SNOWFALL

by Mitchell Smith

  There was movement where Tall-David Richardson stood, and Catania supposed he was ready to kill her if she shot, and perhaps before. But she kept looking down her arrow shaft at Chapman Olsen's bow-stave, held half raised, his lean belly, and wrinkled brown buckskin shirt. A string of red beads had been sewn down one side of the shirt. She saw the darker edge of his belt below, its yellow horn buckle ... and noticed Chapman wasn't breathing now; his belly wasn't moving in and out.

  Then she stopped paying attention to those things. Time had slowed to dull, measured thumps, hard to hear, perhaps her heart beating.

  Now Catania could see a small grease stain on Chapman's shirt, a little to the left for a perfect killing shot, but still a fair mark. She put everything out of her eyes but that small spot, and it seemed to grow slowly big as a man's fist... then big as an open hand. It was an easy mark.

  Someone said something too softly for her to understand. Catania felt her draw-shoulder begin to ache, and reminded herself to loose the shot if she heard Tall-David's bowstring twang, since she might miss once she was hit. She listened for that, and the soft grunt a person gave when they threw a lance or knife.

  "One of you kill that bitch," Chapman said. Catania heard that, saw his belly moving as he said it. Her bright impatient arrowhead followed that slightest movement.

  A woman said something near her. Not Garden May.

  A man called, "Don't. Don't!"

  Catania relaxed her right hand only a little, to begin to release the arrow.

  The same woman said something more, and Catania glanced that way. Susan Monroe had come up the slope, and walked into the field between them. She looked pale, and was unsteady on her feet. She held the baby in her arms.

  "Don't!" Torrey called out. "No trouble. No fighting near the baby!"

  "The Weather damn you, Susan," Joan Richardson said. "Get out of the way."

  Catania looked back to her aim. Then she heard Jack say, "What if Susan hadn't come with the baby, and we fought? Then there would be another two or three Trappers dead or crippled. Soon, being so few, we would be beggars wherever we go. And what would Ned Richardson have said to that? What would Sam Monroe, Nathan Sorbane, and Peter Auerbach have said? What would all our dead people say to Trappers fighting Trappers?"

  "That's just talk," Del Richardson said.

  "It's good sense, Del," Torrey said. "Jack's trying not to kill you!"

  "He tells us what to do!" Joan made an animal's face, and moved her knife on Lucy's throat. A thread of blood ran down.

  "Joan .. . Joan," Susan said. "We're not in our mountains, anymore. We're running and we're with strangers here and we'll be with strange people all the time until we find a new place. We need to be told what to do, just for a while."

  "You need," Joan Richardson said. "I don't need."

  "Who pays for my brother?" Chapman lowered his bow.

  "Your brother fought—and lost his fight," Newton said. "He was quick, but not strong enough."

  "Catania," Jack said.

  Catania heard him as she'd heard the others, as if from a distance.

  "Catania, ease that bow."

  Catania blinked, and eased her bow. She bit her lip when her draw-shoulder hurt losing the strain. The arrowhead twinkled in the sunshine as she lifted the arrow from the string, twirled it in her fingers, and slid it over her right shoulder and down into the quiver.

  She saw Chapman Olsen looking at her. Now, it was hard to see the little grease stain on his shirt.

  Jack strolled over to the Olsens as though nothing bad had happened. He walked past them, past Tall-David and Del, and went over to Bailey Auerbach. Bailey was sitting with a band of cloth, soaked red, tied around his calf, where Myles Weber's arrow had gone through. "How's that leg, Bailey?" Jack said.

  Bailey looked up at him, but didn't answer.

  "Catania," Jack said, "—come look at this leg."

  "She better look at it!" Myles called down from his tree-top. "I stuck my arrowheads in shit, Bailey. Your fucking leg is going to fall off!"

  "You dogs," Joan Richardson said. She sheathed her knife, put her moccasin-boot in Lucy's back, and shoved her down on her face. Then she smiled at Newton. "You can come and get her, since you love her, since you want her so."

  "These are things," Garden May said, "—that are never done in Gardens." But she didn't seem disturbed.

  * * *

  In the evening, just before sunset, Tattooed Newton put on his trousers, laced them, and left a private place in the pines to go into the camp for food. His forehead was sore where Catania had sewn in thread stitches.

  He said hello to Myles and Helen Weber, and their boy, Pat, who were standing camp guard in case of more trouble . .. then came back to the private place with a smoked grouse and two cooked potatoes. He stood for a moment looking down at his wife.

  Lucy lay naked on the fur robe, despite the chill of evening, her arms flung out, her long light-brown hair spread loose. The fur was wolf, dark gray and frosted gray, so she looked as if she were lying in evening mist. Lucy lay still, but her eyes were open, eyes nearly the color of the fur.

  She was a slender woman, with wide hips and small soft breasts. Her face and arms were dark with weatherburn, but the rest of her body was white as goat's milk, turning golden now in sunset light.

  A thin red-scabbed line ran across her throat—Joan Richardson's mark. The hair at her crotch was soaked and curly from fucking, and Newton could see a little pink fold of her, unfolded.

  There was a lot to look at. He saw how complicated she was, and it struck him there was nothing and no one else just like her anywhere.

  Newton set the food down on a hide, stood over her, then fell on top of her like a cut-down tree. The breath left Lucy in a grunt, and he lay on her, pawing at her arms, her small breasts, licking her throat where Joan had hurt her, licking in the light, sweated fur of her armpits. He licked and gently bit her as if he were going to devour her skin, then her fat, then her muscle and guts so he could see everything down to her white bones, with nothing left hidden from him.

  "Oh, my cannibal," she said. He was tickling her, rubbing at her with his hairy chest. He was so big, so heavy that she couldn't push him away, so she began to hold him instead, gripping his shoulders and crooning to him, puffing for breath under his weight.

  "My cannibal...." It was her secret name for him. She never used it where anyone else could hear. The first time she had called him that in fun—having recalled from childhood a Salesman's tale of the Boxcars' supposed habits—he had turned, his face twisted like an angry bear's, and hit her, knocked her sliding across the floor of her father's house. Lucy had thought he was going to kill her then—but was only frightened that her father and brothers might come into the house and catch him. .

  After that one blow, Newton's face had changed, and he'd laughed and said, "Well, it seems that's too true a word to run from...." Then he'd bent down, picked her up, and sat on the bed with her in his lap, pinching her nose to stop the bleeding. When she was feeling better, he had gone outside and cut the hand he'd hit her with, cut it deep across the back. The hand was no good to him that winter.

  Lucy never asked Newton about his life in Middle Kingdom, where he'd come from. "Dot-men come from Big Ol' Missy," the Salesman had said. "Boxcars ran that river, eat people now and then...."

  Lucy never asked Newton about any of that. And she didn't mind that he would eat raw meat and sing odd songs, or that he was so big and looked strange with his short dark hair and dark bear's eyes. He had four blue dots tattooed on each cheekbone, and shaved all the hair off his face with his knife every two or three days, but she didn't care what anyone said about him.

  ... Newton groaned, lifted himself, and rolled off her. They lay holding hands for a while, then he got up, covered her with a fur against the evening cold, knelt and fed her pieces of potato and smoked grouse from his fingers, as though she were a little child.

  After they ate, and the sun went dow
n, they slept. Newton dreamed of his father, standing huge and smiling, reviewing the troops of the East-bank army. His father was wearing the Helmet of Joy.... Then he dreamed of a footrace, woke from that dream of running—and heard running as he woke.

  Lucy woke to that sound as well, and they were up and out of the furs together. Then armed.

  Many torches wavered from the forest at the top of the camp. Gold bracelets shone in their light. Nearly two-hundred Garden men with cocked crossbows stood along the edge of the wood. The only woman with them was Mary One-eye, standing at the middle of their line, naked but for green paint. The torches threw shifting shadows across the snowy ground.

  Now, all the Trappers were up and armed. The Auerbachs ran along Fast Creek, to hold the bridge behind them.

  Jack stepped up the slope, and called out to Mary One-eye. "Not one of yours has been hurt in our troubles!"

  She walked down to meet him. The Gold-bracelets stayed where they were. "No," Mary said, "—and not one will be. If you kill yours today, you will kill ours tomorrow."

  "Our trouble is over," Jack said, loud enough for everyone to hear.

  "And our trouble with you, will not start," Mary said. "Your second Warm-time week ends tomorrow, but since you fought and we did not, we give you one day more, and food for that day .. . then food for traveling."

  "We'll go," Jack said, "—and go easily."

  "You will certainly go, easily or not." Mary started back to her men, then turned. "I don't say you're bad people. But you are too sad, and like an injured animal that bites its wound and whoever comes near it."

  Then she walked away. She should have looked odd to the Trappers, and funny—a fat little lady, naked but for green paint, trudging barefoot up through the last of spring snow. She should have looked odd, but she didn't.

  "It's ended well," Catania said to Jack as they lay down again. The Gold-bracelets and their torches were gone from the forest edge. "It's ended well, despite what Mary said. Only Jim was killed, but not by you, and you didn't kill the others."

  Though Jack nodded, she saw his eyes in firelight, and felt he might have been more comfortable with killing.

  "No," Catania said, as if he'd said otherwise. "You went the wise way. There are not enough of us left."

  He turned to her then, and hugged her, and she felt the bitter strength he restrained, and with what difficulty.

  ... In the morning, before sunrise, Catania went back to the field on the edge of the forest with Martha Sorbane, Donna Weber, Wanda Sorbane, and Mercy Richardson. While those women prayed, Catania tucked Jim's guts, nearly frozen, back inside him, and sewed his middle up.

  They all prayed over him for a while, recommending him to Mountain Jesus as a hunter, which was a good recommendation. Then they picked him up and carried him down to Fast Creek, the coldest water they had. They set him to soak and put on what ice he could, while other Trappers came to pray along the bank. Then all of them sang the ancient 'Rock of Ages.'

  Though Jim could gather only the thinnest glittering coat, the Olsen men took him out and went into the woods with him, to tie him up into a tree. A poor substitute for watching from High Hill.

  When Jim was gone, all the Trappers who'd heard of the Garden blanket, those men and women who'd stayed away during the trouble, and even those who'd caused the trouble, came to see it folded around the baby. Only his little red face was uncovered, his dark eyes peering out at them from green and gold.

  Seeing the baby in his wonderful blanket made good feelings out of bad feelings, so even Joan Richardson came and touched the weaving, to see how soft it was.

  Catania went to the Auerbach fire, cleaned the arrow wound in Bailey's leg again, and bandaged it with fresh boiled cloth. He said nothing bad to her, and said nothing about old Myles Weber claiming to have put shit on his arrowheads.

  None of the Trappers, except Martha Sorbane, had given Catania bad looks that morning. And only a few had given Jack and Newton bad looks. Still, the morning moved stiffly, as if it had been sick at sunrise and was still recovering. What-worse-might-have-happened drifted through the camp like wood smoke.

  * * *

  At midday, a small Garden girl named Paula came to camp, and found Catania playing scissors-paper-and-stone with Susan and Garden May. Jack sat watching them.

  "Our Lady Mary wants you," Paula said to Catania. "What is that game?"

  "Sit here and play," Catania said, getting up.

  "Don't go to her," Jack said.

  "Better that we know what Mary wants, than we don't."

  "If you aren't back by evening," Jack said, "—we'll come for you."

  ... Catania was frightened, walking alone through Gardens, though no one threatened her or gave her bad looks, but was less frightened by the time she came to Mary One-eye's house. By then, she'd grown tired of being afraid.

  "Have you come trembling?" Mary said, smiling at her from a cushion by the hearth. Only the one-handed old man, Paul Bongiorno, was with her. "There was no need for that. Do you want vodka?"

  "No, thank you."

  "Good," Mary said, and stood up. "I have two things to show you, Tall Scarface." She did a little dance to stretch from sitting. "You come with me, and I will make you a wiser woman than before. Perhaps wise enough...."

  Mary led up out of her house. Carlson Gold-bracelets was waiting on the path.

  "Hello, Carlson," Catania said, to see if he was still friendly after the trouble in camp.

  "Hello," he said. "Tell Jack I will not play checkers with him anymore."

  "I told him not to," Mary said. "Your fierce Jack was clever to win honor from this fool."

  "I still have some left," Carlson said.

  "Fool," Mary One-eye said. "You may come with us to help me in the high places, but only for a little way."

  Carlson Gold-bracelets bowed, and walked behind them as Mary climbed the high path higher. She took Catania past several under-tree houses with thin green-painted sticks standing in front of them ... then out to the end of the cloth-weaving field, and up into the forest.

  There, Mary stopped and leaned against a tree to breathe.

  "Are you all right?"

  "Catania—if I was 'all right,' I wouldn't be trying to make you a Lady. I would have the luck-time to find a competent girl and teach her. You know the word 'competent'?"

  "We had a Webster's, and we used it."

  "Yes. ..." Mary kissed the tree she'd leaned on, and walked along the forest ridge, with Carlson now holding her left arm and helping her over tangles and deadfalls. Catania saw that though she could stroll very well, and dance, and even climb a net ladder into a tree, Mary had difficulty with more continuous effort. She took Mary's other arm and helped lift her when they climbed over huge fallen timbers of great trees, grown along the spine of the ridge.

  Carlson and Catania helped Mary One-eye along until even the sounds of the looms, even the growl of the mill were gone, swallowed by the forest. They helped her over evergreen scrub and shallow snow, and got no thanks for it, only muttering and bad looks.

  The ridge broke into wooded slopes and deep valleys. It was the highest ground Catania had seen in the forest, and they walked a long way through it. Mary needed support along these steep ways; Catania heard her panting like a puppy.

  At a wall of cracked gray stone flaking away under ivy, Mary said, "You stay here." Carlson Gold-bracelets folded his arms and leaned against the rock's snow-powdered ivy-leaves to wait.

  Mary One-eye led Catania along the wall for a little way, then down great shattered slabs of the wall, fallen, so they climbed deeper into a valley so narrow the sky was only a strip of blue above them.

  Cold air had settled into this place like a slow river. It swirled around them as they traveled, Catania helping Mary over rotting logs and fallen stone.

  "Here," Mary said.

  The rock to their left had become a long shelf, with a great hollow beneath it that went back into darkness. Mary ducked into that as the
Garden people ducked into their tree-root houses. When Catania went after her, Mary took her arm and held her still.

  "Listen to me," she said. "Where we were walking was a Warm-time road. If you dig down, you find broken black pieces. No one—no one—has ever come here but Ladies who've given an eye. I make an exception for you, Catania."

  "Thank you," Catania said.

  "Don't thank me. It is not an honor. It's something else: it's a wisdom maker." She kept her grip on Catania's arm, pulling her deeper into the dark.

  Catania thought she saw light far ahead. "What is that?"

  "Take off your boots," Mary said, "—and shut your mouth. This is a quiet place."

  Catania bent and took off her moccasin-boots and foot wraps. When she stood barefoot on icy uneven stone, she saw a distant shaft of light coming down through the rock's high ceiling ahead of them.

  Mary walked on, and Catania followed. The stone ceiling had split along a narrow crack. Icicles hung in sheets along it, and these shone in soft uncertain sunlight filtering down.

  To the left was a low wall, smooth, and mottled gray, with big pieces of dark ice along its top edge. Catania saw something painted on it. She went closer. It was a starved blue-gray dog, running.

  She touched the stone beside the running dog—and her fingertip slipped in grease, then stuck, frozen to the rock as if it was a knife's frigid steel she'd touched, on the Range. She tried to pull her hand away—but was caught there, had to stoop and breathe on the place to warm it before she could tug her finger free.

  "This wall isn't stone!"

  "No," Mary said. "It isn't stone, and isn't a wall, either." She took Catania's arm and led her past the running dog. There were two narrow steps there, up into darkness.

  "Go in," Mary said. "And be the first to see them with both eyes."

  "What is it?"

  "Go in."

  "What is it?"

  "Go in, and learn."

  Catania climbed the first step, then stopped.