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people... or if she looked on me as a charity case, with herself as Sister of
Pity, bringing me back to life with fleshly mercy. But I've had twenty years
to think about Steck, and I've rejected all the easy answers. She met a
withdrawn, far-from-enticing stranger and the idea just popped into her mind:
'Wouldn't he be unlikely!' I imagine she wrestled with the notion for weeks.
In time, she succumbed to the idea... and I succumbed to her."
I could barely hold my stomach down. My foster father and a Neut? But of
course, Steck hadn't been Neut back then: just a normal girl, a good-looking
one if Zephram could be believed. Then again, by the time you're sixty, every
woman you've slept with must turn beautiful in memory. Beautiful, or else
hideous; when you're sixty, why waste your memories on anyone in between?
"So you and Steck were..." I let my voice trail off rather than say a word
that would make me cringe.
"Lovers?" Zephram finished for me. "Depends on your definition. I was a
needer rather than a lover. I needed someone in the nights, and I needed
someone in the days too. Steck saved me from smothering under grief. As for
what was in it for her I don't know if she loved me or needed me, but some
impulse made herclaim me." He suddenly picked up his knife and briskly chopped
his bacon into pieces. "Let me tell you about meeting Steck," he said. And he
did.
The Silence of Mistress Snow settles over the village with the first snowfall
every winter. By tradition, no one speaks a word from the first sight or touch
of a snowflake until dawn the next day. This isn't the Patriarch's Law Leeta
thinks it goes way back to monkey times, when the coming of snow stopped our
ancestors jabbering in the trees and reduced them to watching the world coat
up with white. There's something about the quiet of snow, especially when it
comes after sunset and descends like a million ghosts slipping from the skirts
of Mistress Night: youhave to hold your breath. You stand silent in the open
doorway, with no thought of how hard winter will be, no worry whether you've
put up enough preserves or stored enough hay for the cattle. What's done is
done; you're ready or you're not, and either way, the snow is too beautiful to
care.
So Tober Cove falls silent when the snow arrives, as mute as an initiate in
prayer. Even the children understand. Parents hug them to show it's all right,
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but keep a finger to their lips until they get the idea. Chores get set aside
to let the hush settle in deeper; many people sit on their front steps or in
their windows, with no lamps cheapening the blackness.
Then, around midnight, the Council Hall bell rings once: the Cold Chime, rung
by Mistress Snow herself. Sure, it might be the mayor who pulls the bell-rope,
but it's Mistress Snow who carries the sound through the village, her fingers
so fuzzed with frost that they muffle the tone. The chime signals people in
town to make their Visits... Visits which are promises, sealed by Mistress
Snow, that you'll help another household through the winter.
A Visit is simple. You get a small piece of burnable wood and carry it to
someone else's home. Every front door is open, if only by a crack. You walk in
without a word, add your stick to the fire, then go, closing the door tight
behind you. The closed door shows that this house has been placed under your
protection others who might come by should Visit elsewhere, looking for a door
that's still open to the wind. One by one, the doors are closed; and so the
people of Tober Cove silently promise that no one will face the winter alone.
You don't break promises made to Mistress Snow.
Zephram had lived in our town almost a month by the time snow came. He
couldn't say why he hadn't left while there was still time before winter. "I'm
bad with explanations," he told me. "Now and then I believe I understand why
things happen... but then I always think better of it."
People had seen the snow coming long before it arrived: a bundle of bleak
clouds advancing across Mother Lake from the northwest. The clouds had the
feathery gray look of mourning doves, and they closed off the afternoon as
they drew in. Every perch boat came back to harbor early. Down at the
Elemarchy School, the teacher let her children out at two o'clock so they
could scurry home to help with last-minute chores.
Zephram happened to be near the docks when the boats started to come in "All
right," he admitted, "I was sitting half-numb on the pier, watching the clouds
choke the sky" but he fought off his gloom and roused himself to help unload
the day's catch. That's when he heard about the Silence of Mistress Snow, and
the other Tober traditions associated with winter's coming. The men were
divided on what Zephram himself should do at midnight: whether he should make
a Visit of his own or keep shut behind a closed door. Both sides of the
discussion meant well. Some thought it would be good for Zephram to
participate in community traditions, while others said it would be easier on
him not to get involved. After all, if Zephram made a formal Visit at
midnight, he was committing himself to stay in the cove until spring. Was that
what he wanted? The trip down-peninsula wasn't easy in winter, but a few
sleighs made the journey every year supposedly to buy supplies, really just
for something to do once the harbor froze. Zephram could catch a ride down to
Ohna Sound any time he wanted... but not if he promised Mistress Snow to see
someone else through the hard cold season.
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