The first time it happened, Fraser wasn’t even Benton. He was Benny. Nobody called him Benny, except his Mum. But that was okay. Nobody else called her ‘Mum,’ after all. It was like they had their own secret language. Benny. Mum.

Right now she was singing in the kitchen, peeling potatoes, and keeping the skins to make ‘chips’ with.

Benny carefully finished his colouring in, his tongue tucked out in concentration. Red was his favouritest colour. Daddy – no, Dad, Benny was grown up now – Dad wore red sometimes, when it was very very special. Maybe when Benny was older he’d wear the red too. ‘Surge,’ Dad called it. Like a tide or... something. Benny didn’t know all the words yet. He would do, one day. There were lots of words. Words in English, Inuktitut, Chinese, French. Mum spoke French; she sang it to him at bed time, and sometimes she told him off. “Benny, que’est que tu as! Arretes, maintenant. Sauvage...” But when she tucked him in it was all lullabies. Dad never sang him lullabies, though sometimes he sat by Benny’s bed, looking frightened to be in the same room as him, and would read him poems.

The worst were poems by Milton, or Yeats, which either bored Benny, or gave him nightmares. “What rough beast, its hour come round at last, slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?” Benny had no idea what that meant, but he could see it – a sphinx, he thought it was called, dragging its hind legs across the desert. Like a cat with a broken back, before the birds pecked its eyes out.

The vision kept him up for nights. When Benny told Mum what was wrong, she thwacked Dad on the head with the book and asked him “what were you thinking, Bob? Seriously, Yeats? Milton? Haven’t you heard of Doctor Seuss?” Dad fended off the book, laughing, took Mum by the waist, and apologised. The apology must have worked, because later, when they thought Benny was asleep, they were giggling in the kitchen and... smooching. Benny was sure that was the word. Smooch. “I was raised in a library,” Dad said, and dipped Mum, like they were going to dance. “What do you expect?’

Right now Dad was in the field, and Benny was working through the dictionary –  the proper dictionary, the Oxford English dictionary, not the baby one with pictures. He was copying it out. Well, some of it. The words he understood, and which Mum let him learn, which was most of them. And if the ‘definitions’ were too boring he skipped them. Or did what Dad called a ‘precis.’ At first he thought it was a ‘pressee,’ but apparently that wasn’t a word.

So far he was up to ‘e.’ His handwriting was getting better, and it was a lot of, lot of paper.

Mum finished her peeling, and dumped the potatoes in a pan of snow, carried it over to rest on top of the stove. When the potatoes were bubbling, in a few hours, (six, at least) she would start chopping onions and garlic. A few hours later she would fry the meat on the pan, then she would stir them all together, and an hour or so later there would be stew. Benny’s stomach growled at the thought of beef, and potatoes and gravy, even though he’d just finished his oatmeal.

Sometimes it seemed that all Mum did was cook.

Well. Cook and play with him. And when she was finished shovelling snow, feeding the dogs and chopping wood, she’d make chips. Benny glanced hopefully at her. She grinned, and got out the frying pan. “Don’t worry, Benny,” she said. “Ten minutes.”

Ten minutes later he was curled up next to her, eating the potato peelings, fried in butter, with cracked pepper and salt, and a splash of precious vinegar. Benny was licking his fingers, when there came a knock at the door. More of a bang really. Mum raised her head, and lifted an eyebrow, looking puzzled.

“Who could that be?” she wondered and licked butter off her fingers, stood.

“It’s not Dad,” Benny said. That was obvious. If it had been him all the dogs would have set to barking a welcome. Everything outside was quiet as – well – snow. Benny knew snow. It sang him lullabies at night. The snow wasn’t saying anything.

“I know that,” Mum smiled. “It must be one of his friends.”

“Maybe it’s Buck,” Benny said, and sprang to his feet, made toward the door. Whoever it was thumped again.

“Benny,” Mum said, and grabbed his hand. “Don’t.”

That was the first time it happened. Mum touched his hand and....

Red. Red on white, and a sharp short crack, echoing in the cup of the valley. Benny staggered, and clutched his mother’s arm.

“Benny,” she said. “What’s wrong?”

He blinked. White and red and...

An echo.

“Mum,” he whispered. “Don’t go.”

The  knock on the door started again, more of a thud this time. Benny could see him. Even though nobody had opened the door yet. A big man. A big man, with a gun.

His mother went pale, then reached behind the door for her own shotgun. Armed herself.

“Benny,” she said, “hide.”

He hid.

It was a long time before anyone called him Benny again.