Snow ✓

An Inadvisable Adventure

No one came knocking the next day, nor the day after that. No matter how many how times Mat paced to and from the window, looking out in anticipation of an angry mob with pitchforks, no one came to whisk Snow away.

All that arrived were the season's first snowflakes to powder the front yard.

The stints between his looking grew longer and longer until he quit looking all together. By the end of the week, Snow imagined he was already thinking up new ways to introduce her to the world. He had plenty of time to ponder—the snow stuck around; winter was here.

Snow couldn't relate to this "cabin fever" Mat incessantly complained about; there was plenty to distract her. While the old woman spent most of her time in front of the fire, knitting and snoring, Mat baked and Snow helped. Fans of the cocoa bean, they made everything from chocolate chip hotcakes to hot cocoa tarts, and countless mugs of hot cocoa before Gran complained: "Keep it up and we'll all have hearts pumping sludge, waddling around the gardens come spring, not able to see past our knees." The old woman slept the sweets off in her oversized armchair while Mat and Snow played games; put cylinders on the phonograph and danced; built snow palaces; stayed up late and built forts out of furs where they read and told stories until the sun threatened to spill over the horizon.

Snow could imagine worse ways to spend a winter. But still Mat complained, and being the little thought gremlin she is, Snow thought up a solution she thought good enough to share: one last outing to Myst to cap the orbit.

"Absolutely not."

"You're always complaining about how bored you are--"

"And cold. How would that help?"

She thought on that. "The raw sense of adventure will keep us warm."

He laughed. "Raw fear, more like." Playing knucklebones at the hearth, he hadn't looked up at her completely serious face until now. "You're serious?"

"Dead."

"I can't believe you," he said, eyes back on the game. "We just went and you hated it."

"I want to see it as it is, not when it's crawling with goblins and ghouls for a patriotic fright night."

"And if we get caught?"

"We won't."

"And if Gran finds out?"

"She won't. Mat—"

"I said no."

For a moment, she thought his hypothetical scenarios meant she was making progress but he went on playing knucklebones like she wasn't even there. The truth is, this hadn't seemed so important moments ago. She hadn't known how how bad she wanted it until he denied her.

"You took me. FestiFae was your idea."

"That was different, everyone looked like--"

You. She could see he hadn't meant to say it. Cheeks red, he went back to playing knucklebones, concentrating comically hard on the bouncing ball.

"So what? We're gunna stay holed up in this cottage, waiting for Gran to die, so you and I can play house for eternity?"

He looked at her as if she had burped and a fly had flown out of her mouth. "'Course not, don't be stupid."

"Then, what! We didn't even get caught, why are you so--"

"Can't you wait awhile?"