Chapter 7 Kindling
Kindling
It’s colder now than it’s ever been. The electricity has been coming and going as it pleases—currently gone—and earlier I overheard Mrs. Whitby speaking with Lane about frozen pipes and how their usual repairman is blocked by the snow.
The Blue Room has ceased being my warm oasis and is now frigid.
I’m sitting on the rug by the fire, hands cupped around the dying candle between my knees.
The air is so dry that the flame shivers with every draft.
Other candles flicker throughout the room, giving what would be a beautiful ambience if not for the ice in my veins.
Outside, the blizzard has become a siege, battering the old glass with pellets of ice and the occasional frozen branch that sounds like the strike of a drum.
The radiator hisses and knocks in the corner, an invalid laboring through its last hours.
I’m not entirely sure it’s working at all. It doesn’t seem to make a difference.
The wind finds a new weakness in the window frame, a whistle so high and keening it makes my molars ache.
I press my hands to my ears, almost laughing.
My pulse is fast, probably from the brandy Whitby brought me, or maybe from the memory of Larkin’s hands, or maybe just from the deep genetic knowledge that I am not meant to outlast a house like this.
I sit for a while longer, as if I might grow roots through the boards and out into the frost. Then, with a breath that fogs the air in front of my mouth, I force myself upright.
The fire is dead, of course, a grave of gray ash and one or two sullen red eyes buried at the bottom.
The logs are in the hall. I make a plan, as if the act of scheming can warm me: match, wood, kindle, flame.
I have not yet made it halfway across the room when a knock comes at the door.
I freeze, unsure whether I should answer, hide, or simply allow the house to absorb me into the wainscot. I’ve been alone most of the day and feel the house is turning me into a paranoid recluse.
“Come in,” I say, my voice creaking like an old rocking chair.
The door opens. Lane fills the frame.
He is bigger than I remembered, or perhaps the cold has made him bulkier: his coat is dusted white at the seams, his beard rimed with crystals, his hands bare but loaded with a pyramid of split wood.
His breath makes ghosts in the light from the corridor.
There is a wet, evergreen smell that I associate with childhood holidays and less with him, but tonight the association feels right.
God, he’s beautiful.
He stares at me, not speaking, the set of his jaw suggesting that this is a mission and not a social call.
He stands there, boots leaking small puddles onto the rug, and I see that his eyes are not merely gray, but flecked with blue and something almost green.
For the first time since I arrived, I am embarrassed of my own appearance—sweater stretched and pilled at the elbows, hair unwashed, dark circles under both eyes.
I wrap my arms tighter around myself, as if to ward off a judgment that isn’t coming.
“Room’s cold,” he says, voice gravelly from the night air.
“It’s not the room,” I reply. “It’s the universe.”
He almost smiles, the beard hiding most of the attempt. He moves to the fireplace and sets the pile of wood down next to it. When he attempts to start rebuilding the fire, I stop him, not wanting to look completely helpless.
“Don’t worry about building the fire. I can do it.”
He turns to look at me, and I know he wants to question that, but instead just shrugs.
“Thank you for the wood.” I want to facepalm at the double entendre.
No one says anything for a moment. Lane leaves the wood stacked neatly next to the hearth, and then stands.
He breaks the silence. “You should sleep by the fire tonight. Power’s been out for an hour now. House’ll go subzero before dawn.”
I nod, rubbing my hands together, then holding them out to the warmth. The first wave of heat is almost painful, a sting on the backs of my fingers.
Lane turns, surveys the room. “Blue Room’s the coldest when the weather turns,” he says, almost to himself. “Always has been. Some flaw in the walls.”
“I believe it,” I say, then add, “Thank you.” The words sound weak in my own ears.
He shrugs. “No trouble.” He stands, brushes the ash off his jeans, and turns to leave. But he hesitates at the door, one hand on the knob.
“If you get cold,” he says, not quite facing me, “there’s extra blankets in one of the trunks. Use them.”
I look at him—really look, for the first time since he arrived. He is a force, but not a violent one, more like the pressure behind a dam, or the weight of ice on a roof. There is something in his posture that suggests he is used to enduring, and equally used to being ignored.
It breaks my heart a little bit.
“I will,” I say, and mean it.
He gives me a short nod and slips out, the latch clicking shut behind him.
I kneel before the fireplace, add a piece of wood, and watch the embers try to catch on. They don’t. I add a smaller piece, then use the poker to adjust them. It barely works.
My hands smell of sap and smoke. The cold prickles my cheeks, and for a moment I think I might cry, but I do not. I let the fire—what little there is of it—warm me, and try not to imagine what the night will bring.
Outside, the storm rages on, but here, at least, there is light. And the hope of more.
I’m not sure how long I crouch by the hearth after Lane departs, half-hypnotized by the flames, the tips of my fingers stinging from their brush with the cold. I am rearranging the logs, pointlessly, when the door creaks again.
This time, Lane stands there minus his outer coat, a different bundle under his arm—a kindling basket, bristling with twigs and strips of birch bark. He says nothing as he steps inside, the door clicking with a care that is almost gentle.
He moves toward the fire, eyes fixed on the smoldering cradle, and then—without asking—kneels next to me on the faded hearth rug. The weight of him warps the floorboards. We are close enough that his elbow nudges my arm. I flinch, then stay very still, not wanting him to think I didn’t like it.
“You built it wrong,” he says quietly. “Won’t last an hour, this way.”
I bristle, but he is already dismantling my work, laying the logs to one side and sweeping out the ash with some sort of fireplace broom I didn’t even know was there. He gestures at the basket, then at me. “Here. You do it.”
I stare at the kindling, then at him. His eyes dare me to refuse.
I reach into the basket, fingers numb, and select a few pieces of birch. The bark is papery and curls at the edges. I arrange them as I’ve seen in videos online—tepee style, tidy and symmetrical.
Lane shakes his head, a faint huff of amusement under his breath. “Not like that. Too neat. Fire wants to breathe.”
He takes my hands, which surprises me so much I nearly drop the kindling.
His grip is enormous—calloused, cracked, warm despite the raw cold in the room.
He turns my palms up, like a fortune-teller, then presses a bundle of twigs into them.
The touch is meant to be instructional, but something in the way his thumb grazes the heel of my hand sends a ripple up my arm.
He guides my hands to the hearth, arranging the kindling in a loose pyramid, correcting my placement with the smallest brush of his own fingers.
“Like this,” he murmurs, his voice low and full of gravel.
“Messier the better. Fire won’t hold if you make it too perfect.
Nothing in this house does,” he adds, almost to himself.
I do as he says. Our hands overlap, his fingers brushing my knuckles, rough and alive. The space between us is charged, as if the static in the storm outside has invaded the room and coiled itself around our bodies.
He strikes a match—a real, old-fashioned wooden one—and hands it to me. I hold it over the nest of birch, letting the flame catch the curl. Lane watches, close enough that I can see the lines at the corners of his eyes, the way the firelight makes his skin glow copper and gold.
I light the fire, then sit back on my heels, uncertain what to do with my hands.
He stays beside me, arms folded across his knees, gaze fixed on the flames. In the hush that follows, the only sounds are the crackle of the birch and the faint, arrhythmic beat of the storm against the glass.
“You ever build a real fire before?” Lane asks, still staring at the hearth.
“I grew up in an apartment,” I say. “The only fire I ever saw was the kind that set off the smoke alarm.”
He grunts, a sound that might mean anything. “We used to have one in every room. When I was a kid, the winters were worse. The wind would make snowdrifts up to the second floor some years. You either kept the fire alive or you froze. Simple as that.”
I glance at him, then away, embarrassed by the intimacy of the confession. “Sounds like you hated it.”
He considers, then shakes his head. “Not at first. There’s something about it—sitting up all night, feeding the fire, waiting for the dawn. Makes you feel like you’re the last person alive.”
I look at the flames, watch them lick the new logs. “You don’t seem like the sentimental type.”
He shrugs. “It’s not sentiment. It’s survival.”
We’re silent again. The heat from the fire fills the room slowly, forcing the cold back into the corners. My hands begin to tingle, sensation returning like pins and needles. I rub them together, then fold them in my lap, feeling the imprint of his touch lingering in the flesh.
I laugh in triumph as a log shifts and the fire roars now. I look at Lane and could swear I see a real a smile on his lips.