It’s the details I got to watch for—some bit of cloth, or a toy in the snow, or a twig snapped clean, or a dip in the ground here—but the blizzard means I can’t see much. Sometimes, all of a sudden, the wind stops. Everything floats down like pillow feathers and I can just about pick out what’s all around, but it’s always here one second and gone the next.
Pa used to say that was worse than the storm proper: right when everything’s still, like when you’re in the eye of a hurricane, and you start to get a bit hopeful, but it goes by just like that, and then you’re in the thick of it again. Hunched and cursing about being so bundled up, you’re sweating in your parka. That damn sweat will give you chills or make you thirsty enough to want to stuff some snow in your mouth.
The times I can see more than ten feet ahead, I cross my fingers that I can pick out the boy’s shape and Bess’s too. Looking proud, sticking out her chin like she wants to be taller than she is. That’s what really throws men for a loop, that feeling she gives off that nobody can touch her. She’s awful pretty with her light skin and her red hair, sure, but she’s a wild card too. I have no idea what’s going on in her head. I still figured it would be a good idea, her being better educated than anyone here, not that that’s saying much, and she wanted to get the heck out of Dodge. I needed someone for the kid, someone to teach him things, but of course it wasn’t long before she was out of her element too. Thing is, he’s learned plenty from books but just about nothing when it comes to staying alive around these parts. What does it matter if you know every last thing about that plate-tectonic stuff if you don’t know what to do when you get hit by a quake? He can tell me the names of every single ocean trench in the world, but he can’t even land a minnow, never mind gut and cook the fish. Cole said he’d make a man out of the boy. Teach him all “Magnus’s rules for staying alive” in the spring. Just that, though—for school stuff he’s the last one who could help, even if he’s a city man from Outside and has no excuse.
I can’t watch over him here forever. He needs to be schooled, just like any kid his age, and she’s going to be trying her damndest to get him back again. Christ, what good am I for a kid in such a godforsaken corner? What can I show him but these views and snow, more snow than anyone’s ever seen?