Snow ✓

Myst

Gran wouldn't let the girl back outside when she offered to take apple cores to the horses.

"One fright a day's enough to keep this old woman's heart healthy."

The girl let her hands drop coreless to her sides. She stalked off to the bedroom.

As Gran turned toward him, Mat hastily returned his attention to the pot above the cookfire, pushing clams around with a stick. It was the first moment alone they'd had since Gerrard made his surprise visit, and Mat hadn't decided whether to tell the old woman the identity of the mystery corpse.

"So?" she said, pulling up a chair.

"So," he said, feeling the opportune time to tell her slipping away.

"What'd ya talk about in that hidey hole of yours? You were down there for quite awhile"

"Gardening mostly."

"Ah. Seems to really like the work," she said, rubbing her bad knee. "Well, she doesn't complain about the work. With that dull stare, I can't fathom what that girl likes."

Mat surprised a snide retort.

"And?"

"And, what?" he said with eyes only for the clams.

"Did you talk to her about that man?" she said testily.

Mat had wondered whether the girl thought about the dead man as much as he and Gran. Now he knew.

He nodded.

"And?" The legs of her chair creaked as she leaned in.

He and Gran didn't keep secrets. Not big ones.

His biggest was how bad his mother got before Gran whisked him away. Soon after his arrival here, they adopted a silent understanding not to discuss her. Nothing worse had ever happened. Their lives were simple, never carried out more than a couple of hundred feet from one another. But he had someone else to think about now. He often wondered if what kept Gran from pushing the girl out was her belief that her stay was temporary. How might she react if he ripped that possibility out from under her?

He chanced a glance at her and lost all confidence. It was too soon for the truth.

"Swears she didn't know him."

"Foundlings. What about wherever she came from?"

Chiding himself for not having anticipated this incredibly logical next question, he said: "It's like she doesn't fully remember," wincing at such a lame reply.

"Poor thing probably has amnesia—

"Those clams are burnin', boy."

Sure enough, thin wisps of smoke nipped at his nose. He pushed them around, then darted to the counter for a bowl to scoop them into, unable to believe his good fortune—she believed him!

After dinner, Mat was lounging in his grandmother's armchair and the girl sitting cross-legged at the hearth, a book open in her lap, when Gran tore into the cottage, slamming the door behind her. Mat peered lazily over the back of the chair as the old woman huffed and puffed to the pantry where she made a racket, before peeking her head out and violently waving him over.

He bit back a yawn. "What is it?"

Gran's eyes darted around, loose in their sockets. "I went to the cellar to tally our remaining food stores—I thought we still had a couple pounds of dried salmon,"