River Moonstone's Arc

Chapter 2 of 2

The sacred seeds lay under the soil now, but River Moonstone knew soil alone would not save them. That night he walked to the greenhouse and felt the cold press through the glass. The seedlings had broken ground three days ago, thin green threads no taller than his thumb. He pressed a hand flat to the pane. It was like touching ice. One hard frost would end everything. Oliver Greenwood was already inside, kneeling by the beds with a thermometer. The boy ran the greenhouse the way a banker ran a vault, and he did not look up when River entered. "Forty degrees and dropping," Oliver said. "They need sixty. They won't last the night." He set the thermometer down hard. River heard the fear under the flat words. River looked at the glass walls, the dark clearing, the seedlings shivering in their shallow beds. "Then we bring heat in," he said. He thought of the commune houses across the clearing, each one built with a small stone fireplace. "We move a hearth. Tonight." Oliver stared at him. "You can't carry a fireplace." "We can carry stone and coal and a grate," River said. "We build one here." They worked in the dark. River pulled loose fieldstones from a garden wall and stacked them in a corner of the greenhouse. Oliver hauled buckets of coal and dry wood from the nearest house. Willow Meadows came when she saw the lantern light. She said nothing, only picked up a bucket and joined the line. "Vent's too tight," Willow said after one glance at the roof. "Smoke will choke them faster than frost." She climbed the racks and cracked two panels near the peak. River felt cold air slip in, but the smoke found its way out. River lit the fire near midnight. The stones caught the heat and held it. Warmth spread low across the beds. Oliver knelt by the thermometer and watched the red line climb. Forty-four. Fifty. Fifty-eight. The seedlings stopped their shivering. Their thin leaves lifted. "Sixty-one," Oliver whispered. He sat back on his heels. For the first time River saw the boy smile. By dawn the frost had come and gone. White rime coated the grass outside. Inside the glass the seedlings stood green and alive, warm above the low fire. River had beaten the cold. Then Oliver frowned at the coal bucket. It held maybe two nights' worth. He looked at the stack of wood, then out at the clearing. "We burned through half the fuel in one night," he said. "The houses share this coal. We take it all, people freeze in their beds." Willow crouched and turned an empty bucket over in her hands. "Six weeks of cold nights," she said. "And one pile of coal for the whole island." River looked at the fire that had saved the crop. It would burn every night now, and it would burn through everything the commune had to keep itself warm.