Root and Stone

# Chapter 1: Cold Comfort

The cold wakes me before the dark does.

It's not the cold that announces itself, not the sharp slap of frost through a cracked window or the dramatic howl of wind finding every gap in the mortar. It's the other kind. The patient kind. The cold that seeps up through the stone floor and into the bones of my feet and says, very calmly, *I've been here for hours and I'm not leaving.*

I lie still for a moment, cataloguing. Three bodies in the cottage that weren't here six months ago. Fern is curled against the far wall in the bedroll we stitched from old grain sacks, her breathing the deep, boneless rhythm of sleeping like the young do, as if sleep were something they'd invented and were very good at. Dill has the cot by the door, his travel coat folded under his head because he refuses, on principle, to use the pillow Cob carved a frame for. Something about the road teaching you to sleep on anything. The road taught Dill a lot of things he's very happy to tell you about.

And Husk. Husk is in the chair by the dead fire, chin on his chest, a half-finished whittling still in his hand. I've stopped asking him to use the bedroll. He says chairs are more honest than beds. I don't know what that means and I've decided not to find out.

I swing my feet to the floor. The stone bites. I find my boots by touch, cracked leather, wool-stuffed, the left one still damp from yesterday, and pull them on without lacing. My coat hangs on the peg by the door. It smells like woodsmoke and thyme and the must of a garment that hasn't been properly dry since autumn.