Chapter 1: Introduction

Alone. That is what I was. The seemingly-endless well of tears had dried up long ago, so when I knelt in front of my parent's tombstones every morning before beginning my daily chores, I no longer had the ability to cry, but that hollow feeling of loneliness still rested in my stomach. All the servants had left long ago, looking for better jobs in a country slowly being torn apart by a war we should have never provoked. My only constant companions were my overwhelming emotions of self-pity.

Well, I'm being overly dramatic. I have all the farm animals to keep me company. But the one horse, three cows, two goats, and six chickens don't have much sympathy for me. As long as they get their food and water as well as a nice warm barn to shield them from the weather, they ignore me like the ghost I am.

Papa died when I was still a little girl. The only memory I have of him is the warmth of him holding me close one night as he read a book to me.

"Papa, you have to do the silly voices!" I had insisted.

"You do them much better than I, Camster," he laughed.

"My name is Cammie, not Camster, Papa! And you have to do the voices."

He laughed and held me close, and I giggled and hugged him back.

That's it, that's all I have of him. The silver locket I wear around my neck everyday has a lock of his dark brown hair, permanently entwined with my mother's blonde strands.

Mama died soon after the war broke out and Grant left home. Food had been scarce and all the extra from our farm had been sent to the soldiers, leaving little for the two of us during one of the harshest winters the country of Gallagher had ever seen. The cold had gone straight to Mama's lungs, and she coughed the life out of her body. She managed to last until spring and the soil was soft enough that I could use a pickaxe to bury her next to Papa. The gravestone had been harder; I had carried a large rock smoothed by the stream that ran through our land and propped it next to Papa's. His tombstone had been shaped and carved, but I couldn't manage to scratch a single letter with all the tools I could find into Mama's. It had been more than a year since Mama died, but her stone was still propped up next to Papa's without a single thing carved on it.

She deserved better. So had we all. But war does not care about what is fair and right. Grant left to join the army a little more than two years ago, and even though the war ended, nine months later I still waited with only a scrap of hope.