The room was dark, lit by only an oil lamp perched on the centre table and two candles spaced over the nearest bench. Dorran stood there, knife in hand and eyes wild.
They stared at each other for a moment, both silent and unmoving. Then Dorran exhaled and dropped the knife back onto the chopping block. “Clare. You startled me. You looked like a ghost.”
She glanced down. Her own candle lit her, but not well. She could only imagine what she must have looked like standing in the dark doorway. “Sorry.”
“Is everything all right?”
“Yes. Fine.” She stepped into the room, warily eyeing the knives on the wall and the bronze fixtures that flickered in the candlelight. “It’s dark in here.”
“I will fix that.” The aisle was narrow, and Dorran’s shoulder brushed Clare’s as he passed her. He flicked an oversized switch on the back wall, and sudden, sharp light bathed the room.
Dorran blew out the candles and the lamp as he returned to the bench. He’d been chopping leeks. Not far away, a pot simmered on the stove top. He pulled a chair out from under the nearest table and indicated for Clare to sit. Then he undid his coat and draped it around her shoulders before stepping around her and fetching something from a cupboard near the door. Clare gratefully hugged the fur coat around herself. The kitchen wasn’t quite as cold as the rest of the house, but it was still biting enough to feel through the dress.
“Here.” Dorran placed a pair of worn leather boots at her side. “These should stop you from freezing. I didn’t expect you to come looking for me, or I would have left the lights on.”
She wanted to laugh but didn’t know if it would be rude. “Do you always work in the dark?”
“No. But the storm took the power out.” He scooped the leeks into the pot and stirred it. “We have a generator—the house is so remote that we lose power at least three or four times a year—but our fuel supplies are limited. I am trying to conserve where I can just in case we are trapped for longer than a few weeks.”
“Oh!” She frowned up at the large, high-intensity lights set into the ceiling as she slid her feet into the boots. “Sorry. I didn’t realise. You can leave them off.”
His glance was sharp. “We can afford to keep them on for a while, especially since you are not familiar with the house.”
Dorran retrieved two bowls from under the sink, ladled the soup into them, then topped them with parsley. He placed one in front of Clare, and she saw that it was really more of a stew. Chunks of meat bobbed among the vegetables.
“This is nice. Thank you.”
“It is still tinned soup, I’m afraid, but I supplemented what I could.” He sank into the chair beside her. “We have nonperishable food and frozen meat and vegetables but almost nothing fresh.”
“I suppose your family wouldn’t want the food rotting while they were away.”
“Exactly.” He frowned. “The leek was a lucky find.”
“A moment ago, you said you were conserving fuel in case we’re trapped here for weeks. That’s not likely, though, is it? Winter’s only just begun. There’s usually a few patches of warm weather before the cold really kicks in.”
He didn’t speak for a moment but stirred his stew slowly. “I am not sure what to think. This storm arrived unnaturally quickly.”
Clare closed her eyes and once again tried to dredge up memories of that final day. She remembered brewing coffee that morning. It had been a fair day then. Sunlight—not warm but bright enough—had been coming through her window.
That was her last reliable memory. Everything after that felt jumbled and was mixed in with what had to be dreams. Her recollections felt like someone had dumped two jigsaw puzzles into one box and told her to solve them.
She’d been driving to Marnie’s. She was sure that was real. And she’d been on the phone with Bethany, though she couldn’t remember what they had been talking about. But it had been snowing heavily. Beth had been worried about her. She thought her older sister might have been telling her to go back home, but it had been too late for that. She’d been closer to Marnie’s house than to her own.
She thought she remembered something about a news station. That had to be a dream. She only watched TV in the evening and never followed the news because it just depressed her. And she had passed a car on the side of the road, but that had been so unreal that she wasn’t sure whether it was an actual memory or not.
But she did remember the snow. “The storm came out of nowhere, didn’t it? I wouldn’t have gone driving if I’d known it would be that bad.”
“The same for myself. We had barely even had frost the week before. Realistically, my family should have been able to stay here for at least two or three more weeks, but my mother likes to make our journey to Gould early, before there is any chance of snow. I asked to be let out not long after leaving the forest. The sky was clear then. An hour into the walk home, snow was falling between the trees, and I could hear the wind howling. It was not long after that when I found you.”
“You walked home? From outside the forest?”
“It is less than four hours if you keep a good pace.”
“You must have really not wanted to go to Gould.”
He laughed. “I did not.”
Clare sipped some of the soup. It was good, meaty, and rich. “I guess the storm caught both of us unaware.”
“Yes. And I bring up the storm’s suddenness to try to explain why I am being cautious.” Dorran continued to stir his soup, scooping up bits of vegetables then letting them drop back in. “Weather in this region can be unpredictable. But the storm appeared in less than an hour and has lasted for three days now. That is not normal.”
Clare lowered her spoon. “What are you saying?”
“I cannot be certain, but some part about this feels wrong. I intend to be cautious, to take precautions, to guard our resources. The storm may still clear, and the temperature may rise within a day or two. But we cannot rely on it. Lives are lost when people take good fortune for granted.”
Chapter Eight
Nestled in the kitchen, in the heart of the house and with Dorran beside her, it was easy to forget how vicious the weather was. But Clare could still picture the outside world blanketed in snow so thick that the ground looked like it might never resurface. She was used to storms lasting a few hours, sometimes as long as half a day. Three days of unrelenting blizzards wasn’t right, though. A sense of malaise crawled into her bones.
On the morning of the crash, Beth had been worried about something. She’d called Clare because of it. Worried about the storm? No, if it had just been a storm, I would have stayed in my house and weathered it out.
“If this is a worst-case scenario…” She spoke carefully, trying not to let her imagination run away from her. “How long could we live here?”
“I took inventory yesterday. We have an abundance of firewood, so heat will not be an issue. Food is more limited. We have tinned soup and rice but only enough to keep us for a few weeks. We have three kilos of frozen meat and a small amount of frozen vegetables.” He nodded towards the door. “We also have a garden.”
Clare frowned. “That’s got to be long gone, though, right? It would be buried under the snow by now.”
“Not quite. I will show you later. It is not planted, but it may provide food once the nonperishable goods are gone.”