The Totem-Maker (part sixty-three)

The Totem-Maker

Chapter Seven

Winter Alone

(part sixty-three)

I dug out my doorstone and carried the snow indoors. I dug further, even when I had all the water I and my pony could want. I felt warm from exercise, which was something. I discovered I must tie a scrap of linen over my eyes to see, when the sun shone on the snowfields. But wind and sun restored a view, of treetops, rockfaces; I was able to see the plain, as many leagues below as I had ridden from the mountain’s foot.

Crabbed pines overlooked the precipice. I marked their place for safety, and kept my making of paths within the evening shadow’s reach, of my home.

I shoveled, raked, and swept for an hour before I took a midday meal, an hour afterwards. I spread fodder, and the trample of my sheep up and down, and the darker hues of hay and mud, stopped the snow reclaiming them. My stable opened to a yard, roofed by a double line of pickets, pine branches laid on. The tollhouse had been sited to all the advantage this evil place afforded, and the wind swept whistling over a hump of rock, with much of the snow gathering beyond.

Three urns had been left me by my escort, carried on the flanks of their great-footed, longhaired mounts. The urns were filled with seeds and honey. I conserved my rations in this way: I mixed a handful of seeds with two fingers of honey, cleaned my hands in a bowl of water and drank it.

I counted twenty-seven days since my abandonment. Already I was thinking of meat and bread, of green leaves. I woke on the twenty-eight day to turn my pony into the yard for his short circling walks, to bring him indoors to his stall and feed. I tended his coat and hooves, built up my fires and heated my pots of water. I wrapped my feet and went outdoors.

I forced hunger. I could endure the same food all day, every day, if I were hungry. One day, I might need to wash myself, or my clothing, but in this cold I smelled only smoke and wind.

But how wonderful to have had a helper! A dog at least, only to hear me speak. This was my morning revelation, that I had wasted more of my firewood than was wise. I knew sticks wanted seasoning—and how to dry them unless I had built a fire?

And if one task is most urgent, others must be less so. Yes, I was frustrated.

Did I have time to assign a character to each chore, so as to rank each chore, so as to end the needed ones quickly, having an hour at least for my work? My work was to master an art, or to overmaster a malevolent place-spirit; to make myself the key to the Prince’s campaign against the Citadel, or to prove at last that the tollhouse held none.

I would not solve this puzzle. This equation of chores and time would defeat me. And I would not live unless I solved the puzzle.

But the old woman had taught me, also, when mastery of the smallest art had been long labor: “Do what you can. For now, child, do what you can.”

67

Winter Alone

The Totem-Maker (part sixty-four)

(2018, Stephanie Foster)