Matt sat on his bed with his legs close to his chest, his head on his knees. His room was almost completely empty. The walls were bare, the only window didn’t even have curtains and not a single light showed in the room; no selling light, no lamp, no nothing. The only thing that hung on the wall was clock just across from his bed.

“8:56,” he whispered, “Only four more minutes.”

He got up and walked across the almost empty room to a closet. In it, there were two white slightly dirty t-shirts, three pars of old jeans (that were undoubtedly to long for him), an old worn brown jacket with holes in it and a pair of brown boots so worn the sols of them were fraying to nonexistence. He took out the thin jacket and boots and carefully pulled them on as if afraid they would fall apart if he were to ruff (which was probably true) then walked to the kitten.

Jose was sitting on an old brownish red sofa (the ones that are all squashy and made of leather) his long hocked nose just inches away from an old black and white television set, watching a twenty-year-old romance show rerun or something like that.

“J-Jose?”

“What?  I’m watching my show.”

“Um… c-can? Um… I’m… well…”

“Spit it out!” Jose never took his eyes from the screen.

“I-I’m going to Anthony’s Hill.”

“Then go already!”

“Y-yes sir,” Matt replied, he then turned and slowly walked to the door.

“Shut the door on your way out! We don’t live in a barn, yah know.”

“Yea.”

Matt had never gone to school before. Because of farming, he learned a little math and science. And though, the farm kept him in better physical shape than most children his age one subject he never learned well was English. He could not read, write, nor could he speak very well. Thus forming his speech problem-he stuttered for one thing and did not have a big vocabulary, which was why he trailed of when he spoke. All he could say were things he had heard Jose say (and that defiantly wasn’t good) and knew the meaning to a few words he had only heard once. Like to him Mother was just a word Jose had said once while cursing. Nevertheless, he knew it had another better meaning, he had never heard it used for that meaning, though he knew it was there.

Like the footprint of a horse who lived long ago; the horse is nowhere to be seen, but you know it had been there.

Matt slowly walked the length of the farm, crossed the bridge, and started down a path only to stop again. A fork in the road is not that puzzling, that is if you know exactly where you want to get to. But Matt was not really so sure.

Two he knew well. He had traveled up and down them many times, but one he did not know at all. What he did know was that a little ways down the forest turns to stumps and a log cabin appears. A man lives there or use to live there, Matt was not sure which. Jose had forbidden him to go there just as he had forbidden him to go into town.

The second one led to the bath house but he cut his visits during the winter because many people went there to stay worm. Therefore, he had no chose but to go straight down the third path, which lead to Anthony's Hill where on winter nights he’d watch the snowfall.

Its legend that every twenty to thirty years (thought it seems more random than that) a golden road appears lending away from the cliff’s edge and it is rumored to go all the way to heaven. Only few have seen it, yet those who had taken it never returned, thought it was always someone no one knew well.

The sun was long gone and clouds covered the sky so that the normal starlight was hidden and useless. Trees lined the dirt-covered path. The grass was scraggly and grew in odd patches.

…

After climbing the steep path surrounded by trees all the way up the hill, he sat down on an old rickety bench of to one side.

There were to large stones side by side that at some point in time had writing chiseled in to them, but age and bad weather had worn the words away only the word that could be read was Anthony. The stones stood at the edge of the cliff end of the hill. Sharp gagged rocks and deep ocean waiting at the bottom. Anthony’s Hill was a beautiful place, especially in spring, but winter was Matt’s freest time of year.

He sat there for hours watching the snowfall and the moonrise. He sat there so long his legs went numb and his fingers froze threatened by frostbite. Jose would not care if he lost fingers, as long as he could still work. Matt did not stand until the first light of dawn filtered through the still falling snowflakes warming his toes. The light flitted across the ocean, like the golden streaks in the blue mines below GoldRode. Matt could have stayed longer, he was not needed until seven, but he chose to leave.

Eleven inches of snow had fallen over the last few nights and continued to do so, as if it was afraid the earth would be angry if it did not snow more than last year. Matt simply trudged on through the knee-high snow. He knew the path well, he need not worry. But not more than half way down the hill Matt slipped, or perhaps he fell or tripped, but either way he ended up on his back smacking his head on the now tightly packed snow.

Matt wined softly and rolled onto his side. He hadn’t really hurt himself much, in fact it didn’t really hurt at all. But knowing that now his cloths were completely soaked irritated him. He’d have to dry them himself and he needed his jacket if he was going to work today.

Ever so slowly, Matt stood and brushed snow from his curly brown hair and continued down the hill. He was young, too young to live as he did. Every morning at seven Matt would wake, dress, eat the pitiful breakfast of one slice of toast and if he was lucky, a cooked egg Jose set out for him. Then he would work through the day tending the farm and all its inhabitances, if Jose was in a good mood (which was rare) he’d remember to give Matt lunch, then Matt worked until eight o’clock at night when Jose would put him in his room with dinner (toast and maybe some beans or raw vegetables). At nine, Matt would be aloud to leave the farm to go anywhere he wished as long as he stayed away from the stump forest and the town (which limited him greatly), he’d stay out till seven when he would presume his work. Often he would sleep on the hill, but he never dared break any of Jose’s rules because when he’d been five, not three years ago, Matt had wandered into the village completely oblivious to the rules, Jose found out and wiped him. He still bore scars…

In addition, the towns’ people knew, of course, all about him, he’s the one who supplied food for them for nearly three years. Yet they did nothing.

Now, as he’d been pondering this he once again tripped or slipped or fell, but this trip, slip or fall brought him tumbling painful down the rest of the way, veering of the path and into some dead bushes some twenty feet from the path at the bottom of the hill. He stopped abruptly as he banged into a log and lay sprawled on the bank of the river.

Matt did not move, not because he was frightened and not because he was stiff but just simply because he did not want to, and knew that even if he had wanted to, he could not. He could not walk, he knew, he just could no longer accomplish that task in life. And just then his life became seemingly shortened.

He just lay there for a long time. He lay there so long that the golden streaks moved up to the dark blue sky and changed it to a clean crisp winter blue. And he lay there much past noon and if he’d been thinking he would have been thinking that Jose would be looking by now or perhaps not to get his hopes to high, Jose would not care, he never had, never would. And as night approached he continued to lay there, unmoving in the deep winter snow.

…

The man walked through the crunching snow towards Matt. The wild twigs and thick foot tall snow seemed to jump out of his way. He reached down and placed a rough, well worn hand down stopping just above Matt’s mouth.

The man grunted in surprise, perhaps he had waited to long this time. Maybe he’d left Matt to long in the hands of the “others”, but no. Faintly he could feel the soft breath of a seven-year-old on his palm. The man looked up.

“Thank you, Goldrode.” His voice was gruff but some how marry and welcoming, “I’ll not be forgetting the help in a hurry.”

Then he knelt down and lifted Matt easily off the icing bedding, then slowly walked away.