Tsuga's Children Read Online Free PDF

loose from the piles with axes,” Tim Hemlock said wearily. “And the doors. All the doors will freeze hard shut.”
    Iron ice, Arn thought. When had he heard that?
    As the days passed the cold never let up. It sent its probing chill to find chinks or cracks in the cabin. And each day Tim Hemlock got worse, as if the cold had found a way in and was freezing his throat and chest. He could barely drink the thin hot soup Eugenia made for him, and finally he lay on a straw pallet before the fire, trembling and gasping for breath. Arn, as best he could, wearing all the clothes he could put on and still move, had chiseled open the cabin and barn doors, and with Eugenia’s and Jen’s help, took care of the animals and chopped logs loose from the frozen piles to drag them in over the blue ice. They had to wear iron crampons strapped to their boots, the spikes barely digging into the ice that was harder than any they had ever seen before.
    Each day Oka gave less milk. The nanny goat gave her usual small amount, but of course her udder was so much smaller than Oka’s. The goats didn’t seem to mind the ice and cold, as if they said, “We can climb anywhere, live on anything.” Jen, who spent hours in the barn with Oka, thought she heard things like that from the goats, but their thoughts were cold and superior, not directed toward her at all.
    One day when they had nothing for supper but a piece of bread, dried berries and thin milk, Tim Hemlock could no longer hear them or respond. He lay with his eyes closed, breathing short breaths as quick as a mouse’s breath. He grew dryer and colder to the touch. Eugenia tried to keep him warm, to keep herself hopeful, but inside she was in despair. Her whole world seemed to be ending. She could not bear to live if Tim Hemlock weren’t there. And what would happen to her poor dear children? The merciless cold would steal into the cabin, into their bodies and claim them forever for the far world of the dead.
    Arn and Jen knew how bad their father’s illness was, even though Eugenia tried to keep it from them. They found it impossible to believe that Tim Hemlock, who was always so strong, who had always protected them and provided for them, could be so weak and sick. It seemed impossible. But then all of a sudden they would know, as if they had awakened from a dream, that the strong silent man could not speak to them or hear their voices or see their tears.
    That night at supper Arn couldn’t eat his food. His small crust of bread would not soften in his mouth. It was as hard as iron. Iron, he thought. And then he remembered. It was the old woman. They were all so worried and frightened about his father, they hadn’t thought of the old woman at all. She might have been a piece of wood sitting there on the bench all day long. She had said once in her hand language to Tim Hemlock, “The month of the iron ice will be the worst.” And now, certainly, they were in the month of the iron ice. February. With these thoughts he was awakened again to the strangeness of the old woman, what she had brought with her as a gift when she first came to the cabin. Yes, there they were, all the little birch-bark boxes of powders upon the shelf, each with a picture cut into its top. He remembered some of the pictures of plants: goosefoot, arrowhead, roseroot, kinnikinic, glasswort, purslane and dock. Others he didn’t recognize. Suddenly he felt that it was time to open the boxes. For one thing, all of those plants he recognized were good to eat, and they were hungry. He got a stool and climbed up on it so he could reach the shelf.
    “What are you doing?” Eugenia asked.
    “We’ve got to eat,” Arn said. “Here, Jen, take these as I pass them down.”
    “But we don’t know what’s in them!” Eugenia said.
    “I do. Some of them, anyway.” Somehow he knew he was right, that it was almost too late but not quite. Then he happened to see a movement out of the corner of his eye, a brown thing