Axel Timberson's Arc

Chapter 4 of 6

Morning came gray and cold. Axel warmed his hands at Isaac's fire, but the timber weighed on his mind. His whole stockpile still sat in the brick shed, far across the frozen ground. He needed that wood to build his inn. He couldn't drag it here alone before the cold sank deeper. "I have to move my timber," Axel said. "All of it. Before the next storm buries it." Isaac Bloodborne stood by the bear cage, checking the rusted bolt. He was the giant who had freed his grizzly to scatter the wolves, the man Axel had paid in wood for this fire. "One man can't haul a shed of logs," Isaac said. "You'll freeze trying." "Then I need hands." Axel looked at Aldric, huddled near the flames. The weathered vagrant had guarded that shed once, then joined the inn plan. Aldric met his eyes and sighed. "My back's bad. But I'll pull what I can." Morgan sat apart, staff across her knees, the red stone dark. "I don't haul logs," she said flatly. She turned the staff in her hands and said nothing more. Axel's plan felt thin. Two sore men and a bear-keeper who owned no cart. Then a knock came at the shack door. It swung open before Isaac could reach it. A red-haired woman stepped in, arms full, a boy at her hip. She wore a long brown dress and carried a covered dish like a shield. "You didn't come by," she told Isaac. "So I came here. Brought pie." This was his neighbor. For four years she had knocked on a door he never opened. Now she walked into his shack without waiting. Isaac's stern face softened a hair. "Stella," he said. "You shouldn't be out in this." "Neither should you." She set the dish down. The boy beside her stared at the bear cage, wide-eyed. "Leo, don't touch it," Stella said. Then she looked at Axel. "You're the inn man. Isaac told me. You need wood moved, you need my sled. My late husband's oxen still pull." Axel straightened. "You'd lend them?" "I'd trade them. For a room at your inn when it's built. Somewhere Leo and I can wait out storms." She meant it plain. "That's the real price." They worked through the day. Stella's oxen dragged the sled between the brick shed and Isaac's clearing. Axel and Isaac loaded logs. Aldric roped them tight. Leo ran messages between the two men. Trip after trip, the stockpile shrank in the shed and grew beside the shack. By dusk, the last log lay stacked near the fire. Axel's whole supply sat in one place, safe from the deepening cold. He had done it. But he counted the pile and his chest tightened. He had promised a room to Isaac, a room to Stella, shelter to Morgan and Aldric. The timber was here now, whole. And most of it was already owed away before he'd cut a single beam.