Waiting for him to die. 

That wasn’t a surprise. The boy had been waiting all this time for his own self to die. The surprise was that he had woken up still waiting. 

The boy gently slid the elbow of his working arm behind him. Yes, there was a tree back there. And while his shoulder did seem to be wrenched, the bad arm didn’t feel broken. The wrist and fingers of his hand felt thick and tight, though.

It had snowed in the dark time, the time when he’d been waiting to die. There had been no snow when the bullies without wings had brought him here. Now a thin white blanket covered the forest just beyond his toes. The tree had shielded him from most of it. He stretched one foot out and used his toes to gather some of the cold, wet stuff so that he could rest his bad hand in it. 

If he wasn’t going to die, then he had to figure out how to live. 

Garbage.

The boy tried to look around the forest without moving his sore head. One eye didn’t see too good. The cold, white blanket now covered every bush and every path and every footprint. He’d never be able to find his way back, even if he wanted to. 

He didn’t want to. 

Garbage didn’t go back where it wasn’t wanted. Garbage didn’t have a home. 

Now that the snow had started, the boy knew that it wouldn’t stop for a very long time. Days and weeks and days. Walking in snow was dangerous. He shouldn’t try walking unless he knew where he was going. So where was he going? What did he know? 

He knew he couldn’t be lost. If he was lost, then the goblins would come. In the few stories he’d overheard, goblins were always collecting lost boys. If he didn’t want to be collected, he had to at least pretend he knew where he was going.

What else did he know? 

He knew that his head hurt. 

He remembered someone saying that moss only grew on one side of trees. He wished he could remember which way led to the mountains and which way led to the sea. Somewhere in the mossy direction was the place he didn’t live anymore. He definitely didn’t want to go back there. 

The boy tilted his head back—it hurt less if he rested it on that spot there—and looked at the sky through the branches of his shelter tree. Patches of blue peeked through the layers of gray clouds. There were no stars to wish upon in the daytime. He closed his eyes anyway and wished that he knew where to go. 

The garbage bird hopped to a lower branch. Its sharp beak gleamed wickedly in the snowlight. 

There was movement in the clouds. More birds. A group of them flew in a crooked line. Flying seaside for winter, he remembered someone saying. Some birds didn’t like the cold—he scowled at the garbage bird—so they moved to where it was warmer. To the sea. The boy watched the flock and noted the trunk of the tree where the garbage bird was perched. The flock was flying away from the moss. 

Slowly, he got to his feet. Slowly, slowly. The garbage bird flew away, in the mossy direction. The opposite direction. Good. There was more garbage in that direction. He wasn’t following that bird anyway.

Why was he standing again? Standing hurt. Every part of his body hurt. When he saw the stars later, he would wish for wings.

Thankfully, the boy’s bottom half wasn’t as bad off as the top. After a while, his feet went numb in the snow and the blood stopped dripping into his eyes. The cold would ease up if he could run, but running needed deeper breaths in a non-squashed chest. Running meant jostling his brain around inside a head that didn’t seem too good at holding things anymore. Like blood. 

One step at a time, the boy walked steadily onward. Seaward. Away from the moss. 

He stopped when he found something edible. He grabbed up bitter grasses and ice with his good hand while burying the bad one in whatever snow he didn’t consume. Sometimes his head spun, and when the darkness came he let it take him. Sometimes the darkness came in the middle of walking. Those times he didn’t eat at all. 

He never expected to wake up again, but he always did. Sometimes he was angry about that, because it meant more walking and finding food. Sometimes when he woke up there was more snow. Sometimes not. But there was never another garbage bird and that made him feel better. Until the stomach cramps started. Then he didn’t feel better at all. 

When there were animals, he stopped to watch them. He saw what they ate, and then he scared them away and took it for himself. He found a few nuts that way, and some bushes still full of berries. When he found the berries he cried because they were so wonderful. Then he cried because he realized he could cry whenever he wanted to now, and no one would hurt him for it. He filled his belly with berries. He filled his pockets with berries. He took his shirt off and filled that with berries, too. It was cold, but the berries were worth it. 

Eventually there were no more berries, but he found other things. Like apples, crisp and sour and hard and sweet. He really liked apples. Eventually, there were dreams instead of darkness.  Eventually, there was less snow. And less pain. He found a stream and began following that. Following the birds. He passed through places where the ground was hard from carts and the people were loud. But these places were not the sea, so he kept on walking. 

He passed by farms. He avoided people and animals, except when he came across a pen of pigs that had just been slopped and pushed in to share the bounty. The strong pigs shoved him aside, but they didn’t punch him or kick him or drag him away from the food. He only got a little bit sick afterward, but it was worth it. The rotten apples had been particularly delicious. 

Days and nights went by. He didn’t think to count them. He wasn’t sure he knew how to count that high. Even if he did, he wasn’t sure his head still knew how to hold things like that. 

But none of that mattered when he saw the sea. When he saw the sea, all the bad things that he had ever known in his life faded away to nothing.