Snow, page 2
We ate the bird with our fingers. I ate every morsel I could find and licked the grease from my fingers one by one, not giving a rat’s eye about manners, which I probably should have seeing as it was the first meal I’d eaten in company in three years.
And once that bird hit my belly, my thoughts came alive again.
‘Did you take my knife?’ I asked the hunter as I wiped my hands on my pants.
‘I did,’ he replied.
‘Why?’
‘I’m not keen on haven you poke holes in me when I’m trying to catch a nap.’
‘Why should I kill you? You’ve done me none but favours to now. And I’m glad to be out of that tower and away from her.’
The hunter did not answer and I could not read his face.
But I already knew the answer. It had been in the pit of my belly this whole time. Once the bird meat landed on top of it, it rose up and finally made its way to my mind.
The hunter stood and started kicking snow over the fire. It hissed and smoked in a sodden fury at being put out.
‘What are you going to do to me?’
My fear overtook what little wisdom I had gained in my twelve years and I stood up with my fists clenched. ‘Tell me, what are your orders, Hunter?’
‘You’re to be kild and your warm heart brought back to her as proof,’ he said flatly, squatting near the smoking fire.
‘Why now, when I been locked up all these years? I would have died from not seeing the sky before too much longer, then she could have laid me in the tomb beside my father and been done with it.’
‘Seems she couldn’t wait. Seems the matter became pressing.’
‘Something to do with the riders that arrived a night ago?’ I asked him.
The hunter looked into my face then. ‘What do you know about that?’
‘Nothen but muffled words I couldn’t hear proper,’ I conceded.
‘My orders were to get you away fast and quiet. And bring her back something to show I’d done my work,’ he finished, shaking his head and prodding the dying fire with the toe of his boot.
When I looked into his face then I saw a boy rather than the man he’d appeared to be in the dark of night. He were only a few years older than me, but grown proper having been outside in the fresh air eating roasted birds as he liked, and lengthening his legs with walking. My legs were like the rest of me, small from being shut up like a pet tortoise in a bowl. The hunter wore his hair shaved at the sides to show markings set under the skin that told he were a first-born son, his father dead but his mother living still. Three sisters came after him and the years in his trade showed as six arrow-shaped marks at his left temple. I could also see his life hadn’t been all as he’d liked because a scar ran across his nose and under his eye and there were shadows beneath his cheekbones that showed he’d known worry. Which, given his present task, I took for true. Something about the weave of his trousers brought back a memory.
‘Aren’t you the boy come with his mother and sisters to the chateau kitchen, years ago, looking for work?’
The hunter looked up at me.
‘I remember your boots were too big for you.’
‘You were there?’
‘I were hid under the table, keeping out of the way.’
‘The boots belonged to my father afore me.’
‘What happened to him soas he had no need of his boots anymore?’
The hunter looked away to the trees. ‘He weren’t a good man and all I can say is he maybe shouldn’t have taught me so well which end of an axe works better than the other.’
Perhaps the killing of me weren’t the first sorry task the hunter had turned his hand to afore this. The darkness in his face showed me both the good news that he dint take kindly to violence but also the bad news that he’d nevertheless done as he had to. As I understand it, it makes no difference to be kild by someone who doesn’t have the heart for it as by someone who does. The end result is you’re dead and the difference is none.
‘Why give me your fur and feed me? Do you prefer to murder girls with warm blood and full bellies? Are you a monster as well as a hunter?’
I said this fiercely, and as soon as the words left my lips, I knew I’d misjudged. The hunter’s face hardened and too late I perceived that I was making his killing easier if I called him names.
‘Little Queen,’ he sneered, ‘I’m doing my job or else I’m dead. That’s the way of the world now. Stamping your foot and given me orders makes no difference. I have mine from higher than you. The way I see it, it’s your blood or mine. And as I hold all the steel, I’m placing my bets against little girls with none but high and haughty tempers.’
With this the hunter drew his hatchet from his belt and wrapped his fingers around the handle.
I may have lost my blade, but with roasted bird in my belly my wits were returning to me.
‘Why do you call me Little Queen?’
The hunter lowered his chin to his chest. ‘That’s what they call you in the chateau,’ he said. ‘The tenants. They call you the Little Queen in the tower. And they wonder what it was you did to Rain to make her hate you as she does.’
The hunter frowned here, like he’d like to know it too.
I weren’t going to satisfy his curiosity just so he could get to killen me sooner. Besides, all I’d done to make her hate me was be born.
‘That knife were given to me by someone in the chateau who wants to open the odds against hunters with steel.’
He hesitated. ‘It’s true there are those whose sympathies lie more with you than with her. That being no surprise after the way she carries on, making life a misery. Still, she owns the dwellings and the land and there’s few feel like going out on their own. They’d rather hide behind stout walls with safety in numbers than be out in the long nights on their own. Including me. So I’ll be doing my job as paid for.’
‘What does she pay you?’ Asking him questions was keeping my warm heart beating on the right side of my chest and best it stayed that way as long as possible.
‘That’s none of your business, Little Queen. Unless you think you can match it?’ the hunter said, smiling with one side of his face.
I considered my assets. My knife stolen, they were none but the clothes I stood up in and then even the fur borrowed.
‘I’ll claim my father’s house when I’m of age.’
‘It be your word against hers and she’s in possession. No law or lawmakers to back your claim hereabouts.’
‘I’ll wed you when I’m grown,’ I said, taking a gamble. Promises that are a long time coming can be overtaken by fate in the meanwhile. ‘In exchange for my life.’
The hunter scoffed. ‘Could be a while in the waiting,’ he said. ‘Not sure I got that kind of time being as how small you’re starting out. But if you’re offering, then I accept your proposal. I have no appetite for killen children today and she’ll know no difference between your heart and a piglet’s.’
Winning caught me unawares. If he never intended to kill me I’d given my betrothal away for free.
He slid his axe through his belt and turned to leave.
‘Don’t head back the way of the chateau if you value your beating heart or your future husband’s, Little Queen,’ he called over his shoulder. ‘You can keep the dog fur as an engagement gift.’
I’d been furious all my life with Rain, but that was being bested by my fury at the hunter as he turned away from me, stepping into our tracks from the night afore. Outwitted by a hunter was hard for my pride to take. And while my thoughts chased each other around, going nowhere, he was leaving me.
‘Hunter!’ I yelled in a panic. ‘You must leave me my knife or you are killen me anyway. But slow and of cold, and that is meaner than killen me fast and warm.’
The hunter paused. I saw his hand go to his belt as he turned back toward me and then all manner of events happened in one moment.
There was a rush of cold air behind me and I were pushed face-first to the snow, where I lay stunned. A great weight were on my back and I heard a snarling I took to be from a bear. A big one, judging by how I was pinned to the ground, my face smashed into the sharp top layer of snow. Then, just as I were wondering if I could draw my last breath before my ribs were crushed, or whether my throat would be torn out first, the hunter gave a shout and the bear turned. She stepped from my back and started running toward him, but clumsily, for the snow were deep and soft. I raised my head and saw the hunter swing his firearm from his back in one motion, bullet already in the chamber, and squeeze the trigger.
The bear dropped mid-stride, and her last breath left her body afore she fell in the snow.
I climbed to my hands and knees and retched as a surge of fright passed along my nerves. I had sense enough to keep my breakfast in my belly but only by an effort of breathing slow and long. I dug my fingers in the snow to feel the icy cold and bring me back to my senses. It took an effort but slowly the world stopped spinning and I sat back on my heels to take in the scene.
The danger was past but I were sorry to see that saving my life had cost that of a mother bear, for a cub wandered out of the forest and pushed up against the dead body. It were a wee thing, hardly to my knee and still showing all the sweet roundness of a baby.
‘Are you hurt?’ said the hunter to me, and I shook my head. ‘Dammit, dammit,’ he said. ‘I wouldn’t have kild her, if she hadn’t been about to rip off your head, then mine.’
I knelt next to the mother bear and stroked her fur, sayen my sorries, and not ashamed to let the hunter see that I shed tears for such a beautiful creature in spite of her menace. She were only trying to protect her cub, though she were worried for nothing. We must have been camping on her trail and coming across us gave her as much of a scare as she’d given me.
There never used to be such an animal as a bear on these islands but when the cities flooded, all manner of beasts that had been shut in cages for people’s amusement were set free. Not all of them lived, being unsuited for life in this new and different wilderness, but the bears found the land to their liking and prospered, even though they were the first of their kind to walk here.
Like a wild dog’s, a bear’s fur were valued for warmth and not to be left rotting in the snow. And so now the hunter, pushing the cub and me to the side, made quick work of removing that mother bear’s skin. It were too much gore for me to watch and I crossed the clearing, keeping my back to the hunter’s sorry work, and set about reviving the fire he’d kicked over. It gave my fingers something to do and a task for my mind as I recovered my senses from the scare. After a time the hunter bundled up the fur, tying it with leather straps, to be cured by the tanners at the chateau, and took one last thing from the bear as he stood. I saw then that he held the mother bear’s heart, dripping on the bloody mess of snow around what were left of her.
‘I have my proof now,’ he said. ‘You can thank the she-bear for that. You’re free to go, Little Queen. Head west. Look for a camp of miners. I know of no women stopping there but perhaps they will take you in if you offer to work for them. And you may have your blade back.’
With this, the hunter stuck my knife in the snow where he stood and took his leave, bear blood marking his trail.
Snow alone
My father named me for the freshly fallen snow. At the beginning of the clouding over it were just a name, but later it came to feel like a curse, a constant reminder of hardship. The long nights season draws longer every year and when the ground is frosty, there can be no crops planted or harvested. With the rivers and lakes frozen, even drawing water is a chore that takes a whole day. People pray for the sun to once again burn through the thick layers of cumulus between the earth and the heavens but all for nothing. There are no prayers strong enough to lift the sky. They are wasting precious energy they could be using to draw another breath.
I waste no air on prayers. They have done me no good so far.
It were a long cold night that followed after the hunter left. The twilight lingered under the heavily laden boughs of the forest trees. The dying of the day like a trickster, fading slowly and then surprising me by suddenly turning black. I nursed my fire into life and collected damp wood. It burnt, but low.
I’d never heard a bear cub cry before and it broke my heart to hear it now. That cub kneaded what was left of the she-bear but got no comfort as the cold air drew out what was left of her warmth. I wished the cub would come and join me at my fire. I’d have welcomed the company of even a sharp-toothed wild creature such as she as I shivered in my bed of snow. I felt my thoughts slow to a honey-like consistency and a golden liquidy warmth spread through my blood. My eyelids were heavy and it would have been the very peak of pleasure to let them close. But a part of my brain, deep down in the back, sent out a jolt. If I slept then it would be the last thing I did. I were freezing my way to dying and there were only one way to save myself.
I took my knife and crept over to the she-bear carcass, placing a hand on the crying cub, for my own comfort as much as hers. The hunter had left the head and scruff, perhaps as no mistake, because now I took my knife and cut away the fur. When I were done I placed the she-bear’s skull over my own, which fit like a crown forged special for me, and wrapped her scruff around my shoulders. It were still a slimy mess but it brought me up warm in a moment. I crept back to my snow bed by the low fire and passed into dreams of climbing inside the bodies of slain creatures and wrapping myself in their slippery innards. Before the light of the next day came I were aware of the cub, finally come to curl up with me, and with her blessing the visions passed away and we fell into a dreamless slumber.
I woke to the bear baby kneading my front and nuzzling under my furs.
‘There’s none there of what you’re looking for,’ I told her, sitting up and pushing her away. ‘It’s a hard day’s wean you’ve got ahead of you, you silly wee thing.’
The cub sat on her haunches and looked at me scornful liken.
‘Sorry to be the bearer of woeful news but the sooner you get used to it, the better for us both,’ I told her.
There were nothing to be had for my breakfast either. Even the bones of the parrot had been buried by a fresh fall of snow. I brushed the frost off as I stood and stamped my feet to warm them. Now that I had a wealth of two furs, I fashioned myself a skirt from the dog fur by tying it about my waist over my long pants. Then, settling the she-bear head and scruff as comfortable on my head and shoulders as were possible, I looked to the way the hunter had pointed and set off in that direction, sinking ankle-deep in the snow.
It were a day no one remembers when the sun disappeared. A span of a day or two of overcast skies and no one thought anything of it. And then the grey piled up and it were grey upon grey. After a month people were shaking their heads in wonder. Where was the sun?
It were called the clouding over after that. And even now, there are some who look up from their work from time to time, willing the white to part for a glimpse of sunshine. My father told me he’d looked up into clear blue sky over and over without thinking a thing about it but when it was gone he wished he could have every one of those times back to keep them lasting longer.
It were a cold morning to start a march on an empty stomach, and as far as I could tell from her crying, the bear cub was in agreement. As was a habit in my cell I passed the hours walking by letting memories come back to me.
After my mother died, Rain came along. She convinced my father to marry her in secret and made the announcement to me along with the rest of the chateau, like I weren’t even family, let alone my father’s first-and-only daughter. I heard the kitchen girls say that she’d left her own children along with their father. Always looking for greener fields, she were. When she first came she looked on me and weren’t approving of what she saw. I’d been allowed to turn feral, she told my father. He had no ideas about how to raise a girl, she told him. My pony was turned out and instead I were made to wear dresses and sit while my hair was fussed with and I were prodded and poked and plucked until she was satisfied.
My father had swelled up in his joints by then and every movement were painful for him. He couldn’t think how to make a life without my mother so he let himself be told how to be by Rain. As the long nights settled in, it made his pain worse and his new wife soothed him with her honey voice, nothing being too much trouble if it brought him comfort. She doted on him, caring for every need he may or mayn’t even known he had. She ordered him broths and sat with him while he sipped at them, whispering and laughing softly.
At such times I saw them I dint doubt she loved him. He were the only person she was kind toward, and it weren’t just for his house and possessions. But while my father went on getting more and more feeble, she crept in and spread herself about. After she had me smoothed over she set her sights on the chateau, throwing out the tenants she didn’t like the look of and letting stay those who were quick to scramble to her word. She added gilt and glamour to the main house that were not to my liking and she told the tenants what to do as if the words were coming from my father. She told them to grow food. She told them to make heat and power for her or their children would freeze when she cast them out of their homes.
After a while she forbade me visiting my father in case I did something to make things worse, though what that may have been by sitting by his bed and spenden time, I never knew. But she were like a child with elbows spread wide to keep all the cakes to herself, shutting me out and keeping my father’s company for herself. I should have done more but instead I spent as much time out of her sight as I could, in the kitchen with Cook and in the yards, though I weren’t allowed to ride my pony anymore. Instead I did all the feeding of the animals pushed aside by their mothers. There were always goats and lambs crying and it were tedious work to give them the bottle. The hands in charge were of the mind that letting them die were more natural. If the mothers had rejected them, maybe there were a good reason for it, just not one plain enough to see. I weren’t in agreement and took it on myself to gather and feed them all through the day and night. If I came under Rain’s eye after doing it, covered with grit and wearing working clothes, I were subject to her wrath. She couldn’t stand it. I’d be made to sit through more bathing and plucking and poking and straightening and primping and preening and posing.
