Chapter 7 - The Choice above the Well
Before Thomas could climb back onto the well, a sudden, frantic shouting from the hatch above cut through the rumbling of the chamber.
"Thomas! Come up! You have to come up!"
It was Claire’s voice, but it wasn't the voice of a woman waiting in a sanctuary. It was the voice of a mother fighting for her life.
Thomas didn't wait. He scrambled for the ladder, his boots finding the rungs with a desperate speed, with Nicholas and Arthur right behind him.
When his head broke through the opening of the hatch, the scene in the kiln was one of pure, chaotic nightmare.
The blue frost had completely claimed the outer walls of the room, turning the brick into a glittering, frozen ice-palace. The blankets they had used to seal the windows had frozen solid and shattered under the pressure of the wind, letting the screaming white storm blast directly into the room.
But it wasn't just the cold that was killing them.
The refugees were fighting.
A group of men, led by a desperate, half-frozen farmer named Silas, had gathered around the central oven mouth with axes and heavy iron bars. They were trying to tear the masonry apart, believing that if they could get closer to the source of the heat, they could survive.
Claire stood in front of them, her body blocking the narrow opening of the oven, her face streaked with dirt and tears. She was holding a heavy wooden timber, her eyes wild as she kept the men back.
"Don't touch it!" she screamed over the wind. "My husband said if you break the brick, the heat dies! You'll kill us all!"
"We're already dying, Claire!" Silas roared, his face waxy and blue, his eyes crazed with the cold. "My son is turning white! We need the fire! We need the heat now!"
He raised his axe, preparing to swing it at the brickwork.
"Silas! Stop!" Thomas yelled, leaping from the hatch and throwing himself into the space between the farmer and the oven.
The crowd froze, their eyes locking onto Thomas as he stood there, his face blistered, his leather gloves torn and bloody.
"The heat isn't inside the brick, Silas," Thomas said, his voice carrying a quiet, authoritative weight that made the farmer lower his axe by a fraction of an inch. "There is a machine below us. An engine of stone. If you break this oven, you seal the vents. The heat will stay trapped below, and the air in this room will turn to ice in five minutes."
"Then what are we supposed to do?" another man cried from the crowd, his voice cracking with a desperate, hopeless grief. "The walls are freezing! The floor is going cold! There’s nowhere left to stand!"
It was true.
The circle of warm floorboards in the center of the room had shrunk to a space no larger than ten feet across. Over forty people were packed into that tiny, crowded circle, their bodies pressed together for warmth, while the blue frost crept closer and closer to their feet.
Thomas looked at Claire, then at Matthew and Lucy, who were huddled under her coat, their faces pale but their eyes bright with trust.
Then he looked down at the open hatch.
"The engine is dying because it’s cold-locked," Thomas said, looking back at the crowd. "I have to go down and open the core. It’s the only way to release enough heat to clear this room. But if I do it... the chamber below might collapse. I need men to hold the ladder. And I need someone to help me swing the hammer."
Nicholas Birch stepped forward, his leather gloves tight on his hands. "I'm with you, Thomas."
May you like
Arthur Vance stepped up next. "Me too."
Silas looked at his shivering son, then at the axe in his hand. He let out a long, shuddering breath and stepped beside Nicholas. "Tell me where to stand, mason."
