By early autumn, her cabin was packed.
Barrels of dried apples.
Bundles of smoked venison.
Fish hardened with salt.
Shelves filled with jars of tomatoes, herbs, and berries.
Even the floorboards hid small sacks of preserved food.
To anyone else, it would have looked excessive.
To Martha, it felt barely enough.
Then, in late October, the sky changed.
The air grew strangely quiet.
Birds disappeared from the valley earlier than usual.
Old hunters noticed the wind blowing down from the mountains colder than it should have been.
And one morning, the first snow fell.
At first it was light.
Beautiful, even.
The town children played in it.
But it didn’t stop.
Day after day, the snow grew deeper. Roads vanished beneath white drifts. The narrow mountain pass that connected Ashaow Valley to the outside world disappeared completely.
Wagons couldn’t pass.
Horses couldn’t climb.
No supplies came.
By mid-November, people started to worry.
By December, the valley was trapped.
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