Linny Marsh's Arc

Chapter 14 of 22

By midday Linny knew she would not reach the ridge. Her toes had stopped hurting, which was worse than hurting. The bread was gone. The dried meat was gone. Two walnuts rattled in her pocket. Her own trail from the way in was buried under new snow, and the wind had scrubbed the branches clean of any mark she had cut. She stopped walking and made herself think. Warmth first. Food second. Direction last. In that order she might live long enough to be lost. She pushed off the open slope into a stand of frost-laden trees. Their fine icy branches met overhead in a shimmering roof. The wind cut off at the trunks. She stood in the sudden quiet and felt her ears burn back to life. She worked fast while her hands still bent. She broke the low dead branches off the lee side of the biggest trunk. She scraped snow into a wall with her boot. She cut two long strips from her blanket, wrapped one around each foot inside her boots, and pulled the wet wool off her hands. She pressed her palms flat against the tree bark until they hurt again. Hurt was good. Hurt meant she still had the hand. Under the tree, in the dry litter where snow had not reached, something moved. A small brown shape with a white belly stared up at her, cheeks packed round. A chipmunk. It had a cache. Linny went still. The animal held. She lowered herself into a crouch and eased her hand along the frozen ground. The chipmunk bolted up the trunk. She dug where it had been. Her fingers found seeds. Then a hollow. Then more seeds, and a lump of frozen berries, and a knot of pine nuts still in their shells. She pulled out two handfuls and stopped. She left the rest. She did not know what winter meant to a thing that small, but she knew what it meant to take everything. She cracked the nuts with her knife hilt against the trunk. She ate slowly. The berries were hard as pebbles and burned sweet when they thawed in her mouth. Feeling came back into her jaw. Then her hands. Then, worst and best, her feet. She sat against the trunk while the light shifted. She counted what she had. Food for a day. Feet she could still walk on. A windbreak of trees she could sleep under if the night caught her short of the ridge. She was not going to die in the frostwood. Not today. She stood up. The ridge was still a long walk south. She fixed the sun over her left shoulder and started down through the trees. Behind her, high in the branches, the chipmunk chattered once. She did not look back. She had taken what she needed and left the rest, and that felt, for the first time in days, like something she had gotten right.