The Snow Child: A Novel (16 page)

The next day he scraped at the frozen earth beneath the smoldering wood, digging as far down as he could with a shovel. A December grave was hard-earned in this place, but it would come. He left the man beneath a tarp, far from the fire. It was a gruesome thought, but he didn’t want the body to thaw. It was keeping well frozen.

On the third day, Jack trudged home covered with soot and weary to the bone. Mabel was waiting.

“George came by,” she said. “I told him you were out in the new field, burning stumps.”

“Oh?”

“He said you weren’t out there. He couldn’t find you.”

“Hmm.” He didn’t look into her face.

She took hold of his forearm and squeezed gently. “What is it? Where have you been?”

“Nothing. I’ve just been working. George must have missed me somehow.”

The next morning Jack returned to dig in the softening earth and build the flames back up. He was drenched in sweat and coated in dirt and charcoal from the half-burned logs. The girl was nowhere to be seen, but at times Jack felt something watching him from the trees and wondered if it was the girl or the red fox he had seen slip now and then between snow-covered boulders.

By midafternoon the pit seemed deep enough to bury a man. Jack scraped the last coals out of the hole and then leaned on the shovel, his cheek resting on his hand. This wasn’t the first grave he’d dug alone. He thought back to a small grave, a tiny lifeless body, not much bigger than a man’s heart.

Jack called for the child. It’s time, he said. Time to put your papa to rest.

She appeared from behind one of the spruce trees.

Is it gone? she asked.

You mean the fire? Yes, it’s gone.

There was no coffin. He didn’t have the lumber to build one and didn’t want to attract too much attention by inquiring in
town. The tarp would have to do. Jack shoved and pulled at the canvas until it broke free of ice, and then he dragged the body across the snow to the grave.

Have you said your goodbyes?

The girl nodded. Jack felt ill. It could have just been the long day of sweating and freezing and no stomach even for lunch. But it didn’t seem right, burying a man without notifying the authorities or signing some piece of paper or at least having a man of the cloth read something from the Bible. He didn’t see a way out. The worst that could happen to this child, besides her father dying in front of her, would be for the authorities to get involved. She’d be shipped off to some orphanage far from these mountains. She seemed to him both powerful and delicate, like a wild thing that thrives in its place but withers when stolen away.

Without another man to help him lower it slowly, Jack shoved the tarp-wrapped body into the hole, where it fell with an ungodly thump.

Shall I cover him up then? he asked.

The girl nodded.

He began shoveling in dirt and black, dead coals. He wondered if he had the strength to finish, but he kept at it, shovelful after shovelful, the girl silent behind him. Occasionally he stamped his feet on the dirt to settle it and the girl joined him, hopping up and down on the grave, her small face frowning, her marten-fur hat hanging down her back by strings tied at her neck.

So it’s done, then, Jack said.

He scraped a few last piles of dirt over the grave.

The girl came to Jack’s side. She closed her eyes, then flung her arms into the air. Snowflakes lighter than feathers scattered across the grave. It was more snow than a child could possibly
hold in her arms, and it filtered down as if from the clear sky above. Jack was silent until the last flakes settled.

When he did speak, his voice was hoarse from the smoke.

In the spring, he said, we can put some pretty rocks here, maybe plant flowers.

The girl nodded and then wrapped her arms around his waist, pressed her face into his coat. Jack stood motionless for a moment, awkward with his arms at his sides, and then he slowly reached around her and patted her softly on the back, smoothed her hair with his rough hand.

There, there. All right. It’s going to be all right. It’s done now.

I
t was unexpected, to look forward to each day. When Mabel woke in the mornings, happy anticipation washed over her and for a moment she would not know its cause. Was this day special for some reason? A birthday? A holiday? Was something planned? Then she would remember—the child might visit.

Mabel was often at the window, but it wasn’t with the melancholy weariness of the previous winter. Now she watched with excitement and hope that the little girl in the fur hat and leather moccasins would appear from the woods. The December days had a certain luminosity and sparkle, like frost on bare branches, alight in the morning just before it melts.

Mabel tempered herself. She imagined running to the girl when she appeared at the edge of the trees and throwing her arms around her, spinning her in circles. But she didn’t. She waited patiently in the cabin and pretended not to notice her arrival. When the child came indoors, Mabel did not scrub her clean, brush the leaves and lichen from her hair, wash her clothes, and dress her anew. It was true—she sometimes pictured the child wearing a lovely ruffled dress and pretty
bows in her hair. Sometimes she even daydreamed about inviting Esther over for tea to show off the girl as if she were her own.

She did none of these things. They were silly fancies that had more to do with her own romantic ideas of childhood than with this mysterious girl. The only real desire she had, once she stripped away the vain and the frivolous, was to touch the child, to stroke the girl’s cheek, to hold her close and deeply breathe in her scent of mountain air. But she contented herself with the child’s smiles, and each morning she watched at the window, hoping this day she would come.

Mabel had not been able to find a pattern in the visits. The child came every other evening for a week or so, but then for two or three days she wouldn’t appear. One morning she came and stayed with Mabel in the kitchen instead of following Jack around the barn. She watched Mabel mix bread dough, and it was as if a songbird had landed on a bedroom windowsill. Mabel did not want to frighten her away by moving too abruptly, so she emulated Jack’s quiet, accepting manner. She spoke softly to the girl. She described how you had to dust the dough in flour and knead it again and again until it was right in the hands, even and elastic. She told the child that Jack’s aunt had taught her how to bake bread, that she had been astounded a woman could be grown and married and not know how.

That evening, the girl stayed for dinner. Jack came in from the barn and Mabel and the child joined him at the table. The girl bowed her head before he had even begun saying the blessing, and Jack and Mabel’s eyes met. She had grown accustomed to their ways.

Jack seemed in an uncommonly good mood, making jokes and talking about his day’s work as they passed the food around the table. At one point, he turned to ask her to hand him the
salt. She was focused on her own plate and didn’t notice. Jack cleared his throat, then tapped lightly on the table.

This is getting silly, he announced.

The child startled. He quieted his tone.

We must call you something. Will it be “girl” forever?

The child was silent. Jack reached over her for the salt, apparently giving up on getting a name from her. Mabel waited, but Jack went back to eating.

Faina, the girl whispered.

What’s that, child? Mabel asked.

My name. It’s Faina.

Will you say it again, more slowly?

Fah-EE-nah.

Each syllable a quiet whisper. Mabel at first could make no sense of the foreign sounds, so many vowels without their consonants, but then she heard a gesture toward words like “far” and “tree” and a breath of air at the end, sounds that were indeed this little girl sitting at their table. Faina.

What does it mean? Mabel asked.

The girl bit her lower lip and frowned.

You must see it, to know.

Then her face brightened.

But I’ll show you. Someday I’ll show you what it means.

Faina. It is a lovely name.

Well there, Jack said. That simplifies things, doesn’t it?

That night, after the child left, they said her name again and again. It began to roll easily off their tongues, and Mabel liked the way it felt in her mouth, the way it whispered in her ear—Did you see how Faina bowed her head at dinner? Isn’t Faina a beautiful child? What will Faina bring next time she visits? They were like children pretending to be mother and father, and Mabel was happy.

Dawn broke silver over the snowdrifts and spruce trees, and Mabel was at the kitchen table trying to sketch the birch basket the girl had brought them. She had it propped against her wooden recipe box so that it tipped toward her, and she tried to remember how it had looked full of wild berries. It had been too long since she had drawn, and the pencil was awkward in her hands, the shading and angles of the drawing all wrong. Frustrated, she put a hand to the back of her neck and stretched.