SNOWFALL

by Mitchell Smith

  "I haven't seen a dog," Torrey said to Catania. "I don't think these people keep them."

  At the top of the path, Mary stepped to the left at the trunk of a great red-bark, and was gone. Then her daughter ducked after her, and Catania and Torrey stood looking down into a deep hole under the roots of the tree. The hole had been carved to resemble a woman's genitals.

  "I'm not going down there," Torrey said. "—And don't you go, either."

  "I think we have to," Catania said. Mary's hand and arm appeared at the bottom of the hole. "Catania," she called, and beckoned her down.

  "I'll wait up here," Torrey said.

  Catania set her lance against the tree-trunk, handed Torrey her bow and quiver, then climbed down.

  "Yell if there's trouble." Torrey leaned over to watch her. "Then I'll come down."

  Turning sideways to slip through the entrance, Catania looked up, and saw Torrey's anxious face in a shield of sunlight.

  We have come to a wonderful Garden town, and many Garden people, painted green.

  A clever woman named Mary rules them, and is deciding what to do with us.—How strange to feel myself a child again, and at the mercy of others. Mary plays the mother, but a mother with a knife.

  I want to feel more kicking by the baby in Susan's belly.

  FROM THE JOURNAL OF DOCTOR CATANIA OLSEN

  CHAPTER 9

  It was the prettiest living-place Catania had ever seen. She bent beneath a low ceiling, and stared.

  The small, round room was like a fox's den, like snow caves children dug in play, or hunters dug in deep drifts when buzzards caught them in the mountains. It was burrowed under the root arches of the great red-bark, and floored and roofed with polished planks of yellow pine—laid first one way, then the other, like the pattern of a fine basket.

  Mary One-eye and her daughter were sitting on cloth bags— cushions—to one side of a baked clay fireplace. There was a clay pipe leading from the hearth up through the tree's roots, then, Catania supposed, out into the air. A small fire snapped hot and rolling in the stove, its light glowing off many little trees and blossoms hammered out of gold and hanging from the ceiling, so there was brightness everywhere.... There were scatters of the thick, soft cushions, each with sewn decorations of little forest birds—shown only perched, never flying, with all their true colors accomplished in dyed thread.

  "Sit," Mary said, and kicked a cushion to Catania. Two jays were sewn on it in blue. Their eyes were black beads.

  Catania sat cross-legged ... and saw the room's low walls were covered with coarse white cloth, painted along its upper edge with leaves and evergreen branches. The evergreens stayed the same, but the leaves slowly changed their colors around the room, to show the shift of seasons. There was an art-painting under the cloth's leaf border.

  "This is a beautiful house."

  "Thank you," Mary One-eye said, and began braiding her daughter's hair.

  It struck Catania that these were pattern people—their caned baskets and rows of neat vegetables, their woven cloth, paper making . . . their way with designs of polished wood in this pretty room under a tree. They were pattern people as the Trappers were hunting people, and they were ruled by a woman who weaved what nets they needed.

  The art-painting beneath the wall-cloth's border of leaves and branches told a story that circled the room.—A huge tree was shown, tilting back as if it was falling. Further along, a bright yellow woman was painted being born out of its torn-up roots. She was naked, the yellow umbilical cord still curling back from her belly into the tree. The woman was smiling.

  Slowly turning her head to follow, Catania saw that a green man was being born between the yellow woman's legs. Only his foot was still tucked inside her. He was painted crying, his mouth stretched wide—and out of it a little kid goat was struggling free. The goat was red; its button horns were blue. Its slender tongue was sticking out, and a large yellow egg stood balanced on it.

  Catania turned to see the yellow egg shown cracking, with a partridge's head thrusting out. The bird's beak was open, and there was a rectangle wedged into it at the circling painting's end.... A starved blue-gray dog was running in the rectangle.

  "Do you know that painting-story?" Mary One-eye completed one casual braid, and started on the other.

  "I don't know the story—but it's about changes that are only changes, never becoming a difference."

  "Or becoming only a slight difference," Mary said.

  "... I don't know what the running dog means."

  "Few do," Mary said. "Are you hungry?"

  "Yes, I am—and Torrey would be, too."

  "You like that sturdy Nine-fingers, don't you?" Mary said. Catania thought she was being asked that—then saw Mary was talking to her daughter. "Giving him little looks...."

  "I don't know him, and there's no reason for me to like him," May said. "He's just a snow-person like all the others."

  "Liar," Mary said. She finished the second braid, and gave May a push. "Get up and make us some food."

  "I'm not a liar," May stood up at the hearth; she didn't have to bend under the low ceiling. "—Anyway, he smells of dogs." She took a brown-skinned smoked duck down from a hanging hook, then potatoes and some sort of other vegetable, white and pale blue, out of baskets along the wall.

  Mary One-eye smiled at Catania. "Isn't she going to like your foolish Nine-fingers?"

  "Probably so," Catania said, and smiled back, supposing Mary was making woman-fun as a courtesy to put a stranger at ease. "—And now we've mentioned it, she won't be able to stop thinking how little she'd care for that handsome, strong young man. And how foolish you and I were, to have said such a stupid thing."

  "Yes," Mary said. "And she'll visit him from time to time, to be reminded just how wrong we were."

  "That isn't even funny," May said. She was slicing vegetables on a wood shelf beside the hearth.

  "Then she'll dream," Mary said. "And wake wet between her legs."

  "And one day," Catania said, "—she'll go to him and say, 'I don't like you, and I want you to leave me alone!' "

  Mary One-eye laughed. "And how long, after that—the first baby?"

  "Still a full year," Catania said. "If she's strong."

  "A bare nine months," said Mary, and leaned sideways on her cushion to reach up and spank May on the butt.

  May said, "Oh, that's so humorous," using a fine Warm-time word.

  Mary and Catania laughed, and Catania knew then that the Garden people would probably not kill the Trappers soon, and perhaps not at all. Mary One-eye had no need to pretend pleasance.

  May put the pieces of potato and odd blue-white vegetable into a trade-pot, and poured water over them from a clay jug. Then, she hung the pot on a little swivel arm of iron and pushed that into the clay stove, over the fire.

  Mary was sitting with her good eye shut, as if she were dozing.

  Catania, glad not to be looked at for a while, thought the swiveled cooking arm was a clever idea, a civilization-notion that saved women burns.... It struck her, after watching May prepare food, that Warm-times must have been wonderful times for women, with everything made gentle, to save them injury. That was clear in every copybook. Almost always, the women's sorrows were love-sorrows or loneliness-sorrows. Only in the very oldest copybooks did women's children die more often than they lived.

  This little house, so comfortable and in a town, might almost be a Warm-time house, though without the detective police or Clinic Mayo. And the town almost like ancient Detroit, but making paper instead of four-wheel traveling Chevies....

  Mary opened her good eye. "How old are you, Catania?" Her 'are' sounded like 'urrr.'

  "Twenty-eight years old."

  "You can call me Mary."

  "Twenty-eight, Mary."

  "You look older.—It's a hard life, isn't it, up in the mountains?"

  "No. Not the life."

  Mary sat looking at her, round face pale even in firelight. A stripe of green paint
shone across her forehead. "So. Who has set you running from your homes? I see you and your people still running, even when you're standing still. Some of your people were crying at night. . . and you left a sad man hanging in a tree."

  Catania said nothing.

  "Have tribesmen set you running?"

  "... Yes. There was a battle."

  "Ah. Blackfoot?"

  "Cree."

  "Cree.... And you are all that's left, Catania? Forty-one now,

  since the sad man was left hanging in the tree?"

  "Yes."

  "Cree.—Not Kipchak people from the west? You've seen no horse-riders with odd eye's?"

  "No. None of those."

  "And have you seen things that were not men—but not animals either?"

  "No," Catania said, and smiled. "No story monsters. Only the Cree."

  Mary turned to look up at May. "Are you making onions?"

  "Mother, I'm not making onions. We have potatoes and turnips. I'm not making onions."

  "I've read about turnips," Catania said.

  "Reading about them," Mary said, "—is better than eating them."

  "I'm not making onions."

  Mary made a face. "I was going to have a boy," she said to Catania. "But I wished him to a her in my belly—and see my reward."

  "I have no children," Catania said.

  "Then you lost none to the Cree."

  "Only dear friends."

  "And were these tribesmen satisfied with killing your friends, and taking your home—or are they following?"

  "I think they were satisfied."

  Mary One-eye scratched her round belly. "And who thinks they weren't satisfied?"

  "Just... Jack Monroe thinks they might follow."

  "Oh, I see. Just your Jack." Mary turned to her daughter. "May, sweetness...."

  "Mother, if you want onions, you come cook them."

  Mary sighed. "You spoiled bitch...." She said nothing more for a while, only sat on her cushion, watching Catania. Catania looked back, but politely, and also watched May slice the smoked duck and set portions aside.... Mary One-eye had an easy way, but she was not easy, and Catania reminded herself to be careful, and not pretend she could match Mary in silences.

  "Your paper.. . . Did the paper the Salesmen brought us come up from Gardens?"

  "No, no." Mary shook her head. "They bargain with us for best-laid, and take that south. Do you know a Salesman named Bruce Nolan?"

  "No. The trade-people who came to us were Mathew Dittmeir and Ed Ward. Those were the ones who brought us paper and steel-bricks every year. Ed Ward's father used to come—but he was killed by someone, traveling, when I was a little girl."

  "I don't know any of those people, Catania, but I do know you were never traded fine paper. Whoever it was, traded you rough reams—and we don't even make that, paper with no cloth in it at all."

  "Cloth? I thought paper was made from trees, made from wood ground up in a mulch."

  "How we make paper, is our secret. But any paper is better if Mexican puff-cloth—cottie—is in it." Mary turned on her cushion. "May, aren't those turnips done?"

  "Almost."

  "Did you cut them small? If you didn't cut them small, they'll take forever."

  "I did."

  "Little pieces?"

  "Little pieces."

  Mary sighed, and she and Catania sat silent again.

  * * *

  Torrey had stood by the tree, holding his lance, until he grew tired of standing. Then he leaned against the rough bark. It was the fat of the day, and people painted with stripes of green came up and down the path—stepping around him with a look, as if he was a chancy dog off his lead. They stared down their noses at him, even those who were shorter.

  He would have been more comfortable with a Trapper beside him. Even an Auerbach for company would be better than standing here alone guarding this den, this entrance hole. He would have to go down with his knife if there was trouble.... leave the lance. Leaning against the tree, he could hear soft voices. He'd heard the women laughing—Catania laughing—and that seemed a good sign. A sign of no more trouble, at least not right now.

  He wasn't ready ... the Trappers weren't ready for more trouble. They were heart-weary.

  Jack Monroe, Torrey supposed, was always ready for trouble. And Tattooed Newton. Newton would be good company standing at the tree with Garden people going past, and staring. Newton would stare right back; he thought everyone was funny.

  Torrey scratched a shoulder-blade against the tree's rough bark.... While in the forest and running south, it had been easier to think of other things than what had happened, and who was dead. But now, unless these Garden people came to kill them, there was nothing else to think about. Though what had happened still felt too strange to be possible, so considering it was like trying to grip something too slippery to hold.

  It seemed to Torrey that all the dead people—and the Range as it was—must still be somewhere, and not gone entirely. But it was difficult to imagine even Mountain Jesus' hands as being large enough to hold them.... Could even the Weather's son hold Mount Alvin and Mount Geary, and all the country between them? Could a sensible man believe that? And the fur animals, the caribou herds—could all that be held in cupped hands?

  Torrey thought not, which made the sadness permanent....

  Though he was on watch, he was startled when the Garden girl, the singing girl, popped up out of the tree-root hole like a marmot. One moment she wasn't there—then she was.

  She held a wooden plate of sliced bird-meat and pieces of potato, and something else white. She handed the plate to Torrey with an angry face, as if he'd said something bad to her—then popped back down into the hole exactly like a Mount Alvin marmot when an eagle came over.

  She'd been dressed, but he remembered her naked. Even angry, she had eyes dark and rich as a fisher-cat's fur.

  Torrey squatted with his back against the tree to eat. The meat was smoked duck with something odd in the flavor. He ate it all, then licked the grease from his fingers.

  As he ate the potatoes, a thin old man with his left hand missing walked up and sat down on a big stone across the path. There was a green stripe painted across his mouth. He and Torrey stared at each other for a time, and the old man scratched the stump of his wrist, as if it itched him.

  Then, suddenly as before, the singing girl came up out of the hole again. "Daddy," she said to the one-handed man, "—Mother's busy and I'm busy. You go make your own dinner."

  Then she looked at Torrey as if she were surprised he was still there—-unpleasantly surprised. "What happened to your finger?"

  "I bit it off to make a whistle," Torrey said, and she snorted and went back inside.

  And here we are, Torrey thought. Old man with a hand gone. And me with a finger gone. Two stumpies. He handed his plate over to the old man, and watched him eat the white things that weren't potatoes.

  "Your daughter has bad manners," Torrey said. The old man said nothing.

  * * *

  "Do you fart?" Mary One-eye asked it with her mouth full of smoked duck. "—I mean when you're with other people."

  "Not deliberately," Catania said. The duck was delicious. It had been smoked with an herb that tasted green and salty. The turnips were not delicious.

  "We do, sometimes," Mary said, "—when we're visiting. To be friendly."

  "I understand…." Catania didn't, know if she was supposed to fart, to be polite.

  "And you're the .. . shaman for your hunters?"

  "Doctor," Catania said. "I'm a scientific physician—as scientific as I can be."

  "Is that so?" May had given Mary a lot of food; her plate had been piled with it. Now there was less. She was a busy eater.

  "We're not fools," Catania said. "We're book people—we had more than three-hundred copybooks!"

  "Ah...."

  "Those are gone—but I have my medical books with me. And they're very scientific."

  "I see," Mary sai
d, and picked up a duck leg to chew. She seemed uninterested.

  "I suppose we could let your people copy my medical books...."

  "Oh, we have our own." Much attention given to the duck leg. Big chewing.

  "And I have a dentist's book—for teeth," Catania said. Mary's brown eye turned black. "Mark Inskip, DDS, Basics of Modern Dentistry. Tufts University Press. It's got drawings copied in it, and it's very, very old."

  "Well," Mary put the gnawed duck-bone down, "—we might take a look at that, though as I said, we have several medicine books of our own."

  "Also, I have The Missionary's Medical Primer by Walter daSilva, MD. And General and Special Surgery by Cheryl Miller, MD, and Roger Tosukawa, MD. These also have many drawings copied in them."

  Mary One-eye sighed and ate a piece of turnip. "You bad girl, Catania—you know I want the dentist book, and the others, too. How did you know how much I wanted them?"

  Catania thought of lying, then decided not. "When I told you about the dentist book, the pupil of your eye grew larger. That happens whenever anyone is very interested—when a man first sees a girl, or game ... or a woman sees a baby."

  Mary put her face in her hands. "I should have known that. How could I not have known it, not even noticed such a useful thing?"

  "A Salesman told me, years ago, after we traded. I traded a lynx pelt, a wolf's, and seven fine martens' for an iron pot that had three little legs so it could sit in a camp fire. A spider, he called it. Then he told me all Salesmen watch eye-pupils when they trade, and that I could have gotten two pots." Mary turned on her cushion. "You hear that, May?"

  "Yes." May was standing at the hearth, licking her plate clean.

  "What does it teach you?"

  "To watch the center of peoples' eyes—and remember that we don't know everything." May put the plate away.

  Mary made a face of surprise at Catania, at such a sensible answer. "But still too stupid, too selfish to be a Lady," she said, then put her plate down on the floor. "And what do you want, to let us copy those three books?"

  "Some time to rest here," Catania said. "And food—then more food when we leave."