The eldest of the Kennen, Maya, now digs in the garden, trying to make green things thrive. Some crops we cook for broth and stretch our sustenance; some we press for oil and keep the lamps burning. I’m still surprised at how intolerant of darkness we all seem to be still. These may be the first truly still moments of life for all of us. Without the hum and clank of civilization around us at all moments the clutter of our minds falls away. We are left alone with the sound of wind, rustle in the bracken. You might think it would be a relief, but truly its unnerving. Winter is arriving. As snow falls it becomes so silent I think perhaps we haven’t survived at all. Either heaven or hell might be so silent. At night, figments of the Kennen who didn’t make it skip through the edges of my sight. I feel perhaps I might never get warm again. Is it the land that is haunted? Or is it us? We might be starving.
But Grayson starts catching rabbits. There’s an old smithy in this mining camp. Grayson hadn’t stoked coaking coals since he was eleven or twelve, but in the silence of snow it all comes back. He gets the coals glowing, cobbs together some scraps of iron for traps, sets them across frozen ground like a champion. Soon there is rabbit stew with rosemary and wild onions. And then, like magic, a stag. Grayson brings him down in another trap he devised, stabs him through the heart with a crafted metal spear. We eat the stags still-warm heart, uncooked, right there in the snow. Red, red blood running away from the body. The Kennen whoop and spin in circles. Nobody did that when we hunted with my grandfather as a child. I can feel civilization slipping sideways off my mind. What will be there when it’s gone?
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to NOVEL atelier to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.