by Rene Denfeld
Mr. B lifted the metal bar and ran at her through the trees, his feet curiously graceful in the antiquated snowshoes.
“Run, Naomi!” Ranger Dave yelled, hoarsely. “Run now!”
With a sudden give the spoon handle slid all the way under the latch and the last screws popped out. The hinge was now unattached to the trapdoor.
She was free.
The snow girl scrambled around, moving fast now, piling all her furs and blankets into a mountain on the shelf, desperate to get enough height so she could push the trapdoor open and pull her way out.
Naomi charged up the natural trail they had been following.
She saw trees and brush rushing by, a pattern of bark, the white snow. She ran, feeling her legs churn the air as they did long before, only now the muscles were singing with strength.
She could hear him behind her. The trapper was more adept at the snowshoes—but she was lighter, and much faster. She gained a little distance. She knew she could not outlast him for long. Was he deliberately falling back?
She burst through the trees and was suddenly in a small opening in the dense forest, with a small crude cabin hidden in the trees. The low gray light made everything seem like it was bathed in softness.
The Hallsetter cabin.
Naomi ran into the cabin, the door slamming behind her. Faint light seeped around the edges of blankets nailed over the windows. The room had a heavy, familiar smell to her, from the times it was too late: it was the smell of butchering. She hoped it was just animals.
She quickly took in a rough wood table with a long bench. A rusted cast-iron sink was fed with a cracked rubber hose. A bed showed behind a faded curtain. There was a bucket of offal under the sink.
There was someone else in the dark cabin. She could feel it.
Naomi stopped, panting. “Madison?”
Near the back wall was a trapdoor, flung open. A lock dangled off a broken hinge.
“Madison!” Naomi looked around the cabin. “I am here to take you home.”
From under the bed, where she had quickly scrambled to hide, the snow girl heard the woman. It was odd that the name she called was the same as that of the girl in her fairy tales. How did the woman know that?
Snow girl frowned, her heart beating. Madison does not exist here.
She could hear the creak of snow outside, the squeal of the door as it slammed open.
Mr. B was inside the cabin.
Naomi felt it before she heard him—the trapper was behind her. She felt the metal bar swoosh over her head, close enough to raise her hair. There was a grunt of anger.
Naomi knew she only had an instant—she was whirling, lunging away.
But the trapper was faster, breathing hard in her ear. He had one hand in her hair, looped, and was pulling her back towards him, his hand gaining grip again on the metal bar.
Naomi remembered her training. She fell back against him, a dead weight, not fighting to get away but doing the opposite of what he expected, knocking him off balance.
Quick as a snake she slammed backwards, knocking him to the ground. She heard the metal bar clatter to the floor. He fell but had her foot. She went falling face-first to the floor, and he was on top of her. She scrambled to fight back, her hands flailing against a body that felt rank, as if pulled out of the bottom of the earth. As some babies always recall the taste of mother’s milk, sewn into their bone, so the child finder recalled this, the very first memory:
Terror.
Fight back, her body said. This is when we stop running.
Under the bed, lying next to an old box, the snow girl heard the two fighting. It sounded like two wild animals in the room, smashing into the floor.
The woman cried in pain.
Mr. B can’t hear you, snow girl wished she could tell the woman.
In her hand the snow girl clutched the long silver knife Mr. B used to skin the animals.
The trapper was on top of her, his hands scrambling for her throat. Without hesitation Naomi snaked her head forward and, feeling the flesh of his wrist, bit hard. Blood filled her mouth.
The trapper made a surprised sound, like a hurt animal.
She gouged the trapper in the eyes, and when he pulled back she punched him hard in the one place that men never expect—the windpipe.
He gasped, doubled up, and reared back, and Naomi again punched him hard in the windpipe. Rolling out from under him, she quickly grabbed the back of his hair at the bottom of his neck and with both hands slammed his face on the ground. She could feel his nose burst against the floor. She rubbed his face against the wood, trying to bloody his eyes so he could not see.
She was rolling, trying to get away, but he was quicker, and again she felt his hand on her, grabbing her jacket, hearing it rip. Again he drove her to the floor, hard, and a feeling welled inside Naomi she had not felt for a long time.
It was helplessness.
Suddenly the trapper froze. Both of them looked up to see, standing in front of them, a little girl in filthy clothing two sizes too small, with a bruised face and dirty blond hair. Tears were running down her dirty cheeks, and she was trembling.
With outstretched, offering hands, she held a knife.
The look on his face. What was it? snow girl wondered.
A plea, wonder, hope?
Mr. B slowly rose off the woman, almost forgotten now. He stood in front of her, and there was that look on his face, something she had never seen before.
He held his hand out for the knife.
Now she knew what the look was. It was fear.
The woman was rising, too, but like a perched animal, ready for the run. Her eyes met the snow girl’s.
He saw the glance, the way they traded lives. His face changed to fury, and he moved towards the girl.
The woman bolted off the floor, pushing the snow girl hard out of the way behind her, to protect her. The snow girl felt the woman reach for the knife and her own palm releasing the handle as the woman whirled and faced Mr. B.
The knife was now in the woman’s hand.
Mr. B was still moving fast towards them.
The snow girl watched as the razor-sharp knife, whetted on the gray stone all these years, slid through his open jacket all the way to the handle, right under his heart.
He stopped and leaned against the woman, as if asking for help. Still holding on to the knife handle, the woman gently lowered him to the floor.
Once, a long time ago, a boy went missing in the Skookum National Forest. His name was Brian Owens, and he had just turned seven. He had been born deaf.
His parents had decided to take a long scenic drive into the mountains. It was spring and unusually warm in town. A picnic was in order. But when they got in the mountains they realized their folly. They had headed back towards town, joking among themselves about the picnic in the snow that never happened.
They had stopped at a store on the side of the road, and while his parents were looking around, little Brian had wandered outside and disappeared.
His tiny tracks led into the parking lot filled with the marks of snowshoes—and then they vanished. There were only the footprints of various hunters, passing in all directions to and from the store.
Search parties hunted for weeks, even up into the high mountain ranges where there was no way Brian could have wandered. The searchers stopped trying to yell, knowing the child could not hear. His mom said little Brian had just started to learn. He could write the first letter of his name. He was just beginning to read lips. He knew only the sight of his own name.
One search party knocked on the door of a cabin they found, by pure chance, hidden in the dark forest. A surly older trapper named Walter Hallsetter had answered.
He knew nothing, he said.
Below a little boy lay in a cold cellar. The boy could not hear. He had no way of knowing that anyone had come looking for him. All he knew was he had left the store, and wandering outside, he saw an old man in the parking lot, staring at him. Before
the boy could run, the old man had him, dragging him into the woods. In the trees he tied his hands, gagged his mouth, and threw him over his shoulder. Unable to yell, unaware he even could, the boy was quickly carried into the mountains.
He later forgot where he came from, but someplace deep in his bones he remembered how he came to be.
He learned terrible pain from the old man, and years later, long after he had forgotten his past, he learned how to trap, and eventually he learned to kill. But he never learned to love. Until the day when, tracking far away from the cabin near the ravine, he spotted in the distance a scrap of pink in the snow. Stumbling into a run, he raced to find a little girl lying in the snow, her cheeks already white with frost.
Mr. B lay on the floor, panting with his final breaths. He looked like an animal in a trap. His confused eyes studied the woman above him.
Naomi remembered the poster in the ranger’s office, and the article in the local paper, and Earl Strikes in the store saying, He’s deaf.
Her face softened.
“Brian Owens,” she said, and if he couldn’t hear what she said, his eyes followed her mother lips as they formed the words he had been waiting for his entire life.
His name. He closed his eyes.
The snow girl crouched next to Mr. B, watching the knife handle tremble and then stop.
The snow girl felt her own chest, heard the beating of her heart, wondering if this meant she would die now, too. She touched her captor’s body, tentatively, and then again. She put her hand on his chest in the gesture she always made. Be still, that gesture said.
Naomi watched as the girl began to sob, silently, in relief, fear, and grief, leaning over her captor, her cheeks pink with tears.
The girl was trying to make her mouth move, but it had been three years since she had known speech.
“The snaw girhhlll,” she kept saying, in a cracked, broken voice. “The snaw girhhlll.”
“The snow girl.” Naomi finally understood.
Madison Culver turned to look at her. In her face was a small dawn. A story was unfolding: a story of truth.
“Yes.” Naomi smiled. “You.”
You, her heart said, as the miles and earth began to move again. You, as the trees unfolded to a sky. You, as scent and light awakened.
Me.
Falling snow was filling their tracks, but Madison knew the land. They followed the threads and Madison’s knowledge. It was still afternoon, but felt much later. Naomi’s legs shook from exhaustion and trauma.
They reached the place where Ranger Dave had gotten caught in the trap. He was gone. The snow was wet with blood. Naomi looked at the opened trap. There were bits of flesh in the teeth. Naomi felt admiration. Ranger Dave, apparently, had courage.
The trail of blood led back down into the woods, towards the store.
“It’s okay,” she told Madison, who was looking at the scene with bland eyes. It occurred to Naomi that to the girl this was ordinary.
There was noise at the edge of the clearing. Naomi stopped Madison.
It was the Murphy brothers, materializing through the trees, holding rifles. Mick Murphy smiled at her, and then gaped to see Madison, like a magic sprite in the woods.
“Ranger made it to the store,” Mick Murphy said. “He’s gonna be all right. Earl called us to come here to find you. Hey there, little girl. Wanna go home?”
He reached to lift her, but it was to Naomi that Madison turned with raised arms.
“Not long now,” Mick Murphy told the group, leading them out, as Madison clung to Naomi’s chest, her hair against her cheek. “Not long at all.”
At the store Earl was beside himself, rushing for water to wash, calling the state police. An ambulance had already come for Ranger Dave.
Naomi didn’t want to wait. She took Madison home.
“Mommy?”
Madison’s voice started as a disbelieving whisper from the backseat and became a huge shout as she barreled from the car door and went running up the steps. “Mommy!”
Her mother burst through the door like her heart had exploded.
It was a funeral, of sorts, in the woods. The end of every successful case was like this, Naomi knew: the birth of a recovered child came with a kind of death, a story ending.
She waited outside the cabin as Detective Winfield and his team finished clearing the area—the bright yellow tape looked garish in the somber woods.
Ranger Dave had discharged himself from the hospital, against doctor’s orders, to come watch. The doctors had managed to save his hand, though the healing would be long and painful. His face was pale. His arm was in a sling. She could see the future years on him, and wished he would leave this place. Find a new land, a new life.
The crime team brought out the stiff body of Brian Owens, now zipped into a plastic shroud, and dumped it unceremoniously in the snow outside. A clear evidence bag holding the bloody knife was dropped next to it.
“I’m sorry,” she told Ranger Dave, who stared at the body.
“What are you sorry for?” he asked, and she could see the ache in his throat.
“For not being what you need.”
He looked away, and she could see the reflection of trees in his eyes.
“I had it once,” he said softly.
“You can have it again,” she said. “You will. Just not here. This whole forest—it’s not big enough for you or your love. I think Sarah would have wanted you to know that it’s time for you to leave.”
“Where should I go?”
Naomi gestured through the trees as if at a thousand roads.
Ranger Dave looked at his fingers protruding from the cast on his wrist. The edge of his wedding band was visible.
He rotated the ring, as he had done before. “Maybe it’s time to take this off.”
“It might increase your dating chances,” Naomi joked.
“I’ve been thinking of Arizona, maybe Nevada. I always liked the desert.”
“I did not see that coming,” Naomi said, and they both laughed.
From inside the cabin they could hear banging: the trapdoor was being pulled off so the police could examine the cellar. When the police were all done, Earl Strikes had told them, he and the Murphy brothers planned to come up here and burn down the cabin. It wasn’t right, they claimed, to have such a sickness stand.
Naomi wasn’t sure it mattered. The next case was already calling her. It was all she could think about, because it would be a different kind of case, more personal than all the others.
“Is Madison going to be okay?” Ranger Dave asked her. “After everything she went through?”
Naomi didn’t know. Some of the children she rescued never made it out of terror. But something told her that Madison would be one of the rare ones who not only survived but also thrived.
“I took down their posters,” Ranger Dave told her. “Madison—and him. Brian Owens. Now that they are found.”
“We all,” she said, “want to be found.”
“Even you?” he asked.
“Yes. Even me.”
“Even him?” He pointed at the zippered shroud surrounding Brian Owens.
Naomi remembered the relief on his face when she spoke his name. “Yes.”
“Even my wife? Even Sarah?”
Naomi came forward, hugged him briefly. She stepped back, her eyes bright. “She already was, when you loved her.”
The homicide team and Detective Winfield came out of the cabin. Naomi knew her part was done. She was free to move on. It was time for everyone to go home. But where was home?
The next day the child finder came to say good-bye to Madison.
The house was crowded with flowers and the phone ringing, and the parents were in a confused, happy, bewildered daze.
Naomi had strong words. “Don’t answer the phone. Don’t talk to the media.”
“What should we do?” they asked.
“Move,” she said.
She visited Madison in her room.
The girl had been hiding there—everything else was too big, too bright, and too warm. This world felt fake, like a made-up story.
Madison was drawing pictures at her desk.
Naomi sat on her bed. Next to her was a closet with bright sweaters, pulled at the cuffs. Everything was too small now.
“I want you to listen to me,” Naomi told her back. “There is a part of you that will always be there. What you have to do is make it you. You have to take every inch of what he gave you and make it your own.”
Madison stopped drawing.
“You know something special, Madison. You have a gift. This is you.”
Madison got up and handed Naomi her drawing. It was the snow girl and the child finder. They were holding hands.
Naomi crouched to give Madison a big hug.
“I’m leaving now,” she said. She gave a smile. It was the most beautiful smile Madison had ever seen.
Naomi reached into her pocket and brought out something: a small shiny red rock.
“You taught me this, Madison. You showed me threads in a forest leading to a path. You. You asked me to come find you.” Her eyes were glowing. “I had thought that I failed. But I didn’t. I left enough memories behind to find the threads of my own past. And now I will be brave like you.”
She put the rock in Madison’s hand. It felt warm, like magic.
“Now,” the child finder said, standing up, “there is someone I need to find.”
That was over a year ago. I’m nine now.
A few months after my return, my parents moved me to a place where it always snows: the town of Bear Creek, Canada.
It may seem funny that was what I wanted, but I think my parents understood. They liked that an expert child therapist who focused on captivity lived there, and I liked the endless snow.
I go to the Bear Creek School and am really good at snowshoeing. The other week we had a Christmas party. We dunked apples in ribbons of hot caramel, drank cups of apple cider, and chased each other among the silent trees.
