The Walled Cities

Chapter 35

Time moved by quickly and slowly as Winter continued. Today was December 23rd, unless I had lost track of a day somehow. Unfortunately the weather had gotten even colder and despite the constant burning fire both Kaelyn and I coughed in the mornings. I had experienced this before, when the weather was dangerously near zero degrees for extended periods. Yet with Kaelyn's lung injury I was worried. The few herbs I had would not help with our cough, and the ones I needed would not be around until Spring.

Her cough frustrated me as the only thing I could do was try and keep us alive. Food was still scarce but Hares and the occasional Beaver or Otter kept us going. I had abandoned the fish baskets as it was too much work now to chop through the ice in freezing temperatures. Even though I had seen no large game or even sign of them, I carried the hunting rifle with me whenever I went out.

Crunch!

Snow and ice crunched beneath my feet as I walked through the small clearing around the cabin as I went to search for firewood. Despite the chill and my repeated request to stay inside where it was warm, Kaelyn followed in my footsteps. Her help in carrying the wood once it was was cut would make the work go by faster, yet I worried that she was going to get worse, spending more time out here in the cold.

As if knowing my sorries, the wind picked up, howling as the treetops began to bend in the wind. Irritated that the weather seemed to know my worries, I suppressed an angry snap, as it was not directed at Kaelyn and would not help the situation.

In order to distract my thoughts I stopped and turned around to face Kaelyn. "Your family celebrated Christmas right?"

"Yes we did. My father and mother hand raised a tree that we use every year. Its not huge, but last year I was climbing up and down a ladder to get to the top of it. Our decorations were not that of the old days, with strings of lights. We dud put a star on the top though, and various glass and plastic ornaments on the limbs. I always loved decorating it, and my father complimented my mother and I every year on our tree." She replied, her eyes showing her drifting into the past as her expression softened.

"Well we cannot really have a tree as that hut is packed as it is, but I would like to still do something nice on Christmas Day."

Delight twinkled in her eyes as I said this, and I knew that I would have to make good on my word. It was rare to see Kaelyn so happy, and I wanted her to have something positive to remember these months was Spring came and we left for home.

First, we needed to cut a tree down and turn it into useable firewood. The cold and our coughing had made us burn through firewood at an alarming rate and I wanted more while the weather was fair. One decent tree would give us another week or so of wood. Such a tree presented itself in front of us. At this point we were a hundred paces from the hut.

Felling a tree this time of year was difficult, especially when they were dead trees. Dead trees burned well, but commonly froze. This made them as hard as iron, which increased the risk of something bad happening. I had never had a tree fall on me, but there was always a first. Personally I hoped that it would not happen, as neither I nor Kaelyn could afford to be injured. After having part of a building knock her unconscious back in the Port City of Columbia, her body did not need to have a second experience.

On the chance that something decided to go wrong, I asked, "Kaelyn can you go stand underneath those two trees." They were both alive and would protect her if the tree I was about to cut decided to fall wrong.

Now that she was safe, I hefted the axe and tried a couple experimental swings. Confident that I had the angles right, I planted the head of the axe in the side of the tree. My hands were jarred as the axe glanced of a sheet of ice. Swinging again, I cut through the ice and felt the blade bite into solid wood. Faintly smiling that I had beaten the first patch of ice, I began to swing over and over.

Just as I was roughly halfway through I stopped for a moment to rest my aching hands. Numb despite the thick gloves I was wearing, my hands were painful just to move. It had been a few winters since I had last cut firewood in the dead of winter, and hopefully I would not be doing such next Winter.

Creak!

Creak!

Craack!

Just as the noise of breaking wood reached my ears and Kaelyn's scream of warning, a heavy object smashed into me. My vision went black and then nothing.