Twelve Winters of Ash

In the village of Ashfold the winters are counted, not named, and the counting is a family trade. Sana keeps the ledger her mother kept and her grandfather before that: twelve columns, one per winter, and a single line for the gate on the ridge that has not opened in nine generations. She has no ambitions about it. Then in the fourth week of the coldest winter anyone can count, she puts her hand against the stone and finds it warm.