Twice a year, when the day is half-dark and half-light, in a town a day’s journey away, the Equinox Market came. Merchants arrived from near and far, selling fruit and animals and tools and perfume and cloth and spices. In Snow and Rose’s old life, it was a place the servants had gone. Now, for the first time, their mother went on her own, leaving Snow and Rose to take care of each other.

Their mother’s wagon was drawn by a black bicycle. The cart was a present from their old gardener—in its past life, it had carried shrubs and gardener’s tools. When their mother returned from the Equinox Market, the cart was filled with glass jars, clinking against crates that held bunches of herbs and bushels of vegetables and fruit. On top of it all, securely bound, was a wire cage.

Inside the cage was a beautiful chicken that had golden-brown feathers and laid speckled brown eggs. Snow immediately took her from the cage and held her, even as the round little bird squawked and flapped her wings to get free. Their mother told Snow and Rose that when she was small, she’d had a brown-feathered chicken she loved, and that her name was Goldie.

“Let’s name our chicken Goldie, too,” Snow said.

“Would that make her Goldie Junior?” Rose asked.

“Goldie the Second,” Snow said, nodding in approval.

Their mother looked pleased with the provisions she’d brought back. She seemed capable, as though the heaviness around her had lightened. She tied on an apron and the scarf she used to wear in her sculptor’s studio to keep dust out of her hair. She showed Snow and Rose how to make a chicken pen inside the tin shed. Back in the house, their mother gathered pots and laid out cutting boards and knives to make food to store for the cold season that would come.

“I saw your friend at the market, the young mushroom farmer,” their mother said, handing each of the girls an apron. “He was helping his parents.”

“Ivo?” Snow asked, tying her apron.

“So that’s where he was!” Rose said. “We went to his farm. I wondered if we were looking in the wrong place again.” She smoothed her apron and straightened the bow, then dug into a sack, retrieving bundles and packets.

“We have to prepare,” their mother said. She tucked a stray lock of dark hair beneath her scarf.

“Prepare for what?” Snow mumbled, her mouth full of peach.

“For winter,” their mother answered. “Luckily, I remember how. We had to make things for ourselves when I was little.” She smiled, a small smile, but rare and reassuring. She scooted the bushel of peaches away from Snow. “For when I can’t just make my way down the path to the village, and it’s too cold for anything to grow. So don’t eat everything now.”

Snow eyed the crates of empty jars. “We’re going to fill all of these?” she asked, frowning. “But we just made Goldie’s house.”

“So we’ll have eggs,” her mother replied. “But won’t you want anything else to eat when the snow comes?”

Snow wiped peach juice from her cheek. She looked at her mother skeptically and nodded.

“Then you need to learn to cook.” Her mother held out a wooden spoon.

Snow eyed the spoon. “We should have someone to cook for us.”

“Oh no,” Rose said quietly, busying herself at the sink with a bowl of red currants.

“We’re all going to be cooks now,” her mother said, cutting a melon in half with a sharp chop. “It will be fun.”

“But I don’t want to be a cook!” Snow said, panic growing in her voice. She untied her apron and threw it on the floor. She could hear a clamor starting in her ears, the sound before a symphony, of stray horns and disordered strings.

Her mother sighed. “Learning to feed yourself doesn’t mean you’ll grow up to be a cook.”

“I’m not doing it,” Snow said.

Her mother’s voice was calm but serious. “Since we have come here, I’ve been doing almost everything myself. And now I am just asking for a little bit of help.” She touched Snow’s cheek. “We are all we’ve got.”

Snow laced up her boots, scowling the whole time. “I’m going to look for somewhere else to live.” In her ears, the clamor began to grow louder and louder.

“And what will you eat when it’s cold?” her mother asked.

“I guess I’ll just starve!” Snow shouted, closing the door hard behind her.

Snow sat in her favorite part of the Snow Garden, her garden, back in her old life. Earl Grey had followed her on the long walk out of the woods, down the hill, into the valley. He sat beside her as she breathed in a wall of white blooms until her anger grew quiet enough for her to think. She wondered how people got to be the way they were. Why things angered her so, why they ran away with her, when they didn’t bother Rose.

Their mother said Snow had their father’s temper, but Snow could only remember his anger running away with him once. It was several years ago. Four big horses had thundered up the drive, and their coachman hadn’t noticed the two small girls, and the wheels barely missed them. Their father’s face was usually kind, but it became red and furious. He pulled the man down from his seat and held him by the collar of his shirt, upbraiding him for his carelessness. She knew he was this way because they’d been in danger, but the person he was in that moment—she almost didn’t know him.

Snow had forgotten about her anger some days in the woods. The day they found the library. The day they found Ivo. But today she remembered it, or it remembered her. When she thought she had outrun it, it always seemed to find her.

Snow thought of Rose, happy and patient in the kitchen at the old house. Now Rose made them dinner at the cottage sometimes, when her mother wasn’t up to it or when she’d gone to the market. Snow didn’t know how to make much more than slightly burned toast.

As she watched the white swan gliding slowly on the surface of the pond, Snow made a wish in the garden that she could be patient. That she wouldn’t let her anger run away with her. Snow stayed among the last of the year’s white flowers until the shadows got long.

Then quietly, with Earl Grey at her side, she crept up to the house. She saw herself barely reflected in the window. Inside, the dining room was framed perfectly, a moving picture, bright against the darkening blue outside. People she didn’t know, a mother and a father and three children, were sitting at the dining table, her dining table. The servants brought out a big roasted turkey.

“My turkey,” she said, looking down at Earl Grey. “Of course, I would share with you.”

“What’s that?” A warm, creaking voice came from somewhere behind Snow.

She turned and saw Marcel, the old gardener, wearing the same big green coat he always wore. The look on his face split the uneasy difference between a smile and a frown.

“You know you shouldn’t be here, love.”

Snow looked down, her cheeks growing hot.

“I told you, you can come to the gardens anytime. Anytime. But you can’t be creeping around the house, no—no, that you can’t do.” The gardener’s crepe-papery eyes crinkled, and the stubbly shadow of his mustache curved into another sad smile.

When Snow returned to the cottage, she was amazed to find that her mother and Rose had hung the top of the pantry with upside-down bouquets of rosemary and garlic grass and sage. They’d filled all the jars with red currant preserves and peaches and plum tomatoes, big chunks of melon and squash. Pots bubbled on the stove. The house smelled like blackberry jam.

Snow stood and looked silently, first at her mother, then at Rose. “Is there anything that I can do?”

“You can stir the jam,” her mother said, handing Snow the spoon again, as if she didn’t remember the tantrum, as if Snow had never left.