The column of cold marsh wind didn’t merely puff down the stone chimney-chimney pipe. Caught between the steep pitch of Marta’s newly slated roof and the higher stone gable of the village burial house next door, the squall twisted into a downward ram of tightly packed air that struck the inside of the stovepipe with the physical weight of a falling oak timber.
Inside the cast-iron firebox at the far end of the storeroom, three nonstop hours of dry willow-billets had built a deep, glowing bed of red coals and fine white wood-ash beneath the boiling copper water-tray.
Under the sudden downward hammer of the gale down the upright pipe, the iron spring-latch on the front of the firebox door snapped upward out of its worn cast-iron notch with a sharp metal clang. The heavy iron door swung wildly wide against its hinges.
In a single heartbeat, the entire draft of the stove reversed itself.
Instead of drawing smoke and heat up the stone chimney toward the sky, the tightly packed air column in the chimney pipe blasted a solid, choking torrent of black chimney-soot, swirling grey wood-ash, and live orange willow-sparks straight out of the open firebox mouth into the narrow twelve-by-six-foot storeroom.
