Snow, page 16
The last of the dusk light faded. With it, the bird choir hushed.
And then a gasp arose from the gathering of people and small cries of wonder went up.
I turned and there you were, Snow. Standing in your black funeral finery, a flush returned to your cheeks, bare feet already freezing on the cold stone of the council’s grand steps.
You stood with a hand pressed to your wound which was oozing bright-red blood through your fingers, your face a picture of confusion.
I was at your side in a few short steps, catching hold as the shock of the cold night set your legs buckling. The crowd was rippling with excitement, people climbing up from their knees and crying out with joy at seeing you standing before them alive instead a dead.
Little Bear came to your side, and now it seemed like she’d known all along. Her laying immovable at your feet weren’t despair but instead a patient vigil.
And then, following Little Bear through the doors, came a great swooping of the bird choir, making a new formation spiralling up into the night sky. The crowd turned their faces to watch in wonder and at that moment, the clouding over parted.
Some fell to their knees again, this time in awe, many having lived their whole lives under the clouds, never seeing the stars. The deep blue-black of the universe were revealed to them and just as it should, it struck them mute. It were mid-winter and the clouds slowly drifted apart, the night sky showing itself for the first time in many long seasons. And above, as if put there for you, hung the star ship under sail.
The mountain
The hunter and I sat in our forest camp, half a day’s walk from the chateau. We’d left the city behind, anxious to get back to the mountain, walking up through fields of tussock grass, washed clean by rain and dried by a sun shining clear out of a blue sky. My wound were healing clean, and my legs worked fine.
The doctor who examined me after I’d risen from my coffin said it were a miracle the bolt missed every artery and organ. And lying still through the icy night as I had chilled me to the bone and stopped the bleeding. Not for the first time, I’d warmed up slow and come back to life.
To me it were the least surprising part about my weeks in the city but the people were overcome with the marvel of it and the coincidence of the clouding over parting at the same time I rose from the dead. They held me responsible for the reappearance of the stars and the moon.
I dint do anything, I kept saying over and over, but it were hopeless. They were convinced and there was nothing I could say to tell them otherwise.
I been dead before and could be I’ll die again in the mountain cold before I leave this life for good. After the clouding over cleared, the hunter and I stayed with Cook while my wound were tended to and healed some. It were a faster recovery in the warmth of Cook’s kitchen than I’d had up in the cave in the mountains. And if I were feverish it was with longing to get back to my forests. As soon as I could place one foot in front of the other, the hunter and I bade Cook goodbye again, tearful this time.
Once beyond the city, Little Bear made us laugh by galloping through the grassy fields in the sunshine that was still a wonder.
‘Maybe we can’t be calling her Little anymore, Snow,’ the hunter said. ‘Look at that roundness there in her middle. She needs a long walk and we’d better be getting started on it.’
Sitting around a low fire in a camp with the hunter brought quiet down on my shoulders like a warm fur. But the hunter weren’t feeling the same contentment. He had a tightness in the corners of his mouth and his gaze was restless.
‘Did you take me to the city thinking you’d hand me over for the reward?’ I asked him. I needed to know.
‘No. I never thought I’d hand you over. But knowing where you were was the only hand I had to play. Remember I told you about your stepmother getting it in her head that the Voyagers had brought a sickness with them that terrible long nights season?
I nodded. I did remember. ‘When she evicted them you took pity and guided them down the mountain.’
The hunter bowed his head.
‘Another group come to the gate soon after. They had travelled long and hard by sea and then over the passes, trying to make it before the end of the long days, but weather descended on them while they were still up high and they lost a lot of people to the cold. They were desperate for shelter by the time they reached our gate. And it was bad luck Rain had so recently turned hard of heart toward Voyagers.
‘I never saw such suffering in people before. The men were barely standing, the women faring little better, but all the same still holden babies on their hips or bound with rags across their backs. They were half-frozen and starving. There was no more walking in them. It weren’t like the ones I’d taken down the mountain. That lot were in good health after staying with us for a time, or as near as they’d been in a while, anyway.
‘Your stepmother came down and took one look at this new group and forbade anyone opening the gate. She said they were infested with disease and likely to die before long anyways. We’d only be drawing it out if we took them in. We hardly got enough for ourselves, she told people, ifen we share with every passing stranger we won’t make it through. And besides, did we want to die of whatever disease these Voyagers were carrying? Hadn’t we already lost enough of our own children?
‘I dint believe for a second she were worried about more people dying. She was only worried about having enough for herself. I argued as best I could, and so did Cook. We said we’d give up our own beds. And I said I’d go and hunt, whatever the conditions. But even to Rain it was clear there was very bad weather setting in and she told me I weren’t going anywhere while that kept up. She told me if I opened the gates I’d be walking out through them and never coming back.
‘The Voyagers dint understand our language, but they understood clear enough they weren’t being let in. The men turned, holding onto their dignity, and the women’s faces turned to stone. It were only the children who let their feelings show. One small girl, standing in the snow bundled in all the layers her folks had to give her, looked into my face and I couldn’t bear to look back into hers. She were no bigger than you when I left you in the forest that day. A memory that dint make me feel none better at the time. I pointed them to the forest, thinking it would give them some cover if they could make it there.
‘It were a deadly storm that came down on us then. The wind ripped roofs off the chateau and froze our animals where they stood. It raged for near on a week. And then it were quiet. All of a sudden liken. You know how that happens, sometimes? You’re near deaf from the racket and then the silence falls and seems almost as loud.
‘As soon as I could, I went out looking for the Voyagers and it dint take long to find them. It’s a scene I can’t ever shake from my memory, no matter how hard I try. And sometimes it comes up and grabs me by the throat. Then I can’t hardly breathe and it’s like I’m standing there all over again.
‘Frozen solid all of them, lying about in the snow. But worst of all, the little girl. She died with her eyes wide open, still looking into my face and seeing nothing there that would save her.
‘Word got back to the city about the death of a group of people seeking refuge and eventually the council sent someone to see. Refusing them hospitality were a crime that weren’t going to go unpunished and your stepmother saw it straight away. She told the officer it were me who’d turned them away. That I was her hunter and in charge of the chateau’s security. That it were my judgement that the Voyagers were diseased and we couldn’t take them in without risking the lives of everyone. She said it made her heartsick to turn them away and she’d cried and got on her knees to beg me to open the gate.
‘I were arrested, to be taken to the city to stand trial. I dint raise any objections to Rain’s lies because in my heart I knew that I was as guilty as she were. It was in my power to let those people in. I dint have to listen to Rain. I could have locked her in her room. But I didn’t, so it were as much my fault as hers they all died. I deserved to be punished as much as anyone. I were tired and heartsick about being the cause of such misery. What kind of a man am I that leaves girls in the snow to die?
‘It were Cook who came and convinced me that there were still some good I could do. She were sure you lived and that it were in my power to protect you from Rain. And it weren’t any trouble for me to slip away, especially when Cook unlocked the door and passed me my firearm and furs, the council officer passed out drunk on her needle beer and neglecting his guarding duties. As I left she told me the world, however disordered it be, does have good people in it, and I should run now and stay away.
‘I hugged her tight then, it being a wonder she’d kept her kind heart all those years in spite of the testing she’d been put through. She always said she stayed to keep on feeding her people and doing what she could to put matters right that had been put wrong by your stepmother. Someone had to, she said.
‘So when we got to the city I proposed an arrangement with Rain. I would face justice for my part in the Voyagers’ deaths in return for her setting you free. But she wouldn’t hear it. Instead she said she’d pardon me in exchange for you. Some cheek offering me a pardon for her crime.’
Leaving the city behind weren’t hard for me or the hunter. It didn’t take long for Fox’s men to arrest Stoat, and with me as witness to my own murder, and others from the chateau to verify the Hunter’s version of how the Voyagers died, Rain were found guilty on all counts by the same panel of judges that heard my trial. This time the outcome was more to my liking.
The hunter and I were pardoned. With Rain convicted, she was no longer entitled to hold land and guardianship of the chateau and the mountain it stood on finally reverted to me. She spent some time in a stone cell but without her power or her people she were a sad creature.
My conscience pulled at me, leaving her shut up, knowing as I did what that were like, even though she’d brought it on herself, and more. But she’d loved my father, of that I were sure. And if looking after him while he died slow and painful were all the good she’d done in her life then it was a mercy to let her live the rest of her days in company with none but her own still small voice.
I made Fox grant a suspension of her sentence and she went to stay with Cook, who opened her kind heart once again.
It were there in Cook’s kitchen she sat when I last saw her, my arm strapped across the wound in my chest. She wore plain clothes and worked at cutting onions in the worst way, slow and dull soas to make you weep. She set the knife down when she saw me.
‘Rain,’ I said, ‘you must tell me of the riders who came to the chateau on the dark night before you sent me to the forest with the hunter. What did they ask of you?’
My stepmother wiped her eyes on a cloth and sniffed. ‘They were looking for a Voyager girl. I asked them, how were I to tell a particular one? There were so many and all looking wretched. They said this one were carrying a child though only a child herself. And that it were many seasons ago. Then I suspected they were looking for your mother, the one who birthed you and died in the doing as your father had told it to me. I said that girl and the baby were long dead before my time. They dint seem to be honest men. The opposite. They were wild of eye, and rough, not from around here. I thought it for your own good they dint hear about you.’
‘Yes, best you order my heart cut from my chest yourself,’ I said.
Rain pursed her lips and turned her face away. ‘That’s all I know, Snow. Leave me be now.’
I sold the land at the base of my mountain to the council soas they could move the city inland. It were the only sensible plan, in that I was in agreement with Fox. There would be a whole quarter set aside for Voyagers seeking refuge. There would also be a permanent base at the high pass to meet travellers and ensure safe passage to the new city. I carried in my pack the title to the mountain chateau, now in my name, plus the money I’d made on the sale of the lowlands. There was more than enough to repair all the roofs and stock the cellars for the long nights that were still coming.
The sky above our camp was clear and the wonder of the moon hanging like a spirit lamp in the heavens meant there was no true darkness in the forest anymore. The snow gleamed and I could even make out the needles on the whispering branches over our heads. The trees were pleased to see us and pulled their limbs in close. During the dark hours, birds that had never seen the moon before called to one another, confused about whether it were night or day.
No one expected the cloud cover to stay away for good, but the blue sky were a marvel no one could leave alone for long, people all over the island pausing in their work and gazing into the vastness, checking it were still there, and drinking it in while it lasted.
My wound ached at the end of the day and I still wore my arm bound across my chest. Now and again my mind unbidden went back to the moment I was shot. The memory rose up in front of me and made my heart race, even though it were long over with.
I was walking away from the party, my dress getting in a tangle around my ankles every few steps, I’d paused at the crossroads to get it free and find my bearings. I weren’t exactly sure which was the way to the sanctuary where my bear were being held. I guessed it be to the east, and just as I turned that way I felt a kick in the back, as if from a horse, but there being none close, I were puzzled. My legs folded under me and I found myself looking up to a sky of racing cloud. I was distracted a moment by the cold wonder and fury of it before my vision were blurred by pain. It bloomed from my back and spread from there til I could no longer tell where it started or ended. Just then a dark figure loomed over me, blocking out the sky.
‘I’ll have that back soas I don’t get chased down and pelted with pebbles for being the one put a bolt through the precious Little Queen.’
Stoat, still working for my stepmother, reached down and I saw he’d put an arrow clean through me. He clasped the shaft, placed a boot on my shoulder as brace, and pulled. The pain of the bolt moving through my flesh from back to front were the last thing I knew. Black closed in and I must have passed out.
I pushed away the memory and went around the fire to sit close to the hunter for comfort. In spite of the beauty of the sparkling cold clear night, he sat with his head hung between his knees.
I took his hand with my good one and waited for him to tell me what were on his mind.
‘You called me monster once and you were right. All I’ve ever been is a hunter, but I never took any pleasure in killen. I always tried to do it quick and clean and always to fill people’s bellies. I’ve kilt to protect those I love as well, when I had to,’ he added, pulling his hand from mine. ‘But those Voyagers, I had a hand in killen them. I did. And that makes me a monster as much her. I had to make it right again, Snow. Somehow.
‘The meeting between me and the man you took for a miner were to try get word back to those Voyagers’ families who died while I stood my watch. I wrote an account and spoke to an agent who transports goods around the island, and sometimes the rest of the world. It was to have been sent back the way those people had come from.
‘I described them as best I could remember. How many men, how many women, children and their ages, anything else I could think of in the manner of distinguishing features.
‘But, Snow, it’s a one-way journey. No one who finishes here turns around and goes back again. All the winds and currents flow the wrong way. And letters, like birds, can’t fly backwards over mountains and oceans.
‘What you saw from Cook’s rooftop that night was the agent giving me back my letter, having found no way to send it. It burns now in my pocket. But I’ll carry it with me so long as I can put one foot in front of the other, to remind me never to let my heart turn cold. I’m finished with leaving children in the snow. I were just lucky when I left you, Little Queen. You being you, and having the touch with the forest and the birds, whatever gift it is that you have, it saved you. But that were no thanks to me. I been sorry ever since, and I’ll be sorry ever more.’
I understood then how the extra cares had come to be written in the lines of the hunter’s face. They were drawn there by his part in Rain’s crimes. By following her orders he were complicit in them. There were no getting around that. My stepmother were a bully, that much was true. But a bully can only get her way when others do her bidding.
‘When I called you a monster I dint know what I were sayen,’ I told him. ‘You saved me from my stepmother, from the she-bear, and dying of cold twice. That’s four lives you saved, no matter they all happen to be mine. How many died in the snow? Were it eight? Nine? Then that’s how many more lives you got yet to save. And the rest of your life to do it.’
When he looked up at me again, there was hope in his dark eyes.
‘Also, I think there may be some who know how to get back to those islands. And we’ll do what we can to find them. You and me.’
I ran my fingers over the lines in his face. I told him that I was sorry for those Voyagers and I was sorry for his suffering.
And I told him we were no longer betrothed. We were wed.
The Successful Release of an Apex Predator: A survey of the new endemic fauna of South and North Zealand
Professor James T. Longfort, Post-Nature, vol. 2, 2072
In the immediate aftermath of the global sea level rises of the late 2030s, many of the species kept in captivity in the former nation of New Zealand were released into the wild. Many did not survive, but some did, migrating and establishing populations throughout the mainland (the larger of the two islands, now known as ‘South’). This article provides a summary of the events surrounding the release of new species and how those have prospered.
After the end of the modern climate era, generally agreed to have dated from the last ice age 7000 years ago to the beginning of the Anthropocene (now officially dated from the catastrophic collapse of west Antarctica that took place in the Southern Hemisphere summer of 2035), there has been a complete change in the fauna inhabiting the islands of North and South Zealand. After the subsequent three-metre rise in sea levels over the ensuing decade, the two islands that sit in the lower south corner of the Pacific Ocean were significantly inundated but the small human communities of the islands were able to adapt more nimbly than many larger, more unwieldy populations elsewhere in the world. However, with the collapse of the fossil fuel industry and the worldwide ban on freight shipping and air travel, the flooded islands, along with many nation-states in similar geographical circumstances, were cut off from the global economy. After the immediate crisis had passed and most of the population had relocated to inland cities, the central government (while it remained so before following the rest of the planet into decentralised, local governing bodies) dropped ‘New’ from the nation’s name to reflect the vastly altered state of the nation’s geography and politics.
