Five Miles South of Seattle, Washington Territory
24 December 1880
The snow fell lightly at first, dusting the tops of the towering evergreens that surrounded the small frontier town of Seattle. For a single snowflake to land on the dark forest floor, it had to slip past hundreds of branches. A young deer stepped carefully through the high snow banks near a single cabin in the woods where a thin wisp of smoke escaped the chimney. Hunched over a book, a young man with short brown hair and dark green eyes sat at a wooden table, writing a poem by candlelight.
Dmitri planned to ask Natalya to marry him the next evening. He had saved his money for a year, enough to start a life with her. To prepare for moving to America, he’d spent three years studying Russian books translated into English. It had been lonely living alone this past year in the small log cabin he’d painstakingly built, but hopefully Natalya would be his wife soon, and the cabin would become a cozy home. Everything was planned for the following day—Christmas—which he’d end by giving her his great-grandmother’s emerald ring. An heirloom, the rectangular green stone sparkled, with carefully engraved leaves winding along the gold band.
He concentrated on a crack in the cabin wall, trying to conjure the perfect final line to inscribe within Natalya’s Christmas gift—Anna Karenina—words that would give her cryptic clues to find the ring. She was so smart and loved a good mystery. Dmitri never felt so alive as when he was with her.
They had been attempting to speak English as much as possible, and so his brain was muddled trying to compose elegant words in his second language. His hands were moist with sweat, and the surprisingly loud beat of his heart unsettled him. The snow blew sideways across his window, playing on his nerves. With his old quill pen in hand, he carefully wrote the final line in the bottom corner on the first blank page, then blew on the ink impatiently. With the pages left open to dry, he dressed in his warmest fur coat to hunt before the sun set.
Before leaving, he closed the book, wrapped it with brown paper, and carefully placed it below the blankets in the bottom of his trunk for safekeeping. He blew out his candle and shut the heavy, ill-fitting door of his cabin. As he trekked in the opposite direction of town, his feet sank much deeper than normal with each step. The path before him was white, but he was determined to have fresh meat for Christmas dinner with his bride-to-be. Fresh deer droppings rested on top of the snow—he could find the deer before nightfall.
Far above, snow fell on ancient firs, weighing heavily on their branches. The winter of 1880 had been unusually cold, and a deep layer of ice coated each branch. As the full moon rose over the horizon, an owl flew to the tallest branch of the highest tree. The moment it landed, the great branch snapped and crashed down to the snow-covered earth.
Dmitri looked up just in time to see a mountain of ice and branches hurtling toward him.