Page 71 of The Unknown Birds

“Wasn’t official,” Blake replied, crossing his arms over his chest.

“What would you call it then? They crept out and we crept out. They drank and we drank. And then we knocked the ball around—one day only. Gave ’em hell, too.”

“I’m surprised they didn’t line you up at dawn and shoot you dead for fraternizing with the enemy,” Blake huffed. “Why d’you think they made a point of barely acknowledging the holidays the last two years?”

Rook opened his mouth to argue, but Ash could see as plain as day that Blake was hungry for a similar truce. “I got mail!” she shouted to keep them from quarreling with each other any further.

Inside the box, she found an assortment of delightful pastries, more sweets than she could eat in a whole entire year. And nestled in among them, a small loaf of plain brown bread. A perfect gift. Frau Wintter knew her well.

Ash could almost hear her friends’ mouths watering as they snuck glances between each other and the box. When she held it out to them, Tom eyed the Franzbrötchen first, but then his better angels got the best of him, and he reached for the bread instead.

“Anything but that,” she said, swiping the loaf away. Maybe it was uncharitable, but it wouldn’t mean as much to the rest of them. Nothing tasted of home like plain brown bread. It smelled better than any old thing in the world ever had or ever could. Probably better than God’s own heaven, if Ashley had to guess.

She took a tiny bite, not even aware she was crying until a tear tickled the tip of her nose and splashed down onto the bread.

“Desiderium,” Rook said, nodding with compassion as he handed back her parcel, lighter now than when it first arrived. Then he lifted his own pastry in salute and took a bite.

Ashley didn’t know what desiderium meant, but if it was anything like the profound longing that threatened to tug her heart in four different directions so it was apt to burst, then Rook was dead on.

“Christmas dinner,” Tom said around his pastry. “What d’you reckon this year?”

Ashley’s honest guess was Maconochie stew with some extra stale bread and plum jam, but she didn’t want to spoil his fantasizing. “Perhaps they’ll bring some fresh game from the mountains.”

“Back home, it’ll be goose and charades,” he said.

“We could do charades,” Ash suggested.

“Tradition, isn’t it?”

“I’ve never actually played,” she admitted. “We go to church and light a penny candle while the choir rehearses the carol service. Then we skip the service and roast nuts in the fire.”

“Chestnuts. Mercy, Ash. Why’d you have to mention those?” Stew moaned. “I could eat about a hundred all by myself.”

“No you couldn’t, cause I’d fight you for them,” TomTom said.

“We would sit, side by side, while Mum read A Christmas Carol out loud,” Ash told them, and it made her smile to think of it.

“We toast the Yule log,” Stew said. “And sing songs by the fire. My gran makes up the black bun and my uncles bring out the whisky,” he added with a wink that suggested the whisky bottle didn’t go back in that night.

Ash laughed, picturing Stew’s coal-miner uncles dancing and singing, drunk as lords on the dram.

“We go to the panto,” Blake told them. “And then have pudding and wassail.”

“What I wouldn’t give for a Christmas pudding…” Merle murmured.

“We usually have hen,” Ash told them. “Stuffed with raisins and bread and apples and every delicious herb we can find.” It seemed a marvel how her mum could make so little stretch so far at Christmastime.

Tom’s stomach made a loud gurgle of protest.

“Careful, mate,” Cooper said. “You’ll make TomTom break into his iron ration.”

“I’m famished, is all,” he moaned, and Max barked as if to agree. “That’s right, girl,” Tom told her. “Why, what do you eat?” he asked Coop.

“Not about the food for me, is it? It’s the game. We’re always playing, if not Christmas then Boxing Day. Lucky if I get a proper meal at all.”

“Surely someone feeds you,” Rook interjected, and Cooper grinned.

“Course they do. What about you, sniper? What traditions does the Rook household keep?”