Snow piled up against the door, and the wind, coming from the north, froze it into yellow hunks. The ice wore away at the paint, which crackled and split. Some flaked off, some clung on with the lichen, which was crispy and stubborn, spreading over the door by a fraction of a millimetre.
The windows shivered in their panes. Snow spattered. The frosty draught worked its way through putty, eroding it crumb by crumb.
The steel roof twanged in the cold like an instrument.
And in the chimney, smoke struggled out into the snow. Brewing into icy smog. Stunned by the cold, it hung droopily, strung across the trees in hammocks.
The walls breathed in snow. The cement weakened – loosening bricks, loosening plaster. The house buckled by a fraction of a millimetre.
Sloppy snow fell into the fire and made it sizzle.
Pipes clanked and froze. The taps were turned and turned but no water came out. The taps screeched. Ice in the pipes expanded and a crack appeared – the beginnings of a split in the metal.
Footsteps creaked like pipes. When a face stared out of the window, it looked like a blur of snow behind the old glass.
The footsteps were like stones turning in the river, the hushed voices like branches rubbing together. At night, the house moved restlessly, like the river moving underneath the ice and the falling snow.
Lights flickered. The sun didn’t rise above the valley. Everything was muted and dim, like a lid had been put over.
A hand pressed against the window.
The snow prised off tiles and the last of the leaves. Heaping itself against the roof and the walls, heaping itself against trees, which retreated into themselves, biding their time, living off stored reserves of sugar.
Ice grew on the coldest parts of the house: on the windows and the edges of the gutter. It grew thicker on the slowest parts of the river: the pebbly shallows and the sluggish pools. The ice changed water into glass, changed glass into brittle feathers.
And across the valley, snow pressed itself into nooks and runnels. Ice finding its way into fissures, wearing at them, chipping away like an excavator. Snow-battered, wind-battered, battered by cold. But barely a fleck in the valley’s long memory. Like a shiver that gives goosebumps one moment and is gone the next.
The river cut through clay and granite, digging itself deeper by a fraction of a millimetre.
The clogged pipes groaned and settled. The footsteps slowed and settled. Curtains stayed drawn. A lamp flickered on and off. Smoke struggled out of the chimney. The house leaned against the snow. Paint crackled and clung, holding on for at least one more winter.