The Snow Song

by Sally Gardner

  All the breath in her was gone when she reached the forest. She rested her head on the trunk of a beech tree and listened to the wind. The snow was not so deep under the branches of the trees but she strayed off the path, tripped and found herself slipping down a bank, her foot going through ice into a stream, filling her boot with freezing water. Taking care not to damage the violin, she scrambled out and up the bank. The trees were close together and they caught her dress, and the thorny undergrowth, remembering its sharp claws, tore at her flesh. She was now buried in the forest, where day became night and only the snow, glinting with diamonds, lit the way. Where was she going, where could she hide, said a small voice in her. She turned at the sound of a hunting horn to see if she was being followed. There was no one. She went on, hoping her footprints would disappear under fresh snow before anyone came after her.

  Finally, she reached the necklace of white-coated fir trees that guarded the mountain itself and here the snow became deeper again, harder to walk in. Edith was weary and had lost track of time. She thought she heard dogs barking.

  The light was beginning to disappear. There was little chance of her surviving, she’d known that when she started to run. She was ill-dressed for such a place and such weather and already she was so cold she could hardly feel her feet or fingers and it hurt to walk. It doesn’t matter, she told herself, I’m the white bird flying free.

  Now she heard the unmistakable voice of the butcher shouting her name.

  ‘Edith!’ Her name ricocheted from tree to tree.

  She could see the lights of distant lanterns through the branches and knew there were more men with him. Holding tight to the violin and the bow she started to run as the sound of the dogs came ever nearer.

  ‘Over there,’ shouted the butcher.

  She was too exhausted to go any faster. At that moment when she felt all was lost, she saw the outline of two fir trees standing close together. Covered in snow, in the twilight they looked like the skirts of dancing ladies, and without another thought, she pushed through them. She was in a tunnel of soft green branches, and suddenly she was through them and in a clearing. The light seemed brighter there, and a little way off stood a small dwelling in a sea of untouched snow. She went closer, called softly. There was no reply. The door was hanging off its hinges and inside snow dusted the floor. The place was derelict.

  Edith had no more strength left in her. She sat on the floor, the violin in her lap, and waited. It wouldn’t be long now until the butcher arrived. As she was thinking this, she became aware that she couldn’t hear him calling and no dogs were barking. In the peaceful silence, darkness enveloped her and, shivering, she lay down, curled into a ball, the violin next to her. She closed her eyes and let sleep take her in its warm arms.

  On the edge of dreaming, she heard a voice say, ‘I am here, I am beside you.’

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Walking Between Two Worlds

  Edith sees her grandmother, a golden crown on her head. She sits cradling an ancient book. Words seep from its pages, letter by letter they free themselves from sentences.

  ‘Busy little ants,’ her grandmother says. ‘The letters run away, taking the full stops with them.’ She smiles at Edith. ‘So you are here. Better get up. No good lying there tangled in that dress – unless you want to die. Do you want to die? Come on now, conjure yourself up.’

  Edith has no voice to answer her.

  ‘I can hear you all the same,’ her grandmother says. ‘You know this place. I told you of it many times – of its forest, of its cabin. Of the stranger who comes from far away and brings a different kind of magic. He is preparing you a feast.’

  Should she be frightened?

  ‘Stir your bones, girl, stir your bones.’

  Edith kneels. It’s dark but the light of the moon shows her a stove, a chair.

  ‘There’s wood,’ she hears her grandmother say. ‘And look, a dead man’s coat made of good, warm wool.’

  It’s hard fighting sleep. All she wants to do is lie down again. It seems a long journey to the chair. Blind fingers, bone cold, she crawls across the floor until she collides with a mix of wooden legs and soft fabric. A coat, a chair. She laughs and puts the coat round her. It’s lined with sheepskin, its smell familiar, comforting.

  ‘Good with the needle was your love,’ says her grandmother. ‘Warmer now.’

  It seems to Edith that her grandmother’s words ignite the kindling in the stove and catches it alight.

  The room begins to fill with a flock of bleating sheep, or so she imagines, and she can hardly see her grandmother. Counting the sheep, Edith falls asleep.

  She wakes and thinks she’s in a bed. Perhaps this bed is given to all silent women so they might rest awhile before they disappear into dust, their lives marked only by small graves, their footsteps hardly seen in the snow.

  Her limbs are cold, ice fills the centre of her. She is lying on the floor. From here she takes in the cabin. At least it has a roof and two rooms, and the door is now shut firm against the outside world. Through the broken shutters the sun shines in a bright line across the floor. Last night the darkness felt as thick as velvet and she hadn’t been able to see the whole cabin to know how big or small it was. There is a table, two chairs. Her hands shaking, she lights the stove and begins to explore every nook and cranny. There are storage jars filled with oats, barley, flour and dried pulses. Whoever lived here would not leave it with a larder this full.

  In the other room is a bed with a mattress, a fur thrown across it. She wraps the fur round her. At the foot of the bed is a large chest, full of more furs, linens. There’s a knife and a box with six needles, red thread, a thimble and a pair of scissors. Three boxes of candles. A flint box, a bar of soap. How strange – such luxuries to be abandoned. And she thinks, what does it matter? I’m wearing a wedding dress. I ran into a clearing, found a deserted cabin. I fell asleep on a frozen wooden floor.

  Where would she want to be? Here or back in the village, married to the butcher? The thought makes her shudder. No, this place, this interlude, is to be relished, to be enjoyed. She is free here until death claims her.

  Outside the snow glimmers, pink and purple. The forest, a dark impenetrable wall, surrounds her. She opens the door of the cabin to find two dead rabbits there, tied together with a bunch of herbs. The snow shows no sign of footprints. The forest, her grandmother would tell her, is where all healing stories come from and a stranger’s kindness can save your life. Edith listens to the silence; there is no pulse of another life to it. The snow makes the world sleepy in its hibernation.

  Edith spends the morning gathering kindling and bringing in the logs. She puts a battered pan on the stove, skins one of the rabbits and puts its long, pink body in the pan on the stove with the herbs and some barley. She smells it simmering, impatient for it to be cooked. Her stomach sings songs to the battered pan. To take her mind off food she goes out again to collect firewood and berries. She finds mushrooms, for if you dig under the snow the winter larder is still full and frozen.

  When she’s collected a basketful she returns to the cabin. She takes the pan to the table and hungrily sucks the tender flesh from the carcass. Never has a dish tasted as sweet. Sated and tired, she climbs under the fur in all her many layers and sleeps. She dreams that Demetrius is with her, his fingers touching hers.

  He says, ‘I knew you were a walker between two worlds.’

  She thinks her voice might have returned. ‘Where is your violin?’ she asks. He points up and she sees it floating above his head.

  Sunlight flickers across her eyelashes and throws soft shadows in the room. She props herself up. The wood-panelled walls are painted with a scene of mountains and forests and she can’t remember if they were painted when she first saw the room. There are bears and, if you look, wolves and eagles. It seems to her that the shepherd and his sheep are moving from field to field. She wonders if this is Demetrius’ doing, if it was he who left the rabbits. Had he watc
hed over her while she was sleeping?

  She wakes as it is getting dark, surprised she’s slept so long. What a strange moon it is that shines on her tonight. She lights a candle and takes the rabbit bones out of the stock and puts them by the stove to dry. She makes a soup from what remains. It tastes so good. Sweet rabbit, thank you for your life.

  The snow badgers the windows, rattles the door. She looks up and half expects to hear the stamp of Demetrius’ feet, his voice saying, ‘My love.’ That night she stays close to the stove. When the bones are dry she lays them out on the table as if by reassembling the rabbit she might, as in one of her grandmother’s stories, bring it back to life. They don’t quite lie down, these bones that once hopped and jumped.

  Edith puts the violin under her chin. It feels to her that an unseen hand guides the bow across the strings and plays a tune so infectious that she begins to dance. She dances until she is too hot in her coat. She takes it off and dances herself wild. She stops suddenly. She’s heard something, someone. She puts down the bow and picks up the knife, her mind playing tricks in the dark. She waits and wonders if her playing might have brought the devil to her.

  There is no one there. In the cupboard she finds plum brandy among some bottles and she pours a little into a cup. She takes a sip and then another.

  This moment of consciousness is the beginning.

  For a while, gifts are left for her – a pheasant, a hare, a partridge – and the snow always covers the tracks of whoever brought them. A part of her says Demetrius is beside her and she wonders at how he makes such magic happen. When the gifts cease to arrive she becomes a huntress. She makes a trap and catches a partridge; both she and the bird surprised at the audacity of her actions. Triumphant, she brings it home, kills it and plucks it. She saves the feathers to make a headdress.

  She keeps the cabin warm; there are enough logs, enough food, and winter has bedded itself down. Edith wishes she could speak and tell Demetrius she isn’t frightened. She would say, ‘Whatever happens, I will be ready.’

  She takes pieces of fur from the chest and makes a pattern for a hat. In the candlelight, close to the stove, she stitches.

  Days fall into each other. The routine of life is ruled by the need for warmth and food. Sleep is a blessing. She has no concept of how much of winter has passed and how much is still to come. Some nights, curled up in the bed as the wind and snow whistle into the cabin, she sees herself hidden in a vast forest, part of a spinning world suspended in space. None of it matters and all of it matters. She becomes braver, stronger, growing into the unknown parts of herself that have always been there. It feels, she thinks, like finding your house has more rooms than you knew. She has become a hunter. She becomes a survivor.

  The snow is falling and, wearing her hat, she builds a snowman and then a snowwoman to keep him company. In the forest she finds decoration for them until these visitors look almost real, then she silently addresses them as if they were her old friends.

  ‘When will he be here?’ she asks the snowwoman who wears an antler skull on her head.

  ‘I saw him when your back was turned,’ the snowwoman replies.

  She asks the snowman with his rabbit hat, ‘Does he see me?’

  ‘He looked in your direction,’ the snowman says.

  She asks the snowwomen if he came searching for his violin.

  ‘Yes, he put it under his chin to play you a lullaby but you were already asleep.’

  This pretence near defeats her. She feels her longing for Demetrius as an ache inside her.

  He is dead. I saw him dead. I know he is dead.

  She crumbles into the snow. This one thought is all it takes to pull down her dreams and she is overwhelmed by a terrible sense of abandonment. What will she do? Go back down the mountain? Where would she go? Back to her village and the vengeance of the butcher?

  She makes mushroom soup with the stock from a pheasant and goes to bed, hoping she’ll dream of him.

  She dresses. A ray of weak sunshine turns the snow pink. She makes porridge from the oats and dreams of honey to sweeten it. Because I’m silent, it doesn’t mean there are no words in me. You just can’t hear me. Because I can’t see you, it doesn’t mean you’re not here. I know you are. You are in everything that has kept me safe and given me a place of rest so I might gather the missing words.

  The silence is shattered by the barking of dogs, the shouts of men, a barrage of sound that startles Edith’s senses. She hears the rustle of trees, the thud of snow and in the clearing a bear cub stops, terrified, and cries into the forest. Even before Edith sees the huntsmen, she has one arm in the coat, and is half out of the cabin. Conscious only of the bear, the small vulnerable bear, she lifts the animal; the weight of the tiny creature causes her to stumble. She smells the forest in its fur, smells its fear. She straightens and turns back to the cabin, the little bear clinging to its rescuer.

  Two huntsmen appear in the clearing, their guns levelled at her.

  One of them, who has a feather in his hat, shouts, ‘Put it down. It’s our kill. A fair chase. Put the bear down.’

  Edith stands her ground. The bear nuzzles into her coat, whimpering. She recognises the other man. He’s the mayor’s son. He lowers his gun.

  The huntsman with a feather in his hat does not. He shouts, louder this time, ‘Did you hear me, girl?’

  The mayor’s son is staring at Edith. Then he quickly looks about him and back the way he came.

  ‘Leave it,’ he says. ‘We’ve lost our party.’

  ‘We’ve spent the morning chasing it,’ says the huntsman with the feather. ‘It’s my kill.’

  ‘It’s not much of a bear,’ says the mayor’s son.

  The other turns on him. ‘What’s wrong with you?’ He moves towards Edith but the mayor’s son takes hold of his jacket.

  ‘She doesn’t speak,’ he says. ‘Her name is Edith – she’s a ghost.’

  The huntsman lowers his gun.

  ‘Edith? You mean the village girl who ran away from her wedding?’

  The mayor’s son nods. ‘Come on,’ he says, and there is panic in his voice. ‘Let’s find the hunting party.’

  ‘No, wait,’ says the other. ‘We’ve caught something more significant than a bear.’

  ‘She’s a ghost.’

  The huntsman with the feather waves his friend away. He’s looking at Edith, eyeing her up.

  ‘She seems to me to be made of flesh and blood,’ he says. His tongue slowly wets his lips. ‘And if she is a ghost, then it wouldn’t matter what I did to her, would it?’

  ‘She’s cursed,’ says the mayor’s son. ‘I’m going. Do what you want – you always do.’

  Edith watches him as he runs into the forest.

  The huntsman steps closer. ‘Curses, like chickens, come home to roost. Don’t you agree?’

  The bear cub starts to wriggle and Edith lets it down onto the ground. She is aware now that something is behind her.

  The huntsman looks up in disbelief at what he sees. He fumbles for his gun, his finger finds the trigger. Without a thought Edith runs at him. The gun goes off, the shot ricochets through the forest, echoes in the mountain. Crows fly from the trees, darkening the sky. The huntsman has fallen to the ground. When he looks up he sees a bear towering over Edith. She doesn’t move; she shows no fear.

  The huntsman finds his feet but loses his hat and turns to run but the bear lurches towards him and catches him with a swipe. His screams are lost in the bear’s roar. He drops his gun and, clutching the side of his face, stumbles into the forest, his blood speckling the snow. Only then does Edith slowly turn. The bear towers above her and she bows her head as it drops to the ground and disappears into the forest, the bear cub safe on its mother’s back.

  It begins to snow, flake by feathery flake, until the blood is covered with a dusting of white and no one would know that the hunted and the hunters had been there. A new page is ready to be written on. Silence, thinks Edith, is like the snow: it co
vers secrets, makes the unacceptable acceptable. She picks up the gun and the feather from the huntsman’s hat then sits on the step of the cabin listening to the snow. She hears in it a gentle sound that calms her. The snow is singing softly, the forest settling back into itself. She stays there until the heat in her is gone, grateful for her new boots and the sheepskin-lined coat, for the cabin. The primaeval forest with its murmuring pines is gathering the darkness to it and she hears the howl of a wolf. She fears there is little time left. The huntsmen will be back bringing the butcher with them. She doesn’t doubt it.

  Demetrius must be somewhere not far from here, she thinks. Even though his face was unseen, he was with me, I heard his voice. What a thin veil of moon and stars divides us from a different heaven that holds a thread of possibilities. Be near me again, be near me.

  The hope in her is gone but still she has no desire to leave. She heard what the mayor’s son called her – a ghost – but he would use another word in the village. A word that would strike at the heart of all the villagers’ superstition. He would say she was one of the bloodless.

  In the gloaming hour the forest looks on solemnly. Numb with cold, Edith hears again the chiming, the soft ringing of bells, just as she had on her wedding day. Holding out her hand she catches the snowflakes. Then, laughing, she opens her arms and spins round and round to the song of the snow. Tilting back her head she sees the moon rise pregnant with the night.

  Giddy from spinning, she stops and in the long shadows sees him. She looks again in case her eyes have tricked her. He stands by the trees, his little dog at his heels. Edith dares not move in case a breath might mean the loss of him. Her eyes never leave his as he comes to her. She is certain she will find him made of ice and illusions. But his arms are strong about her, his eyes as blue as a winter sky, his lips warm, his kisses filled with love.