Mercy Snow

by Tiffany Baker

  Hannah sniffled and let the door slam behind her. “What are those?” She crept closer to the birds.

  “Pheasant. You haven’t seen Gert’s ghost around here lately, have you?”

  Hannah shook her head, her ragged curls swaying. “Not since we scattered her ashes. But that doesn’t mean she’s gone.”

  Mercy laid one bird down and began on another. She needed to be careful about what she said next. “You know, it’s not really a good idea to talk about things like our ghost at school with all your new friends.”

  Hannah’s face darkened, and she looked down at her feet. “That’s okay. I don’t really have any friends.”

  Mercy’s heart seized with this information, but her fingers kept a steady rhythm as she pulled out feather after feather. “It’s not a good idea to talk about what happens out here with anyone.” Hannah crossed over to the little cot and bounced on it, making the springs squeak. Mercy, busy with her birds, winced at the noise but didn’t look up. “Stop that. It’s annoying.” There was no reply from Hannah, but at least the springs quieted. “You don’t ever chat to the mill owner’s wife, do you?” Mercy knew Hannah’s gregarious ways all too well. The child would converse the ear off a housefly, but she was ominously mute now.

  “No,” the girl said at last.

  Mercy glanced up to see Hannah’s bottom sticking up in the air as she peered under the cot on her hands and knees. She clucked her tongue. “Get up off of there. Floor’s filthy. And God knows what’s living under that cot. Could be spiders or who knows what all.” Spiders, Mercy recalled, were one of Hannah’s greatest fears, after water. But she didn’t seem to care about them now. “Did you hear me? I said get up before you tear your nightdress to shreds and I have to spend the better part of a morning fixing it.”

  Hannah finally obeyed, wrapping her parka tight around her. Mercy squinted through the dusty air. “What are you looking for?”

  Hannah righted herself and blushed. “Nothing.”

  Mercy remembered the string of carved stars she’d confiscated and given to Dena. Clearly Hannah was hoping for further treasure. “Anything you find out here isn’t necessarily yours, do you got that? You tell me if there’s anything here that didn’t used to be. Do you promise?” Hannah nodded, miserable, and Mercy went back to her work. “You better get your bones inside before they freeze solid. I’ll be in soon. And then you best get off to school. Are you going to the library after?”

  “Probably.”

  Mercy knew she should be glad that Hannah was finally settled in a proper school and that she should be grateful, too, for the refuge the little brick library provided for her sister, especially now that the cold was crystallizing ever harder, but there was something about the heaviness of the place and the way the windows fronted the building that reminded Mercy too much of the jail that Zeke had spent time in. Also, June now knew that Hannah spent time there. Mercy turned to her sister. “Remember what I just said. Keep your mouth shut, okay?”

  “Okay.”

  “Okay to what?”

  Hannah flung open the rickety door, once again letting in a burst of stabbing cold. “Okay to everything.” Stuck in her mess of feathers, Mercy watched her little sister dart back into the gray morning, resisting the urge to run after her and marveling at how only she could make it sound like she was saying both yes and no to everything in the whole world at once.

  Chapter Eleven

  Hannah had a terrible secret. She wasn’t really attending school. That first morning she’d been so excited as Mercy had walked with her down the road into town to catch the bus, but the school’s looming hall, with its shiny linoleum floors and the roaming packs of pigtailed, beribboned girls and the slamming of metal lockers had set off a shaking inside her that she’d never known before.

  She’d worn her best jeans for the first day, freshly patched by Mercy, and she’d combed her wavy hair smooth, but Hannah could tell that it wasn’t enough. Her shirt collar was stained a noxious yellow, her teeth felt scummy, and dirt ringed her cuticles. She clutched the doorframe as more kids pushed their way past her, knocking her with their backpacks.

  “Move it, greaseball,” a boy with crooked teeth and fat cheeks growled at her, and Hannah obliged, easing herself farther to the side while she tried to work up the courage to thrust her way into a universe she could tell wanted less than nothing to do with her.

  The shriek of bells reverberated, and before she knew what she was doing, Hannah was running away from that sterile throat of corridor and back into the wide open air she trusted. At first she lingered in the fields behind the school, amusing herself with making snow angels and a snowman, and then, when the cold started to nibble at her, she set off walking back to Titan Falls, where she would find a warm seat for herself in the little library, which was full of cozy nooks between dark rows of shelves. She could get lost and then lost again in books, trailing her fingers over story after story she had yet to read. And best of all, none of them were her own.

  It was easy as peaches to slip by Miss Dinton, the elderly spinster librarian. For one thing, she was half deaf, and for another, sleep overcame her in midmorning after a cup of chamomile and a graham cracker. Hannah waited, peeking through a side window until she spied the old woman’s head bobbing forward on her chest, and then she tiptoed past the front desk and made her way to the second floor, where the shelves narrowed and all the best books were hidden.

  For a week this strategy was successful. Every morning Hannah walked down Devil’s Slide Road swinging a cloth sack into which Mercy had put a nub of crab apple or a rough heel of food-bank bread, pretending she was off to catch the bus. Instead she loitered in the sanctuary of the woods, digging pinecones out of the snow and snapping icy, low-hanging twigs. When she knew that the coast was clear, she skipped into town, taking care to skirt the side of the road in case she needed to make a dash for cover. Hannah’s talent wasn’t just seeing ghosts, it turned out. She knew how to be one, too.

  She discovered the mythology section in the library and happily tore through the Odyssey and a book of Norse legends. Then, opposite a shelf of American history, she happened upon a collection of fairy tales, which was where June found her, hunched over an illustrated page, her lip trapped between her front teeth in concentration. June noted this and smiled. Nate used to do the same thing when he was young.

  When June first spied the child hopping through the shrubbery opposite her house, she thought she might be seeing things. Panicked, she recalled the rumors going around town that wolves had been spotted in the area, but as her vision focused, she quickly realized she was simply staring at the Snow girl. She watched with fascination as the child disappeared out of her field of view, wondering where she might be headed. Clearly not to school—another violation of the proper upbringing June could see the child was being denied. The next morning she waited at her window at the same time, breathing shallowly against the glass and exhaling when she once again spotted Hannah’s small dancing figure. On the fourth day, she followed Hannah, though she had already figured out where she must be going.

  She smiled now and stepped closer to Hannah in the library, walking very slowly so as not to startle the girl. “Hello there,” she said, squatting down so she was eye level with the child.

  Hannah looked up from the illustrated page she was poring over. Her face was filthy, June saw, and her hair looked like it hadn’t been brushed in a week. “How long have you been here?” June asked, though she could have answered the question herself. She wanted to see if Hannah would tell her the truth, if the pull she felt toward the child was somehow reciprocal. If it was, she decided, she would give herself permission to interfere just a little—offering the child some food, maybe, or buying her a new hat. She didn’t get the answer she was expecting.

  Hannah blinked, caught between the dreamworld of her book and the sterner angles of the library. “Only for two pages.”

  June hid her smile. The child was so thin. She loo
ked like she could blow away in a hard wind. “Have you eaten today?”

  Hannah puckered her lips. “I had a bowl of oats at home.”

  June pictured a soggy mass of grayish grains. Back in her kitchen, she had half a ginger cake and a round of sugar-powdered cookies smeared with strawberry jam. She leaned closer. “Are you still hungry now?” She pictured fixing a tray of dainty tea sandwiches filled with cucumbers and cress and eggy mayonnaise.

  For a split second, Hannah’s face turned savage. Her cheeks angled stark as a wolf’s, and the sockets of her eyes seemed to darken. “Yes,” she whispered.

  June held her breath and stretched out an open hand. “Do you want to come with me?” She remembered all the summer afternoons when Suzie and Nate would tear through the front hall in their filthy sneakers, screaming for sandwiches, for cookies and lemonade. While she had been in the thick of them, the sweetness of those moments had been impossible to fully recognize, the way you never knew what your own voice sounded like until you heard it played back on an answering machine or a videotape. Suzie was gone, dead and buried, but against all logic here was another child in front of June, needy in the worst way, ripe for loving. One girl in the place of another, June thought. What was wrong with that? It was resurrection at its simplest.

  Hannah hesitated, as if she sensed that they were lingering at a dangerous crossroads. If she accepted June’s invitation, it would mean betraying the trust of Mercy. How many times had she warned Hannah not to mingle? How many times had she painted the dangers of strangers? Hannah knew that something bad had happened to her sister in the woods with a pair of men and that Zeke had paid the price for it, but surely June, who trailed the sugary scent of vanilla, was different. Surely she couldn’t be anything like the disguised stepmother painted on the page of the book Hannah was reading, who hid an apple behind her back and smiled to show teeth that were black and broken. Hannah licked her lips. “Okay,” she finally said, unfolding her legs and gathering her coat.

  “Do you want to bring your book?” June nodded at the volume Hannah was still holding. “I can help you check it out.”

  Hannah considered. Up until they’d moved to Titan Falls, all the stories she’d ever read, she had stolen, not borrowed. Then she’d been stuck carrying the guilty weight of them. It had never occurred to her until now to script her own adventure. Solemnly she slid the book into its place on the shelf, squeezing the witch and her apple back into darkness, suspending them in mid-villainy until the next reader came along.

  “No,” she said, reaching up and taking June’s hand, trying not to thrill at the velvet whiteness of it. It was the hand of a queen who could summon magic and spells or keep them hidden in a fold of brocade. It was a hand beautiful enough to tempt fate. “I’m pretty sure I know what happens next.”

  But June did not end up taking Hannah home. Instead, once they got outside the library and the bright air rushed up through her sinuses, June began to think through all the dangers of letting the likes of Hannah Snow through her front door. For one thing, someone might too easily see them. And then the child might steal something or make notes for her sister to come back and hoist something later, or she might leave something behind that would betray her visit—a stray trinket or wayward footprint from her filthy boots. June frowned. How would she explain her sudden private fondness for the littlest Snow to a mean-eyed jury of townswomen when she could barely begin to account for that affection herself?

  Glancing about to make sure no one was watching, June led Hannah around the shadowed side of the library. She put her hands on Hannah’s thin shoulders and leaned down so their two faces were level. She had an idea. “How would you like to go eat in a restaurant?”

  Hannah’s eyes lit up. “Oh, yes.”

  June pushed her farther into the shadows. “Wonderful. Why don’t you let me go fetch my car? You start walking out of town, back toward Devil’s Slide Road, and I’ll come along and collect you.”

  Hannah looked doubtful—she generally avoided Devil’s Slide Road during school hours—but the lure of hot food was too great, and she soon agreed to June’s plan. To quell the little seed of unease that had begun to sprout in her belly, she reasoned with herself while she trudged the few blocks out of town. She couldn’t understand what Mercy’s objections to June were. The mill owner’s wife seemed lovely to her. She smelled good. Her honey hair was shiny as an otter’s and held back with the prettiest pair of tortoiseshell combs, and she always bent down when she was talking to Hannah, as if she were about to share a delicious secret.

  In the car, though, they didn’t speak much. Hannah fought the urge to duck when they drove by the spot in the woods where their encampment was, but the trailer was tucked well down from the road, she knew. Anyway, Mercy was probably out roaming the woods, searching for food.

  They drove to Berlin. It was bigger than most places Hannah ever went. She stared out the car window as June negotiated Main Street, gazing at the graceful façades of the buildings. A good portion of them were abandoned. Others were still inhabited but sinking in on themselves. Hannah wondered if living pressed up so tightly against a bunch of strangers’ wishes and dreams changed your own.

  June pulled in to a parking slot. “Are you ready?” She smiled down at Hannah. How good it felt to be in charge of a child again. “Do you have your mittens?”

  Hannah blushed. “Oh, I forgot them.” In truth, she’d lately been wearing a cast-off pair of men’s leather work gloves that were comically too big on her and not even very warm.

  June didn’t seem to be fooled. Her stare turned more probing. “You forgot them or you don’t have any?”

  Hannah began to squirm in her seat. She had to pee, she realized, but was too shy to ask. For the first time, she felt a small flicker of fear when it came to June. Maybe the woman really did have a poison apple up her sleeve. But before Hannah could explore that thought further, June’s expression changed to one of tenderness. She reached up and stroked Hannah’s cheek. “Of course you don’t have any. No one thinks of you, do they, Hannah? Not really. How about if I knit you a pair? What color do you like?”

  Hannah answered straightaway. “Green.” It was the color that she knew best, the one she saw vibrating behind her eyelids when she closed them to sleep at night, the hue of acre after acre of trees blurring by the RV windows.

  June scrunched up her nose. “Green? Really? For such a pretty girl like you? Wouldn’t you like pink?”

  Hannah blushed with pleasure. Maybe pink was better.

  They browsed up and down the shops on the street, peering in windows at the displays. June bought a tube of lipstick at the chemist and a blue plastic comb with flowers painted on it for Hannah, as well as a package of barrettes. In another store she bought Hannah a watch with a white plastic strap and a picture of Cinderella on its face—an object of such breathtaking beauty that Hannah lost the ability to speak. June wanted to purchase her some new boots, but Hannah demurred. It would be one thing to hide a watch but another thing entirely to try to explain to Mercy where brand-spanking-new footwear had come from. Luckily, her stomach started growling and June took her to eat.

  They went to an old-fashioned soda fountain where the booths were covered in soft blue leather and the stools in cherry red vinyl and the floor was a checkerboard of black and white tiles that made Hannah dizzy to look at. She was relieved when June asked for a booth, but soon she was squirming again, the need to pee having returned tenfold now that the excitement of shopping was over.

  She cleared her throat, her cheeks reddening. “I really have to go to the bathroom,” she whispered, and to her immense gratitude June simply raised her eyebrows and pointed toward the back of the restaurant.

  When Hannah returned, a waitress was looming over the table while June perused the menu. Hannah studied the woman. She had snow-blond hair piled up on her head as airy and light as a cream puff and a complexion the color of strawberries and cream. At first glance Hannah thought she must
be young, but closer inspection revealed faint purplish smears underneath the woman’s heavy-lidded eyes and the kind of broad hips that suggested she’d borne a child. When she spoke, there was the hint of an accent, though her English was perfect. Her name tag said BRYGA.

  “We have onion soup on special today. And Reuben sandwiches.”

  June flicked her menu closed. She didn’t look at the woman. “I’ll have a chopped salad and an iced tea.”

  The waitress wrote the order down on her pad. Every now and then, she examined June through the fringe of her thick black eyelashes, as if committing her face to memory. She seemed extremely nervous. “And what would you like?” She turned her gaze on Hannah.

  Panicked, Hannah opened her menu upside down, the print swimming before her eyes. The waitress laughed and turned it right side up for her. “So many choices, I know, for a little girl like you. Why aren’t you in school today?”

  June scowled and interrupted her. “She’ll have a grilled cheese with french fries and a chocolate shake.”

  Chastised, the waitress blushed and snapped her pad closed. “Sure thing.” She took one last, deep look at June and then bustled off to place their order. June unfolded her paper napkin onto her lap, then reached across the table and handed Hannah hers. “What do you think about that woman?” she asked, jutting her chin at the disappearing plump hips of the waitress.

  “She’s pretty. Kind of dainty.” Like one of those fancy pieces of cake in that case on the counter, Hannah thought.

  June pursed her lips in thought. “She’s Russian, I bet. Or maybe Polish. Her people are anyway. They have their own church across town, decorated with onion domes and everything. For many years it was closed, but they restored it and opened it again. I bet she attends it.” June’s eyes followed the waitress as she bustled behind the long counter, watching her almost as if she recognized her from some other context, but not quite.

  The North swam with an odd mixture of souls, Hannah knew very well. In the insular world of the backwoods, Acadian loggers still spoke their strange clipped French, bands of Italian-Americans had one another’s backs, and Slavs of all kinds muttered away half in English and half in their complicated tongues. What did a person have to do to quit being a stranger? Hannah wondered. What made anyone belong to one spot of earth?