After North Street was sealed off again, Greta did not have everyone completely clear it the way they had yesterday.
She first divided the Disaster Affairs Office personnel into two groups: one to clear routes between the clinic, the public water station, and the shelter; the other to check each household for the number of people inside, fuel, and structural damage. If residents could dig open the passage in front of their own homes, they were to clear only a one-person-wide path for now, no longer wasting effort keeping it wide enough for carts to pass each other.
"The snow is falling faster than we can clear it." Greta stood beside the worktable outside the dye shop. "Today, we make sure people don't die inside their homes. We'll worry about the roads after people can get out alive."
Lutia stood beside the table, her right palm wrapped in the bandage the clinic had replaced.
The wound had stopped bleeding, but it still stung when she clenched her hand. Lorne had taken her temperature that morning, then recorded her scraped palm, aching shoulder, and hours of sleep on a new form.
Lutia had asked why they needed to record even how long she slept.
Lorne had answered that fatigue affected judgment.
She had then asked why, if humans knew fatigue affected judgment, the Disaster Affairs Office personnel still slept only two or three hours.
Lorne had said that knowing and being able to do something were two different things.
Greta handed Lorne a stack of registration forms, then took a short-handled iron hammer and several pieces of chalk from a wooden crate.
"Twelve households on the east side. Confirm the people first, then check the water mains and roofs. Don't enter red danger placard houses. Yellow caution placard houses are inquiries from the doorway only. Report anyone who's missing immediately."
She turned to Lutia.
"No snow shovels for you today."
"Why?"
"Because your hand is injured."
"It doesn't affect spellcasting."
"You won't be casting today, either."
"Then what am I doing?"
"Looking, listening, carrying what you can, and answering questions."
Lutia picked up the top registration form.
The paper was divided into many boxes: household name, current number of residents, injured persons, drinking water, fuel, food, condition of the house, types of damage, and urgent needs.
At the very bottom was another box labeled "Other."
"What counts as other?"
Greta was already looking down at the next neighborhood map.
"Things that don't fit in the boxes above."
"If things that don't fit keep happening, why not draw more boxes?"
"Because we don't know what will appear."
Lutia looked at the long blank box.
Humans gave things names, sorted them into categories, and stamped them. In the end, they still left one box for things they did not know where to put.
Lorne tucked the forms into a waterproof leather case.
"Let's go."
He had not brought yesterday's stack of large maps. He carried only a dark crossbody bag containing a notebook, folding ruler, chalk, and several blank notices. His right leg was stiffer than the day before, and his steps had shortened slightly as he walked around the worktable toward the street corner.
Lutia followed him.
"Is your leg injured?"
"An old injury."
"Does the snow make it worse?"
"It's less flexible in the cold."
"I can—"
Lorne turned to look at her.
Lutia paused and changed what she had been about to say.
"Do you need assistance?"
"Not at present."
"Is that a clear refusal?"
"Yes."
"Okay."
Lorne glanced at her but said nothing.
They went first to the first house on the east side of North Street.
The homeowner had already dug open the entrance herself. Snow was piled on both sides, leaving only a narrow path down the middle. Lorne knocked, identified himself and the Disaster Affairs Office, and only pushed the door open after someone inside answered.
Lutia was about to follow when Lorne held out a hand to stop her.
"Wait for the homeowner's consent."
"You already went in."
"I stated my identity and received an answer."
"She only said, 'Come in.'"
"So I came in."
"That sentence didn't include me?"
"Not necessarily."
The middle-aged woman inside heard them talking at the door and poked her head out.
Her expression paused for an instant when she saw Lutia.
"Is she coming in too?"
Lorne said, "She's assisting the Disaster Affairs Office with damage registration. You can refuse."
The woman looked at Lutia's pointed ears, then out the window.
"Come in. Don't leave the door open too long."
Only then did Lutia cross the threshold.
It was warmer inside than in the street, though the air smelled of wet wood and smoke. An iron basin sat in the corner, filled with water dripping through gaps in the ceiling. The fire in the stove burned weakly, with dismantled chair legs and boards from wooden crates piled beside it.
The woman's name was Ada. She lived there with her husband, two children, and elderly mother.
Her husband had taken their eldest son to the shelter to help, leaving three people inside. They had enough food for two more days, but only half a barrel of drinking water remained.
"Isn't there a public water station?" Lutia asked.
Ada pointed outside.
"My mother can't walk that far. The little one had a fever last night. I can't leave them home alone."
Lorne wrote water delivery under urgent needs.
"When did the water main stop working?"
"The night before last. First there was no water in the kitchen. In the middle of the night, the wall started making noises. By morning, it had cracked."
She led them to the kitchen.
A copper pipe running along the wall had split at a joint and was wrapped in old cloth as a temporary repair. The floor had been soaked black, and a thin layer of ice covered the corner.
Lutia crouched and touched the floor through her glove.
The ice was thin, with no obvious seasonal resonance echo.
"Can you melt it?" Ada asked suddenly.
Lutia looked up.
"Yes."
Lorne's pen stopped.
Ada immediately asked, "Right now?"
"I can treat only this small area. The range isn't large."
"Then do it quickly. It's too slippery here. My mother nearly fell yesterday."
Lutia looked at Lorne.
"That was a request from the homeowner."
"Where will the water go after the ice melts?" Lorne asked.
Ada stared at him.
Lutia studied the slant of the floor.
"It will flow toward the corner."
"What's beneath the corner?"
"I don't know."
"The floor has already been soaked. Adding more water could seep into the beams below."
Ada frowned.
"We can't just leave the ice there."
Lorne took out his chalk and drew a conspicuous white line beside the ice.
"Spread dry ash and coarse cloth over it first. Deal with it together when the water-main repair crew arrives."
"How long will that take?"
"It's currently scheduled for today."
"You said today yesterday, too."
Lorne did not argue. He simply revised the repair priority on the form.
Lutia looked at the ice.
She could make it melt, but the meltwater would still remain here. The blackened boards would not return to their original state just because the ice disappeared.
Ada spread an old burlap cloth over the ice.
"Anything else?" Lorne asked.
"The roof leaks, the back window won't close properly, and this is all the firewood I have left." She pointed at the dismantled boards beside the stove. "And my mother's medicine is almost gone."
Lorne recorded each item.
Before they left, Lutia helped her empty the full iron basin into the drainage ditch outside, then put it back in place. The basin was not heavy, but its rim was dented, and whenever Lutia poured, a stream ran down its side onto her sleeve.
Ada watched her from the doorway.
"Yesterday, did you really only mean to cool down the market?"
"Yes."
"You didn't think the roofs might collapse or the water mains might crack?"
"No."
Ada gripped the doorframe.
"At least you didn't say you had."
She closed the door without saying anything more.
They had to knock for a long time before anyone answered at the second house.
Only an old man lived inside. He sat in a chair near the fire with two wool blankets over his legs and had poor hearing. Lorne had to repeat every question, and even then the old man often answered something else.
He said his son had gone to the docks.
A while later, he said his son had moved to South Bank three years ago.
He said there was still enough oat porridge in the house, then pointed at an empty clay jar and told Lutia to see for herself.
Lutia stood in front of the cupboard and listed the remaining food for Lorne: half a sack of oats, a small jar of salt, two wrinkled turnips, and a piece of hard cheese wrapped in cloth.
"Is that enough for one day?" she asked.
Lorne did not answer directly.
"Meal delivery. Two portions. Before noon today."
He hung a blue wooden placard on the hook inside the door and told the old man that he should open the door only for a meal-delivery worker carrying the same blue placard.
The old man asked three times what the blue placard was for.
Lorne answered three times.
As they left, Lutia looked back.
The old man was holding the blue placard up close and examining it carefully.
"He shouldn't be left home alone," she said.
"I know."
"Then why not take him to the shelter?"
"He refused."
"He may not know what he refused."
"So a placement officer will come back to confirm."
"What if he refuses again?"
"First we confirm that he understands the risk."
Lutia stepped across a patch of loose snow.
"You're very stubborn about letting people make that decision."
"You're just as stubborn about making decisions for other people."
She did not argue.
The third house was a small dye workshop.
A yellow caution placard had already been posted on the front door. The owner and two workers were waiting for them outside. Water had flooded the shop floor, and three of six dye vats had cracked from freezing. Deep purple, brown-red, and blue-black chunks of ice were mixed together, frozen from the threshold all the way out into the street.
The owner crouched outside and knocked off a small piece of blue-black ice with an iron shovel.
"This batch is for a South Bank trading house's winter shawls," he said. "The cloth is all inside, and now we can't even get through the door."
"Quantity of goods?" Lorne asked.
"Seventeen rolls of wool, eight rolls of fine linen, all dyed halfway."
"Do you have the orders and purchase invoices?"
"In the accounting office."
"Can you get to them?"
The owner lifted his chin toward the yellow placard.
"What do you think?"
Lorne noted it as pending.
Lutia stood at the door and looked inside through the gap. After the dye vats cracked, the frozen dye had piled up across the floor. Several rolls of cloth had been crushed beneath a fallen wooden rack. A long wooden spoon and a leather boot were frozen inside the blue-black ice.
"Whose shoe is that?" she asked.
One of the workers looked down at his feet.
"Mine."
"How did you leave wearing only one shoe?"
"The other one got stuck."
"No frostbite?"
"My toes are still there."
The owner said impatiently, "When we dragged him out yesterday, we didn't have time to find his shoe."
Lutia looked at the boot again.
"What do you need?"
The owner looked at her.
"I need the snow to stop."
"Before that?"
"Open the door and get the cloth out."
"This building has a yellow caution placard. We can't go inside."
"That's why I've been waiting here for you."
The owner pointed at Lorne's form.
"Are you done writing?"
"Completing the registration doesn't mean we can enter immediately."
"Then what does it mean?"
"It means the construction crews will know there are seventeen rolls of wool, eight rolls of fine linen, three cracked dye vats, and three people who have lost their workplace."
"And after you write it down?"
"We schedule the recovery, confirm the losses, and assign people to deal with them."
The owner knocked another piece of ice loose with the snow shovel.
"Until anyone comes, the cloth is still soaking inside."
Lorne flipped the yellow placard over and added a black mark in the corner.
"I'll list salvaging the goods as a priority."
"You listed me as a priority yesterday, too."
The tip of Lorne's pen paused.
"Yesterday, there were residents whose roofs were about to collapse ahead of you."
"And today?"
"Today, I don't know yet."
The owner stared at him, then finally stuck the snow shovel into the ice.
"Then go find out."
He turned and went back to the other two workers.
After leaving the workshop, Lutia asked, "He doesn't believe you."
"Normal."
"You're not angry?"
"He lost a workshop. I only lost a little credibility."
"Can credibility be regained?"
"Sometimes."
"How?"
"Make the things you promised actually happen."
Lutia looked at the increasingly thick stack of forms in his hand.
"What if you can't?"
"Then it will be harder to make people believe you next time."
He added another line to the dye workshop's record.
The fourth, fifth, and sixth households had all moved away.
At one house, snow had blocked the front door, so the residents had climbed out through a back window and were staying temporarily with relatives in South Bank. Another house had no obvious roof damage, but a blocked stove flue had forced the whole family to move to a public shelter.
The sixth household was home to a couple with a baby.
They had already packed their bags and were waiting for an evacuation wagon. The woman had wrapped the baby in three blankets, leaving only a small patch of red face exposed. The man kept carrying things back and forth: clothes one trip, food the next, and on the third trip he carried back inside the things he had set beside the wagon during the first two.
"You can't take the bedding," Lorne reminded him.
"Does the shelter have beds?"
"It has sleeping spaces."
"Are they clean?"
"The straw mats will be replaced."
The man looked at the bundled bedding beside the door but still did not put it down.
The woman suddenly asked Lutia, "Will it snow there, too?"
Lutia looked at Lorne.
"The shelter is in South Bank," Lorne said. "It's outside the snowfall zone for now."
"For now?" The woman hugged the baby tighter.
Lutia said, "As long as I remain near North City, the snowstorm will not spread south to South Bank."
"So you'll stay here?"
"Yes."
"You won't suddenly leave?"
"No."
Lorne looked up at her.
Lutia paused.
"At least not before the city government and Springturn Forest decide that leaving is safer."
The woman clearly did not like the second half of that answer.
The man dragged the bedding back inside and took only two bundles.
When the wagon arrived, Lutia helped them load their luggage. The woman boarded first with the baby. The man locked the door last and handed the key to a Disaster Affairs Office employee for safekeeping.
As the wheels began to turn, he suddenly jumped down and ran back to the door to check the lock one more time.
"He knows it's locked," Lutia said.
Lorne stood beside her.
"Knowing and feeling reassured are also two different things."
The man tugged the handle twice before returning to the wagon.
Lutia watched the wagon leave in the direction of South Bank.
The house was left behind in the snow, its doors and windows shut and no smoke rising from the chimney. The freshly dug path in front of it was soon covered by another white layer.
"How long before they can come back?"
"I don't know."
"Again with 'I don't know.'"
"The house needs to be inspected, the flue needs repairs, and the snow has to stop."
"What if it never stops?"
Lorne did not answer.
The water main at the seventh house had split the worst.
The first-floor walls had already bulged. Once the plaster peeled away, it revealed thoroughly soaked gray mortar. The residents used wooden basins, pots, and every container they could find to catch the water, but a thin stream still ran along the floor toward the basement stairs.
Two repairmen were trying to shut off the main valve.
The valve was frozen solid. A wrench was stuck against the copper ring and would not turn no matter what they did.
"To the left," one repairman said.
"I'm turning it left."
"That's right."
"I'm standing on the other side!"
Lutia thought the exchange sounded familiar.
She did not approach. She simply stood beside Lorne and waited for the homeowner to answer the registration questions. The homeowner was a young man who kept glancing back toward the stairwell as he spoke.
"What do you have in the basement?" Lorne asked.
"Firewood, pickles, old furniture, and several boxes of books my sister left here."
"Has anyone gone down?"
"No. The stairs are icy and too slippery."
"Has it flooded before?"
"It gets damp sometimes in spring, but never flooded."
Lutia walked to the stairwell.
Cold air welled up from below, more concentrated than the wind outside. A layer of clear ice covered the steps, and water was still running down along the edge.
She held on to the doorframe and looked down without moving closer.
The depths of the basement were very dark. She could only make out the outlines of several wooden crates.
"The water is freezing down there," she said.
The homeowner gave a bitter laugh.
"We can see that."
"The ice below is thicker than the ice on the stairs."
Lorne looked up.
"How do you know?"
"The edges are different. The stairs have a thin layer that formed recently. The ice below has already sealed the bottoms of the wooden crates."
The homeowner brought an oil lamp and shone it downward from a safe position.
The light reached only the fourth step.
Lorne asked, "Is there another entrance to the basement?"
"There's a firewood hatch in the backyard, but it's buried under snow outside."
"List it as off-limits for now. We'll see after the repair crew shuts off the water."
Lutia remained by the doorway.
She was about to move a little closer when Lorne drew a yellow line on the doorframe with chalk.
"Don't cross it."
"I wasn't going downstairs."
"Your foot was already beside the first step."
Lutia stepped back.
"I was only looking."
"Then look from outside the line."
The repairman finally turned the valve.
A series of muffled impacts sounded from within the wall, and the flow of water gradually weakened. The homeowner immediately grabbed cloths and began wiping up the water on the floor.
Lorne recorded the basement's abnormal ice under "Other."
Lutia watched him write.
"Do you think it's abnormal down there?"
"I think it needs to be confirmed."
"You wouldn't simply write 'abnormal'?"
"I haven't seen it yet."
"Do you believe what I saw?"
"I believe you identified that the two layers of ice were different."
"This time, you don't need another explanation?"
"We do. But we'll record it first."
When they left the seventh house, Longchime Bell Tower struck noon.
Meal-delivery workers pushed covered wooden carts through the street. One wheel sank into the loose snow, and several nearby residents immediately stepped forward to help, pushing the cart back onto the narrow cleared path.
Lorne took Lutia to the corner to collect two bowls of stew.
They did not return to the dye shop. Instead, they stood beneath the awning of a closed store while they ate. Lutia held her bowl in her left hand, and the bandage on her right palm still made using the wooden spoon awkward.
Lorne ate quickly, barely looking up.
Lutia asked, "Do you eat like this every day?"
"During disasters."
"What about when there isn't a disaster?"
"I sit down."
"That's the only difference?"
"Sometimes the food is hot."
Lutia looked at the beans, already half cold, in her bowl.
"Does Goosebell City usually have disasters, too?"
"River flooding, windstorms, warehouse fires, roof collapses. Occasionally."
"Seasonal disasters?"
Lorne paused.
"Not on this scale."
"So you've never dealt with one."
"No."
"Then why do you look like you know what to do?"
"I know how to confirm the number of people, supplies, roads, and buildings. As for why the snow won't stop, I don't know."
Lutia stirred the bottom of her bowl with the wooden spoon.
"I don't know, either."
"I know."
She looked up at him.
"Do you always say things other people already know?"
"You were the one who said it first."
"I was admitting that I didn't know."
"Good."
That praise sounded about as warm as Greta adding eating to the list of controlled requirements.
Their first stop in the afternoon was the bell tower machinery workshop.
The workshop stood on the north side of Bellheart District. Its outer walls were built of deep-red brick, and its roof was lower than those of the surrounding houses. Above the front door hung a disassembled model of a bronze bell. The clapper was gone, leaving only the hollow bell body half-covered in snow.
Several crates of gears and copper pipes that had not been moved inside in time were piled outside the door.
A young woman sat on a wooden crate, a wrench in her right hand and her left hand wrapped in thick bandages, the entire arm held in a sling across her chest. Her short, dark reddish-brown hair was cut just below her ears. The tip of her nose and her ears were red from the cold wind.
When she saw Lorne, she raised her chin.
"Finally."
"Novie Tann?" Lorne confirmed.
"Who else would I be?"
"The workshop registration lists your master's name."
"My master was called to inspect the main bell wheel in the bell tower. This place is mine for now."
Lorne glanced at her bandaged left hand.
"You should be at the clinic."
"I went."
"Did the clinic send you back to work?"
"They said I couldn't touch water, lift anything heavy, or remove the bandages. I'm only using my right hand to hold the wrench."
"That's not resting."
"No one wrote that resting was required."
Lorne did not argue with her. He began the registration first.
The workshop roof was intact, one front window was cracked, two crates of tools had gotten damp, and the stove had been out for half a day because the flue was iced over. The truly serious problem was the piping and bell-tower repair parts outside. Most were buried under snow and had not yet been counted.
"How did you injure your hand?" Lorne asked.
Novie pointed toward the bell tower with the wrench.
"I went to close the north ventilation gate last night. The lever was frozen solid, and my gloves were wet. When I grabbed it, they stuck."
Lutia looked at her bandages.
"Frostbite?"
"Can't you tell?"
"I want to know the severity."
Novie's gaze fell on the tips of Lutia's ears.
"The clinic said two fingers might have lasting problems. They haven't died yet. Detailed enough?"
Lutia did not answer immediately.
Novie shoved the wrench into her tool bag with her right hand.
"You're the elf who caused the snow."
"Yes."
"Yesterday I was supposed to repair the main bell's offset wheel here in the workshop. When the snow came, the entire shift was called to deal with frozen ventilation gates. Now the offset wheel is still crooked inside, and my hand is like this."
"Healing resonance can accelerate tissue recovery," Lutia said.
Novie's expression changed at once.
"No."
"I haven't said I would do it now."
"You'd better not even think about it."
"I was only telling you that the method exists."
"I don't need it."
Lutia straightened slightly.
"Healing resonance will not make the wound disappear. It only accelerates the recovery the body can already perform. It cannot restore tissue that has already died—"
"I said no."
Novie stood up from the crate.
She was slightly taller than Lutia. Her injured left hand hung against her chest, while her right hand remained pressed against her tool bag.
"The clinic already treated me. I don't know whether your magic might make the hand grow too fast and seal the frostbitten parts inside. I don't know whether the recovery you're talking about is the same thing human doctors mean."
"I can examine it first."
"Don't touch me."
"I don't need to touch you to—"
"Lutia." Lorne stopped her.
She turned her head.
Lorne closed the registration form halfway.
"She refused."
"I know. But she doesn't understand resonance magic."
Novie let out a cold laugh.
"Do you think that if you keep explaining until I agree, you're respecting me?"
"I don't think that."
"You're still talking."
Lutia stopped.
The only sound outside the workshop was the faint patter of snow landing on the wooden crates.
Lorne put the form into his leather case and said to Novie, "Your hand has already been recorded by the clinic, so I won't duplicate it. The supplies outside the workshop still need to be counted. We'll send people to help later."
"Don't send people who'll carry the gears away like scrap metal."
"I'll note that workshop personnel are to direct them."
"That's better."
Novie sat down again and pulled a half-open toolbox to her feet with her right hand.
Lutia looked once at the bandaged hand, then turned and walked toward the street.
Lorne followed her.
After they had gone some distance from the workshop, she finally spoke.
"She doesn't know what I can do."
"She doesn't need to know everything before refusing."
"What if healing could save her fingers?"
"The clinic already treated her. No one can be certain your resonance would make things better."
"I can be certain."
"She can't."
Lutia stopped at the side of the street.
"So if she refuses, I can't do anything at all?"
"Correct."
"Even if she might suffer permanent damage?"
"Correct."
"That's unreasonable."
"Her hand isn't your repair work."
"Her injury was caused by my snow."
"So you have to take responsibility," Lorne said. "But that doesn't mean you can handle her body."
Lutia looked at him.
"What if she regrets it later?"
"That will be her decision, too."
Lutia did not like that answer.
Novie's injured hand hung against her chest, while her other hand still had to keep working. Lutia clearly might have been able to help, yet could only leave.
"At least I should apologize one more time," she said.
"Not now."
"Why?"
"She just refused you. If you apologize again, she'll have to decide whether to respond."
"An apology isn't a request."
"You asked Mila yesterday why she didn't accept yours."
Lutia remembered.
"I won't ask now."
"Standing there waiting for her answer would be the same thing."
"Then should I say nothing at all?"
"You can, for now."
"That will make it look like I don't care."
"She didn't ask you to prove that you care."
Lutia was silent for a while.
"So an apology isn't a request for the other person to accept it."
"No."
"And because I want to take responsibility, I can't require her to let me treat her."
"You can't."
"Even if I really can help."
"Correct."
She lowered her head and looked at the thin ice on the street.
"Then what good is an apology?"
Lorne walked several steps forward, realized she was not following, and stopped.
"It acknowledges what you did," he said. "Whether she lets you do anything afterward is up to her."
Lutia did not ask anything else.
They continued registering households one by one.
The ninth house was a small shop selling dried herbs and medicinal plants. The shopkeeper had moved all the damp cloth sacks upstairs, but the staircase was jammed by swollen boards, so each load required her to ram the door with her shoulder first.
The tenth house was a cobbler's shop. The owner's family had moved to a shelter, leaving only the apprentice to watch the place. All the leather in the shop had frozen stiff, and it was still unknown whether it could be used after thawing.
The roof of the eleventh house was intact, but the underground heating pipes had stopped working. The residents were heating the house with two braziers. Lorne discovered that the smoke was not venting properly and immediately ordered the entire family to evacuate. The homeowner refused, saying there was nowhere to store the household silver. In the end, Greta sent people to seal the door, had Disaster Affairs Office employees inventory the silver on the spot, and took it into safekeeping.
The final house was at the very end of Clockmaker's Alley.
It was not large, and there was no snow in front of the door. Someone had clearly cleared it repeatedly. A woman in a dark-blue apron opened the door. Two boys of about the same age stood behind her, each holding a wooden bucket.
"We're not moving," the woman said as soon as she saw Lorne.
"I'm registering you first. I'm not ordering you to move immediately."
"The people who came yesterday said the basement was freezing over. Someone else said today that as long as the stove could still burn, everything was fine. Which one of you is supposed to be right?"
"I need to see yesterday's record first."
The woman handed him a wrinkled yellow sheet of paper.
Lorne unfolded it, his brow creasing slightly.
Lutia stood beside him and saw two different handwritings on the page. The first line recorded ice forming on the east wall of the basement. The second said, "Possibly caused by water-main leakage after snowfall."
"Can the basement be entered now?" Lorne asked.
"Yes. The ice hasn't reached the stairs."
"Who went down to look yesterday?"
"My husband. He went to the shelter to help last night and hasn't come back yet."
Lorne looked at Lutia.
"Stay by the door."
"Why?"
"The basement is narrow. I need to confirm the structure first."
"I need to see the ice."
"After I look."
The woman led Lorne inside.
The two boys remained by the door, watching Lutia.
One of them asked, "Can you really make the snow stop?"
"Not at present."
"What else can you do?"
The other boy immediately tugged at him.
"Mom said not to ask."
"She's right here."
"That doesn't mean you can ask."
Lutia remembered what Lorne had just said: when no one asked, she did not need to keep explaining.
But this time, someone had asked.
"I can move wind, moisture, and heat, and I can alter how quickly plants grow."
"Can you make apples on a tree sweeter?"
"I can make them ripen faster, but their sweetness still depends on sunlight, soil, and water."
"Can you make broken things go back to how they were?"
Lutia looked inside the house.
"No."
The boy lowered his head and kicked the threshold.
"What kind of miracle is that?"
His mother called from inside, and both boys immediately carried their wooden buckets in.
Lutia remained outside.
She heard Lorne's footsteps going downstairs, followed by the faint creak of boards. After a while, he appeared again at the head of the stairs.
"Come in," he said.
The basement entrance was behind the kitchen.
The woman lit a second oil lamp and handed it to Lutia. The staircase had only eight steps, with rough stone walls on either side. Wooden crates of potatoes and pickles were stacked along the walls.
The ice was concentrated beneath the east wall.
Unlike the ice in the seventh house, which covered only the floor, this ice had grown outward from the gaps between the stones in a layer of translucent white. At its thickest, it was more than a handspan deep. Several wooden crates against the wall were frozen in place, their bottoms fused to the ice.
Lutia crouched.
This time, Lorne did not stop her from approaching.
"Don't touch it," he said.
"I don't need to touch it."
She closed her eyes and held her attention near the wall.
She did not cast a spell or stir the cold.
Snow from above was seeping downward through gaps in the stone and old pipes, coating the existing ice. The cold nearest the surface carried a resonance echo familiar to her. Deeper inside, however, it was much denser, separated from the outer layer by a thin fault.
"This didn't form just yesterday," she said.
The woman stood on the stairs.
"It was here before yesterday morning."
Lorne looked up.
"When did you discover it?"
"The evening before the snow started. My husband came down for pickles and said there was a layer of ice along the wall. We thought an old water pipe was leaking and planned to find someone to repair it the next day."
"Why does yesterday's record say the leakage happened after snowfall?"
"The person taking the registration asked whether the ice had gotten thicker after the snow began. I said yes, and that's what he wrote."
Lorne spread the yellow sheet out again.
"The first snow began yesterday afternoon. Are you certain you had already seen the ice the evening before?"
"Certain. It was unbearably hot that day. My husband touched it twice and kept asking me upstairs whether we'd hidden winter in the basement."
Lutia opened her eyes.
"The outer layer has my resonance echo."
The woman's face changed.
"What about inside?"
"The ice deeper in doesn't."
Lorne took a step closer.
"You can tell the order in which it formed?"
"The outer layer covers the old ice, with stone dust between them. We need to remove a small piece to confirm."
"How?"
"With a tool."
The woman immediately asked, "Will it damage the wall?"
Lutia looked at her first.
"It might crack the surface ice, but we won't need to touch the stone wall. Do I have your permission?"
The woman glanced at Lorne again.
"Only the ice?"
"Only the ice."
"No magic?"
"No magic."
The woman nodded.
Lorne took out the short-handled iron hammer and found a narrow chisel in the homeowner's toolbox.
"I'll do it."
He placed the chisel against the outer edge of the ice and tapped it several times. Fine cracks appeared across the surface. Then a small piece fell into the clay bowl Lutia had placed beneath it.
She did not catch it with her hand.
The broken face of the ice was divided into two layers.
The outer side was clear. The inner side carried tiny white lines, with a thin gray line between them. A small amount of stone dust flaking from the wall was mixed into the gray line.
Lutia moved the oil lamp closer.
"The outer layer formed after the snow began. The layer inside formed earlier."
"Does the inner layer have your resonance echo?" Lorne asked.
She narrowed her perception and held it only on the piece in the bowl.
When the cold from the outer side touched her, a familiar numbness appeared in her fingertips. After she crossed the gray line, the sensation broke off.
Lutia immediately withdrew her perception.
"No," she said.
Lorne looked down at the piece of ice.
"Are you certain?"
"The inner layer isn't my resonance."
The woman on the stairs asked, "So was this ice caused by her or not?"
Lutia looked up at her.
"The newly formed part outside was affected by my snowfall. The ice inside formed earlier and has nothing to do with me."
"Then what caused it?"
"I don't know."
Lorne moved the bowl to the center of the basement, away from the wall and the other objects.
"The ice sample needs to be sent to the Engineering Office for examination. Keep the basement sealed for now. Don't light fires or strike anything near the east wall."
The woman gripped the stair rail.
"Do we have to move?"
"There are no abnormalities upstairs for now. Check it every day. This record will be marked as a priority."
"Another priority."
"This time, we have ice layers that formed at different times and a physical sample to send for examination."
Lorne crossed out "possibly caused by water-main leakage after snowfall" on the original yellow sheet and wrote a new line.
Lutia stood beside him and watched the page.
Abnormal ice formation on the east wall of the basement.
Earliest discovery: evening of the day before snowfall.
Inner ice formed before yesterday's snowfall and contains no resonance echo from Lutia Windgarden.
The outer layer is newly formed ice from after the snowfall began.
Cause unknown.
After Lorne finished writing, he had the woman confirm the time she had discovered it and sign beside it.
She stopped halfway through signing.
"Does this mean the ice started forming underground before she arrived?"
"It doesn't mean that," Lorne said. "It only means this wall had already frozen before she cast her spell, and another layer formed afterward."
"Then this disaster—"
"Her snowfall yesterday is a confirmed fact. This record won't change that."
The woman glanced at Lutia, then finished signing her name.
When they left the house, evening was approaching.
The snowfall had not intensified, but the street was another layer higher than it had been at noon. Disaster Affairs Office personnel were reinserting marker poles along the road so no one would walk into drainage ditches buried under the snow at night.
Lorne put away the last registration form.
Lutia followed him toward the dye shop. After they had walked more than a dozen steps, she asked, "Do you believe that ice is connected to this snowfall?"
"Yes."
"You told the homeowner just now that you couldn't be certain."
"Connected doesn't mean it has the same cause."
"Then do you believe someone caused the underground of North City to start freezing before I cast my spell?"
"I believe that's the question that needs to be investigated now."
"You never answer directly."
"Because a direct answer doesn't exist yet."
Lutia looked back at the house.
The basement window had been boarded up, and a new yellow caution placard hung outside. The east wall lay below street level, and nothing unusual could be seen from outside.
Before the first snow fell, the ice had already grown there.
And at that time, she had not even set foot in Goosebell City.