Chapter 5 - The Long WinterFebruary tested Anna more than autumn ever had.
Buying the pigs had been one decision.
Keeping them alive was hundreds.
The feed supply shrank.
The pump froze twice.
One section of fencing loosened after a hard wind.
The smallest piglet stopped eating for a day.
Anna sat in the barn beside him until midnight.
Doctor Harris examined the animal the next morning.
“Cold stress.”
“Will he live?”
“Probably.”
Anna hated the word.
Probably had become the word governing her entire life.
Probably the farm could survive another season.
Probably the orchard was not entirely dead.
Probably the pigs could make it through winter.
Probably Thomas would have approved.
She gave the piglet warm feed in small amounts.
By evening he ate.
Anna leaned against the barn wall and let herself cry for less than a minute.
Then she stood.
Outside, February remained gray.
The trees still showed nothing obvious.
Neighbors stopped visiting.
The story was no longer entertaining.
People had expected quick failure.
Instead, nothing dramatic happened.
The piglets lived.
The woman worked.
The orchard stayed bare.
Anna preferred the quiet.
Every morning:
Forty-two.
Every evening:
Forty-two.
She began noticing changes no visitor would have understood.
Grass near several trunks looked darker.
The soil broke apart more easily.
The piglets had removed old decaying fruit and worked years of leaves into the ground.
The trees in the most heavily worked sections looked less gray near their bases.
One afternoon Anna walked all forty-one trees.
She pressed her palm against each trunk.
Some felt exactly as dead as before.
Hard.
Dry.
Finished.
But several did not.
The difference was almost impossible to describe.
Anna thought of a sleeping person beneath a blanket.
Still.
Quiet.
Yet undeniably there.
She wrote nothing about it.
At the feed store, Harold Pike stood near the counter.
He looked at Anna’s sacks.
“Still feeding them?”
“Yes.”
“Must be costing you.”
“Yes.”
“Still think those trees are coming back?”
Anna looked at him.
“I never said they were.”
He frowned.
“Then why keep going?”
“Because the ground has changed.”
Harold laughed.
“Can’t sell dirt.”
Anna lifted one feed sack.
“No.”
She carried it toward the door.
Harold called after her.
“Spring’s nearly here.”
Anna stopped.
The same man who had said none would survive now seemed eager for the deadline he had invented.
She looked back.
“Yes.”
Then left.
That evening she stood in the orchard as daylight faded.
The piglets moved among the trees.
Stronger now.
Broader.
Their movements more confident.
Anna realized she had changed too.
Autumn Anna had needed the orchard to succeed because failure felt like judgment.
Winter Anna wanted only the truth.
If the trees were dead, she would accept it.
If the method failed, she would learn.
But she would not declare failure before the land answered.
May you like
March was coming.
For the first time, Anna was not afraid of it.
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