Snow Storm

By M A Morris

A raging blizzard. An isolated farm. A lone woman desperate to protect her beloved animals from the storm. But the weather isn't the only threat...

• Language: English
• Publisher: Black Guillemot Books
• Release date: Jun 21, 2019
• ISBN: 9781393432777

Book preview

Nothing certain in the world but the rope in her hands. Even the ground beneath Nancy’s feet as she shuffled forward into the blizzard, head bent, panting, felt as if at any moment it would trick her, as if the snow, instead of compacting under her boot so that she could brace for the next step into the maelstrom, would give way, and she’d tumble into a sinkhole some raging god of the north wind had made just for her, like the ones that swallowed the sheep up on the hills.

Nancy slid her hands forward along the rope, gripping it as tightly as her mittened hands would allow. With each step her legs butted up against the drifts that had formed in the trench she’d cleared between the house and the stable during the respite this morning.

Snowflake. Beautiful, benign word. No relation to the whirling, screaming mass that confronted her, stripping her body’s heat from under the layers of clothes so that she felt naked in front of a malevolent force, intent on keeping her from her destination.

But it would not.

Another step. The snowflakes spinning in the beam of her head-torch formed pictures from her memory, from her fears. The Pensioners, tossing their manes and hurrumphing in disgust when she’d gone down to their field bearing lead ropes instead of their pitchfork of hay two days ago. Older than you, girl, Bryn’s brown eyes seemed to say before he allowed her to lead him from the field where the gorgeous, treacherous snow lay already two foot deep. Fuss about nothing. But it came again, the blizzard, the respite, the blizzard again, and the rope she’d slung across the yard turned from an aid into a lifeline.

Another step. The howl of the wind like a banshee, like the shriek and groan of an old barn’s tin roof collapsing under the weight of snow, like the screams of the sheep and lambs Dan Russell had gathered off the hill last year to keep them safe inside, and no she would NOT think of that, or of Dan in his kitchen next day surrounded by silent neighbours, tears slipping down the lines of his face and the steaming tea forgotten in his hand, and not a word out of him about loss of livelihood or the cost of fixing the barn like you’d normally hear from the farmers, only, ‘The creatures, God