Snow in Summer: Fairest of Them All: Fairest of Them All (19 page)

“And don’t you come around here with your fairy stories anymore, Nan,” he said to me, wagging his finger at me as if he was my pa instead of the little old fat boy in our class who’d never had a single friend because he was a squealer and mean besides.

And that was that, except for my prayers, till a man out walking his dog on the far side of Elk Mountain found a torn piece of Summer’s blue dress and the ribbon that had been about her waist. They were in a meadow overrun with bear tracks and fresh scat, and much too far from any town for her to have gotten there by any means other than bad business. Though by then—since it had been raining for days—the trail had gone cold. And even a pair of prize bloodhounds brought in from Buckhannon couldn’t find Summer’s scent.

DARKNESS DESCENDS

T
he basket was heavier than I expected. And something inside seemed to move about, making a funny buzzing noise. For a moment, I was afraid. But just a moment.

“What’s inside the basket, ma’am?” I asked.

“I make little figures that walk about by clockwork,” she said, scissoring a walking motion with her two pointer fingers. “I sell them door-to-door. It keeps body and soul together.”

“Oh, like our clock.” I pointed to the clock on the wall. Every hour a little clockwork bird came out of a hole singing. The first time I heard it, I was startled, but now I loved to listen to its little song. “The brothers brought it from the old country.”

She looked sharply at me with her one good eye. “Brothers? Where are they now?” Her voice suddenly sounded stronger.

“In the mines.” I set the basket down on the table. We could look at her clockwork figures after she’d been fed. I’d take one as a gift, even offer to buy it from her with money the brothers had been setting aside in a tin box over the sink for when I went on my way. After that, I’d send her off. There was something about her that made me uneasy, but not uneasy enough to forget my manners. But go she would have to, before the brothers came home for their dinner, found her in the house, and scolded me for letting her in.

I cut a slice of the küchen for her and one for me. She took it gratefully and crammed half of it in her mouth at once, as if eager to be getting on.

I brewed the tea and she washed the second half of the küchen down with that.

“Thank you, dearie. So delicious,” she said. “Did you make it yourself?”

I nodded. Klaus had shown me how.

The old woman stood. “Now pick out your present, and I will let you be.”

I was somehow suddenly shy, almost reluctant to let her go, the first person other than the brothers I’d spoken to in over a month. But I set that feeling aside because it was more important for both of us that she be gone. Picking up the basket, I propped it in my left arm and lifted the lid.

The buzzing sound was so loud, I looked in, and there glaring up at me was the largest rattler I’d seen outside of the With Signs church.

I cried out and dropped the basket as the old woman laughed. Looking up, I saw that she’d ripped the white cast from her bad eye and was now staring at me, her one blue eye and one green eye as venomous-looking as the snake’s, and both full of laughter.

“Stepmama!” I cried, and at the same time felt something sharp pierce my ankle. Horrified, I looked down. I’d been struck by the rattler.

She laughed, her voice high and crazed. “The mirror gave you away, child. It said:

“It did not take more than a month and a bit of asking around to find you. What Hunter could not do, I surely can. He served me ill and found his doom. The snake has mostly been milked, but there will be enough venom to keep you under and I will take you from here and suck your essence before you die. It would have been better had you given it willingly. But in a few days your essence will be mine. My youth restored. And then the father. And the land. All three. The charm,” she cried out wildly, “the charm’s wound up.”

Laughing, she came toward me, hands stretched out. I was suddenly terrified to let her touch me, even more than I was afraid of the snake at my foot, so I took the caul out of my shirt pocket, stripped it out of the bag, and flung it in her face. Where it hit her, fire burst forth and seared her blue eye and her ancient face melted like candle wax into a semblance of the Stepmama I knew.

She screamed, and as she screamed I picked up the frying pan from the table where I’d left it. It was suddenly heavy as a stone, heavy as doom. I had to use two hands but managed to bring it around in front of me, slamming it down again and again on the top of the snake till it let go of my ankle, till it stopped moving, till it was squashed under the heavy iron skillet.

Dead.

Dead as I would surely be in a minute.

In an hour.

By day’s end.

I sank to the floor, feeling the poison move up my leg, burning beneath the skin. Death’s arrow, death’s lance, death’s river flowing up my veins, seeking my heart.

I lay down, sweating, not with fear, no longer with fear, but with the poison.

Dark descended, though I knew it was day.

I couldn’t see, but I could still hear.

I could hear Stepmama still screaming, but quieter now, almost a whimper.

I could hear Ursula at the door, growling and shaking something beneath her mighty paws and teeth.

I heard a voice I didn’t recognize shouting, “Drop her! Drop her, you silly bear.”

I heard the little men greeting someone. I heard their familiar, comforting voices: Jakob and Freddy and Karl and Klaus, Philip and George. Their voices came closer, surrounding me with their concern.

I tried to speak, but my voice was weak, even to my own ears. I tried again. “Papa,” I said. “Tell Papa he’s free.”

And then I heard nothing more.

JAKOB REMEMBERS

V
e buried her at the crossroads below the house at midnight as deep as ve could, a stake in her heart. Best no one ever finds her and asks questions. Ve were all vitness to the final deed, all seven of us. Brothers, you know, stick together.

And then ve had to clean the house up. Vhat a mess ve had found on returning home. Klaus had gone early to help Summer vith the garden and came running back screaming for us to get out, get out and come right away.

The terror in his woice conwinced us and ve dropped tools and ran. Ve were only minutes away, of course, but it seemed as if it took hours to get there. Vhen ve arrived, ve found a mass of old clothes by the door, vith Ursula still worrying it. Only later did ve realize it was the remains of a voman, hideously battered as if vith a frying pan.

Villy had come home to this scene of horror and vas bending over Summer, still in her gardening clothes, in a svoon on the floor. His mouth vas on her ankle.

“Vat is he doing?” I shouted, then saw the dead snake on the floor and knew. He’d made a cross vith his knife over the point vhere the poison had gone in and vas sucking out as much of it as he could.

Klaus vas standing over him, veeping. “Too late. Too late.”

And indeed it looked far too late, for Summer vas pale as death, her face vhite vith that black hair spread out and a trickle of red blood at her mouth. Vhite and black and red.

Her ankle vhere the snake had bitten it vas svollen. Not a lot, not black already, vhich vould have been for the vorst, but you could see how it vas much puffier than the other ankle.

“Is this Summer, the one you wrote me about?” Villy asked.

I nodded.

“She’s too young, too beautiful to die like this,” he said. “I can’t allow it.” He bent back to suck out more of the poison.

But ve both knew that death can come at any age, come as vell to the young and beautiful as the old and vretched. Our mother had died in the prime of her life, in this wery house, giving birth to him.

“Young and beautiful,” I said, “and good, too.”

He did not again stop his awful task.

“But Villy, only God allows and disallows.”

Philip began saying a prayer over Summer, but Villy sat back, then bent down and picked something up off of the ground, something gray and rubbery-looking, like a little cap.

“That must be the caul she told us about,” Freddy said. “In her story.”

“Her
story,
” I said. “Ve thought it just a fairy tale, really. A young girl running away from home because of a vicked stepmother. The Brüder Grimm could have vritten it. And then she showed us the caul bag she vore around her neck.”

Freddy found the bag not far from vhere Summer lay. He put the caul back in the bag. Gave it to me. I placed it around Summer’s neck.

And then something unexpected happened. Summer sighed. Opened one eye, closed it again. She vhispered something. Villy, who was closest, vas the only one who heard vhat she said.

“She says to tell her papa he’s free,” he reported.

“She’s not dead yet,” I said. “Ve need to get her to a doctor.”

Villy shook his head. “She shouldn’t be moved. It’ll only make the poison go faster. You have to get a doctor to come here.”

 

 

Freddy and Philip raced down the road, vhile Klaus and Karl moved the old voman’s body to the mine for safekeeping till ve had time to figure out vhat to do vith it. They left Ursula to guard the mine entrance.

Meanvhile, Villy, George, and I piled blankets on Summer to keep her varm. Then ve took turns sitting by her side till the doctor arrived with some tventy wials of anti-wenom.

To his great surprise, after using only six, Summer vas suddenly avake and talking.

The doctor said he vas amazed but took her to the hospital anyvays. She vas there for more than a month, because there vere other problems that the wenom caused and they needed to keep a close eye on her.

All the vhile Villy sat vith her, talked to her, read to her, hardly left her side.

Her father and her cousin Nancy came from Addison two veeks into Summer’s treatment. He vas a handsome man, somewhat vorn down from his years with the vitch. And Cousin Nancy vas a modestly handsome voman. She held Summer’s hand, but her papa vept vhen he saw the girl lying in the hospital bed.

“Don’t cry, Papa, the doctor says I will be fine. Just some scars. Willy says it makes me more interesting than merely being pretty.” She laughed. “Imagine me, pretty.”

“Pretty as a summer’s day,” said her papa. “Always was. Always will be. The spit of your mama.”

“Amen to that,” Cousin Nancy said. A truly good voman, as I came to find out.

 

PHOTOGRAPH

The photograph of our wedding is in color. We are standing in front of the church up the mountain so Mama can be part of the ceremony, too. Cousin Nancy got special dispensation to attend from Father Clarke, the new priest.

It is my nineteenth birthday, so we are celebrating that as well as the wedding. The church has been filled with wildflowers cut from the mountainside. I insisted on them.

In the picture I am in a long white dress that I sewed myself on Mutti’s sewing machine, with sparkling white jewels Jakob had bought in Clarksburg encrusting the bodice. I am wearing a wedding crown that had belonged to Mutti and a necklace that had been Mama’s. Cousin Nancy had given me a lace handkerchief sewn on all sides with blue stitching, which I tucked into my sleeve.

“Though I hope you never use it to cry with,” she said.

“The crying days are over,” I told her. And indeed they are.

My hair is long and down to my waist and I look much younger than nineteen, but I think it’s the combination of happiness and astonishment.

To one side of us stand Papa and Cousin Nancy, shyly holding hands. They have only just decided that they will get married, too, a quiet ceremony at Christmas when Willy and I will be home for the holidays. Father Clarke will officiate.

To the other side are the six brothers. Jakob looks like a proud papa though he’s just eighteen years older than Willy. George stares at his feet but is smiling. Naughty Freddy is making rabbit ears behind Jakob’s head while Karl and Klaus look at each other, mouths open, as if sharing a secret. Only Philip is staring directly at the camera.

They have left Ursula at home. Or so they think. But if you look very carefully in the churchyard behind us, near Mama’s grave, you can see a tuft of one ear above the gravestone and a bit of her behind. Above her, on the branch of a birch tree, wings stretched out as if it has just landed, perches a white owl. If you close your right eye and look at it with your left, it looks like a lady angel, her face framed by long dark hair and with a dimple in her chin.

As for me, I am gazing up at Willy, who has just begun his teaching at Wheeling College after three years of graduate school. He is in his one good suit, a dark blue that only emphasizes how slim he is. His round glasses perch on his nose as if they are about to fly off, which they often do. He’s not smiling but looking quite serious because—as he said later—until we were off on our honeymoon and away from the churchyard, he wouldn’t believe we’d really managed to get married after six years of courting.

But I always knew it would happen. After all, it was True Love from the very first moment we met. The best kind, born out of adversity and hard work and destined to last happily ever after. Of that we are both absolutely certain.

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