Chapter 1
Things that are dead are better left dead.
But no one ever tells that to a child.
...
Hind’s village had no name. It was wedged between three barren mountains, black as the earth’s rotting teeth, and on the fourth side—the forest. Everyone simply called it the evil forest, as if that were enough. And it was.
The houses were low, their roofs heavy, pressed down by years and winters. The wood was split, the clay fallen away in places. No one repaired more than was needed to keep everything from collapsing.
Their house stood at the edge of the village, where the road thinned and began to lose itself toward the forest—a small house, weighed down by time, with one large room that held all their things and all their silences, and another even smaller in the back, where the cold lingered even after the fire was lit.
Three souls lived there—Hind, her mother, and her grandmother. Or rather—two and a half, because her mother was there in body, but not with everything she once had been.
After Hind’s father died in the salt mine, swallowed by the earth without leaving behind anything but the news and a heavy silence, something in her mother slowly closed.
She no longer touched the child who still reached for her, no longer asked if she was hungry or tired, no longer told stories to stitch the evenings together, nor lifted her eyes to see if anyone was looking at her.
She worked.
She worked with a heavy quiet, lost inside her own mind.
She woke before the light, cleaned the house, cooked, ate without tasting, kept silent, then fell asleep as if sleep itself were just another kind of labor.
Her gaze passed through Hind, never once settling on her—and it was a pity, because if it had stopped, even for a moment, she would have seen a child such as rarely grows in places like that—a little girl of only six, yet filled with a warmth and life so bright she could have filled the entire house on her own, if only there had been someone to see her.
Hind was the kind of child who did not yet know how to be fully sad, even though the world around her gave her plenty of reasons—a child who still clung to small things and made them large: a ray of sunlight on the wall, a puddle that held the sky’s reflection, a falling leaf she would follow all the way down as if it were something important.
Her eyes were black, wide and deep—too large for her small face. Her skin was pale and clear, as though dirt could only touch her on the surface, never truly reach her. Her long black hair fell over her shoulders in tangled strands, but under her grandmother’s fingers it became soft and obedient, as if she were tending to something fragile.
She smiled often, without thinking, without measuring out her joy.
And perhaps the strangest thing about her was that she loved the world exactly as it was, without asking why it was heavy, without judging it—finding, in each day, something worth looking at more than anything else: the rain that gathered on her lashes and made her blink and laugh, the sun that slipped into her eyes and forced them half-shut, the wind that lifted her hair and whispered things she did not understand, but somehow felt.
Hind did not know this was rare. And there was no one there to tell her.
Her grandmother was ill and could walk only a few steps through their small rooms.
Her hands were thin and knotted, worn by years, yet warm and patient, and her voice was low, almost a whisper, but alive—stubborn, like a small light that refused to go out.
She sang often, almost every evening, as if the silence of the house were too heavy and had to be broken into small, bearable pieces.
They were not cheerful songs. They did not speak of easy things or simple joys, and in that strange way, that was precisely why they were beautiful.
“Come here, little bird,” she would say to Hind, drawing her close with care.
She combed her hair slowly, untangling not just the knots in the dark strands, but somehow the knots in the days that piled up one over the other.
And then she would sing, letting the words flow like a quiet water that knows its way—
Of rains that never return to the same place, of the moon and stars that watch without judgment, of the sun that warms without asking anything in return, of things Hind did not fully understand, yet felt as something good.
Of children who grow too quickly…
Hind did not understand everything, but she did not need to, because in those moments—pressed close to her grandmother, her eyes half-closed and her breathing soft—her world, already beautiful in its simple way, became warmer, gentler, easier to love.
“One day, little bird, you will leave this place and find something better than this,” her grandmother would whisper, her warm fingers slipping through the tangled strands of her hair, parting them with care, as if each one were something precious. “You will go somewhere life is sweet, where people laugh often, and no one is sad.”
Hind stayed close, her cheek resting against her grandmother’s arm, feeling how every movement soothed her, how every touch gathered her thoughts and set them back in place.
“And there,” her grandmother went on, “you will find someone who truly sees you—not just looks at you, but sees you, as you are, small and bright—and they will hold your hand and never let go. They will love you with passion, with fire.”
Hind said nothing, but in her mind, simple, warm images began to take shape—no clear faces, no grand words, just the feeling that somewhere there was a place where she would not have to ask to be loved.
“And you will have your own home too, perhaps small, but full,” her grandmother continued, her voice growing softer and softer, like a song fading away, “and you will have children who will laugh and run and tug at your hand, and you will never let them feel alone. Your little birdlings. And you will be happy, my dear Hind… you will be.”
Her voice thinned, drifted, but the touch remained.
Hind blinked heavily, feeling sleep come over her slowly, like warm water covering her without haste, and just before she drifted off completely, she had the brief sensation that she was no longer in the house, no longer in the village, no longer anywhere she had ever been.
She dreamed.
At first there was nothing—only a dim light, like morning when the sun has not yet decided whether it will stay.
Then the eyes appeared.
Blue.
Bright.
Hind smiled in her sleep, without knowing why.
And for a moment, as brief as a breath, she felt loved.
