Winter (6)
Chester had wanted to keep their bodies from weakening over the winter as much as possible, but with things as they were, he had no choice but to cut back on activity. He also gave up on eating properly at regular intervals.
"Hey… what do we do when the food runs out? How long can we last?"
"Depends on the person. Someone with more fat on them could hold out longer, but Monia and I aren't exactly carrying extra weight… lasting a month would already be doing well."
"A month."
"We might have to eat Ant."
Chester said it with a smile, joking. Monia and Ant both hit him for it.
"Don't make jokes like that."
"Mm. Sorry."
"Anyway, a month, you said. How long can we stretch what we have right now?"
"About three months, if we're careful."
Three months. Adding the time they could go without food, that meant they could hold out for roughly four months.
As long as nothing as catastrophic as the sudden destruction of the storehouse happened again.
Knowing that, Monia still couldn't shake her anxiety even with the four-month calculation.
"It's Ant I'm worried about, though."
Chester looked at Ant as he spoke.
"Ant's small. The smaller you are, the less energy you can store. Lasting a full week completely starved would already be impressive."
"……"
Hearing that, Monia teared up a little and pulled Ant into her arms.
"It'd be nice if Black Wind's people helped us out."
"Yeah. We'd be grateful, but Black Wind probably doesn't have the time either. They're busy with the baby right now."
Black Wind's girlfriend—whom Chester and Monia had been introduced to—had become his wife almost overnight, and then almost as quickly she had gotten pregnant.
Getting pregnant right at the start of winter meant he would have no spare attention to spare for them; he had his wife and the child in her belly to look after.
Besides, no one except someone of Black Wind's standing ever came down to the lower levels to interact with them. The People of the Summit, who worshipped strength, regarded the lower levels as weak ground and avoided setting foot there as much as possible so the weakness wouldn't rub off on them.
It was a mindset that had taken root over long years of living on this island; it would take a long time for that to change.
"Holding on while hoping help might come won't do us much good."
"You're right."
It wasn't as terrifying as the storm had been. But there was a slow, tightening kind of fear.
Monia bit her lip hard against the anxiety.
Had Monia's bad feeling been right? Thanks to the island's abundant nature, the beasts had never bothered them before. But once winter set in and food grew scarce, Chester and Monia's storehouse became a target.
And so their food was stolen.
"Damn it."
It hadn't been like this at first. The turning point was the hailstorm. After the storehouse was smashed and food spilled onto the ground, the beasts that could climb trees realized there was something to eat here and began actively targeting the storehouse and the chicken coop.
Chester and Monia tried to fortify things with the materials they had, but the beasts gnawed through the bamboo walls and forced their way in; there was no real way to stop them.
After three full days of testing every method they could think of while still losing food, Chester finally managed to keep the beasts out by wrapping the storehouse tightly with a rope he had improvised from knives, cutlasses, and nails all lashed together.
Of course a clever enough beast might still get through, but if that happened they would truly be out of options, so there was nothing else to be done.
"For now, let's move as much food as we can down into the cellar."
And if beasts came for the storehouse, they would turn the place into a trap and catch them instead.
Chester set traps inside the storehouse and went to sleep.
The next day he learned, to his regret, that the traps had failed. The beasts were vicious enough that if one of them got caught, the others simply ate it. All Chester and Monia got out of it were blood-soaked snares scattered among the bones.
"They even broke through the knife barrier."
"Yeah. Look. There's blood on the blades. They must have shoved their bodies through the edges and forced their way in."
"Clever."
"They are clever."
"We'll have to fix the knives and cutlasses more firmly. I deliberately left them loose so the wind would rattle them and close the gaps, but that failed."
"But is there even any point in doing more here?"
At Monia's words Chester gave a bitter smile.
"You're right about that."
Of their three months' worth of food, two months' worth had been eaten by the beasts.
The problem was that the beasts moved at night while Chester and Monia were deeply asleep. Even when Ant noticed their approach and hurriedly woke them, Chester couldn't go out late at night in this much snow with only a single torch to rely on.
Worse, the beasts moved even on days when the wind was so fierce that Chester and Monia had no choice but to stay shut inside the house.
Naturally their defenses were always a step behind, and the beasts cheerfully cleaned out the storehouse.
"They're smart and they climb trees… just like ant-wolves."
Monia said it without thinking, but Ant, hearing the thoughtless remark, seemed to take it personally; the speed at which he was eating slowed. Startled, Monia hurriedly comforted him.
"I think he almost completely understands what we're saying. No—I already knew that, but he's really not just ordinarily smart."
"Good heavens. Our kid's a genius…!"
At first Monia had only been apologizing out of guilt toward Ant, but soon she was calling him a genius over and over and trying to teach him to talk. Unlike the People of the Summit, who could clumsily mimic their language, Ant's mouth structure was so different that no amount of learning would ever let him speak human words.
"Say 'Mama'! Mama!"
"Mama~."
"Not Chester!"
"Mama mamma."
"Kyaaak!"
"Ugh. Use a human voice."
- Kieee!
"Oh, he learned a word."
"Ant, not like that—Mama! Say Mama for me!"
One day the enormous ice island that had been hanging near their island simply vanished. It had been stuck against them all this time; sometime during the night it must have drifted away.
Chester quietly looked at the empty place where the ice island had been and prayed that, now that such a bizarre mass was gone, the island might grow a little warmer.
Monia prayed beside him.
While they prayed, the two of them said nothing. More accurately, they no longer had the strength left to speak.
The food was almost gone. Because they had reduced their portions, their bodies had grown steadily thinner; both Chester's and Monia's cheeks were hollowed out.
Conserving even the strength to talk, they cut their movements to the absolute minimum and simply endured.
Until the last of the food ran out they still had to keep fighting off the beasts that kept trying to raid the underground cellar.
On top of that, blizzards and hail had struck several times, and eventually even the house itself took damage from the hail, forcing them to scramble up in the dark and make emergency repairs.
Snow and freezing wind pouring in through sudden holes woke the sleeping family and tormented them, driving their stress endlessly higher.
They spent their days fighting the winter that way, but little by little they were losing even the strength to fight the weather.
Still, lying completely still wasn't an option, so every morning they came outside like this to pray and take a little air, if only for a change of mood.
The content of the prayers was, of course, mostly that winter would end early. Or that food would miraculously fall from the sky. Or, failing that, that at least the piled snow would melt enough for them to move around.
When the prayers were finished they went back inside, held each other tightly, and lay that way for hours.
Since they had no idea how long winter would last, it was a way to burn a little less firewood: by raising their body heat together they could get by with only a small fire.
They spent most of each day sleeping. They slept so long that headaches from oversleeping became common.
Their sense of time slowly dissolved; they could no longer tell when they had closed their eyes or when they had opened them.
They reached the point where they couldn't even be sure whether today was today, or tomorrow, or yesterday.
They put the very last scraps of food into their mouths. Even the act of chewing was becoming an ordeal.
While they were withering away like that, a hopeful sight finally appeared.
The snow began to melt, little by little. The weather, too, grew warmer by tiny degrees. The wind that had howled so fiercely softened, and the hail and blizzards stopped coming.
The sun, long hidden behind clouds, showed its face for longer stretches, and the snow that had been melting slowly gained momentum and began to vanish quickly.
Winter was leaving.
Winter was going away.
That emotion lasted only a moment.
Once a fair amount of snow had melted, a rabbit that had woken from hibernation earlier than the other animals came hopping thoughtlessly across the snowfield.
"……Meat."
"Meat!"
"Meat! Meat!"
"Catch that thing! Damn it, Ant! Chase it! Chase it!"
From somewhere in their starved bodies Chester, Monia, and Ant found strength; they grabbed their gear and began chasing the rabbit.
"Uwaaaaaaah!"
"Kyaaaaah! Meeeaaat!!"