Chapter 4 - Forty-TwoCold came harder in December.
Anna began counting the piglets twice a day.
Morning.
Evening.
Forty-two.
It became part of her routine.
Forty-two at sunrise.
Forty-two before dark.
Some had begun filling out.
Their legs looked steadier.
Their narrow bodies were gaining weight.
One brown piglet with a notched ear became easy to recognize.
Another always arrived last at the trough.
Anna privately called him Last One.
She told herself she was not naming them.
Then realized she already had.
Harold returned one afternoon.
He stayed outside the fence.
Anna appreciated that much.
He watched the animals for a while.
“They’re still alive.”
“They are.”
“Runts usually don’t amount to much.”
“These are doing fine.”
He looked toward the orchard.
“Trees are still dead.”
“The ground isn’t.”
Harold finally looked at her.
His eyes moved briefly toward the cheek he had struck weeks earlier.
No apology came.
Anna did not ask for one.
“You spent nearly everything on them,” he said.
“Yes.”
“What happens when feed runs out?”
“I find more feed.”
“What happens if the orchard does nothing?”
“I’ll know I was wrong.”
Harold seemed surprised.
He had expected defiance.
Maybe certainty.
Anna offered neither.
“I don’t see what you see,” he admitted.
Anna looked past him toward the gray trees.
“You might.”
“When?”
“Come spring.”
Harold shook his head and walked away.
That night, temperatures dropped sharply.
Anna lay awake listening to the wind.
Before sunrise she dressed in darkness and went outside.
Frost covered the orchard.
The piglets had huddled together near the old stone wall.
Anna counted.
Thirty-nine.
Her breath stopped.
She counted again.
Forty.
Her heart hammered.
Then two small bodies emerged from behind the largest tree.
Forty-two.
Anna closed her eyes.
Relief made her knees weak.
“Don’t do that to me.”
The pigs ignored her.
Over the next weeks she added straw shelters along the wall.
Feed became a concern.
The money from the tool auction was nearly gone.
Anna reduced her own expenses.
She baked instead of buying bread.
Mended gloves.
Used less lamp oil.
She sold two unused pieces of household furniture.
Not because she believed the piglets were more important than her comfort.
Because she had already committed to the experiment.
Stopping halfway would tell her nothing.
By January, Anna noticed something else.
The soil around several trees remained darker after cold nights.
Not frozen as deeply.
She pressed a hand against one trunk.
At first, nothing.
Then a faint resilience beneath the bark.
Not warmth.
Not movement.
Only a feeling the wood had not completely surrendered.
Anna moved to another tree.
Then another.
Three felt different.
She did not tell anyone.
Hope was dangerous when announced too early.
So she wrote only one line in Thomas’s old ledger:
January.
42 alive.
May you like
Three trees uncertain.
Then she closed the book and went back outside.
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