilling out.
The glistening tears reflected the image of Martha in the dancing firelight of the stove.
Tiny Martha lay on the bed, constantly calling out, "Sister, I’m so hungry" and "Sister, I’m so cold," while wearing the warmest cotton-padded jacket at home, and she hadn’t been able to bring back the bread in time.
She wiped her face, suppressing her boiling emotions, and picked up the spoon to scoop the merely tepid porridge.
The water still hadn’t boiled, with sawdust floating on top.
She poured the sawdust back into the pot, hastily bringing the porridge to the inner room, "Mom, the porridge is ready, please come have some."
She propped up her mother’s frail, skin-and-bones back, spooning the porridge to her lips.
Her mother’s mouth opened very slowly, swallowing with difficulty. Even though Anna had removed the floating sawdust, the bread she brought back was still tough to swallow.
When they reached the fifth spoonful, her mother started coughing violently, spewing a mouthful of bloody froth onto Anna’s hand. The scorching blood droplets fell on the chilly hand, making Anna shudder violently.
"Mom, I beg you, please don’t cough."
Her mother’s symptoms were the same as Martha’s.
Neighbors said, it was the "winter plague."
First, it empties a person’s stomach, making the stomach lining rub against each other like sandpaper, causing it to bleed; then it freezes every last bit of warmth in the bone crevices, swelling the joints like rising bread; finally, it slips along the bloodstream and drills into the heart.
Mother coughed for a long time, and suddenly, as if realizing something, she grasped Anna’s hand with her gray-blue fingertips.
"Take care of yourself... and Martha, when your father comes back, good days will come... he said he got a... cough, a George Medal."
Anna nodded, yet her tears fell like a string of pearls breaking, hitting the back of her mother’s emaciated hand.
Her mother’s hand slowly loosened, her head completely tilted into Anna’s arms, the last breath exhaled in the crook of Anna’s neck, taking away the last bit of warmth from her body.
At this moment, the porridge on the stove was just starting to bubble.
Anna held her stiff, sharp-boned mother in a daze, as if the bones could pierce through the clothes.
Outside the window, a piercing cold wind blew, emitting a bleak wail.
The girl went to the attic to pick up her light sister, placed her into her mother’s arms, then poured half a bowl of thick porridge back into the bubbling pot, staring blankly at the rising steam.
She wanted to cry, but no matter what, she couldn’t, her chest felt like it was blocked by a stone.
She picked up the porridge bowl, serving herself a full bowl.
The porridge with sawdust and bran was indeed difficult to swallow, but she still ate quickly, urgently, until her stomach was a small ball, then she scraped the bottom of the pot again with a spoon, licking it clean.
After finishing her meal, she extinguished the stove.
There was not much fuel left at home; even the four legs of the bed had been taken down and burned the day before yesterday to boil water for drinking.
The room, having lost its only heat source, became cold again.
She returned to the inner room, squeezed between her mother and sister, curled up, and stared blankly.
Why couldn’t you wait for me a little while longer?
Why didn’t I get up early yesterday to stand in line?
Why, after mother worked herself to exhaustion, couldn’t the factory foreman let her replace mother?
"It’s all my fault."
"It’s all my fault."
She murmured softly.
But immediately, a cold voice rang out in the empty room.
"It’s not your fault."
"Who?"
"Who’s outside?"
In front of Anna appeared a coal miner, who took off their hat, revealing a head of snow-white long hair, wiped away the black soot from their face, revealing a delicate girl’s face.
"You can call me Furinjira."
"Are you one of Natasha’s people?"
Anna’s eyes brightened suddenly: "Are you also a Caster? Please, save my mother and sister, will you?"
The female miner let out a cold laugh, revealing a pair of sharp little fangs.
"I came attracted by the intense despair you exude; I thought it was a talent worth nurturing, but after going through this, you still rely on others."
"Please..."
"I’m willing to pay any price."
Seeing the pleading expression on the girl’s face, the female miner’s expression eventually softened a bit: "I am not a deity, I can’t bring the dead back to life. Even if I could, it would be raising a corpse. If only you had called Nia... Natasha sooner, perhaps there was hope."
"My master said, there are no saviors, don’t rely on a divine Emperor either, if you hate someone, want revenge, you have to rely on yourself."
The female miner snapped her fingers, and a goblet filled with blood-like liquid appeared in her hand.
"If you’ve figured it out, drink it; if you plan to continue being submissive, pour it away."
She gave Anna a deep glance, then turned and transformed into countless small bats, flying out through a large hole in the roof like smoke.
If not for the goblet filled with the blood-red liquid still there, Anna would definitely have thought it was an illusion.
She stared blankly at the crystal liquid in the goblet, remembering the words left by the visitor before leaving.
"Who do I hate?"
"Who do I want revenge on?"
The emotions in her heart ignited, self-blame, pain, sadness, instantly transforming into intense hatred: "I hate, of course I hate, I hate the Tsar who started this war, hate the petty factory owners, hate those hoarding capitalists and aristocrats."
"I’m not lazy, I give my all, scavenging for wood in every corner of the city, chiseling ice for water ten kilometers away at the Neva Riverbank, competing with men for a piece of birch bark, this world never gives people like us a way to survive."
She unhesitatingly picked up the goblet and drank the rusty-tasting liquid all in one go.
The next moment, her vision turned into a blood-red world.
On the table under the goblet, a line of small words—"Come to 133 Carpenter Alley"—was written.
Anna’s body started convulsing, the liquid remaining in the goblet becoming sweeter and more irresistible, even sweeter than the Texas maple syrup Father sent home last year.