Snow in Summer: Fairest of Them All: Fairest of Them All

by Jane Yolen

  Each morning the brothers went off to the mine, where they dug not for coal like most of the miners in Webster County, but for rough jewels like garnets, amethysts, even the occasional ruby and emerald. These they polished at home and then Jakob—with one of the other brothers—would take their finds every few weeks to sell to jewelers in Charleston or Morgantown or Clarksburg.

  And me? At first I filled my days with cleaning the house and sewing missing buttons back on their trousers. I hemmed up Mutti’s dresses to fit me. But that took such a small part of my day. Of course after I discovered Willy’s library tucked away in the closet of the music room—with his name neatly spelled out, both Wilhelm and Willy in a neat and careful hand—I began to read again, reading every book he had in English. The brothers read, too, though much of it was in a foreign language—German, as it turned out, not alien at all.

  When I’d run through all of Willy’s books, I managed to persuade Jakob to find me some other books, from a secondhand bookstore, when he next went on a selling trip.

  “Especially fairy tales,” I told him. “Do you know what I mean—fairy tales?”

  He laughed. His laughter was like a big man’s—full and deep and generous. “Have you heard of the Brothers Grimm?”

  I nodded. “Of course.”

  “Vell, they vere Germans from Hessen, as are ve.”

  I laughed back. “But not miners.”

  “Not miners,” he agreed. “But in Hessen, little Summer, there are more miners than there are fairy-tale makers.”

  “Here in West Virginia, too,” I said, “though they mostly mine coal.”

  As he started out the door, I remembered the thing I’d meant to ask for and had forgotten. “And please also bring back packets of seeds.” I gave him a list I’d made. “I’m going to plant you a garden.”

  Over a month had gone by, and though I kept meaning to leave, I stayed, one happy, fear-free day melting into the next.

  The brothers, though, were more mindful of danger and warned me never to open the door to a stranger in case Stepmama or Hunter came by. As there had been no sign of either, I felt completely safe both in the house and outside of it as well. Inside I had locks on all the doors. Outside I had Ursula. She long ago had forgiven me for tossing the stick at her and now followed me around like a dog. A big dog.

  Did I spare a thought for Papa and Cousin Nancy? I confess they were not at the top of my waking mind. But each night, before sleep, I worried about them and prayed for them till sleep overtook me. My dreams were all green.

  Ursula was my constant companion whenever I went out into the woods to search for ramps or lamb’s-quarter or dandelions and other things in nature’s larder. She followed closely at my heels. And while I gathered any wild greens, stuffing them into my tote bag, she lay down by me and kept a watch. Also she had a nose like a pig for truffles, finding edible plants and mushrooms growing up on tree trunks as well as any honey hives within a mile of the house.

  I started the brothers’ garden on the far side of their cottage, away from the chasm, planting vegetables and flowers, which I knew would be in full bloom even after I was gone. They’d never planted a garden for themselves though I’d found the remains of one.

  “Mutti had a garden,” Klaus explained. “It vas her pride and joy. She never allowed us in it, not to plant nor to reap.”

  Jakob had laughed at that explanation. “Voman’s vork!” he said. “We hadn’t time to care for it after she died.” He took a deep breath. “Or the heart.”

  I shook my head. “So I suppose instead, you buy food in the cities and cart it back here whenever you’re on your jewel trips. So much money spent. And the food all overripe or underdone.” Papa would have said the same.

  Philip held a hand up and tutted at me. “Ve hunt for the pot—grouse and duck and boar.”

  “I fish,” Freddy added. “Brown trout. Yum.”

  “He fishes more than he catches,” said Karl.

  I laughed. Their little spats were always in fun. There was no malice in them. “Growing your own food makes for better eating,” I told them, repeating what I’d learned in home ec class. “And better for you.” I grinned. “Makes you grow big and strong.”

  “Vell, strong perhaps,” said Freddy.

  At that we all howled with laughter.

  While I didn’t have Papa’s perfect gift with green things, I was miles better than the brothers, except for Klaus, who spent every evening after he got back from the mine by my side, learning all he could about gardening. It turned out he had green fingers like Papa’s, if not quite as practiced.

  That pleased me because I knew that even long after I’d left them, my little men would have something to remember me by.

  I got Freddy, Karl, and Philip to put in a fence around the garden to keep it safe from marauding animals though really, we hardly needed it. With Ursula sleeping by the garden at night, we’d no trouble with pests like rabbits, groundhogs, moles, or deer. She’d marked her territory pretty well, and none of them dared come near.

  Was I happy?

  Never happier.

  But happiness can breed complacency, a word that means “smug satisfaction,” or “being unaware of danger.” I relaxed too much into my new life, believing myself completely safe when, in fact, there was nothing safe about it at all.

  It was just days before Willy was to come home from the university for the summer. And it was a week before I’d promised myself I would definitely be off east, heading toward Virginia. I was working as usual out in the side garden. It was so hot under the brilliant sun that I’d tied my hair back under one of Mutti’s colorful scarves and had even taken off the caul bag, shoving it into the pocket of my shirt so it wouldn’t lie heavily on my chest, making me sweat puddles.

  As I bent over the carefully dug rows, disguised by the high grasses outside of the fence, I was all but invisible to any passersby. Though of course no one ever did pass by.

  Ursula dozed by the foot of a nearby birch, quite stuffed with honeycomb that she’d discovered somewhere down the road. She’d brought a bit home as well for the brothers and me, and I’d already stored it in a canning jar. The brothers loved a teaspoon of honey in their porridge bowls.

  My hands were in the dark soil, transplanting some lamb’s-quarters I’d found back in the woods. Lamb’s-quarters—which the brothers called goosefoot—will take over a garden if you’re not careful. But there’s nothing better in salads, as Papa used to say, or steaming it to serve just like spinach. The peas and beans I’d planted were just starting up. Carrots and potatoes, too, their little green shoots pushing through the rich earth. Next I was going to plant the precious squash seeds Jakob had brought back for me. I planned ten hills of them. I’d already explained how they grew to Klaus, who wrote it all down in a little notebook because the root vegetables and the squash would be ready for harvest after I was gone.

  Suddenly, breaking through my garden thoughts, I heard a knock at the front door and a crackling old voice called out, “Anybody home?”

  Ursula was awake in an instant and began a low, rumbling growl. She began to stand, but I put a hand on her shoulder to keep her still.

  “That doesn’t sound like anyone I know,” I whispered to her. “Not Stepmama nor Hunter. But we will be careful nonetheless.”

  Standing, I tried to tidy myself, wiping a dirt-encrusted hand across my forehead because my brow was sweaty. I was in my work clothes, not one of Mutti’s nice dresses—a pair of Willy’s old outgrown trousers and one of his shirts tied up in front, which had become my regular gardening outfit. With the strings of the caul bag hanging out of the pocket of the shirt, I must have been quite a sight.

  An old woman stood at the door. If I looked bad, she looked ten times worse. Her skin was like parchment stretched over brittle bones. Her hair, gray and greasy, hung down to her shoulders. Long, scraggly bangs almost obscured her eyes, which was just as well since the left had a white cast over it. Her cheeks were de
eply sunken; hunger must have been a constant companion. A filthy dress and coat seemed to droop from her stooped shoulders as if from a hanger. Even if the dress and coat had been clean, they wouldn’t have had any color, for years of washing had bleached them both to a uniform gray. Her shoes were broken; the left one had toes showing through and the right heel was half off.

  If I looked like a disaster barely avoided, she looked like the disaster had hit her head-on. Poor woman.

  It didn’t occur to me to ask why she’d come this far up the mountain. She seemed so exhausted, with a pack on her back and a covered willow-weave basket over her left arm, that all I felt was pity, not blame.

  “Grandma,” I said to her, “how long since you’ve last eaten?” Just as the brothers had asked me.

  She put a hand over her breast as if her heart hurt. “I . . . I can’t rightly remember.” Her voice creaked with age.

  “Well, let me bring you out some tea and küchen.” Even though she looked as if what she needed first was a good wash and a lie down, I’d promised the brothers I’d never let anyone into the house. They said it wasn’t safe. And I’m always good as my word.

  I led her by the trembling arm to the bench by the door. “Sit here, ma’am, and I’ll bring you out something to eat. But don’t bolt it, mind, it’s quite rich food. Wouldn’t want to risk you getting sick on it.”

  “You’re a good child,” she said, her crabbed fingers patting my hand.

  Then I went inside.

  I’d no sooner got to the kitchen than I heard footsteps at the door and I turned. She must have been bewildered or perhaps hard of hearing as well as half blind, for she’d tracked after me and she was standing at the door and holding on to the doorjamb as if ready to faint.

  I stood there with the pan holding the freshly baked küchen in my hand, the kettle on the boil behind me, and made a decision. “Oh, you poor thing,” I said. “Sit here at the table before you fall over.”

  She was in the house and already had the pack off her back, the basket held toward me, before I’d finished speaking.

  “Thank you, dear child,” she quavered. “And you must take this as a gift from me for your sweet invitation.”

  I didn’t have the heart to send her back outside into the hot sun now that she was already in the house. It would have been ungracious. And I feared that if I refused her offering, whatever it was, I’d surely hurt her pride. So I swallowed back an exasperated sigh and put out my hand for her gift.

  •27•

  COUSIN NANCY REMEMBERS

  Each night after Summer had gone missing, I got down on my knees and prayed. And each morning before opening the post office, I went to church for confession. Father O’Hare looked annoyed to see me again, entering his side of the confessional with a heavy sigh. I knew he was tired of hearing me say the same thing.

  But I never stopped praying. Or confessing.

  Never.

  Else how would I ever be able to explain it to Ada Mae when we met in heaven? Church doctrine aside, I just knew that’s where she and that precious baby boy were.

  As for where Summer was, well, I refused to believe that she was in heaven with them. Not yet. I would have known it in my heart. I would have felt the pain of it under my breastbone. No, not dead, but surely taken, probably hurt, terrified, beaten down, confined. I couldn’t think enough bad thoughts, which the priest dismissed by giving me some Our Fathers and Hail Marys, more and more each day.

  When Charlie Hatfield finally got around to asking Stepmama in the second week that Summer was gone, the witch said she’d run off with a boy she’d met at church; she didn’t rightly know his name. And that of course she’d hired a private detective to find them and bring them back though she didn’t offer up his name and number.

  “But if they’ve gone and gotten married,” she said in a tight voice, “I expect Snow is no different than her mother, Ada Mae.”

  In that way, she condemned both of them in a single breath, which to me meant she was condemning herself.

  And silly old Charlie Hatfield fell under her spell even as she spoke, and didn’t do anything more about it except send around notices to the towns closest to us to be on the lookout for a girl in a blue dress.

  No amount of my telling Charlie that Summer wasn’t the kind of girl to run off with a boy she just met made an ounce of difference. He was set on believing the witch.

  “And don’t you come around here with your fairy stories anymore, Nan,” he said to me, wagging his finger at me as if he was my pa instead of the little old fat boy in our class who’d never had a single friend because he was a squealer and mean besides.

  And that was that, except for my prayers, till a man out walking his dog on the far side of Elk Mountain found a torn piece of Summer’s blue dress and the ribbon that had been about her waist. They were in a meadow overrun with bear tracks and fresh scat, and much too far from any town for her to have gotten there by any means other than bad business. Though by then—since it had been raining for days—the trail had gone cold. And even a pair of prize bloodhounds brought in from Buckhannon couldn’t find Summer’s scent.

  •28•

  DARKNESS DESCENDS

  The basket was heavier than I expected. And something inside seemed to move about, making a funny buzzing noise. For a moment, I was afraid. But just a moment.

  “What’s inside the basket, ma’am?” I asked.

  “I make little figures that walk about by clockwork,” she said, scissoring a walking motion with her two pointer fingers. “I sell them door-to-door. It keeps body and soul together.”

  “Oh, like our clock.” I pointed to the clock on the wall. Every hour a little clockwork bird came out of a hole singing. The first time I heard it, I was startled, but now I loved to listen to its little song. “The brothers brought it from the old country.”

  She looked sharply at me with her one good eye. “Brothers? Where are they now?” Her voice suddenly sounded stronger.

  “In the mines.” I set the basket down on the table. We could look at her clockwork figures after she’d been fed. I’d take one as a gift, even offer to buy it from her with money the brothers had been setting aside in a tin box over the sink for when I went on my way. After that, I’d send her off. There was something about her that made me uneasy, but not uneasy enough to forget my manners. But go she would have to, before the brothers came home for their dinner, found her in the house, and scolded me for letting her in.

  I cut a slice of the küchen for her and one for me. She took it gratefully and crammed half of it in her mouth at once, as if eager to be getting on.

  I brewed the tea and she washed the second half of the küchen down with that.

  “Thank you, dearie. So delicious,” she said. “Did you make it yourself?”

  I nodded. Klaus had shown me how.

  The old woman stood. “Now pick out your present, and I will let you be.”

  I was somehow suddenly shy, almost reluctant to let her go, the first person other than the brothers I’d spoken to in over a month. But I set that feeling aside because it was more important for both of us that she be gone. Picking up the basket, I propped it in my left arm and lifted the lid.

  The buzzing sound was so loud, I looked in, and there glaring up at me was the largest rattler I’d seen outside of the With Signs church.

  I cried out and dropped the basket as the old woman laughed. Looking up, I saw that she’d ripped the white cast from her bad eye and was now staring at me, her one blue eye and one green eye as venomous-looking as the snake’s, and both full of laughter.

  “Stepmama!” I cried, and at the same time felt something sharp pierce my ankle. Horrified, I looked down. I’d been struck by the rattler.

  She laughed, her voice high and crazed. “The mirror gave you away, child. It said: ‘She lives with six small men who mine,

  And a seventh she will know in time.’

  “It did not take more than a month and a bit of aski
ng around to find you. What Hunter could not do, I surely can. He served me ill and found his doom. The snake has mostly been milked, but there will be enough venom to keep you under and I will take you from here and suck your essence before you die. It would have been better had you given it willingly. But in a few days your essence will be mine. My youth restored. And then the father. And the land. All three. The charm,” she cried out wildly, “the charm’s wound up.”

  Laughing, she came toward me, hands stretched out. I was suddenly terrified to let her touch me, even more than I was afraid of the snake at my foot, so I took the caul out of my shirt pocket, stripped it out of the bag, and flung it in her face. Where it hit her, fire burst forth and seared her blue eye and her ancient face melted like candle wax into a semblance of the Stepmama I knew.

  She screamed, and as she screamed I picked up the frying pan from the table where I’d left it. It was suddenly heavy as a stone, heavy as doom. I had to use two hands but managed to bring it around in front of me, slamming it down again and again on the top of the snake till it let go of my ankle, till it stopped moving, till it was squashed under the heavy iron skillet.

  Dead.

  Dead as I would surely be in a minute.

  In an hour.

  By day’s end.

  I sank to the floor, feeling the poison move up my leg, burning beneath the skin. Death’s arrow, death’s lance, death’s river flowing up my veins, seeking my heart.

  I lay down, sweating, not with fear, no longer with fear, but with the poison.

  Dark descended, though I knew it was day.

  I couldn’t see, but I could still hear.

  I could hear Stepmama still screaming, but quieter now, almost a whimper.

  I could hear Ursula at the door, growling and shaking something beneath her mighty paws and teeth.

  I heard a voice I didn’t recognize shouting, “Drop her! Drop her, you silly bear.”