15

 

        I woke to daylight and my breath steaming out of me

        The fire had gone out!

        I clawed my way out of my sleeping bag to start it again, grabbing up the few handfuls of twigs that remained. I knew they would not provide enough heat.

        A missing link in the stain glass window  had let both cold and snow into the room, and showed a significantly white world outside.

        Puck stirred as I grabbed the ax and headed for the door, his eyes thick with the glaze of fever. "Where are you going?"

        "To get more firewood,” I said “But only God knows where I'll find dry wood in this storm. There must be two feet on the ground outside.”

        Puck, too sick for another outburst, merely nodded and I went out.

        The snow still fell, filling in my track behind me nearly as fast as I made it. The wind sculpted the snow into huge drifts, yet left large vacancies between so that I could steer  through these valleys with the vague idea of reaching the trees below where I hoped I could find some branches that wouldn’t be too difficult to chop.

        Fate or perhaps pure luck took me to a site where contractors had erected the skeleton of a house, a future life already shrouded in white.

        The wooden framework looked particularly ghostly in the storm, snow dusted its upper surface. Workers hadn't yet picked up all the scrap, and I stuffed bits and pieces into the now empty backpack, and into one of the more sturdy bags left over from our sleeping gear. I also grabbed a few larger pieces that he could drag along back to the castle, where Puck was still sleeping and snug inside his sleeping bag as was I a few minutes later.