Coral Springs's Arc

Chapter 1 of 1

The first hard frost came a week early, and Coral Springs still had no shop to open. She stood in the clearing at the edge of the pines with a burlap sack of tea tins at her feet and a hand-painted sign under her arm. The sign read HOT TEA BY THE FIRE. There was no fire. There were no walls. There was only the flat patch of ground she had cleared last month, and the trail behind her where travelers were already trudging south to beat the snow. She had come to Everfrost with one plan: a warm little tea shop where every traveler on the mountain road could sit by a hearth and thaw. She had the tins. She had the kettle. She had a jar of coins from three summers of saving. She did not have a building, and the lumber she had ordered from the mill was still two weeks out. Two weeks was too long. A woman with a baby had passed her yesterday with blue lips. Coral picked up the sack and walked deeper into the trees. She remembered a place her grandmother used to point to from the ridge. A cabin, empty since the old trapper died. Fairy lights, her grandmother had said. He strung them every autumn and never took them down. She found it a mile in. The cabin sat in a pocket of pines with warm yellow bulbs draped along the eaves, still lit, still humming from a small solar box on the roof. Snow dusted the shingles. A pot of dried marigolds stood on the porch. The door was not locked. Inside, a stone hearth, two windows, a plank floor, and dust. She set the kettle on the hearth and went back for firewood. By dusk she had a fire going and the sign nailed to the porch rail. She swept the floor twice. She lined her tins along the mantel. When the first traveler came stumbling off the trail, an old man with ice in his beard, she poured him a mug and pointed at the bench. He drank without speaking and put a coin on the plank beside him. Then two more came. Then a family of four. By full dark the room smelled of pine smoke and bergamot, and every seat was taken. She was counting the coins by lamplight when the door opened again. A tall woman in a mill coat stepped in, stamped snow from her boots, and looked around at the mugs, the fire, the tins on the mantel. "Who told you this cabin was yours?" she said. Coral set the coins down. The travelers stopped talking. Outside, the wind picked up, and somewhere past the porch the first heavy snow of winter began to fall.