All morning they kept to the corners, whispering about her, peering over their shoulders at her. At least the one named Mat threw the occasional, polite smile her way; the old woman, whom he called Gran, looked like she might unravel if the girl scurried too quickly from any spot to another. Built like a stack of frumpy pancakes shoved into a potato sack with thick grey cords tied tight in a bun and a wizened face worn by habitual frowns, she was the oldest woman the girl had ever seen. Mat looked younger than her brother but older than her—too young to be a man, too old to be a child. Muscly and sun-kissed, it was clear he spent more time outside than in. He had mussed, golden curls infused with sunlight that went every which way and kind eyes the color of mud under a cloudy sky.

Gran brooded over the way he kept posing questions to the girl in a soothing lilt and blustered when the girl stared dead ahead, quiet as a mercenary without a tongue.

It wasn't that she couldn't speak so much as that she refused. Fear had settled into the hallows of her body like lizards eager to wait out the rain. After being hidden away her entire life and told that she was to be seen and not heard, that discovery by outsiders meant the end of everything as she knew it, keeping quiet seemed like the best policy; it was the familiar in an unfamiliar place. Surely, her brother would show up anytime now and whisk her back home where she could go back to being unseen, something she never thought she would miss once gone.

"Maybe she's simple," Gran said, not for the first time.

"Maybe she's scared," Mat said, the eyeroll in his voice.

Gran sighed as if being crushed by the weight of the world. "It's damn near high sun, someone's got to dig us out of here before we all have to claim corners to make puddles."

"Are you volunteering?"

"Boy, you watch your mouth," she spat, then mumbled something about weak knees and traitorous hips.

Mat laced up his boots at the door, glancing skeptically between her and the old woman who looked as if he was threatening to leave her alone with a murderous bear.

"She could help you prepare lunch," he offered.

"I'm not turning my back when she's within arm's length of the cutlery—"

"A nice book, then," Mat interrupted, loudly.

He stepped toward another door, kitty-corner to the exit, swung it open wide and gestured for the girl to go inside. Fiddling with the hem of her cloak, she obeyed, making quick time of the short distance. Small, the room felt cramped with a bed and side table on one side and a bookcase on the other. The only window that she knew must look out onto the Burnt Forest was boarded up.

"Right, let's get a little light in here."

As he removed the boards, the girl latched onto the wall to avoid the woman's scrutiny as she hovered in the doorway.

"Can you read?" he asked once finished, the boards tucked under his arm.

She glanced at the bookcase. His brow rose, and she knew he must be thinking that she did indeed understand him.

"Look, pretend okay," he said, lowering his voice, "just to stay out of her way for awhile." He yanked a bound hide off the shelf and handed it to her. "Here. This one has pictures."

Snow White and the Seven Dwarves.

With an encouraging nod from Mat, she sat on the floor and cracked it open, then ignored him when he lingered as one might when they see a creature out in the wild for which they have no name.

He cleared his throat. "You can lay down if you get tired. Maybe stay out of the kitchen."

He left the door open a crack. He and the old woman bickered about the finer points of morality in hushed voices before Mat started wrestling his way out into the snow.

The girl had read Snow White before. In her mind's eye, the wicked stepmother always had her own mother's face. She skipped straight to the huntsman chasing Snow White through the woods but found herself unable to do more than admire the pretty pigments as she wondered what her brother was doing now.

The girl tried to do as she was told, but when she finished the book her bladder felt ready to burst and her stomach like a raisin. Peeking out, she saw the old woman bustling in the kitchenette and a bowl of something presumably edible on the kitchen table. Her stomach tried to betray her with gurgles but Gran didn't seem to hear. On her tiptoes, the girl moved to the table, reached up, and was rewarded with a slice of dried apple. It was halfway in her gob when the old woman turned, screamed, raised a wooden spoon over her head as if brandishing an axe, and brought it down where the girl's hand had been a breath before. The girl recoiled, tripped on her cloak and fell hard on her backside.

"You sneaky little devil," Gran howled as the girl tried to scoot away.

Mat rushed in on the commotion, letting in a gust of cold air as he came to stand between them.

"Hey! What's going on?" he said, putting a hand up against the spoon the woman still clutched with white knuckles.

"She snuck up on me to thieve from the table!"

"It's an apple slice--"

"You told her to stay in that room!"

"Yes, and kids don't always do as they're told," he said, reaching down to help the girl who scrambled up without his aid.

He bustled her out the front door as the old woman fumed, her threats trailing them.

"Come on," he said, pushing her off the stoop as she squinted against the sudden glare of sunlight. "I got as far as the washroom." He led her down a corridor with towering walls of packed snow.

"Sorry about Gran. But if you could tell us where you're from, how you got here?" He stopped to stare at her expectantly.

She rushed past him toward the ramshackle heap of planks he had indicated as the washroom and slammed the door shut behind her. Struggling to get her pants off, she stumbled to the toilet in the nick of time.

Mat kept her outside while he continued to shovel the white away. If she kept quiet, the girl was certain he would protect her from the old woman until her brother returned. So, she entertained herself by crafting miniature snow animals to pass the time, much to his annoyance.

"Stop that! You're gonna lose fingers." Then, to himself: "Honestly, out in a snowstorm without gloves."

She waited until his back was turned to finish the antlers on her stag.

By the time Mat had cleared the entrance to the stable, the hood of her cloak was up and her hands were tucked into her armpits. He leaned the shovel against the doorway and walked in, leaving her to mill about the entrance and look in on big beasties shifting about in stalls, their nostrils steaming.

"It's okay," he said with a suppressed smile, waving her over. "They're gentle."

The girl tiptoed toward the closest one: a deep-brown brute with an inky mane and big, black eyes. She had seen horses only once before, the rest in storybooks, and her brother had explained then why people kept them around: When folks are going further than their feet can take them, they ride these landbeasts. It had seemed odd that men should ride animals, but seeing them now, up close, one was more than big enough to hold up a single man. A symphony of snorts, restless behinds bumping stalls, and hooves stomping the oiled dirt floor got louder the deeper the girl moved into the stable. Looking quizzically over his shoulder, Mat walked up to pet the horse's velvety nose. As the girl drew closer, the animal took step after step back, bobbing its head as if looking for an escape. Once the girl had reached the door to its stall, she could see only the tips of its ears. Mat put out his arms to indicate he would lift her, and when she didn't protest, he hoisted her by the waist.

"There—"

The horse reared up with an ear-splitting neigh. Mat took a wide step back as a chorus of whinnies struck up from the other stalls.

Baffled, the girl watched the animals' eyes roll in their long faces until she remembered herself and squirmed, urging Mat to let her go. She darted from the stable and made it to the washroom before it hit her she had nowhere to go. Surrounded by a gelid sea of snow, she couldn't leave even if she wanted to. Not feeling up to braving Gran alone, she waited for Mat who came back looking bemused but made no mention of what had happened.

"Let's see what's for lunch, eh?"

The girl had forgotten her hunger. All she wanted was to escape Gran's prying eyes, so she strode straight into the bedroom, curled up atop the bed, and stuffed the pillow over her head. It nor the mattress were as soft as what she had at home, she lamented, and glared at a piece of straw sticking out of the pillow.

When the door creaked, she mashed her eyelids shut. Hearing a clink on the floor, she counted silently to ten before she looked to find a bowl of dried apple slices inside the door. The sunlight had begun to wane by the time she was hungry enough to leave the bed for them.

Mat walked in on her stuffing them into her cheeks like a chipmunk.

"You're going to choke, you're not careful."

Feeling her face flush, she chewed.

"Sorry," he sputtered when she, again, caught him staring. "I don't mean to stare—we don't get many visitors."

And I look like a snow witch, sent by the storm's blistering womb.

"We'd like to help you get home."

Avoiding eye contact, she shoved the last of the slices into her mouth.

"But to do that, you have to talk—or write?"

She turned away from him until he was nothing more than a speck in the tail of her eye. He continued to press her about where she came from, who was missing her and how they might safely return her to them, while her voice hovered like an earthworm trapped in the frozen ground, wiggling, searching for loose dirt so that it might burrow deeper.

"Are you in danger? Were you running from something, someone?"

After one too many unanswered questions, he left and returned with a lit candle.

"Here," he said moodily, setting it on the bedside table. "Don't let the nightmares fright." He closed the door behind him, again, leaving it open a crack.

She leapt up and closed it. Eyeing it like a beast in the night, she expected it to swing back open at any moment, an angry old woman on the other side. No one came. She scrambled back onto the bed, unclasped the cloak pulling at her neck and used it as a blanket as the dark pressed in around her. 

It occurred to her only after the cold started nibbling on her toes that maybe the boy had left the door open to let in heat from the hearth. She tried to rub the cold away but it seeped into her bones, and with it, memory of the night before bled into her mind's eye. 

Her brother trudged through the snow with her in his arms, unbeknownst to her, bearing her ever closer to this house as the storm raged around them. She had kept quiet when he told her to dress without delay. Kept quiet as they ventured from home. Kept quiet even when over his shoulder she saw another someone keeping pace with them through the white. Even when he put her down, put his lips to her ear so that his words stood a chance against the storm's wail and told her to go, to run toward the cottage she could only see once the tempest changed directions, to knock until they let her in, and to not look back, no matter what.

He shook her. Promise me.

She promised. She was a good girl, and good girls do as they're told.

Eliwood had left her before, but he had always come back.

Always.