The Language of Sand by Ellen Block

not to dwell on what Merle had said that morning. Diverting herself with housework had been an intentional measure. What she couldn’t distract herself from was the threat of spending another night in the bitter cold. Abigail unlocked the shed and the hinges sobbed.
    “Take a number. You’re not the only squeaky thing around here.”
    The firewood had been quartered, making one edge especially sharp. Her forearms took a beating as she bunched the logs.
    “There has got to be an easier, less injurious way to do this.”
    While searching for a container to carry the wood in, Abigail spied a flashlight behind a phalanx of kerosene lanterns. Seeing how unreliable the house’s wiring was, a flashlight could come in handy. She reached for it, inadvertently disturbing the delicate balance of firewood, and the logs proceeded to tumble to her feet.
    “This is going swimmingly.”
    Hands now free, Abigail switched on the flashlight. Nothing. She gave it a shake.
    “I guess I should put batteries on the shopping list along with primer, rollers, sandpaper…”
    She hunted through the shed for painting supplies. The brushesshe found were rock hard, bristles petrified with paint. Another visit to Merle’s store was in order.
    “Won’t that be a treat?”
    Flashlight and logs gathered in her arms, Abigail kicked the shed door shut, leaving it unlocked.
    “Time to start a fire.”
    With the wood set on the log rack, the match ready and waiting, Abigail remembered she still had no kindling. Lottie’s brochure was buried somewhere in the mess, and she had no pad or paper except for the register in her checkbook and her checks. There was the newspaper article from under the mattress. Except Abigail didn’t feel right about burning it. The article had survived too many years to meet such a fate. Paper bags, which she had in abundance, were the best bet.
    Fighting her trepidation, she struck the match. Abigail tried to stare down the flame but lost her nerve. She lobbed the matchstick into the fireplace, the flame caught on the bags, and the wood took.
    “The first time is always the hardest,” she told herself.
    Abigail was well aware, though, that any time she had to start a fire it would be hard on her. She shuddered at the cold as well as the thought that she might have to do this every day from here on in.
    Since the fireplace had no screen, she stayed close, holding vigil at the hearth and contemplating the fact that the word fire was almost as ancient as what it signified. Its ancestry spanned the millennia. The Greeks baptized it pyr . In Old English, it was labeled fyr , in Old High German, fiur. Fire was elemental to life, hence to language. The fear of fire was equally elemental. Abigail’s fears had been justified. She had a right to them.
    “Maybe you’ll get used to this,” she said. “Probably not.”

    Night drew itself up along the shoreline as Abigail sorted through the boxes of books strewn across the living room floor. It was high time to find a home for them in the study upstairs. She doused thefire with a few mugs of water, then grabbed a box. The staircase sung a dissonant scale of screeches with every step.
    “Yeah, yeah, yeah. I hear you.”
    The second floor was blindingly dark. Abigail hurried to switch on all the lights—the overhead fixture in the study, the bulb in the bathroom, and the lamp in the bedroom. Once they were lit, Abigail could breathe easier and concentrate on unpacking.
    Several flights of stairs later, the study was filled to capacity. Boxes were piled on the desk, the cot, and the floor. Shelving the books was a project Abigail relished. Her packing process had been hasty, done without regard to order; hence, opening each package was like opening a gift. For her, the sprawl of bland brown boxes rivaled Christmas. As she organized, she allowed herself to read the first few pages of each book, tasting the story or sampling a morsel from a text. It was as if she were bumping into