by Eowyn Ivey
“Doesn’t seem right,” Jack said, and winked down at the boy. “A man doesn’t get to catch the fish, but he has to clean them.”
“Can I help, Papa? Please?”
Mabel left the two of them at the creek to go back to the cabin and stoke the fire. Jack leaned heavily on his cane as he shuffled to the water’s edge. The boy lined up the fish in the yellowing grass. Jack took his fold-up knife from his pants pocket. With a hand on his cane, Jack was lowering himself to a crouch when he felt the boy’s small hand on his arm.
“Here, Papa,” the boy said, and though he was too small to be of help, somehow the child’s touch made the pain in Jack’s old bones seem like not much at all.
The boy gave him a grayling, and Jack held it in the palm of his hand as he slid the knife blade beneath the silver skin and sliced open the belly. He showed the boy how to hook a finger in the lower jaw and pull free the glistening entrails. When they tossed them into the clear running water, young salmon darted and nibbled at the strings of intestines. Jack reached into the fish and slid his thumbnail along the spine to break free the line of kidney like a slender blood clot, and he rinsed the blood into the creek water, until his hands ached in the cold.
The boy waited, crouched beside him.
“Last, the scales,” he told the boy, and he showed him how to run the knife blade against the grain. When Jack rinsed the fish in the creek, the small, iridescent scales shimmered and scattered in the water, drifted on the current, and washed up against the rocks like transparent sequins.
“They’re kind of pretty, aren’t they, Papa?” the boy said, a single scale pasted to his fingertip.
“I suppose they are,” Jack said.
George and Esther arrived before nightfall, and as always Esther was talking even as she came in the door and her arms were loaded with jars and towel-wrapped goodies. As they were flouring the grayling and frying them in a buttered cast-iron pan, Jay ran to the window.
“It’s Daddy! Daddy’s here!”
Jay was in his arms before Garrett could take off his coat and hat.
“What did you see, Daddy? What did you see?”
“Well, let me think. Oh, yes. I saw… a wolverine.”
“Don’t tease the boy,” Esther admonished as she flipped the sizzling grayling.
“No teasing. I was way up high, above the tree line, in this little valley I once visited a long time ago. There used to be a wolverine there, but there hasn’t been for years.”
“But you saw one?” the boy asked.
“I did. I’d tied the horse off to a tree and was hiking up over these rocks when, on this ridge, a wolverine was looking down at me. I thought it might jump on my head. He had claws this long.” Garrett held up his index finger and thumb to indicate several inches.
“Were you scared?”
“No. No. And he didn’t jump on my head. He just looked at me with his yellow eyes. Then he turned, real slow, and sort of loped away and over the ridge.”
“What else did you see, Daddy? What else?”
“I guess a wolverine’s not enough,” Esther said and chuckled.
“Well, not much else. Except for those clouds over the mountains. Looks like snow.”
The boy looked out the window, then back to his father, with a disappointed expression. “It’s not snowing.”
“Don’t worry. Bet you anything it’ll come tonight,” Garrett said.
All through dinner, the boy could hardly stay in his seat, even as they commended him on the good-tasting fish he had helped catch.
“Settle down, Jay,” Esther said. “You know a watched sky never snows. Go sit with Grandpa George. Maybe he’ll share his piece of cake with you.”
George playfully scowled at the boy, then grabbed him in a bear hug and tickled him.
“Good God! Watch out for the dishes,” Esther said. “You’re going to knock the whole table over.”
After dessert, George and Esther began to gather their belongings and talk of going home, and the boy looked crestfallen. He always protested when these gatherings ended, and he once said they should all live together in Jack and Mabel’s cabin so that no one would ever have to leave.
Mabel helped Esther put on her coat, Jack shook hands with George, and Garrett said he and Jay would come out to get the horses and hitch the wagon.
“Put your hat on, Little Jack,” Mabel called after him, but the boy had already run out the door.
Jack was stacking dishes on the table when he heard the wagon begin to creak down the dirt road, and then he heard another sound—yips and laughter. Mabel was at the kitchen window.
Jack peered over her shoulder. At first he could see only their reflections in the windowpane, but then he began to see past their two old faces to make out the figures in the night.
Garrett stood near the barn with a lantern in his hand, and nearby the boy was leaping and throwing his arms up to the sky. Even from inside the log cabin, Jack could hear the boy’s whoops and cheers. The dog bowed playfully beside the boy, barked, then jumped and ran in circles, too.
As Jack’s eyes grew accustomed to the darkness, he saw the ground covered in white and, in the light of Garrett’s lantern, snowflakes spinning and falling.
He took hold of Mabel’s hand, and when she turned to him, he saw in her eyes the joy and sorrow of a lifetime.
“It’s snowing,” she said.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
First and foremost, thank you to Sam, who, always believed. To my daughter, Grace, whose incredible imagination fed my own. To my mother, Julie LeMay, a poet who taught me the magic of words and the power of empathy. To my father, John LeMay, who taught me to love wild places, wild creatures, and, always, books. And to my baby brother, Forrest LeMay, who first taught me a child’s love.
Immense gratitude to my editors, Andrea Walker and Reagan Arthur, and my agent, Jeff Kleinman of Folio Literary Management—there are not enough pages to describe all the talent, enthusiasm, and diligence you put into this project. Thank you to everyone at Reagan Arthur Books/Little, Brown and Company, especially Amanda Tobier, Marlena Bittner, Terry Adams, Tracy Williams, Karen Torres, Heather Fain, and Michael Pietsch. Thank you to the publishers, booksellers, and readers around the world who have welcomed Faina. And to Alessandro Gottardo and Keith Hayes, thank you for a book cover I want to frame and hang on my wall.
To my first, kind readers—John Straley, Victoria Curey Naegele, Rindi White, and Melissa Behnke—your encouragement and advice were invaluable.
Several books influenced my writing—The snow Child as retold by Freya Littledale and illustrated by Barbara Lavallee; Russian Lacquer, Legends and Fairy Tales by Lucy Maxym, in particular the story of “Snegurochka”; and “Little Daughter of the Snow” from Arthur Ransome’s Old Peter’s Russian Tales.
Many people throughout my life have taught, inspired, and supported me as a writer as I worked toward this first novel: James and Michele Hungiville, Jacqueline LeMay, Michael Hungiville, Kachemak Bay Writers’ Conference, David Cheezem and my friends and customers at Fireside Books, Andromeda Romano-Lax and 49 Writers, and the Baers. To the Betties—the first six out of the box are yours.
And the parting glass I raise in memory of our dear friend Laura Mitchell McDonald (November 26, 1973–January 1, 2007).
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Eowyn LeMay Ivey was raised in Alaska and continues to live there with her husband and two daughters. She received her B.A. in journalism through the honors program at Western Washington University and worked for nearly ten years as an award-winning reporter at the Frontiersman newspaper. She is a bookseller at Fireside Books in Palmer, Alaska. This is her first novel.
Contents
Front Cover Image
Welcome
Dedication
Part 1
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
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Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Part 2
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Part 3
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Copyright
Copyright
The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.
Copyright © 2012 by Eowyn Ivey
Cover design by Keith Hayes. Copyright © 2012 by Hachette Book Group, Inc.
Cover illustration by Alessandro Gottardo (Shout)
All rights reserved. In accordance with the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, the scanning, uploading, and electronic sharing of any part of this book without the permission of the publisher is unlawful piracy and theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), prior written permission must be obtained by contacting the publisher at [email protected]. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.
Reagan Arthur Books/Little, Brown and Company
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First e-book edition: February 2012
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Excerpt from “The Snow Child” copyright © 1989 by Freya Littledale. First appeared in The Snow Child, published by Scholastic, Inc. Reprinted by permission of Curtis Brown, Ltd. All rights reserved.
ISBN 978-0-316-19295-8
