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.

Gran grunted. "Look at it. Whiter than a grub with the eyes of a beast."

Mat threw a scathing look over his shoulder. "Are you really going to throw a child back out into that?"

The cottage moaned in reply.

Barring her teeth, Gran said: "Normal lads bring pups home."

The girl's eyes whirled as her fate bounced between Mat and the old woman. He tried not to ogle.

"I bet she's hungry and thirsty."

"A blasted inn we've become, eh?" The girl looked to Gran and she recoiled as if she'd been struck.

"Gran, please."

Grumbling about she-devils, Gran shuffled off toward the pantry.

"Crotchety, that one," Mat whispered, "but she's all huff."

The girl stared back at him with all the facial nuance of a doe.

"Don't be afraid." Mat schooched closer but stopped as she visibly shied away. "You don't want to leave tonight. I bet I'll have to dig a tunnel to the stable in the morning. My toes ache just thinking about it." He wiggled them and a big toe peeked out from a hole in his sock.

The silence stretched between them as Gran rummaged with the kettle over the fire.

"Were you out there alone?"

Nothing.

He doubted any stragglers could survive long out there, sightlessly separated from warm havens by great walls of white.

"Where'd you come from?"

"Keep your distance," Gran snarled, though neither had moved. As if lacking the fortitude to move past her grandson, she placed a wooden tray with a hunk of bread and a steaming cup of water in a chipped mug beside him. The girl eyed the ensemble like it might rear up and bite her.

"You," Gran pointed at the boy, "will sleep in my room tonight while I keep an eye out here on this one."

"We should all stay near the hearth to keep warm. Besides, should she go feral, it might take both of us to wrangle her," he deadpanned.

They looked to the girl who appeared none the wiser.

"Spoiled rotten you are," Gran shot at the boy, "with all those damn pets your mother kept."

Mat soured at the slight and plucked at his holey socks.

The old woman swung her chair around to face the door, then plopped down with the kind of groan only those with old bones know. "I got my eye on you—the both of you. No silly business, or you'll learn quick an old woman's fury."

Within minutes, she was snoring.

It became clear the girl would not touch the tray, at least not with him watching. Mat stood up and stretched with a yawn. He grabbed the furs from Gran's bed and draped one over the old woman, another on the icy floorboards, and the rest he dropped in a heap before the girl.

"Just do me a favor and don't open that door tonight, or you'll kill us all dead."

She stared up at him with big eyes and he acted out his request before giving up with a wave of his hand. The cold making alpine ridges of his skin, Mat shrugged on his jacket and put on his boots for good measure, then curled up on the ground, his back to the girl. Despite the storm's unrelenting howl, sleep finally dragged him under.

Mat woke in the blighted hours of morning, when the storm's roar had died to a growl, and felt a weight at his back. Foggy with sleep, he tried to roll over and nearly crushed the girl. Skin prickling in disbelief, he sat up to find nothing but crumbs on her plate and the furs in the heap where he'd left them. Curled up in her cloak, her fingers twitched and her eyelids flickered, as if she were suffering a dream. Mat got up, slowly so as not to disturb her. He raked the glowing embers in the hearth, set logs on the dying fire, then beat the air with a fan until the fire crackled. Blowing warm air onto his fingers, he returned to his spot where the girl had rolled over in her sleep, maybe missing his bodily warmth. He laid back down beside her and fell asleep wondering about her queer complexion and peculiar arrival.

He dreamt of frostbitten children with molten sunlight for eyes.

A pale, winter light was filtering in through the front window and a biting chill had penetrated his cloak the next time he woke. The silence struck him as odd; the storm was over. Gran had removed the storm boards Mat had nailed over the window the night before and was looking out with furrowed brow at a wall of snow. The girl was still curled up beside him, nothing but her wild white hair peeking out of her cloak. He got up, making a slow go of it, the cold in his bones.

Gran's resting frown deepened. "I never thought I'd see another, not after that damnable war."

Mat came to stand beside her and peered out at the sliver of deceptively blue sky above the snow that ended above his top-most curls. "One what?"

"A faery," she uttered, as if it were a curse.

Mat bit back a grin. "No one's seen a faery in more than eighty orbits."

"Well, I'll be damned if she's human. That lot left something behind."

"Maybe it's a genetic disorder, purely cosmetic."

She grimaced as if slighted that he hadn't immediately latched onto her crazy conspiracy theory.

"We can't keep her."

"What makes you think she'll want to stay?"

Gran grumbled about disobedient grandsons and nefarious storms until the words terminated in a sputter with her looking wide-eyed over Mat's shoulder.

He turned to find the subject of their dispute sitting, looking untidy and disoriented.

Again, the old woman uttered an oath.