The Snow Child (44 page)

At first, Mabel could not see what was different about the dress. It fit her perfectly and moved with a soft rustle against her skin. Faina wore leather moccasins beaded in shimmering white beads and tied with white ribbons up her calves. The veil flowed down her back and the flowers were sprinkled across her forehead. She held the bouquet of wildflowers, ferns, and currant vines.

Then, as Faina stepped closer, Mabel saw the feathers—white feathers, stitched along the neckline of the dress. They lay flat against the fabric so that they seemed part of the raw silk, a mere variation in the texture. Mabel could see the pattern now, how the feathers went from smaller to larger at the center of her chest. Other feathers were sewed along the hemline, and not one covered her embroidery of snow flowers, but each seemed part of the design.

Mabel heard someone take in a breath, perhaps one of the young women, but then Faina was walking past her to Jack’s side, and she could see the back of the dress. Pure white feathers fell down the center of the skirt and fanned out into larger and larger sizes until along the hem some were as long as a woman’s forearm, all laid flat against the fabric and moving gently with the silk. Like the fabric, the feathers gleamed ever so slightly, a sort of luminosity that came from within the filaments themselves.

Jack, wearing his best and only suit, took Faina’s arm, and they began to walk slowly toward the river where the jars of wildflowers sat on tree stumps. The smell of cut spruce was strong in the air. Everyone followed without speaking, and the rustle of Faina’s gown became the gentle roar of the river. They arranged themselves near the shore, the jagged, snowy mountain peaks behind them.

“Where is Garrett?” Mabel heard someone whisper. They shifted awkwardly in their dress shoes, and the baby let out a whimper. The sun was unbearably hot on Mabel’s head and shoulders, and her eyes ached from the piercing brightness. When she looked up at Jack, he nodded at her and gestured with his chin back toward the wagon trail. She turned and looked over her shoulder, and there was Garrett, riding his horse at a gallop across the meadow. He, too, wore a fine suit, and with one hand he kept a black hat on his head, and with the other he held on to the reins. At the horse’s feet, Faina’s husky sprinted, his tongue flapping at his mouth.

Garrett slowed the horse as he neared the cabin and dismounted even as the horse was still trotting. He loosely tied a lead rope to a nearby cottonwood, wiped his forehead with the back of his hand, and walked toward the gathering. Mabel was surprised when he came directly to her.

“Do you have the flowers?” he whispered.

Mabel frowned in confusion.

“The wreath?” Then she remembered and pointed to the table where the circle of fireweed and roses and ferns lay.

“Thank you,” Garrett said, and he kissed her on the cheek.

Curious, she watched him pick up the wreath and then tap the side of his leg with one hand. Faina’s dog ran to him. Garrett held up a hand, and the dog sat. He slipped the wreath over the animal’s head, and then what looked like a loop of ribbon and a small pouch. Again he held up his hand, and the dog stayed sitting while Garrett walked to the wedding gathering.

“Not a bad entrance,” Bill whispered as Garrett joined him.

As the ceremony began, Mabel held to Jack’s arm, but it was as if she were floating and spinning. The hot sun blurred her vision. She would faint, or already had. Words swam and dodged, and she could not tell if they were spoken aloud or only in her head…

… Hope is the thing with feathers… perches in the soul… to have and to hold… Do you?… hurry… hurry… to the ragged wood… no roses at my head… Do you?… until death do you part… until death…

I do…

I do…

I do…

I do…

There was a whistle, like a chickadee’s, and Faina’s dog trotted past as Mabel’s eyes focused again. She clung to Jack’s arm. Faina was calling the husky to her, and Garrett was grinning proudly. The dog, the wreath of wildflowers around its neck, sat obediently at the bride’s feet, and Garrett knelt beside it and untied the ribbon from its neck. He opened the pouch and poured two gold rings into his hand. Mabel heard a child clap and Esther laugh.

Then all sound was lost to the river’s roar, and the ground shifted beneath Mabel. She saw Garrett and Faina, face to face. She saw the flicker of the gold rings in the sun, and then they were kissing and suddenly everyone was cheering.

“Are you all right, Mabel? Mabel?” Jack held her from behind, his arms firmly beneath her elbows. “Here, let’s sit down at the table. It’s this heat. It’s gotten the best of you.”

Someone brought her a glass of water, and one of the young women swept a fan back and forth in front of her. At last she could breathe and think.

“Faina? Where’s our Faina?”

“She’s over there.” Jack pointed to one of the big cottonwoods, where the girl stood, white and shimmering, beside Garrett.

“But… is it snowing?” and she heard someone laugh beside her.

“Goodness no, dear.” It was Esther. “Just cottonwood seeds. But it does look like snow, doesn’t it?”

The air was filled with the white down. Some floated up and over the trees, while other seeds drifted lazily to the ground. Faina looked at Mabel through the falling white and held up a hand, a little wave, like when she was a child.

“They’re married?” Mabel whispered.

“Yes, they are,” Jack said.

CHAPTER 53

T
he night was cool and pale blue, and Faina lay naked atop the wedding quilt. She was on her side, her long legs askew, one arm beneath her head, the other curved below the slight round of her belly. Garrett took off his suit jacket. His white button-up shirt was clammy with sweat and his feet ached from the dress shoes he had worn all day. He undressed and left his clothes on the rough-cut plank floor. As he walked toward the bed, he let his hand skim across the wedding gown where it had been thrown over a chair, as if a giant wild bird had shrugged off its skin and cast it aside. After the ceremony, as they ate fire-grilled salmon, potato salad, and an extravagant white cake with white frosting and candied rose petals, as the voices ebbed and flowed and the sun danced off glasses of homemade elderflower wine, again and again Garrett let his hands touch the small of Faina’s back where the feathers lay flat against the silk, and he knew they had come from the swan.

Aren’t you cold? Garrett whispered as he lay beside her. She shook her head and slid her arm around his neck to kiss him. Overhead, moths fluttered along the log purlins of the roof frame and a few scattered stars shone even in the gloaming. It could rain, the bugs could be ferocious, he had told her, but she insisted on sleeping in their unfinished cabin.

It’s our home, she had said. So he hauled their wedding bed to the cabin, along with the quilt his mother had sewed for them and the feather pillows and soft sheets they had been given as wedding gifts.

Faina’s fingertips grazed his bare arm, and she laughed.

But you are cold. Your skin is prickly.

Garrett shrugged.

It’s OK. I won’t freeze.

As they made love beneath the summer night sky, he tried not to think about the child in her womb or their raw gasps and sighs traveling across the land. He wanted only to think of her.

During the next weeks, as Jack and Garrett worked beneath the endless sun to put the roof on the cabin, then add the door and windows and woodstove and cupboards, Faina disappeared into the trees, her dog trotting beside her. She was gone for hours, sometimes the entire day, and Garrett did not know what to make of it. He politely dismissed invitations to Jack and Mabel’s for dinner, not wanting them to know how rarely Faina joined him for meals. He prepared his food alone in the cabin, often nothing more than a can of beans heated atop the woodstove. One night Garrett sat up, waiting for her to return, until it was nearly morning. No longer open to the night sky, the cabin was dim and stifling, but he wouldn’t let himself prowl outside like a restless animal. She would come home.

Where do you go?

When?

Every day. Nights, too. I thought you wanted to be here, with me, in our home.

I do.

So?

But she only blinked her white eyelashes at him and patted the dog. Garrett was reminded of that day at the frozen lake when he had wanted to curse and kick the ground and fight back but instead could only dumbly follow her.

We love each other, don’t we?

He didn’t want his voice to whine.

She came to where he sat, held his face up to her and kissed him hard. That night she stayed.