The Snow Child: A Novel (35 page)

The next evening Faina came, and they settled into their familiar habits of preparing dinner and gathering at the table. When Faina yawned, Jack stood and announced, Get your coats. We’re going out.

What? Going out where? Mabel asked.

Down to the river.

The child jumped to her feet, her eyes alive. Will we all go? she asked.

Jack nodded.

But it’s freezing out there, Mabel said. And why on earth would we go to the river?

No time for questions. Get dressed.

He rarely gave orders so bluntly, and Mabel seemed surprised into submission. They got their coats and boots, and
Jack insisted Mabel put on long underwear and wool pants. He wrapped a scarf around her neck.

There now. Mabel, you take the lantern.

He grabbed a canvas bag from beside the door.

What’s that you’re bringing? Mabel asked.

He merely raised an eyebrow comically and grinned.

And why are we going out in the middle of the night?

Again, just a flick of the brow.

I don’t think I trust you. Not one little bit.

It was cold outside, clear and still, with a nearly full moon shining just above the mountains. With the fresh snow and moonlight, they didn’t need the lantern, but it gave a comforting glow. They followed the trail down to the Wolverine River.

This way, Jack said, and he led them through a stand of willows and out toward a small side channel of the river. The wind had blown the ice clean of snow, and it glistened black beneath the moon. Jack found a driftwood log and had Faina and Mabel sit side by side. He knelt by their feet.

For heaven’s sake, Jack. What are you doing?

Jack pulled the skates out of the bag. Mabel started to stand.

Oh no, you don’t! she said. Have you lost your mind? You are not getting those on my feet. I’ll fall flat on my back, or I’ll break through the ice and drown.

Jack laughed, grabbed her feet, and buckled the blades onto her boots. Mabel sputtered indignantly.

Quick, Faina, Jack said. Do you know what these are?

The girl shook her head, her lips pinched tight in fear and excitement.

They’re ice skates. You put them on your feet and slide on the ice.

He showed her how to put them on and buckle the straps. Then he returned to Mabel and put his mouth to her ear.

I’d never let anything happen to you. You know that, don’t you?

Mabel’s eyes glittered in the moonlight.

Yes. I do know, and she wobbled as she stood up.

The river’s still frozen thick, he said. All this last thaw did was smooth the ice to a perfect shine. And even if we did fall through, this isn’t the main channel. The water’s only a foot deep. We’d just get cold and wet, but even that won’t happen. I promise.

Jack put on his own skates and led them onto the ice.

Mabel was hesitant, but soon her childhood came flying back to her and she slid confidently across the ice. The child, on the other hand, seemed to have left her braver self, the one who slew wild animals and slept alone in the wilderness, back on solid ground, and she surprised Jack by clinging to his arm like a toddler.

It’s all right, he told her. Even if you fall, it only smacks your bottom a bit. No harm done.

As if on cue, Mabel slipped and fell.

Dash it all! she said.

Before Jack could shake free of Faina and rush to her side, Mabel had eased onto her knees and stood again.

I should have strapped a pillow to my back side.

She laughed and dusted herself off.

Jack skated faster, while Faina merely held on and let herself be pulled. Mabel joined them, and the three held hands and slowly skated in a circle. The riverbed echoed with the sound of their whoops and laughter and their blades carving into the ice.

Mabel let go and skated farther up the channel.

How far is it safe? she called back.

All the way to that corner, and he watched as Mabel gained speed.

Will she be all right? Faina whispered, still holding on to his arm.

Yes. Yes she will.

Eventually Faina grew comfortable on the skates, and Jack set the lantern in the center of the ice. Mabel returned to skate slowly but gracefully around and around the light, while Faina followed like a long-legged fawn learning to walk. Jack skated in the opposite direction and caught Mabel by a hand.

We used to skate like this together when we were young, he said as they passed Faina. Do you remember?

How could I forget? You were always trying to kiss me, but I could outskate you, so you never got the chance.

She laughed, pulled her hand free, and skated upriver. Jack pursued her across the ice, the night-blackened trees and sky flying past him.

Faster! Go faster! Faina called out, and Jack didn’t know who she was cheering on, but he skated as fast as he dared and prayed his blades wouldn’t catch in a crack or rough spot. Mabel stayed just out of reach, until she slowed and swung around to face him. Hand in hand they skated back to where Faina stood in her small circle of lantern light. Without a word, Jack and Mabel each took one of the child’s hands and skated up the river, following the curves of the bank. Faina squealed in delight. Even through the cushion of their thick coats, Jack could feel her small arm folded in his, and it was as if his very heart were cradled in those joined elbows. The ice was like wet glass, and they glided fast enough to create a breeze against their faces. He looked at Mabel and saw tears running down her cheeks and wondered if it was the cold that made her eyes water.

As they neared the corner, where the small channel rejoined the main river, they slowed to a stop and the three of them
stood arm in arm, Jack and Mabel gasping for breath. The moon lit up the entire valley, gleaming off the river ice and glowing on the white mountains.

Let’s keep going, Faina whispered, and Jack, too, wanted to skate on, up the Wolverine River, around the bend, through the gorge, and into the mountains, where spring never comes and the snow never melts.

H
e wasn’t always there. Some days Mabel crept through the snow and down to the creek behind the cabin, and the creature wouldn’t show himself. There’d be only the trickle of water through snow and ice. But if she sat, patient and silent, at the base of the spruce tree, eventually he might appear. His small brown head would peek up from a pool of open water in the creek, or his tail would disappear over a snowy hummock.

This November day, the river otter did not keep her waiting. She heard ice splinter, a splash, and then he was just the other side of the small creek. She expected him to dash across a log or run humpbacked down the bank as he always did. Instead he paused at the water’s edge, turned toward her, and stood up on his hind legs. He was remarkably still, supported by his thick tail, his front paws dangling at his chest. For longer than Mabel could hold her breath, the otter stared at her with his eyes like deep eddies. And then he dropped to all fours and scampered down the creek.

Farewell, old man, until we meet again.

She had no way to know its age or gender, but there was something in the light-colored chin and long, coarse whiskers that reminded her of an old man’s beard. From a distance the
otter gave a comical, mischievous impression, but when it slithered close Mabel could smell fish blood and a wet chill.

She told no one of the otter. Garrett would want to trap it; Faina would ask her to draw it. She refused to confine it by any means because, in some strange way, she knew it was her heart. Living, twisting muscle beneath bristly damp fur. Breaking through thin ice, splashing in cold creek water, sliding belly-down across snow. Joyful, though it should have known better.

It wasn’t just the river otter. She once spied a gray-brown coyote slinking across a field with his mouth half open as if in laughter. She watched Bohemian waxwings like twilight shadows flock from tree to tree as if some greater force orchestrated their flight. She saw a white ermine sprint past the barn with a fat vole in its mouth. And each time, Mabel felt something leap in her chest. Something hard and pure.

She was in love. Eight years she’d lived here, and at last the land had taken hold of her, and she could comprehend some small part of Faina’s wildness.

The seasons of the past six years had been like an ocean tide, giving and taking, pulling the girl away and then bringing her back. Each spring Faina left for the alpine high country where the caribou migrated and the mountains cupped eternal snow, and Mabel no longer wept, though she knew she would miss her.

Homesteaders called that bittersweet season when the river ice gives way and the fields turn to mud “breakup,” but Mabel found something tender and gentle in it. She said goodbye to the girl just as the bog violets bloomed purple and white along the creeks and cow moose nuzzled their newborns, just as the sun began to push winter out of the valley.

And then, when the days stretched long, the land softened and warmed and the farm thrived. Beyond the barn, beneath a cottonwood tree, there was the picnic table Jack and Garrett had built, and often on top of it during the summer there would be a moonshine jar filled with wildflowers. Most Sundays, they shared a meal with the Bensons, sometimes here, sometimes at their homestead. When the weather was fine and the bugs miraculously scarce, they ate outdoors. Jack and George would build an alder fire in a pit early in the morning and then roast a hunk of meat from a black bear Garrett had shot in the spring. Esther would bring potato-and-beet salad; Mabel would bake a fresh rhubarb pie and spread a white tablecloth. Then the two women would walk together arm in arm and pick fireweed and bluebells. In the background they would hear the men talking and laughing as the flames in the pit sputtered and flared with the bear-fat drippings. When Mabel went into the cabin to get plates and silverware, Jack would sometimes come up behind her, softly pull back the wisps of her hair, and kiss her neck. “You’ve never been more beautiful,” he would say.

Harvest would come, and sometimes during those long, exhausting days, it would be as Mabel once imagined—she and Jack together in the field as they gathered potatoes into burlap sacks or cut cabbages from their stalks, and even as she wiped sweat from her face and tasted grit between her teeth, she tried to breathe in the sweetness of the moment. At night they would rub each other’s sore muscles and jokingly complain of their aches, Mabel always more than Jack, though she knew his pain was so much worse.

Then, when the days shortened and the first frost came, they whispered their blessings and prayed for snow. Mabel would try to guess how much Faina had grown since they had
last seen her, and she would sew wool stockings and long underwear and sometimes a new coat, always blue wool with white fur trim and snowflakes embroidered down the front.

Each time the girl arrived, she was taller and more beautiful than they had remembered, and she would bring gifts from the mountains. One year it was a sack of dried fish, another it was a caribou hide, tanned supple and scented with wild herbs. She would hug them and kiss them and say she had missed them, and then she would run off into the snowy trees she called home.