The Snow Song

by Sally Gardner

  Flora had a mouth full of pins when they heard a loud knocking on the front door. Taking the pins from her mouth, she asked, ‘Shall I see who it is?’

  Edith shook her head. She knew it was the butcher come to shout at her or worse for having broken the cuckoo clock.

  ‘Where’s Edith?’ He sounded angry.

  They could hear the cabinet maker complaining, then what the men were saying was lost in a muffled conversation.

  Edith braced herself. She stood tall as the bedroom door was thrown open.

  ‘Why did you do that to the present I gave you? Do you know how…’

  He stopped, his rage instantly evaporating as he stared at the vision before him. Edith was almost unrecognisable and even more desirable than when he’d last seen her.

  Flora said, ‘It’s unlucky for the groom to see the bride in her wedding gown before the ceremony.’

  Her words broke some spell for the butcher shook himself and without another word he left, ignoring the cabinet maker who went back to bed.

  Flora closed Edith’s bedroom door.

  ‘What was that about?’ said Flora, not expecting an answer. ‘Now, put on your shoes and I’ll fix the hem.’

  The shoes belonged to Lena, but Edith wasn’t able to find them. Her boots, she realised, were missing too.

  ‘Never mind,’ said Flora. She helped Edith to stand on a chest while she pinned the hem. She unlaced Edith who quickly changed back into her embroidered skirt, blouse and bodice. She sat on the bed as Flora folded everything away. When she’d finished she sat next to Edith.

  ‘There’s a reason that I wanted to come early this morning,’ she whispered. ‘We’ve been thinking, my brother and I. We’ve decided to help you escape from the village. So tomorrow my brother will be here before dawn. Look for his lantern. I have some money I can give you.’ Edith shook her head. ‘Is it because you want to marry the butcher?’ Edith shook her head vigorously. ‘Is it because you’re worried that the butcher would take revenge on us?’

  Edith nodded emphatically.

  Flora took Edith’s hands. ‘My brother and I aren’t staying in this village. Come the spring, we’ll be gone. I think we can weather the storm with the butcher. We are probably the only people here who owe him nothing. So just be ready. Don’t look so worried.’

  She gazed at Edith for a moment then said, ‘I too have kept silent. There’s no one in this village I can tell except you — not because you have no voice but because you listen. Even when I’m saying far too much you hear me. It’s a gift you have — to hold the words of others and to understand without judgement. Which is more than can be said for the priest.’

  Edith gently squeezed her hand.

  ‘It’s about my brother, the blacksmith. I’ve loved him all my life and he me. There was no one else I ever wanted to be with. When our parents died we began to sleep together in the same bed and… and… I was very ashamed of what we’d done and we agreed it would never happen again. It was hard for both of us. Then one day we found a box of my father’s papers and there it was: the man I thought was my brother was gypsy-born and had been sold to my father in exchange for three packets of tobacco.

  ‘After that, we slept together and made sure no one in the village found out. In the spring I would go to work in the town and we began to save so that one day we might live there. A year ago, I found I was pregnant. We took the paper with us to a lawyer and asked if we could marry. He said that if the letter was authentic, he could see no reason why not.

  ‘I gave birth to a little girl. We couldn’t bring her home so we arranged that she would board at the Schmidts’. She’s nine months old and we plan to move away from here in the spring, start afresh with our baby. I’ve told no one this but you. Don’t stay. This village is a place of ghosts, it will suck the life from you. Tomorrow,’ Flora whispered, ‘you will be gone. Think of that.’

  It was late afternoon and already the night was falling in on them when the cabinet maker emerged from his bed. Edith pointed at his boots then at her own homemade shoes and held up her hands, questioningly.

  ‘How should I know?’ said her father.

  Edith felt like screaming. If she had a voice she would scream so loudly the windows would shatter and he would be putting his hands over his ears.

  ‘Those shoes will do nicely,’ he said, putting on his coat. She pulled at him and he turned on her and pushed her away. ‘The butcher took them as a precaution. He doesn’t want you running off. I want you married, and when you’re married, he will buy you a new pair of boots.’

  If I had the strength, thought Edith, I’d throw you out of this house. I would make you crawl on your hands and knees to the butcher and bring my boots back.

  The cuckoo clock whirred into life. The dancing couple came out silently, the woodman chopped silently, but there was no cuckoo to mark the passing hour.

  Concluding it was broken, the cabinet maker opened the little door and stuck his finger in. ‘It’s gone,’ he said. ‘The cuckoo’s gone. It must’ve flown away.’

  Edith spent the evening trying to improve the homemade shoes. Then she burst into silent laughter and went into her grandmother’s bedroom. For warmth, she’d brought the pig in as well as the hens. Edith opened Grandmother’s chest and, under layers of clothes, embroidered tablecloths, nightgowns and blouses, she found what she was looking for: her grandmother’s boots.

  That night the snow fell heavy, the wind chasing it into every crack and cranny in the house. Edith waited in the dark for the dawn, for the light of a lantern. And knew before daybreak that the blacksmith wasn’t coming. The blizzard made the journey impossible. She went to bed, curled into herself and wept. Nature had locked and bolted the door. There would be no escape for her.

  She woke to find the world quiet, the light different; she got up and pulled back the shutters. The village lay buried in drifts of snow that brought with it an unearthly hush. It looked to Edith as if a new world was being fashioned, the old one buried.

  ‘Edith!’ Misha called from the verandah. ‘I need your help.’ He came into the kitchen. ‘Should the pig be in here?’

  Edith nodded.

  ‘Listen, there isn’t much time. The mountain is talking. It’s cracking. I told the blacksmith and he too hears strange sounds. I think it’s a sign there’ll be an avalanche.’

  Edith listened and didn’t wait. She put on her grandmother’s boots, her coat and shawl and, with Misha’s help, shoved the pig into her father’s room.

  ‘Only once, well before I was born, did such a catastrophe come near our village,’ said Misha as they trudged through the deep snow, the wind blowing it one way then the other. ‘The worst of it happened to the east. There were no houses there then but now the house of the miller’s son is there. I went this morning to tell him it would be best if he and Lena left and went somewhere safer. He threw me out, told me I was an idiot. I don’t know what to do. I thought if you went… I know you can’t talk but…’ He stopped. ‘I’m worried about Lena.’

  Edith set off towards the house of the miller’s son and Misha was about to follow when she shook her head. He said something that she didn’t catch in the whirling wind and after a few steps she looked back and Misha was gone.

  The further she went, the more the houses disappeared into the snow. By the time she saw Lena’s house, her black skirt was white and her feet and hands freezing. Now she could no longer hear the mountain, only the miller’s son shouting. Edith banged on the front door and waited. The miller’s son stopped shouting and she banged again and again until at last he opened it. Uninvited, Edith went into the house.

  ‘What do you want?’ said the miller’s son. ‘It’s no one else’s business what goes on between man and wife.’

  Lena was holding her face, sobbing, but the moment she saw Edith she fetched her shawl.

  ‘You can’t leave in this weather, Lena,’ said the miller’s son, standing in front of the door. Edith stared at him, unblinking.
He shouted, ‘I have the right to punish my wife. A woman needs to know her place.’

  And Edith’s eyes never left his until he moved out of the way. Lena took Edith’s arm as they set off.

  The miller’s son laughed. ‘You won’t get far. And I might not have a mind to open the door when you come back, freezing, begging to be let in.’

  He slammed the door and turned the key in the lock. He can’t keep out an avalanche, thought Edith.

  Lena sobbed silently, her body shaking, her head bowed, but she matched Edith’s determined steps. The sky was grey with snow and in all the whiteness everything looked the same. The path they had taken was unclear. Edith held tight to Lena’s hand and knew that she hadn’t enough clothes on for this weather. It was the baker’s shop she saw first. The main street was deserted; no one would venture out in this weather. The snow in the cabinet maker’s yard was up to the verandah. She opened the door and the warmth that greeted them possessed a presence, the ghost of her grandmother waiting to hold them in her warm embrace.

  Edith found clothes for them both to change into. Lena not only had a black eye but bruises on her arms.

  ‘Everything I do is wrong,’ she said. ‘And I think he knows he’s not the baby’s father.’

  Edith shook her head; she doubted that the miller’s son had the wit to work out that the child wasn’t his. If he did, it was a truth so buried in him he wouldn’t know what to make of it.

  Lena was still shaking. ‘The food isn’t cooked to his liking and he always wants something I haven’t made. His mother told me that I don’t keep house the way I should and he said this morning he wants his mother there when the baby is born as I wouldn’t know what to do for the best.’

  Edith put her arms around Lena and gently held her. She looked so broken.

  It was midday when the cabinet maker rose from his bed, seemingly oblivious to the pig.

  ‘What happened to your eye?’ he said, sitting down in front of a bowl of soup.

  Edith didn’t bring wine so he got up and fetched a bottle. He had just pulled the cork when the soup dishes started to move on the table.

  ‘What’s that?’

  Edith knew. She opened the cupboard under the stairs and gestured to Lena and her father to go inside. They crouched there as Edith crawled in after them and closed the door.

  ‘The mountain giant is awake,’ said the cabinet maker.

  ‘Why are we in here?’ said Lena.

  ‘It’s the strongest part of the house,’ said the cabinet maker.

  They heard a roar as if the mountain had found its voice.

  ‘It’s started,’ said the cabinet maker. ‘It’s the sleeping dragon. Or perhaps the devil’s scholar who lives at the heart of the mountain. Or perhaps, daughter,’ he put the bottle to his lips, ‘perhaps it’s your wedding dress that’s the cause. I’m right, aren’t I?’

  The answer was furious. It vibrated through the house, rolled over the rooftops, shattering windows with a wave of snow and all the debris it had gathered in its path. Stones, trees, everything and anything came upon them with the speed of revenge. Then just as fast came the silence, a terrifying quiet.

  As Misha had predicted, the avalanche had come from the eastern slope. A sea of snow thundered down the mountain with ferocious momentum, uprooting trees as if they were kindling, rocks stripping the side of the mountain of its thick winter coat. The sheer force and speed had exploded through the house of the miller’s son, burying what remained in deep, churned snow, and still it rolled onwards in a wave of majestic fury down the mountain towards the town. The farms below that had taken a generation to establish were destroyed in an instant. Only the wide-eyed penned animals knew what was coming. As for Edith’s village, the debris from the avalanche cascaded over the rooftops, shattered windows, and peppered the buildings with small rocks. It not only shook the earth, it shook everything and everybody, and nothing would feel safe again.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Three Coffins

  Lena’s mother, hearing her daughter was alive, rushed to the cabinet maker’s house, tears streaming down her cheeks.

  ‘Oh, your face,’ she said to Lena, seeing the marks. ‘You’ve been injured.’

  ‘Yes, Mother. This is what my husband did to me after Misha came to tell us to leave.’

  ‘Why?’ asked her mother.

  ‘Because he didn’t believe Misha when he said there would be an avalanche.’

  ‘You can understand that,’ said Lena’s mother.

  ‘What can you understand?’ asked Lena. ‘Misha coming to the house or my husband giving me a black eye?’

  ‘There, there,’ said her mother. ‘It’s shock, that’s all.’

  ‘No,’ said Lena. ‘Even if my husband is alive, I am not going back to live with him again. Never.’

  She undid her blouse.

  ‘What are you doing?’ said her mother. ‘Don’t take your blouse off.’ Embarrassed, she looked to Edith for support. ‘Thank you, Edith, for bringing…’ She stopped when she saw the bruises on her daughter’s arms and back. ‘I’m sure he only did that because he cares for you.’

  ‘Do you really believe that, Mother?’ said Lena. ‘He didn’t care for me at all.’

  ‘Calm yourself, Lena. Let me take you home.’

  This is why so many of Grandmother’s stories are about women escaping their mothers, lovers and princes, and transforming themselves into someone else, thought Edith. Without such stories what future would any girl have on this mountain? Lena had been lost. She had grown out of the story told her by her mother into a story she told herself.

  ‘You never wished that I might be happy,’ said Lena. ‘All you wanted, all his mother wanted, all I thought I wanted was a baby.’ She wiped her eyes. ‘The miller’s son couldn’t even give me that.’

  Edith put an arm around her and pointed to her bedroom, then to herself.

  ‘You wouldn’t mind?’ Lena asked Edith.

  Edith shook her head.

  ‘Mind what?’ asked Lena’s mother.

  ‘I’m staying here.’

  Her mother was shocked. ‘No you’re not, you’re coming home, you must. What would I tell the neighbours?’

  Lena laughed. ‘Tell them your daughter is having Misha’s baby. Tell them I love him, not the miller’s son.’

  Words are like avalanches, thought Edith. Boulders of truth come crashing down on family stories until all is rubble.

  The widow slapped Lena across the face. ‘If what you say is true, there is a word for a girl like you. A word.’

  ‘What I say is true. And there is a word for a husband like mine,’ said Lena. ‘A word.’

  Her mother left, bright red with rage.

  Lena started to shake. ‘I’ve never spoken to her like that. I wouldn’t have dared before today. She won’t forgive me.’

  She will, thought Edith.

  Later the doctor called, sent by Lena’s mother to make sure the baby was unharmed.

  In the frantic days following the disaster, the community came together with spades and poles and dogs to find the bodies of the missing. Vanda was there, desperately searching for her son, her tears frozen on her face. At night she was the last to leave.

  The mayor made enquiries in order to find out where the missing persons had been when the avalanche struck. The miller told him, shamefaced, that early on the morning of the avalanche, Misha had come to his house.

  ‘Far too early – it was only just light. I mean, no one but a madman would be out in such a blizzard. He told me he’d been to my son’s place to warn him.’

  ‘To warn him of what?’ asked the mayor.

  ‘The avalanche. He said he’d told my son the snow was cracking and that he and Lena were in danger.’ The miller admitted that, like his son, he’d sent Misha away, adding, ‘After all, the boy’s an idiot.’

  His wife had agreed that Misha’s warning was nonsense.

  The miller repeated her last words as she left. ‘
I’m going to see if my son is safe. His useless wife won’t know what to do.’

  She never returned.

  After a week of digging, two bodies were recovered from the wreckage of the house. The doctor said he thought that the miller’s son and his mother hadn’t suffered much, that it would have been a quick death. Misha remained missing and was thought to be dead. The search for him was called off. The villagers would have to wait until the spring for the snow to return his body. Only Vanda went on digging.

  People said, ‘That’s what happens when you have a guilty conscience.’

  ‘I know why you’re silent,’ Lena said to Edith. ‘It’s because there are no words to describe the grief you feel.’ Lena took her hand. ‘Misha’s alive,’ she whispered. ‘He will be back.’

  It seemed most unlikely to Edith. For what good reason would he disappear into the mountain during an avalanche?

  Lena’s mother came again to the cabinet maker’s house, full of righteous indignation. She’d heard of the last words of the miller’s wife.

  ‘I’ve made your room ready and found your old cradle in the attic,’ she said.

  Lena said nothing but she went home with her mother.

  What was said can’t be unsaid, thought Edith, and Lena’s mother would have had to dig a deep grave within her to bury the knowledge of who the father of her grandchild was. She would sow many small lies over the truth.

  For once Edith’s father had employment. Two bodies found, three coffins made. When they were ready, the blacksmith, who was also the village undertaker, made sure the bodies were washed, dressed in their finest clothes and laid out in the coffins that he then took on a sleigh to the church to await the funerals.

  On Sunday the village gathered for the service. The open coffins lay side by side while the villagers said their farewells and when the lids were hammered down, the blacksmith took them back to the forge where they would stay in an outhouse until the snow melted and the earth was ready to receive them. One empty coffin remained with the cabinet maker, waiting for Misha’s body to be discovered.