Excerpt: The Commercial

PART II
Night time. In the distance there is a road made of broken cobblestone that is quickly being covered by thick eddies of falling snow. There are trees well over a century old that rise thick along the edges of the road, an old growth forest. The branches of these trees hang heavy with snow and in the deep silence this first white storm of winter brings, there is an an occasional groan of wood, an echoing crack as the gravity and the freezing weight of piled snowflakes defeats the oldest branches.

There is an owl that swoops from tree to another, soundless. There is a moon, its glow reflects brilliantly off a vast plane of icy flakes. The cobblestone road winds into a village. The last cobblestone has been covered and the village is really nothing but some small houses set close together as if for warmth. Smoke billows from their chimneys and joins the clouds in a soft blanketing haze. There is yellow light coming from the little square windows of the houses. Light that flickers, that is not electric, that comes from wood stoves, fireplaces and candles.

The village is old.

There are barns with horses, cows, goats and chickens shivering inside them. The village is poor so that no one barn has all of these animals but the farmers here have one or the other but no one has everything. The people get what they need though. One trades a dozen eggs for a half a bushel of wheat. Another trades a day's hard labor for a few gallons of milk. It is how a tiny village like this one has existed so long in such a harsh climate. The people work together, they barter, they wed each other's cousins, the take off their hats at each other's funerals. It has been this way since anyone can remember.

They are so far away from anything, their village, so isolated, and their land so harsh that they are mostly left alone. One or two visitors a year. Not even their government cares too much about them. If they do not pay their taxes one year it is too much trouble to go to them. And what would they offer anyway? They have no money. The taxman would come back to his government building with a pair of knitted socks, a dozen eggs, maybe a cow. The government ignores them since there are not many of them anyway and they have nothing.