The Pells burned through half their woodpile in 9 days. Asa Klene lost 2 pigs and nearly lost his youngest boy, who wandered too far from the stove and could not feel his fingers by the time they found him. The relief house in Union, Mrs. Vale’s relief house, had ice forming on the inside of the dormitory windows, and Calvin Reick’s customers bought him nearly bare of every stick of seasoned wood he had, every log he could split. By the 3rd week, people were burning green wood because there was nothing else. Green wood that smoked and sputtered and put out half the heat of dry. Green wood that could not keep up with the cold pouring through their walls.
I heard about it in pieces, people stopping by to see whether the cave house was still standing, people asking whether I had room, people who had mocked Silas Ren and called his granddaughter foolish now standing in my yard with their breath freezing in front of their faces and asking whether the stories were true.
The stories were true.
On the 18th day, the worst night came. The wind shifted. It had been steady from the north, brutal but predictable. Now it swirled. It found the seams in my corridor’s outer section, the section we had built in 1 desperate night. I heard whistling. I felt cold air streaming through. I crawled into the corridor with a hammer and a scarf over my mouth.
