Across from him sat Clara. She was wrapped in three wool blankets, her face a sharp wedge of white against the dark fur of the collar. Her breath came in shallow, rattling bursts that seemed to shake the very rafters. Every few minutes, a cough would tear through her, and she would double over, her small frame convulsing. Elias would stop whittling then. His hand would freeze, the knife hovering a hair’s breadth from the wood, until the silence returned. Only then would the scrape-scrape continue.
Elias set his jaw, threw the heavy wooden bar, and yanked the door open six inches. 8. When We Are in Need
“Rest,” he said. His own voice sounded foreign to him—low and gravelly, stripped of its music by weeks of silence and salt meat. “The fever’s just high tonight. It’ll break by dawn.” Across from him sat Clara