Winter (5)
“Let’s take stock of the remaining food.”
Winter had already settled in for some time, and Chester, feeling the weather’s stubborn refusal to change, began to consider the real possibility that it might drag on far longer than either his own expectations or the information Black Wind had shared.
The first and most essential preparation for enduring a long winter was, of course, food. On the Floating Island in winter, there was simply nothing worth eating to be found. One could gnaw on tree bark if truly desperate, but that was about it.
Animals were scarce, and every plant that grew in the cold was tough and fibrous, offering little that was edible—roots, perhaps, and the softer leaves if one was lucky. Digging up those roots meant battling deep snow and ground frozen hard as stone, so the energy spent often outweighed any gain. Searching for food could easily become a net loss.
What mattered most, then, was carefully rationing the stores they had already prepared so they could stretch them across as many days as possible.
“We’ve prepared pretty thoroughly so far, so we should still have some leeway.”
“Mm. Whenever we hunted, the first thing we thought about was making preserved foods.”
“We do have the chickens, but… they’re not growing properly in this cold, so we can’t afford to eat them down to nothing.”
Fundamentally, there simply weren’t many chickens left. The sailors who had brought the coop had tasted chicken once, and after so long without rich, fatty meat their eyes had gone wild; they had slaughtered quite a few. Chester and Monia themselves had eaten three as well—carefully considering a reasonable number and including shares for Black Wind—and it was clearly right not to touch the flock any further until their numbers increased.
Naturally, until winter passed the chickens’ activity would remain low. They would not lay properly, and the chicks would grow slowly in the cold. The flock would only expand once winter ended and the weather truly warmed.
We’ve cut back on food since winter started, but Monia and I are still exercising. We have to keep our bodies from weakening completely. For the future’s sake, it’s better to periodically eat more than enough.
If one ate only small amounts for too long, the body adapted to accepting only small amounts. That was a sure path to frailty. Eating less made one more susceptible to illness; muscles wasted, bones weakened. To prevent that, they needed to gorge periodically on overflowing portions and build up surplus nutrients.
They planned their schedule with that in mind as well.
Of course, Chester possessed only experience and intuitive knowledge. He could not analyze the precise effects of each food on the human body or calculate exact quantities the way a scholar or alchemist might. From a professional standpoint, his meal plan would no doubt look full of gaps and shortcomings.
“This should do it.”
Emerging from the storage, Chester sighed at the thick snow that had piled up on the bridge connecting it to the house in that short time. Carefully clearing the snow so he would not slip and fall, he crossed over.
When he returned home, Monia had one hand submerged in a jar filled with water that glowed with a soft blue light.
“You’re back?”
“Yeah.”
Winter was growing colder by the day. How cold? Cold enough that when Monia opened the water channel for a drink, the water that had pooled and frozen solid at the bottom came crashing down in a heap and injured her. Fortunately they always kept water in the jar, drawing out the power of the Grace of the Summit, so the wound would heal quickly.
“Does your hand hurt?”
“No. Look.”
The amount of Grace of the Summit here was nowhere near as abundant as in the lake or at the Summit itself, so the effect was a little weaker. Even so, soaking her injured hand for about ten minutes made new flesh grow rapidly until the wound fully closed.
“That’s a relief.”
“Truly. How’s the food?”
“Still plenty for now.”
Chester said so as he warmed himself by the campfire.
“For now, that is.”
“……”
On the twentieth day of winter, a truly terrible accident struck Chester and Monia.
On the night of the twentieth day, when everything had gone dark, hailstones larger than fists suddenly began pouring from the sky. At first the two thought it would pass with time and simply endured it. Then Ant suddenly cried out as if screaming, and they wondered what was wrong.
To check the situation, Chester fashioned a torch and headed toward the storage where Ant was barking. The moment he did, the bridge—collapsed by the hail—came into view.
“Ugh!”
Hastily looking toward the storage, Chester saw that it too had been severely battered by the hail and smashed to pieces. The floor had given way; every scrap of food and every tool inside had fallen to the ground far below.
“Damn it!”
At the rough sound from Chester’s mouth, Monia also came out in alarm to assess the situation. Upon confirming the devastation she covered her mouth without thinking.
In the dark night, hail was still pouring from the sky as if a hole had been punched straight through it. In the end Chester and Monia had no choice but to abandon any hope of going down to salvage the food and return to the house.
When the hail finally stopped around lunchtime the next day and they stepped outside, what they found were the remnants of their stores—thoroughly ransacked and carried off by creatures that had moved about while the hail still fell.
On the Floating Island in winter, where food was scarce, the provisions Chester and Monia had gathered and then lost must have seemed nothing short of a blessing fallen from the heavens to those creatures.
“……What do we do?”
“We still have two food storages left, so it’s okay, but……”
Neither Chester nor Monia could find proper words in the face of the disaster. Not only the food, but many of the tools stored with it had been smashed by the hailstones. Spears, knives, cutlasses and other blades salvaged from the ship were mostly broken; few of the chili-powder bombs remained intact. Even the jars holding pepper, chili powder and grains had shattered.
“First, let’s salvage what we can.”
“Yes.”
The remaining scraps of smoked meat and dried fish, grains that might somehow be recovered, a little leftover sweet potato and potato—they said they would salvage whatever they could. Yet the more they dug into the wreckage, the more their hearts ached. Months of hard work, carefully gathered, gone overnight.
“Haa.”
“Let’s check the remaining food again.”
“Yeah. We need to find a way to protect the storages too.”
They could not simply keep grieving forever. The longer they did, the more it would hold them back and make life on the island harder. Chester and Monia quickly composed themselves and thought about what came next.
“Is there anything edible among the things Black Wind told us about?”
“Most of that is about the upper levels.”
“Ah.”
Going to the upper levels of the Floating Island in this winter weather would be suicide. Monia felt a little disappointed.
“The People of the Summit basically operate on the upper levels, so they have little information on the lower ones. There is a bit of information on plants that grow on both the upper and lower levels, but……”
“None around here, right?”
“Yeah. I looked around before the snow piled up too much, but I couldn’t find any.”
“Hmm. Too bad.”
Nothing ever went entirely as one hoped.
“With so much snow piled up, even if something were growing nearby, going after it would be harder still.”
How deep and hard the snow was—just moving around near the house was exhausting. The one silver lining was that the snow was packed solid enough that they did not sink too deep. But if they misstepped on a soft spot somewhere in that hard crust and their body sank right in, it would be serious trouble. Even Ant, who used to love romping through the snow, had sensed the danger and lately stopped playing in the snowfields.
After finishing all the salvage work, Chester and Monia checked the food in the other storages and redrew their meal plans. Unfortunately but inevitably, their overall intake had to decrease. The largest food storage had been the one destroyed; there was no helping it.
“How’s the firewood storage?”
“No damage, but the bridge on the way there is a bit… one of the bamboo poles broke.”
“Got it. Reinforce the firewood-storage bridge. The walls didn’t collapse?”
“No. Ah, the sailcloth on the wall is a bit torn. The ropes must have loosened, so wind and snow were getting in easily.”
“Thankfully it’s intact. We’ll need to reinforce the walls too. Is it bad?”
“About a handful of snow? There might be more that melted, but in this weather that’s unlikely.”
“Then patching the sailcloth should be enough?”
“How about the other places?”
When Monia asked, Chester sighed a little.
“The chicken coop is a bit damaged but still fine. The other food storage is more of a problem. It’s pretty wrecked. For now I moved the food that was in there down to the lower storage as a temporary measure.”
“……Is this house the only thing left intact?”
“Yeah. This house has the best location on this tree.”
This house was a spot Chester had carefully chosen. Protected more safely than elsewhere by the overhanging branches above, it had escaped the hail damage. The other storages, built in less favorable locations, had not been so lucky. All had suffered greater or lesser damage.
“Things are going to get tough from here.”
Monia sighed.
“Yeah. We’ll just have to endure it.”
That day, the two made do with a single potato for their entire day’s meals.