The Snow Child: A Novel (20 page)

Isn’t that something? Jack asked.

I don’t understand. How…

Don’t you remember doing this when you were a little girl? Jack said. You just wave your arms and legs around. Come on. Give it a try.

Mabel hesitated, held up her basket of berries.

Oh, please. Won’t you? the child begged.

Jack took the basket and handed it to Faina.

I don’t know. With my long skirts and all.

But he took her by the shoulders and, before she knew his intentions, gently shoved her backward. She expected it to hurt, but the powdery snow was like a thick duvet that softened her fall and muffled all sound. She saw Jack and the child grinning down at her and above their faces the brilliant blue sky. Closer, she could see the individual snow crystals that encased her.

Go on, then, Jack called down to her. You’ve got to flap your arms to make the wings.

Mabel swept her arms up and felt the drag of the snow, then back down again. Then she moved her legs side to side.

All right? she asked.

Jack reached down to her, they clasped hands, mittens and work gloves, and he grunted as he pulled her to her feet.

Oh, look! Look! the child cried out. Isn’t it perfect?

Mabel looked down at her own snow angel. Like Jack’s, it was set deep into the snow and the wings weren’t feathery. But it was lovely, she had to agree.

Yours is the most beautiful of all, Faina said, and she threw her arms around Mabel’s waist and hugged her tightly, and Mabel felt as if she were falling again, tumbling, laughing, backward into the powdery snow.

The snow angels remained in the yard, even as the little girl came and went from the forest, and Mabel smiled at them. It wasn’t just their whimsical presence, dancing from barn to cabin, cabin to woodpile. It was also the memory of Jack flinging himself back into the snow like a little boy, and giggling Faina at his side. And then the child’s arms around her, hugging her as a daughter hugs her mother. Joyfully. Spontaneously. The most beautiful of all. The most beautiful of all.

Mabel left the kitchen window and returned to the woodstove. Wait until Esther sees that display, she thought. If she considered us half mad before, once she sees we’ve spent our days making snow angels in the yard, she will surely have us both committed. She stirred the bubbling cranberries. The musky, sour smell permeated the cabin and, Mabel realized, smelled much like the Bensons’ cluttered home had that first day she visited.

She glanced out the window again. Lovely, crazy snow angels! And then it struck her—among all those snow angels were Faina’s. Her delicate imprints with their feathery wings. Surely their existence could not be denied.

When Esther sees them, she will know it’s true, the child is real. How could she and Jack make a dozen angels the shape and size of a little girl?

Though the child had at first been a source of gentle teasing, as winter progressed Esther had become kind and cautious in her doubt. She asked if Mabel was getting enough fresh air, if she was sleeping too much during the day. She encouraged her to come visit, and when Mabel said she wasn’t comfortable driving the horse alone, Esther began to show up regularly.

There was no guarantee Esther would come anytime soon, but she did visit every few weeks, weather depending, and often on a Sunday afternoon. It had been more than two weeks since her last visit and Sunday was just a few days away. As long as it didn’t snow, she would see proof of the little girl from the forest, and Mabel would be vindicated.

Esther’s disbelief was all too familiar. It brought to mind the many years Mabel had spent as a child, looking for fairies and witches and being teased by her older siblings. Her head is stuffed full of nonsense, one teacher had warned her father. You let her read too many books.

Once Mabel was certain she had caught a fairy. When she was eight years old, she built a trap box out of twigs and hung it in the oak tree in their backyard. In the middle of the night she spied it out her bedroom window rocking back and forth in the moonlight, and when she opened the window she could hear a high-pitched twittering, just how she imagined a trapped fairy would sound.

Ada! Ada! she had called to her sister. I’ve caught a fairy. Come and look. Now you’ll see they’re real.

And Ada came, sleepy-eyed and grumbling, and they walked in their bare feet and nightgowns out to the oak tree. But when Mabel lowered the box from the branch and peeked inside,
what she saw wasn’t a fairy but a trapped songbird, quivering in fear. She opened the little door, but the bird would not fly out. Ada shook the stick box, and when the bird fell to the grass, Mabel could see that it was failing. Before she could make it a nesting box in the house, it had died.

The memory made her ill. Wrapped tightly in its hold were shame and humiliation, and the terrible guilt of having caused the bird’s death. But at the core was the truest emotion—an angry disappointment. If she couldn’t convince anyone else, how could she go on believing?

The next days were bright and calm. Mabel guarded the snow angels, and they didn’t fade. They glittered and shone beneath the blue sky as the days lengthened. When the sun glared down, she feared they would melt, but the air stayed cool and the snow fluffy and dry.

It wasn’t until Sunday morning that the wind began to blow down from the glacier. Mabel could hear it gust along the riverbed, and she watched it stir the treetops, knocking snow to the ground. Please, Mabel thought. Come quickly. Come see, and you’ll know she is real.

Mabel did not hear the horse trot into the yard that afternoon—the wind was blowing too violently. She didn’t know Esther had arrived until the door burst open and she came tripping into the cabin.

“Look what the wind blew in!” Esther said. She laughed boisterously and slammed the door closed.

“Oh, Esther! You came. And in this weather!”

“It wasn’t this bad until I was halfway here, and then I figured I was damned either way, so here I am.”

“I’m so glad. Wait! Don’t take off your coat. I want to show
you something.” She wrapped a scarf around her face and pulled a hat low on her head.

True to her adventurous nature, Esther didn’t ask why, only turned on her heels and followed Mabel back out into the blustery afternoon. Although the sun was still shining and the sky was clear, the wind swept the powdery snow off the ground, swirled it through the air. Half blind, they stumbled across the yard.

“Over here,” Mabel called to Esther.

“What?”

They couldn’t hear each other over the wind, so Mabel waved for her to follow, and they went toward the barn. Maybe on the lee side the snow angels would be protected.

When they arrived, however, only the faintest suggestion remained, just a few shapeless dents in the drifting snow.

“Do you see?” Mabel yelled into the wind.

Esther shook her head, then raised her eyebrows and held up her hands questioningly. The wind slacked for a moment, though they could still hear it in the distance.

“Do you see anything?” Mabel pointed to where the snow angels had been.

“No, Mabel. All I see is snow. What am I supposed to be seeing?”

“It’s just… They were here.”

“What was here?” Esther spoke quietly, concerned.

Mabel forced a smile.

“Nothing. It was nothing.” She hooked her arm into Esther’s. “Come on. Let’s get back inside, before the wind begins to blow again. I want you to try my cranberry relish.”

J
ack had shoveled a path through the snowdrifts and was splitting kindling when Garrett rode into the yard with a dead fox slung across the front of his saddle. Jack stood beside the chopping block and watched the boy ride in. He sat the horse with ease, his head low, his shoulders moving with the shift and give of the animal and land beneath him. It wasn’t until he looked up and saw Jack that his youth shone. He sat up straight with a grin, swept his hand overhead in greeting, and then pointed to the dead fox.

“What did you bring in today?”

“Isn’t it a beaut?” Garrett said as he jumped down from the horse. He reached up and took the fox by the scruff and lifted its limp head.

“A silver fox,” the boy said with some pride.

Jack set down his hatchet and walked to the horse. The fox’s ears and muzzle were as pure as black silk, but along its back and sides, the fur was a frosted silver.

“Is it iced up?”

“No sir,” Garrett said. “That’s the way they come—silver tipped.”

“It’s splendid, all right,” Jack said. “You catch many?”

“This is my first ever. They’re not real common,” Garrett said. “Mostly bring in reds and cross foxes. You ever see one of those crosses? They’re a mix of red and black, and they’ve got a black cross along their back.”

Jack went back to his pile of kindling and sat on the chopping block. “Get yourself any of those recently? Any reds?”

“About a month ago, pulled a cross fox out of a snare. I missed another one when it stepped over my trap. ’Course I don’t know what color that one was,” Garrett said and laughed at his own joke.

“No, I guess you wouldn’t. What’ll you do with this one?”

“I was thinking of a ruff for mom’s parka. Don’t mention it, though. I’d like it to be a surprise.”

“That’d be a fine gift.”

“I got her a pair of lynx mittens made last year. Betty down at the hotel—she’ll sew you something if you give her a few pelts for the work. Hats, mittens. She’s pretty good, too. I’d like a wolverine ruff, if I ever catch one.”

Jack was ready to go back to chopping kindling, but the boy wanted to talk, so he let him. While he set another spruce log on the block, the boy stacked kindling and told him about the tracks he’d seen that day—a pile of rabbits, a porcupine, a few lynx, and a lone wolf heading upriver.

“Is that unusual, a wolf by itself?”

“Probably a young ’un, kicked out of the pack and looking for his own way. I set some snares around an old moose kill. Hope I get him.”

Jack whittled down the spruce log with the hatchet, and slivers of kindling fell neatly to the ground.

“You like that life, do you?” he said and picked up another log. “Trapping wild animals?”

The boy shrugged.

“Beats dirt farming,” Garrett said. His look was quick. “No offense.”

“Ah well. I’m none too keen on it myself sometimes. But it’s a living. Trapping, though—that’s got to be tough work. Kind of lonely, too.”

“I like it. Traveling the river. Just me, the wind and the snow. I like to watch the tracks, seeing the animals come and go. When I get older, I’m going to build myself a cabin up the river. Buy myself some dogs. I’d get a team now if Mom would let me, but she can’t stand the barking and howling, and she says they’ll eat us out of house and home. But once I leave the homestead, then I’ll get a team and push my line all the way up to the glacier.”

“You won’t stay on and farm?”

“Nah. My brothers—they can have it.”

Jack felt for the boy. It wasn’t easy to make your own way with brothers already busting ahead of you. He’d watched the older boys hassle Garrett, the way they bossed and teased him. It was no wonder he’d taken to the woods.