Snow ✓

A Peculiar Arrival

Ten orbits later

Mat was curled up in his grandmother's oversized armchair at the hearth, covered in so many furs that it felt as if the beasts themselves were piled atop him. Any closer to the fire, and a stray ember would set him aflame—he could think of worse fates as the snowstorm howled like a pack of wolves outside and the small cottage creaked under its weight. He cursed Gran whose Grizzly-sized snores he could hear from the other room.

A distinctive series of knocks brought his head up. He peered over the back of the chair at the front door. A chill already beginning to roost on his head, he nuzzled back under. A trick of the storm. No one was dumb enough to be out in this, and even if they were, the white out would make finding the cottage from the seaside hamlet Myst near impossible.

The knocks started again, this time frantic.

With a curse, he bolted up out of the chair, the sudden cold a punch to his gut. He paused with his hand on the latchstring, thinking nothing good could come from his opening this door, as a weight, not like that of a gale but of a meatier substance, thudded against it. He pulled the string and the door flew, tossed like a piece of driftwood, back against its frame as the storm whooshed in, snuffing out the hearth, and bringing in with it a messy shape of moving hair and blood-red fabric with the features of a small girl. Mat paid her little mind as he drove his shoulder into the door, his socked feet slipping on the floorboards, trying to find purchase. With a hefty shove, he corked the tempest. 

All was dark. 

The visitor, little more than a shadow, slumped back against the door that rattled, straining against its hinges. Head buzzing with the prospect of someone out in a storm like this, Mat blinked away tears wrought by the frigid onslaught and his breath hitched at the sight: A young girl unlike any he had ever seen, with wind-gnarled hair as pale as a crone's, eyes the color of a rising sun and a face whiter than an eel's.

He wondered if he hadn't fallen asleep after all.

Gran hobbled into the room with a lantern, a question on her lips that garbled into an oath when she caught sight of the girl who hunched against the door, like she would rather take her chances back out in the storm. The old woman ventured closer, uttering curses that bled into prayers and back again.

Mat took a step toward the girl and Gran snagged his arm and yanked him back.

"Don't, boy. You don't know what it is."

"A child."

"A snow witch, sent by the storm's blistering womb."

Mat clenched his teeth and suppressed an eyeroll.

The girl shook and Mat realized that, for a moment, he'd forgotten the cold. He laced his arms around his torso.

"Gran, if we don't get the fire going, we'll all freeze."

The old woman grumbled that he was at fault for the fire going out in the first place, yet started to back toward the hearth, barked, "Stay!" while pointing a gnarled finger at the girl, then took a broom to the ashes.

Mat squatted and, again, the girl drew up against the door like a cornered animal. He murmured assurances but she gave no indication she understood him at all.

The cottage took a breath as the hearth caught, casting a ruddy glow.

"Boy, are you hard in the head? I said don't touch it," Gran snarled from a safe distance.

To the audible umbrage of his grandmother, Mat plopped down where he stood. The girl peeked around him toward the warmth and the flames danced in her wide eyes.