THE LAST BASKET OF DRIED APPLES

CHAPTER ONE — THE BASKET AT THE BOTTOM

The first snow arrived before anyone expected it.

By the middle of November, the mountain road had already disappeared beneath a thick blanket of white. The pine trees bent beneath the weight of ice, and every morning the wind howled through the wooden walls of the little farmhouse where the Miller family lived.

Their house stood alone on the slope, nearly two miles from the nearest village.

There were five of them.

Thomas Miller, the father, had spent most of his life cutting timber in the surrounding forest. His wife, Helen, kept the house and cared for their youngest son, Samuel, who was only nine.

Their older son, Daniel, was sixteen.

And then there was Anna.

At nineteen, Anna was responsible for something everyone in the family depended upon—the food room.

The room was small, dark, and always cold. Shelves covered three walls, holding sacks of flour, jars of beans, dried herbs, salted meat, potatoes, and dozens of glass bottles filled with preserves.

But the most important food was kept in wooden baskets.

Dried apples.

Every autumn, before the first frost, the family gathered hundreds of apples from the old trees behind the house.

They sliced them thin.

They laid them beneath the sun.

Then they stored them in baskets lined with clean cloth.

If the winter was mild, the apples lasted until spring.

If the winter was cruel, they became the difference between hunger and survival.

Anna checked the baskets every morning.

That morning, something caught her eye.

She was reaching for the oldest basket when she noticed a strange smell.

Not rotten.

Not sour.

Something sharper.

She pulled the basket from the bottom shelf.

The apples on top looked perfectly normal—brown, dry, and wrinkled.

But when Anna pushed her hand deeper into the basket, her fingers touched something soft.

She froze.

Slowly, she removed several slices.

The apples at the bottom were changing color.

They were no longer brown.

They had turned a strange grayish-black.

Anna stared at them.

Her heart began to beat faster.

She had seen that color before.

Years ago.

In another basket.

In another winter.

She had been eleven then.

Her grandmother had been alive.

Anna remembered the old woman standing in this same room, holding a handful of darkened apple slices.

She remembered her grandmother’s frightened expression.

And she remembered what happened afterward.

A week later, the family had fallen violently ill.

Her grandmother had never recovered.

Anna dropped the apples back into the basket.

“No,” she whispered.

Behind her, the door opened.

Daniel stepped inside.

“What are you doing?”

Anna quickly covered the basket.

“Nothing.”

Daniel frowned.

“You look scared.”

“I’m not.”

He walked closer.

Anna hesitated.

Then she lifted the cloth.

Daniel stared at the dark slices.

“What is that?”

“I don’t know.”

“Are they rotten?”

Anna shook her head.

“That’s the problem.”

She looked toward the window.

Snow was falling harder.

“The last time I saw apples change like this…”

She stopped.

Daniel waited.

“What?”

Anna swallowed.

“Someone got sick.”

Neither of them spoke.

Then, from outside, came the distant sound of something cracking in the forest.

A deep, violent crack.

Daniel turned toward the door.

Anna looked down at the basket.

For the first time that winter, she wondered whether their food supply was actually safe.

And whether the strange apples were only the beginning.