Fresh Snow

It didn't snow much, this far south. Though Wilder's Gorge was at its northern zenith, Taeghas had a beautiful climate, at least if you stayed inland. The seas off the coast were famously storm-wracked, and lent heavily to the fearsome reputation of Taeghan sailors. Sometimes though, as it had this winter, Wilder's Gorge saw snows that rivaled the thigh-deep drifts of Dhoesone. She sat at the triangle-window in the attic of the farmhouse, staring out at heavy white flakes that drifted lazily to rest on the unblemished blanket of white below.

Year after year, like the rising and setting of the sun, a single wagon driven by a single wagoneer and pulled by a pair of sturdy horses would round the bend and crest the hill at the south-east boundary of the homestead, always within minutes of the advent of dusk. Her caretaker was that sort of fellow. Meticulous, driven, devoted. Yes, she had her parents and her siblings, the family who owned and worked the farmland on which she lived. Daffyd and Beddwyn Bersk, her "father and mother", Daglys and Rhws her "brothers", but he was her caretaker, she knew. Her true father had disappeared long ago, and the caretaker's grey, wan face the sole remaining vestige of the life she had left behind. Uncle Wigraf, she had called him for years and years, but she was older now, almost a woman grown, and she had taken to thinking of and calling him caretaker.

She barely remembered that old life now. These farmers were as truly her family as any had ever been, and she loved them dearly. Sometimes, she knew, she scared them. She was different somehow; she suspected it had something to do with her father. She had heard people say he was a mage. It scared her, but she sometimes thought that maybe she was too. She always felt more at ease, more energized when she walked the loam of freshly tilled fields. She could *feel* the land sometimes, as though it was a close friend, sharing its secrets. Though she reveled in the feeling she held it at bay, worrying that it might drive her new family away.

Year after year. Every Eve of the Winter Solstice, Wigraf Morgenstane would come trundling down the rough trail to the Bersk farm, driven by a gruff fellow from Three-Corners. His name was Ollyf Carter and she knew him to be a good soul for all his grumbling. The past three years, Wigraf's first son, Baldyr had accompanied them as well. Year after year she would wait at the window in the attic, searching the clefts of the rolling hills where they met at the road for the bouncing lantern of Wigraf's cart.

Every year he brought gifts, for her and for her family. At first, when she was still a young girl, they had been simple but fine things; strange fruit, dolls in lace dresses, sturdy but well-made clothes. As she had grown, books took the place of dolls. Wigraf would ask her questions about the books she had gotten the year before, hanging on her every word as she described the adventures on which they had taken her, whether they were fictions or histories or poems or natural journals. Wigraf would sit in a chair across from her, in front of the farmhouse's roaring hearth, listen intently, a wide smile splitting his severe features as she rambled on and on. He never censored her. His only interjections were questions about how she had reached her opinions. And the cough. Always the cough. He would listen, and nod. He never lectured, never corrected, never preached. He always seemed utterly content with what she told him, and at the end of the day, just before he trundled off back to Three Corners, he would reach out one of his pale, skeletal hands and produce some sweet seemingly from thin air. They were weak, his hands, but deft. He would embrace her, his body quaking when he coughed, a bundle of dry twigs, but warm, and would tell her he looked forward to hearing what she had learned next year. She loved him dearly. His kindness was selfless, infinite.

The sky had darkened, and a pit of dread had filled her chest when she saw a bobbing mote of light appear from between the hills. The wagon rolled down the old track, its wheels plowing ruts in the new-fallen snow, Ollyf snapping the reins, as sure as the sunset. She practically slid down the smooth ladder to the floor below, then bounded down the stairs to the main floor of the farm house, taking them two at a time.

"Uncle Wigraf is here!" She cried with glee, and Rhws, still young enough to be excited by such things, started at the table where he had been helping mother chop tubers. She slammed open the front door and leapt through the snow to meet the wagon. Ollyf reined up short as she approached, hauling back on the heads of his powerful horses, all silhouettes against the brazen light of the lantern.

The wagon rolled to a stop and a single figure vaulted from the other side of the driver's seat. As he approached, she knew it was not Wigraf, and her heart sunk a bit. Baldyr's broad face, usually warm and honest and friendly, so at odds with the death-mask of his father, came into view as he approached her in the snow. Now, for the first time in the decade she had known him, the boy's face resembled his father's. It was drawn, and pale, but the light of love shone in the depths of his eyes. She knew they were blue, but in the shade of the dark winter evening, they were as black as the grave.

"I'm sorry Mari. I would have come sooner, but," Baldyr's voice cracked, his broad, powerful shoulders slumping, "I'm sorry."

She knew then. She felt she had known the year before, when her caretaker's cough had gained depth, and dampness. There would be no more spinning of tales to her uncle Wigraf. No more sweets from his sleeves. No more heart-filling looks of pure warmth from his gaunt, grey face. She felt the sharp pang of his loss. The final lynchpin that held her past in place and proved what she had been. The perfect, loving soul that had been cursed to a body seeming already long in its grave. Rhws stood still beside her, motionless, his mouth agape. She wanted to cry, to crumple to her knees and scream into the snow, into the night, but instead she stepped close to Baldyr and grasped him tight, his thick body trembling in her arms as his father's once had.

"It's ok Baldyr. I knew."

"How?" Baldyr asked, "He always had that damned cough, but he seemed like he would outlive everyone until just this spring."

"It doesn't matter now Baldyr. He's with Haelyn now, reading him stories."

Baldyr let out a small laugh at that.

"He thought of you, near the end. Told me to come on the solstice. Keep up the tradition."

Mari gently released her grasp, placing her hands on Baldyr's arms.

"He was a good man. As you are. Mother is cooking a stew. Would you join us?"

Baldyr looked at her then, a look of relief and pure gratitude on his ruddy face.

"I would love that. Thanks Mari."

They turned back and trudged through the snow toward the farmhouse, joined by Ollyf. They walked in silence, and though tears fell from her cheeks, invisible in the dark, she knew Uncle Wigraf was finally at rest, and was happy.