The full magnitude of the disaster had to come home to the villagers. The only road to the town was barricaded by boulders and fallen trees. The debris of the avalanche created an impenetrable ice wall and there was no hope of anyone leaving the village until spring. The small community knew they were utterly cut off from the outside world. Once again, they were reminded of how precarious their lives were. The mountain giant still rumbled and the wedding hadn’t been mentioned again.

The thought that the marriage might not happen occupied the sober part of her father’s mind. Not out of concern for neighbours or for his daughter, but out of a terror that her worth as a bride might be lost to him and his debts would be left hanging around his neck. He had been twice to see the butcher and both times the butcher had refused to speak to him. The cabinet maker heard that Flora had been told the wedding dress was no longer needed. Even the butcher was talking of having been bewitched by Edith.

‘What does it mean – bewitched?’ asked the cabinet maker of anyone who would give him the time of day. ‘Bewitched,’ he said, over and over again.

And he worried – oh, how he worried – that Edith wasn’t in the first flush of youth. She would soon be twenty-one and the butcher had been asking for her hand since she was sixteen. A cold dread came over him.

‘What shall I do if he doesn’t marry you?’ he shouted at Edith. She could see him mentally adding up all he owed and the figures fermenting in his mind. ‘We’ll starve. We’ll be ruined.’

The word ‘ruined’ interested Edith. That’s what her future had been. That’s what her life with her father was. That’s what all her days would be if she was married to the butcher. And she thought that out of the ruin of her silence another language had been born. If there were no words to trip her up then her soul could travel faster. Perhaps it was the only way to find Demetrius.

Fear began to take hold of the villagers as the bleakness of their situation became more and more apparent. They would have to survive on what they had put aside. They were permanently cold and prayed that illness wouldn’t strike. The elders asked the head of each household to be honest about what they had in the way of provisions. How much animal feed, how much fuel, how many candles – the list went on. The results would be announced that Sunday at church. All agreed that no one had bargained on such a hard winter or such a tragedy.

There was a need to find something or someone to blame. The wedding dress, they said, had a lot to answer for. It was agreed it had brought bad luck.