The Snow Child: A Novel (21 page)

“You seem to know your way around. Your dad brags about you.”

The boy shrugged and kicked the toe of his boot into the snow, but Jack could tell he was pleased.

“Guess I’d better be going before it gets too late,” Garrett said. “Do you think your wife might like to see the fox before I go?”

“Maybe another time,” he said.

Garrett nodded, pulled himself up into the saddle, and rode toward home.

“What did Garrett bring to show you today?” Mabel asked when Jack went in for the night. She was setting dinner on the table.

“A fox.”

She stopped what she was doing.

“A fox?”

“I know what you’re thinking, but it wasn’t Faina’s. This was a silver fox. Nothing like that red one she runs with.”

It should have been the end of it, but it wasn’t. All through dinner, she came back to it.

“Does he have to trap fox? Does he try to catch the red ones, too?”

“It’s what he does, Mabel. And he can’t pick and choose the colors.”

A bit of quiet, and then, “But he could catch Faina’s, couldn’t he? He could kill her fox?”

“I wouldn’t worry yourself about it. Her fox seems a wary sort. It won’t find its way into one of Garrett’s traps.”

“But what if it did? Can’t we tell him to stop?”

“Stop trapping? Don’t see we have that kind of authority. And Garrett’s not the only one out there. Up and down this river, men are trapping.”

But Mabel seemed rattled by his assertion. She hardly touched her meal, and she paced in front of the bookshelf several times before taking a letter from one of the books. He was relieved when she at last sat in the chair by the fire to read.

I
t was a tangled, sickening kind of vigil. Mabel watched for the boy, but it was the fox and the little girl that occupied her thoughts. Any sound that could be horse hooves in the snow brought Mabel to the window, pulled her eyes into the trees. Sometimes she even walked to the river to look up and down the ice.

If Garrett were to ride onto their homestead with a red fox dead in his arms, Faina would be lost to them. That was how the story went. Mabel had reread her sister’s letter until the creases were worn, and it was there, in Ada’s lovely, educated handwriting—the fox is killed, the one that brought the child safely out of the wilderness and to their cabin door. Love doubted. Boots and mittens abandoned. Snow melted in clumps. Another child gone from their lives.

It was a possibility she could not bear. She wound herself tightly, as if within her girdled ribs she could contain all possibilities, all futures and all deaths. Perhaps if she held herself just right. Maybe if she knew what would be or could be. Or if she wished with enough heart. If only she could believe.

She hadn’t before, when a life kicked inside her very womb. In a closed-up place in her heart, she knew it was her fault.
During the pregnancy she had wondered, Am I meant to be a mother? Am I capable of so much love? And so it had died inside her. If only she hadn’t doubted, she could have born the baby wailing to life, ready to nurse at her breast.

This time she would not let her love slacken, even for a moment. She would be vigilant and wish and wish. Please, child. Please, child. Please don’t leave us.

But then she would think of Faina running through the trees with the wild fox at her heels, and of Garrett with his steel traps and snares, and she would wonder if one can truly stop the inevitable. Was it as Ada had suggested, that we can choose our own endings, joy over sorrow? Or does the cruel world just give and take, give and take, while we flounder through the wilderness?

Either way, Mabel could not stop herself. She paced and watched and held herself tightly. She pestered Jack with questions. How much longer would the boy trap? Where did he go? What had he caught this time? When Garrett led his horse past the cabin window and waved cheerfully, a dead wolf strapped to the back of the saddle, Mabel held her breath. And when Faina appeared at their door the next day, she let out that breath to ask, How is your fox? And the child said, He’s fine.

At last, when March came and Jack said the boy would soon pull his traps, Mabel began to breathe more freely. The first signs of spring arrived in fits and starts, snow that melted, and then rain and snow again. The drifts in the yard dwindled to small patches, but in the woods the snow was still deep. Each morning ice formed on the puddles, and water dripped from the eaves and froze into long, glassy icicles.

When Garrett passed through on his way home, Mabel asked him into the cabin for a hot drink and a piece of bread.

“So, how many more fox have you caught?” she asked, as if idle curiosity, not desperation, drove her. She set a few slices of fresh bread on the table in front of him.

“None,” he said. “Not since that silver. I did pick up a wolf, though. And a couple more lynx and coyotes.” The boy was awkward, keeping his hands first at his side, then resting his forearms on the table. He shifted his legs nervously and picked up a piece of bread.

“How much longer will you trap?” Mabel asked as she put a cup of tea in front of him and lingered behind his chair.

“The river ice is going soft,” he said around a mouthful of bread. “Few days, I’ll snap my traps and call it a year.”

Mabel reached down with one arm and hugged him around the shoulders.

“We worry about you,” she said. She straightened, embarrassed by her outburst, and adjusted her dress. “Jack and I wouldn’t want you to be out on the river if it wasn’t safe. And you’ve done well, haven’t you?”

He seemed taken aback by her affection, but grinned all the same. “I’ll get some fur money this year.”

“Good for you,” she said, and went back to the kitchen counter.

Mabel dozed by the woodstove just before noon, a book propped open in her lap. Most of the winter she hadn’t allowed herself to sleep in the middle of the day, if for no other reason than to prove she had not even a touch of cabin fever. But tossed about by nightmares, she hadn’t slept well the night before. Now, soothed by the light of day and the warmth of the fire, she drifted off.

She woke to a small, cool hand atop hers and opened her eyes to Faina.

I have something, the girl said and pulled at Mabel’s hand.

Oh, child, you surprised me.

Please hurry, she said.

Is it something to draw?

The child nodded and tugged at her.

Where?

Faina pointed out the window.

Outside? All right. All right. Let me get my boots and coat.

Your pencils, too?

Yes, yes. And my sketchbook.

When Mabel opened the door, the falling snow amazed her. The first week of April, and it was snowing.

Faina took Mabel’s hand again and together they walked into the yard. Even with snow, it smelled of spring, of thawing creek banks and moist earth, of old leaves and new leaves and roots and bark. Mabel became aware of how they stood together, she and the child, still holding hands, and Faina’s was so slight and cool, and Mabel’s heart was a hole in her chest filling like a well with icy, sweet water.

Will you draw? Faina said quietly.

The snow? I wouldn’t know how to go about it.

Faina let go of Mabel and put her palm to the sky, her mitten hanging from a red string at her wrist. A single snowflake lit upon her bare skin. Faina turned and held it to Mabel.

Now can you draw it?

The snowflake was no bigger than the smallest skirt button. It was six pointed, with fernlike tips and a hexagonal heart, and it sat in the child’s palm like a tiny feather when it should have melted.

It was as if time slowed so that Mabel could no longer breathe or feel her own pulse. What she was seeing could not be, and yet it did not waver. There in the child’s hand. A single snowflake, luminous and translucent. A sharp-edged miracle.

Please, will you draw it?

The child’s blue eyes were wide and rimmed in frost.

What else was there to do? Mabel fumbled to open her sketchbook. She took the pencil into her weak fingers and began to draw. Faina stood motionless with the snowflake in her hand.

Perhaps we should go inside and sit down to do this, Mabel said, but then realized her mistake. The child smiled and shook her head.

No, no. I guess we can’t go inside the warm cabin to draw snow, can we?

The sketch was too small, and Mabel saw it would be impossible to capture every groove and line. She wished for a magnifying glass and flipped to a new page.

I have never been any good at symmetrical drawings, she said more to herself than to the child. I’m too impatient. Too imprecise.

She began again, drawing with broader strokes and filling the entire page with the single geometric shape. She propped the sketchbook on one hand and drew with the other, bending slightly to look more closely. But her breath—that alone could reduce the snowflake to a droplet. She turned her face to the side so as not to exhale on it.

Snow began to land as wet spots on her paper. Mabel worked faster and let out frustrated sighs. If only she were a better artist.

It’s perfect, Faina whispered. I knew it would be.

Mabel looked from her drawing to the snowflake in the child’s hand.

I can always work on the details later. Shall we call it finished for now? she asked.

Yes, Faina said.

The child put the heel of her hand to her lips and blew on the snowflake, and it fluttered into the air like dandelion down.

Oh, Mabel said. Tears came to her eyes, and she didn’t know why.

Faina took her hand again, leaned into Mabel and held tightly to her. The wet snowflakes landed all around them. The world was silent. The snow fell heavier and wetter, and Mabel’s coat turned damp.

Faina pulled on her sleeve. Mabel leaned down, expecting her to whisper something in her ear, but instead Faina put her cool, dry lips to Mabel’s cheek and kissed her.

Goodbye, the child said.

When Faina let go of her arm and ran into the snow that was now rain, Mabel knew. She tucked the sketchbook under her coat and stood in the rain until her hair was dripping wet and her coat was soaked through and her boots were in mud. She stood and stared through the rain and tried to see into the forest, but she knew.