The first fire

We have a rule, and it is Petros’s, and it is not up for discussion: the first fire is lit on the first of October. It can be twenty degrees outside. We have had guests sitting in the courtyard in short sleeves while the chimney smoked above them.

It is less a matter of warmth than of marking time. In the old houses of the Zagori the family moved downstairs into the winter room around the feast of Saint Dimitrios, at the end of October, and lived around the fire until spring. We start three weeks early because we can.

The wood is beech, of course, from fallen trees that the forestry office marks each spring. It is stacked in the stable yard for two years before it burns. Beech burns hot and clean and smells faintly sweet, and on a still evening you can tell which houses in the village have lit their fires by standing in the square and breathing in.

Kanela knows the date better than we do. On the first of October she is lying on the hearth stone at five o’clock, looking at the empty grate, waiting.