Growing Home by C.M. Howes

Author:C.M. Howes [Howes, C.M.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2025-09-22T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER NINE

MARLOW SLEPT SURPRISINGLY well that night. He’d expected to be up all night mulling over his regrets with the group and the new information Ewan had given him, but he’d drifted off easily and woke feeling rested for the first time in weeks. Their food was completely spent save for a few fruits and mushrooms they’d collected along their route over the past few days, so their first order of business was to rustle up some more rations. Luckily, the commune’s storerooms hadn’t all been completely decimated by the trees. Many of their supplies had succumbed to a suffocating, wooden end, but plenty remained intact, and even more had been launched and lay scattered around the grove. Marlow gave Daphne the task of gathering up the usable debris that lay around the area.

She combed the grove with a look of utmost seriousness etched across her face. Marlow was impressed by her diligence. She pulled back ferns, riffling through the leaves that had piled up around their bases, and sifted through the detritus around the roots of each tree. It didn’t take long for her to come up with a pile of canned and dried goods, an abundance of extra tarps, plus a full tent kit, and more tools of every sort than Marlow knew what to do with.

“Wow.” He sorted through her pile as she stood with her chest puffed out and one foot on the supplies like a hero in a painting. “Great work here.”

Unfortunately, most of the canned goods had spoiled. The cans had been punctured or were swollen and warped, but there were a few that they managed to save. They even introduced some variety into their diet. Marlow was pleased to find various kinds of soup, vegetables, and even some meats, a blessed reprieve from the beans and lentils they’d been surviving off for most of the trek.

But the real treasure of the day was all the noodles and rice that Ewan had found in the wreckage of buildings, carefully hidden away from rodents by the previous tenants of this grove. Milling any sort of flour had been completely out of the question in Marlow’s life and he’d run out of his own stores of such items years ago. Part of him desperately wanted to break open a package now, but he resisted the urge. He satisfied his growling stomach with an assortment of berries and a granola bar that they’d dug out of a half-shattered cabinet. Soon, he would make them a proper meal, worthy of the occasion. Lord, he had missed pasta.

The tent was another gift. The tarps had served them surprisingly well, but they would all be much happier with four solid—or at least solid fabric—walls surrounding them at night. Marlow looked forward to a night with a proper layer between him and the frogs scampering about the forest floor.

He just hoped it would mitigate the mosquito bites they’d been collecting. Maybe the cancer wouldn’t take him after all, and they’d all fall victim to magical malaria together.

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