8. When We Are In Need -

The shavings fell like pale curls of skin onto the scarred wood.

Elias took the tin cup from the table, dipped it into the melted snow-bucket by the fire, and held it to the man’s cracked lips. The stranger drank greedily, coughing and choking, the water running clear through his beard.

Elias went still. The wind didn't thud. The wind pushed, it shrieked, it whistled. This was a deliberate weight striking the wood. 8. When We Are in Need

He looked at the stranger. The old man wasn't looking at him. He was looking past Elias, toward the corner where Clara lay, her eyes wide and reflecting the firelight.

Elias set his jaw, threw the heavy wooden bar, and yanked the door open six inches. The shavings fell like pale curls of skin

They had been in the valley for six months. They had come for the promise of open land, of a place where a man could breathe without inhaling the soot of the mills. But the valley was a jealous host. It had locked them in early with an October blizzard that had never truly lifted, and now, in the dead of what they guessed was February, the flour barrel was a hollow drum and the tallow was nearly gone.

Instead, Elias took a handful of the parched corn and put it into the pot to boil. Then, he took the tin of dark grease, walked over to Clara, and began to rub it onto her chest, his hands trembling as the warmth of the fire filled the cabin, pushing the dark back, if only for another day. Elias went still

The lantern sputtered, its flame a drowning wick in a pool of gray tallow. Outside, the wind screamed through the cracks in the cabin logs, a high, thin sound like a animal in a trap. Elias didn’t look up from the table. His fingers, cracked and mapped with dirt that no soap could reach anymore, worked a piece of dry pine with a small whittling knife.