THE BREAD SHE BAKED ON A FROZEN STONE

CHAPTER 1 — THE STORM THAT BURIED THE ROAD

The snow began falling before sunrise.

By noon, the narrow road leading to the mountain village had disappeared beneath a white blanket. By evening, the wooden fences were barely visible, and the wind screamed so loudly that no one could hear the church bell anymore.

Inside a small farmhouse at the edge of the valley, seventeen-year-old Clara stood beside the kitchen table and stared at the last sack of food.

It contained cornmeal.

Nothing else.

Her mother lifted the sack and shook it gently.

A thin stream of yellow flour fell into a wooden bowl.

“That’s all?” Clara asked.

Her mother nodded.

Her younger brother, Eli, sat near the fireplace, wrapped in two blankets.

“When will Father come back?”

Neither woman answered.

Their father had left two days earlier to find medicine for Eli. The storm had arrived that same afternoon.

Now the mountain passes were closed.

The family had no way of knowing whether he was still alive.

Clara opened the cupboard.

Empty.

The shelves that had once held jars of beans, dried meat, apples, and flour were bare.

She looked at her mother.

“We have to make this last.”

Her mother gave a tired smile.

“I know.”

Clara poured the cornmeal into a bowl.

There was barely enough to make a few small cakes.

But the cold had become unbearable.

The firewood was running low too.

Every branch they burned brought them closer to a night when there would be nothing left to keep them warm.

Outside, the storm shook the house.

Then Clara noticed something through the window.

Near the old barn was a large flat stone, almost completely buried beneath snow.

She remembered her grandfather once telling her that people in the mountains had cooked bread on heated stones when they had no ovens.

Clara looked at the dying fire.

Then at the cornmeal.

Then at the stone.

An idea slowly formed in her mind.

“We don’t need the oven,” she whispered.

Her mother frowned.

“What?”

Clara grabbed her coat.

“We need the stone.”

And before her mother could stop her, she stepped into the blizzard.