Clay and Ice

Mara wrestles with frozen earth and a dying town, realizing that memory isn't enough to stop the rot.

The clay was dead. It sat on the wheel head, a gray, unresponsive lump. Cold. Heavy.

Mara Halloway kicked the pedal. The motor hummed, a low, electric growl that vibrated up through her shin, settling in the hollow of her knee. The wheel spun. The clay wobbled. Off-center. It always started off-center. That was the physics of the thing. You put a piece of the earth on a spinning disc and you tried to force it to find a center that didn't exist until you made it.

She leaned in. Elbows locked into her ribs. Anchor points. If you didn't lock your body, the clay would throw you. It was stronger than it looked. Fifty pounds of local stoneware, dug up from the riverbank three miles south, refined, pugged, and slapped down here in her garage. It was gritty. Mean. It didn't want to be a vase. It wanted to be mud.

Her hands were wet. The water in the bucket was freezing. A thin film of ice had formed on the surface before she broke it an hour ago. Now it was just slushy gray slip coating her fingers. She pressed her palms against the spinning mass. The friction burned cold. The grit scraped against her skin, exfoliating down to the raw nerve.

Push.

The clay pushed back. It hit her left palm with a rhythmic *thud-thud-thud*. The wheel groaned.

Center it. Fix it.

Mara closed her eyes. The visual didn't matter. It was about the feel in the wrists. The vibration. The house was shaking, but that wasn't the wheel. That was the wind. Melgund was getting battered. Another storm coming off the lake, screaming across the ice, hitting the siding of her converted garage like a physical blow. The windows rattled in their frames. Single pane. Cheap. The heat from the kiln in the corner was fighting a losing war against the draft coming under the door.

She squeezed. The clay rose. A cone of gray mud spiraling up. She pressed it down. Compress the particles. Make it dense. Make it hold water. Make it last.

But her hands were shaking. Just a tremor. A glitch in the signal from brain to muscle. The clay caught the tremor. The walls of the cylinder wavered.

"Stop it," she whispered. Her voice sounded rusty. Unused.

She pushed harder. Desperate. She needed this to work. She needed to make something that stood up. The town outside was falling down. The hardware store: gone. The bakery: boarded up. The school: shrinking every year. Everything was eroding. Wind and snow and time, eating away at the edges until there was nothing left but the foundation. She was the historian. The keeper of the archives. But you couldn't live in an archive. You couldn't eat memory.

The clay flared out. She tried to collar it, choking the neck of the pot to bring it back in.

Too dry. She reached for the sponge, squeezed cold water over the rim.

Too wet. The walls saturated. The structural integrity gave out.

It happened in slow motion. The cylinder slumped. It buckled at the base, folding over on itself like a drunk man trying to stand up. It turned into a shapeless, sad cow-pat on the wheel head. The motor whined, spinning the ruin around and around.

Mara took her foot off the pedal. The wheel slowed. Stopped.

Silence rushed back into the room, louder than the noise. The wind howled outside, filling the gap.

She stared at the mess.

It was pathetic. A gray flop.

She wiped her hands on her apron. The canvas was stiff with dried clay, layered like geological strata. Ten years of dirt.

"Useless," she said.

Not the clay. Her.

She grabbed the wire cutter. Wrapped the ends around her fingers. Pulled it through the base of the pot, slicing it off the bat. She picked up the ruined lump and slammed it onto the wedging table.

*Thwack.*

It felt good. Better than the throwing. The violence of it.

She looked at her hands. Red knuckles. Swollen joints. The dust was in the cracks of her skin. It never really washed out. You just became part clay eventually.

This wasn't working. The preservation. The quiet maintenance of things. It wasn't enough. She was sitting in a freezing garage making pots nobody bought, while the town turned into a ghost story around her. She was guarding a cemetery.

She needed air. The air in here was recycled dust. Silica and regret.

Mara went to the sink. The pipes knocked when she turned the tap. The water was icy. She scrubbed her hands with a stiff brush, hurting herself on purpose. Get the slip off. Get the failure off.

She dried them on a rag that smelled of mildew.

Coat. Boots. Scarf. Hat.

The ritual of layering. You didn't just walk outside in Melgund. You prepared for orbit. The cold here was aggressive. It wanted to hurt you. If you left skin exposed, it bit you.

She zipped the parka up to her chin. It was an old North Face, down-filled, patched on the sleeve with duct tape. Functional. Ugly.

She hit the lights. The studio went dark, save for the gray light filtering through the snow-caked window. The kiln ticked in the corner, cooling down.

She opened the door.

The wind punched her.

It wasn't a metaphor. It was a physical shove against her chest. The door ripped out of her grip and slammed against the siding.

*Bam.*

Snow swirled into the entryway. Dry, hard snow. Like sand. It stung her eyes.

Mara grabbed the handle, wrestling the door shut. She had to lean her whole body weight against it to get the latch to click.

Lock it.

She turned, pulling her scarf up over her nose. The world was white. Just white. The sky was white, the ground was white, the air was white. The horizon was gone. It was like stepping into a blank piece of paper.

Main Street was a tunnel. Two rows of snowbanks, piled six feet high by the plows, narrowing the road to a single lane. The buildings were dark shapes looming behind the drifts.

She started walking.

*Crunch. Crunch. Crunch.*

Her boots broke the crust. The sound was loud in the vacuum.

No cars. No people. Just the wind groaning in the eaves of the old Victorian houses. The town looked like it had been evacuated.

She passed the bakery. 'FOR SALE'. The sign was faded, red letters turning pink. It had been there for two years. The windows were papered over.

She passed the hardware store. 'FOR LEASE'.

She passed the bank. Closed. ATM only.

It was a graveyard.

Every building was a tombstone for a business that tried and failed. And the snow was burying them. Another foot today. Maybe two. Soon you wouldn't even see the doors. You'd just see mounds of white with chimneys poking out.

A figure appeared in the distance. A dark smudge against the white.

Moving slow. heavy.

They got closer.

It was Bill Henderson. Or maybe Joe. It was hard to tell. He was bundled up like a deep-sea diver. Parka, ski pants, big Sorel boots. A trapper hat with the ear flaps down. Goggles.

He stopped as they passed.

Mara stopped. It was the law of the north. You acknowledged the other survivors.

He pulled his scarf down. It was Joe. Joe Miller. His face was red, windburned. His mustache was frosted with ice crystals from his breath.

"Mara," he grunted. Steam shot out of his mouth.

"Joe."

"Nasty out."

"It is."

"Going to get worse tonight. Radio says twenty below. Wind chill of forty."

"Right."

He shifted his weight. Stomped his boots to keep the blood moving. "Town's quiet."

"Always is."

He looked down the street. At the empty windows. "Yeah. Suppose so. Shame about the rink. Heard they might not flood it this year. Budget cuts."

"I heard."

"Well." He sniffed. Wiped his nose with a thick glove. "Way it goes, I guess. Nothing lasts forever, right? Place has had its run."

Mara felt a spike in her chest. Hot. Sharp.

"It's not over, Joe."

He looked at her, eyes watering in the cold. A dull, flat look. The look of a cow waiting for the bolt. "Ain't it? Look around, Mara. We're the last ones at the party. Lights are off."

He laughed. A wheezing, dry sound. "Just trying to keep the pipes from freezing until the kids come put me in a home. That's the job now."

He pulled his scarf back up. "Stay warm."

He walked away. Trudging. Heavy.

Mara stood there.

The wind whipped her hair across her eyes.

*Just trying to keep the pipes from freezing.*

Is that what she was doing? Just maintenance? Just waiting out the clock?

No.

Fuck that.

The profanity startled her. She didn't swear often. Not even in her head. But the anger was real. It burned in her stomach, melting the ice.

She wasn't going to just keep the pipes warm. She wasn't going to just watch the snow bury the town.

She turned and walked. Faster now.

Not home. Not yet.

She walked toward the corner of Main and First.

The husk.

The Old General Store.

It sat on the corner like a shipwreck. A massive, two-story brick building. 1902. It said so on the cornice stone.

It had been empty for a decade. The brick was dark, stained with soot and exhaust. The mortar was crumbling. The awning was gone, leaving just the metal brackets sticking out like rib bones.

The windows were huge. Plate glass. Expensive in 1902. Now, they were blind eyes.

Mara stopped in front of it.

The sidewalk hadn't been plowed here. The snow was up to her shins. She waded through it.

She stood in front of the main display window.

It was opaque. A thick sheet of frost on the inside of the glass. A cataract. You couldn't see in. The building was sealing itself off. Hiding its rot.

Mara took off her right glove.

The air bit her hand immediately. The skin went tight.

She pressed her palm against the glass.

Cold. Solid.

She rubbed.

The friction melted the frost. A slurry of ice water ran down the pane. She wiped it away with her sleeve.

A circle. A portal.

She leaned in, pressing her face close to the cold glass.

Inside.

Gloom.

Shadows.

But then, a shaft of light. The winter sun was low, cutting through the clerestory windows high up on the back wall. It sliced through the darkness like a laser.

Dust motes danced in the beam. Millions of them. Suspended. Static. The air inside was still. Dead still.

She saw the floor. Hardwood. maple. Scuffed, gray with dust, but there. Solid.

She saw the columns. Cast iron. Painted green a hundred years ago, now peeling in long, scaly strips. But they were straight. They were holding the ceiling up.

She saw the space.

It was huge. Empty.

Joe saw a ruin. He saw a tax liability. He saw a fire hazard.

Mara saw a pot.

It was a vessel. Just like the clay on her wheel. It was a container waiting to be filled.

Negative space.

If you looked at a pot, you didn't look at the walls. You looked at the empty space inside. That's what made it useful. The emptiness.

This building was empty. That meant it was ready.

It wasn't rot. It was potential.

She looked at the ceiling. Tin tiles. Rusted in the corners where the roof leaked. But the pattern was there. Pressed flowers. Geometric lines.

She traced the line of the wall with her eyes.

*Gallery walls here. plywood over the brick. Paint it white. No, keep the brick. Texture.*

*Lighting there. Track lights on the beams.*

*Studio space in the back. Kilns. Wheels.*

*Coffee in the front. Heat. Noise. People.*

She could hear it. The sound of boots on the wood floor. The sound of voices. Not the hushed, funeral whispers of the grocery store line. Real voices. Arguments. Laughter.

Life.

Her hand was numb. She couldn't feel her fingers.

She pulled back. Put her glove on.

The circle on the glass was already freezing over again. The frost was creeping back in, stitching the wound shut.

But she had seen it.

It wasn't a dream. It was a structure. It was wood and brick and glass. It was a logistical problem.

And Mara was good at logistics. You couldn't be a potter if you weren't. Clay was chemistry. Glaze was math. Firing was thermodynamics.

She wasn't an artist. She was a maker.

And she was going to make this.

She turned away from the window.

The wind hit her again, but she didn't feel it as much this time. Her blood was up.

She walked back toward the road. Her pace was different. Not the trudge of the survivor. The march of the architect.

She needed a team. She couldn't lift the beams alone. She couldn't wire the lights.

She needed muscle. She needed spark.

She needed Simon.

The kitchen was dark.

4:30 PM and the sun was already gone. That was December in the north. The day was a brief suggestion of light between two long nights.

Mara didn't turn on the overheads. She liked the gloom. It felt honest.

She turned on the stove light. A small, yellow pool of illumination over the burners.

The house was quiet. Too quiet.

Usually, the silence felt heavy. Like a blanket she couldn't kick off. Tonight, it felt like a blank page.

She made tea. Earl Grey. The kettle whistled. A scream in the silence. She poured the water. Watched the steam rise.

She took the mug to the table. Sat down.

Her phone was on the placemat. A cracked iPhone 8. Old tech. It still worked, so she kept it.

She stared at the screen.

Simon Keeler.

She hadn't called him in six months. Not since his wife passed. What do you say to a man like Simon? He didn't do feelings. He did drywall. He did framing. If you asked him how he was, he'd tell you the roof was holding.

She unlocked the phone. The light was harsh in the dim room.

Contacts.

S.

Simon.

She hovered her thumb over the name.

If she called, it started. The clock started. The money started spending itself. The failure became a possibility.

As long as it was just an idea in her head, it was safe. It was perfect.

But safe was dead. Safe was Joe Miller waiting to freeze.

She pressed call.

It rang.

*Brrr-ring.*

*Brrr-ring.*

Long rings. The kind that echoed down empty hallways.

Maybe he wouldn't answer. Maybe he was asleep. Maybe he was dead.

*Click.*

"Yeah."

His voice was gravel. Low. No greeting. Just acknowledgment that the line was open.

"Simon. It's Mara."

"I know."

Silence.

He wasn't going to help her. He wasn't going to ask 'how are you'. He was waiting for the data.

"I have a job," she said.

"I'm retired."

"You're bored."

A pause. She heard him breathe. A heavy, smoker's exhale, though he quit twenty years ago.

"I'm watching TV, Mara."

"You hate TV."

"It passes the time."

"I don't want to pass the time, Simon. I want to use it."

She gripped the phone tighter. "The General Store."

"The wreck?"

"The building."

"It's a wreck. Roof's gone. Floor's rotted. It's a tear-down."

"It's structurally sound. I checked."

" You checked?" He snorted. A dry sound. "You looked in the window?"

"I saw the bones, Simon. Cast iron. Brick. It's standing."

"For now."

"I want to open it up."

"For what? Selling doilies?"

"For work. For us. A hub. Studios. Gallery. A workshop."

"Art," he said. The word tasted like vinegar in his mouth.

"Industry," she corrected. "Making things. It's a factory, Simon. Just a different product."

She leaned forward, elbows on the table. "I need a foreman. I need someone who knows how to keep a roof up."

"I'm seventy years old, Mara. My knees are shot."

"Your knees are fine. It's your head that's going soft sitting in that recliner."

Silence again. longer this time.

She knew him. He was looking at his hands. He was flexing his fingers. He was thinking about his tool belt hanging in the basement. He was thinking about the weight of a hammer.

Utility.

He needed to be useful. It was his drug.

"The General Store," he said. Testing the weight of it.

"Monday. Community Center. 9 AM. I'm getting a team."

"Who?"

"You. Me. Some kids."

"Kids don't know how to work."

"Then teach them."

A sigh. Heavy. Resigned. But underneath the resignation, a spark. The engine turning over.

"It's a widow-maker, Mara. That building will kill your bank account."

"I can't take the money with me, Simon."

"Fair point."

"9 AM?"

"I'll bring a flashlight. Since you probably just looked through the dirt."

"Good."

"Bye."

*Click.*

The line went dead.

Mara lowered the phone.

She sat there for a second. The adrenaline was fading, leaving her cold again.

She took a sip of tea. It was lukewarm.

She stood up. Went to the drawer. Pulled out a notebook. A spiraled graph-paper pad.

She sat back down. Cleared the placemat.

She took a pen. A black Pilot G-2.

She opened to a fresh page.

The grid lines were pale blue. Order. Logic.

She started to draw.

Not a picture. A plan.

First, the perimeter. The rectangle of the footprint.

Then the load-bearing walls. Thick lines.

The columns. Circles.

She sketched the flow. Entrance here. Counter there.

The pen scratched against the paper. *Scritch-scritch-scritch.*

It was a loud sound in the quiet kitchen.

It sounded like construction.

She drew a wall. Then she drew a door in the wall.

Open.

She wasn't just drawing a building. She was drawing a future.

The wind hit the window again, rattling the glass.

Mara didn't look up.

She kept drawing.