The Snow Song

by Sally Gardner

  Today they’d seen her, as solid as a Sunday prayer. Wild-looking, yes, but she did not shun the sunlight. The six elders had noted that the butcher had stumbled when he saw her and clutched at his heart. Now, as he bible-thumped his warning, they saw a man irrationally obsessed with the woman he’d lost.

  ‘The two young men were brought back to the village,’ said the butcher, warming once more to his favourite subject, ‘and you know what the huntsman said as he lay dying.’

  They did. Seven bears. Edith stood tall among seven bears. Her feet never touching the ground. It had sounded suspiciously like a fairy tale Edith’s grandmother used to tell, of the seven bears and the brier rose. Wasn’t there also a princess in the story whose feet never touched the ground? They also knew that the doctor had insisted that the huntsman’s wounds were consistent with those of a bear attack.

  ‘The mayor’s son has been ill ever since, a sickness brought on by Edith,’ said the butcher. ‘We should arrest her, question her, before she infects us all.’

  ‘Infects us? With what?’ asked the miller.

  ‘Bewitches us. Remember the wedding dress, the avalanche? We must question her about the attack on the huntsman.’

  That Easter Sunday, the six elders who all that winter had felt themselves to be a nodding chorus to the butcher’s demands, saw a chink of light. Easter was, after all, a time of resurrection, of new beginnings.

  ‘On another matter,’ said an elder, ‘an important matter, we want to know who gave you permission to release the shepherd’s body to his brother. The mayor didn’t sign those papers.’

  ‘This,’ he said, hitting his fist into his hand, ‘this matter of the attack is more important than a dead shepherd.’

  The other six elders strongly disagreed.

  The mayor’s wife, Georgeta, hadn’t been among the congregation that morning. Her son had had a bad night.

  At their midday meal her husband told her about the creature who’d appeared outside the church.

  ‘Rubbish!’ she said, shooting a furious look at him. ‘I refuse to believe that Edith is one of the bloodless.’

  ‘How else could she have survived such a harsh winter?’ said the mayor.

  ‘By her own wit,’ said his wife.

  ‘You still doubt our son?’ said the mayor.

  ‘Something terrible happened in the forest. He may or he may not have witnessed his friend being attacked by a bear. He may or may not have seen Edith. As for the rest, no, I don’t believe a word. At the heart of his illness isn’t Edith or magical powers but the fact that he lied. And that lie is what is making him ill.’

  ‘She was wearing a hat of fur and feathers,’ said the mayor. ‘She wasn’t of this world.’

  ‘Poppycock,’ said Georgeta and she reached for another potato.

  The cobbler had insisted that Vanda stayed at home that Easter Sunday morning. He didn’t want his wife upset by her father, not now she was expecting their child. And Una was refusing to have anything to do with her.

  ‘A baby?’ she’d said when Vanda told her she was pregnant. ‘At your age? I would have thought you were past all that.’

  ‘I don’t believe it,’ said Vanda when the cobbler told her Edith’s ghost had returned to the village. ‘I’ll go and see her.’

  ‘I’m not sure…’ said the cobbler.

  ‘Hasn’t it occurred to you that my father won’t want anyone to see Edith because she got the better of him, and might do so again? If I know him, he will be plotting some way to harm her, just as he’s harmed Misha and the cabinet maker.’

  He looked up at Vanda as she stood then bent to kiss him. The newness of their relationship made him feel young again. He had been stepfather to Misha, but this was his own child, born out of love, not hate. And they were still young, perhaps there would be more.

  ‘You’re right,’ said the cobbler.

  It was Misha who was the first to see Edith.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  The Hope Box

  There was a knock on the door and fearing another demon – or worse still, the butcher – the cabinet maker tightened his grip on the plum brandy.

  ‘If you’re a demon, go away,’ he said and screwed up his face, dreading the sound of the butcher’s voice.

  But it was Misha who said, ‘Can I come in?’ Still clutching the bottle, the cabinet maker nervously opened the door. ‘Where’s Edith?’ asked Misha.

  ‘Dead,’ said the cabinet maker. ‘But there’s a demon who looks like her – in there.’ He pointed to Edith’s bedroom. ‘A demon,’ he whispered, ‘who can conjure up plum brandy.’ He gazed at Misha’s bulging pockets with interest. ‘What have you there? Wine?’

  ‘Yes, and bread and cheese,’ said Misha and put them on the table.

  The cabinet maker looked round and was shocked to see his daughter.

  ‘Edith! What have you done with the demon?’ he asked her.

  ‘The demon told me that as you’ve been obedient, I can stay here. But if you return to your old ways, the demon will be back to collect you.’

  ‘Me? Are you sure? Me?’

  ‘You,’ said Edith.

  The cabinet maker looked from the plum brandy in his hand to the wine on the table. ‘One glass from that bottle before bed?’

  ‘No,’ said Edith.

  The cabinet maker scurried away to his room. She and Misha heard him drag a chair across the floor to bar the door. ‘No demon can get me now,’ he muttered.

  Edith said, ‘His mind is going.’

  ‘There’s nothing dead about you,’ said Misha. ‘Or demon-like.’

  ‘You didn’t see my hat.’

  ‘I did. And I heard you play the violin.’

  ‘I thought my father would have sold all the clothes from my hope box but he hadn’t, so I was able to change.’

  ‘He missed you,’ said Misha.

  ‘No.’

  ‘He did. The butcher treated him badly all winter. He took back everything he’d given him before the wedding – the logs, the food, the wine. He instructed everyone in the village not to lift a hand to help him. The priest preached a sermon about him, about the sickness of excessive drinking and the evil of a father who can’t control his offspring.’

  Edith suddenly saw Misha had been bringing food and firewood for her father and knew it was he who had brought her the gifts of rabbits and birds when she’d first found the cabin.

  ‘You brought him food?’ Misha nodded. ‘Thank you.’

  ‘I couldn’t do any more for him. I wanted to but whenever I came here some neighbour or other would report me to the elders.’

  Edith put out the bread and cheese.

  ‘Your voice is deeper than I remember,’ he said.

  ‘And you look sad,’ said Edith. ‘How’s Lena?’

  ‘I don’t know. I’ve hardly seen her since the day you ran away. The butcher turned Lena’s mother against me. He looked after her and her daughter and in return Lena is forbidden to see me. Our baby will be born soon and I want to be a good father but the butcher told the widow not to waste her daughter on the village idiot.’

  ‘What does Lena think?’

  Misha shrugged. ‘She’s almost a prisoner so I don’t know what Lena believes. I don’t know if she thinks of me at all.’

  Edith cut the bread.

  ‘An avalanche,’ said Misha, ‘the village is isolated and the butcher becomes all-powerful. But he had no power over you. You are a festering wound to his pride – even more so now you’ve come back from the dead.’

  Edith poured Misha a glass of wine. ‘Is Demetrius buried in the churchyard?’ she asked.

  ‘What do you think?’

  ‘I think his family took him back to the town.’

  ‘As soon as the road was open – about two weeks ago. His brother and an undertaker came to collect the body. After they’d gone the butcher didn’t hesitate to tell everyone that the matter was closed. There would be no investigation. I’m sorry.’
r />   ‘You have nothing to be sorry about.’

  ‘I do. I should have told you something, and I didn’t. I said to myself that when I had the answer, I would.’

  Edith said nothing. She imagined she was holding a bowl into which secrets could be safely poured without fear of anyone hearing them again.

  Staring at his hands, Misha told her of the evening he’d met Demetrius on the mountain and about the letter, the unread words that had been weights on his heart.

  ‘I think he knew he was going to be killed. Just before dawn broke he recited a poem, the words to a melody he’d been playing.’

  Full moon, high sea,

  Great man thou shall be.

  Redding dawn, cloudy sky,

  Bloody death shalt thou die.

  ‘We’d spoken of many things that night, and he’d told me that words can chain us. I asked what he meant and he said I had let my grandfather’s word for me define me as a simpleton. He said, “You know it’s not true and you mustn’t let that word haunt your life.”’

  Edith knew this about listening: that it became harder to hold the bowl. It would be easier to put it down, to question, to comfort. But instead she let the silence gather him in.

  ‘That’s not what I meant to say. I wanted to tell you about Demetrius’ brother. The following morning when I left with the letter, I met a huntsman coming up the mountain. He asked where the shepherd was. I saw Demetrius’ brother when he came to collect the body. He was wearing glasses but with or without glasses I knew it was the huntsman I’d met on the mountain.’ He looked at Edith and said, ‘You know all this, don’t you?’

  ‘Demetrius told me his brother had taken up hunting,’ said Edith. ‘And I know the butcher was hired to guide the hunting party.’

  ‘He was on the mountain that morning too – it was then he took the letter from me,’ said Misha. ‘As for the rest, I have my suspicions – my grandfather would have been on hand if…’

  He paused for a moment. ‘I think you are a shaman,’ he said, ‘a magical woman who can save us. It’s been a hard winter and your father and I are not the only ones the butcher has made life hell for. The butcher has become…’

  ‘…a monster?’ said Edith. ‘He always was.’

  They sat for a while in silence before Misha asked, ‘What are you going to do?’

  Edith stared out of the window. Above the roof of the henhouse the night sky was clear, freckled with a fistful of stars.

  ‘I’m going to write down some of my grandmother’s stories and one of my own. And, once you and Lena are married, I’ll be gone.’

  Misha laughed. ‘If,’ he said.

  ‘There are no ifs. Tell me about your mother.’

  ‘She’s pregnant.’

  ‘No!’

  ‘Yes – and she’s happy, she even laughs. The cobbler looks younger. At first, I thought any day she would wake up, and the enchantment would be broken. Even my stepfather thought that.’

  ‘Stepfather?’ said Edith.

  ‘You know the truth,’ said Misha.

  ‘I do, but I wasn’t sure you did.’

  ‘I had time on the mountain to think. Mountains do that. They were here long before man, long before we had the weapon of words. The butcher has cast doubt on Mother, told everyone that she’s not well in the head.’

  ‘No one can believe that,’ said Edith.

  ‘No one can afford not to believe everything he says. We’ve been isolated all winter and the butcher made sure that if anyone needed anything only he could supply it. So now they’re all even more indebted to the butcher.’

  ‘What of Sorina?’ asked Edith.

  ‘She’s lived at the butcher’s since you ran off. He insisted he needed someone to keep house for him. Una dragged her there, Sorina begging her mother not to make her go but Una was hearing none of it. Half the village witnessed the scene. Sorina looks older than her years. I tried to tell Una whose child I am but she wouldn’t listen.’ He finished his wine. ‘I should go – it’s late.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Edith.

  ‘For what? For not bringing you the letter?’

  ‘For being a good and brave friend.’

  Misha stood up to leave. ‘Lock your door and be careful, Edith,’ he said.

  ‘Misha told me you’d found your voice,’ said Flora when she came the next morning with a pot of honey. ‘And we have lots to talk about. How on earth did you survive all winter?’ But it became apparent that Edith didn’t want to talk about it and Flora changed the subject.

  ‘The butcher called a meeting of the elders yesterday,’ she said. ‘I heard this morning that he wants you arrested.’

  ‘For what?’ asked Edith. ‘Not wanting to marry him?’

  ‘The mayor’s son claimed he saw you attack his friend.’

  ‘Do you think I’m capable of that?’

  ‘Of course I don’t.’

  ‘Why is the mayor’s son lying?’ said Edith. ‘He ran off when his friend was considering attacking me. Did the rest of the hunting party bring them back to the village?’

  ‘Not straight away. The two young men were lost for a while. The butcher found them. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if he convinced them they’d been attacked by you. The mayor’s son has been unwell ever since.’

  ‘Misha told me that once Demetrius’ brother had collected the body, the butcher announced it was the end of the matter.’

  ‘It isn’t,’ said Flora. ‘My brother had a letter from Demetrius’ father, thanking him for preserving his son’s body so well. He wrote that there will be an investigation. He sent money, too, payment for my brother. And this for you.’

  Edith opened the envelope. It contained money and a photograph taken of Demetrius when he graduated from university.

  ‘He was very handsome,’ said Flora.

  Edith closed her eyes to stop the tears. Still they escaped. When his father finds out the truth, she thought, what will be left of the family? How will his father ever recover, knowing what his youngest son has done?

  She walked with Flora to the gate and after her friend left, she gazed at the sky. In the song of the birds she heard Demetrius’ melodies, in the wind she felt the touch of his hand, in the warmth of the sun, his embrace.

  No one else came to the cabinet maker’s house, not Vanda, Georgeta or Lena. Edith knew she was viewed with suspicion and her movements were reported to the butcher. Everywhere she went she was stared at and neighbours whispered behind her back. She realised she had become a stranger among them.

  Edith took some of the money from the envelope to buy much-needed supplies but both the grocer and the baker refused to serve her.

  ‘If my father has run up debt,’ she said, ‘I will settle the bill.’

  It angered her to discover that her father owed them nothing; that the shop keepers would rather have seen him starve to death than disobey the butcher. It was a tragedy that one man could have enslaved the small community with his cruelty.

  The cabinet maker was mending the henhouse, singing to himself. Edith was clearing out the cupboard under the stairs when her father abruptly stopped singing. She became aware of someone standing behind her.

  ‘I like nothing better than a woman on her knees,’ he said.

  Edith pushed the hair out of her eyes and stood up to face the butcher.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  His Mother’s Shawl

  ‘No one makes a fool of me,’ said the butcher. ‘Do you think you can just walk back into this village dressed like a vagabond? Where did you go? You couldn’t survive on the mountain in the winter we’ve just had. So tell me – unless you’ve lost your tongue again – where did you go? Do you know what I think? I think you ran away to join the gypsies…’ he moved close to her and hissed ‘…like the whore you are.’

  Sure he had the better of her, he waited for her reply. Edith stared at him, unblinking. He looked anywhere and everywhere but at her.

  ‘I was only small when I
saw your mother in our walnut tree,’ said Edith. Her self-assured voice hit the butcher as hard as if she’d struck him.

  ‘Have you lost your mind like your father?’ he said. ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘Your mother was wearing an embroidered shawl in purples and golds. I remember thinking that they were ugly colours in an ugly pattern. She told me that she’d been taken by the filth man and that she was waiting for her son at the crossroads to take him to hell where he belonged. She said more besides but I didn’t understand. I asked my grandmother what I should do. I had to tell your mother to leave me alone. I was too young to be told of your crimes. Your mother left, and I didn’t see her again. I once asked my grandmother if she had ever seen one of the bloodless. She said no, but that I had – your mother. I see her now too. She stands to your right, she breathes in your ear.’

  The butcher’s eyes narrowed with rage. ‘How dare you speak my mother’s name.’

  ‘I never knew her name,’ said Edith, ‘but I knew she was your mother. I’m not afraid of you and I’m not afraid of death. If you kill me it matters little. But my advice is leave my father and me alone. You’ve got away with your part in Demetrius’ murder but it will be different if you lay a hand on my father or me. I know what you did, butcher. I know you.’

  ‘Father?’ Una was standing in the doorway.

  The world came rushing back to the butcher and for a moment he wasn’t sure what he’d heard or where he was. His hands curled into fists, his knuckles white. An uncontrollable furnace of rage burned inside him at this creature, this woman who had the audacity to speak to him in such a manner about his mother.

  Una, on her way to her father’s house, had heard his anger and seen the cabinet maker, motionless by the henhouse. From the verandah she’d listened to Edith’s calm voice and hadn’t dared move until that moment.

  The butcher looked at her as if he didn’t recognise his own daughter. He pushed his lips together. ‘Ugly like your sister,’ he said. ‘Both of you, ugly. But at least you’re on my side.’