Small outline heart on the chest

The cairn at the top of Hollen Pass has a new stone on it. Your brother set it there before the first snow, the flat grey slab we argued about carrying up, and this morning I found a shape scratched into its face. It is a single thin line going round and round, a heart with no fill at all, the way you draw when you are too proud to colour anything in. Mother says it was the frost. I say frost does not know how to close a curve.

The mule is lame in the left foreleg and Mother blames you for it, not the weather. We have eleven loaves left and the lamp oil will not see March. The hut roof let in a drift on Tuesday and I lay awake listening to it settle, thinking about the valley road and how small the lights look from up here when the cloud sits low. I counted them four nights running. There are only six houses still lit below Ostwald now.

So I climbed up yesterday with the good chisel and went over the line twice more, to be sure it would hold through the thaw. My hands were so cold I could barely feel the stone, but the scratch went deep enough. When I stood back, the heart looked less like a mistake and more like a door left open.

Come down when the track clears. Bring the mule's shoes and the spare rope. I have left the lantern lit on the cairn each evening so you can find your way up in the dark, and I will keep it burning until you do.

Yours, as ever, Ruth