That winter I used less than half the wood I should have needed. The corridor was not magic. The cabin still got cold, especially at night, especially when the wind blew hard from the north. But it never got killing cold. It never got so cold that I had to choose between freezing and burning through my whole woodpile in a week. The system worked, but only Jonah and I knew it, and Jonah was getting weaker.
Spring came late that year. The snow did not melt until mid-March, and the mud lasted until May. But when the ground finally thawed, I started the work that Silas had never reached: the expansion.
The corridor was 20 feet long, but Silas’s journals spoke of something bigger, a whole system of connected spaces using the cave’s deep chambers for storage, using the bluff’s thermal mass for more than simply buffering the cabin. He had dreamed of growing things underground, of keeping food through the winter without salt or smoke, of turning the worthless limestone hollow into something that could sustain a life.
I did not have the lumber or the skill for all of that, but I could make the corridor better. I could widen it. I could add a small alcove on the cave side for storage. I could make the doors seal tighter and the baffle work smoother.
The work took all spring and most of summer. My hands, which had blistered and bled that first winter, grew calluses so thick I could grip a saw without feeling it. My shoulders, which had screamed after every day of hauling boards, grew strong enough to carry 2 at once. I did not look like a girl anymore. I looked like a person who worked.
Jonah helped when he could, but his cough was getting worse. Some days he came and only sat on the stone footings, watching me work, offering advice when I asked for it. Other days he did not come at all.
“You should see a doctor,” I told him 1 afternoon.
“Doctors cost money, and they’ll just tell me what I already know.”
