Elisabeth nodded sadly. “I hate to think what would’ve happened if Ellie hadn’t woken up to alert us.”

“Mighty glad she did . . . and that she’s all right.”

“Jah, that’s all I can think ’bout now—our Ellie’s alive.”

Lyle kissed her cheek. “God was gracious, indeed.” He slipped on his bathrobe, then sat on the edge of the bed, pondering what might have been without divine intervention. “We have much to be thankful for.”

Using her small mirror to examine her hair, Ellie shuddered. The ends were scorched and fell in several different lengths. “For pity’s sake,” she murmured, then noticed her eyebrows were nearly gone. She ran her fingers over the stubble.

The fire did this, she thought, but she’d been so intent on her task and trying to see through the smoke . . . Her last memory before Sol lifted her out of harm’s way was of pounding the fiery trees with her damp and charred bathrobe.

Looking down at her hands now, she saw blisters on her knuckles. Ach, Sol’s bride looks a sight!

She wondered if there was a home remedy that might help her eyebrows grow back more quickly. Gathering up her clean clothes, she hurried downstairs to find Mamm’s folk medicine book and discovered that squeezing aloe vera juice on the eyebrow stubble and rubbing it in every day could encourage the hair to grow back. I’ll definitely try that.

After she washed up in the small bathroom off the kitchen and dressed for the day, she headed back to her room and peered out the windows, curious about the fire’s overall destruction. From what she could see, the area of the newest apple trees had suffered the most damage. But the vast majority of the orchard had been spared. How many trees were lost? she wondered, anxious to survey the damage with Dat.

———

After a quick breakfast of baked oatmeal and coffee, Ellie and her father took an account of the destroyed apple trees—charred black sticks now. They counted forty-five semi-dwarfs lost.

“Not as bad as it could’ve been,” Dat said as they perused the acre together. “We’ll need volunteers to help strip the scorched and fallen fruit.” He leaned down to pick up the remains of a blackened apple.

“Won’t some of the trees reflower next year?” Ellie asked.

“Some might.” He pointed at the base of one of the trees. “But not if they look like this. See how badly burnt it is?”

She nodded, then followed him to check on similar-looking trees.

“If we just hope these’ll reshoot next year, we could end up havin’ apples growin’ just very high on the tree . . . so much harder to manage. It’s better to start over with fresh trees in a case like that.”

Ellie was struck by how confident and knowledgeable her father sounded.