Part 5

Well, matter of fact, he tried a zillion ways to describe it. But this is what he ended up with. The sea merchant had it copied down on a scrap of notepaper, folded neatly into his wallet. Took it out with the quiet reverence of a priest handling a relic, and showed it to me. It was all in Japanese, so I humoured him with a nod, and he continued with his tale.

So this big snowy bang happened. And before the country feller’s jaw had time to fall all the way open, a woman tumbled out of this snowy globule. She was dressed head to toe in white, so at first her outline was scarcely distinguishable from the snowy slope. All he saw was her face, and he barely saw that, for her skin was pale and her hair silver. As she slid and stumbled ungainly down the foamy earth, the feller heard a sound he took for the peal of sleigh bells.

But friend, you’re surely ahead of the story by now and know better than he did. Those were not bells.

Next he noticed the hill she must have fallen from. And even though that hill had never existed until a moment ago, he accepted the evidence of his own eyes and reasoned there must have been an avalanche – or whatever the proper term is for snow tumbling down a hillside that has only just appeared.

Being quite the country gentleman, he dismissed the weird weather event and concentrated instead on offering his hand to the fallen woman.

Well, that dog was yipping and yapping, staring up at its master with an unnatural haughtiness, as though to say I told you so. But the master was unmoved by the dog’s complaint of injustice.

In any case, he was distracted by evidencing his chivalry. He was already devising ways to make eye contact, be polite yet commanding, and strike up a conversation with the maiden while helping her to her feet – for her want of feet remained entirely unbeknown to him.

So, he took hold of her outstretched hand, what he assumed was a request for assistance, and pulled the strange woman upright. This despite her looking perfectly content where she lay. Despite the warning hand she raised toward him. And despite the set of her lips, a mark of independence he mistook for helpless gratitude.

And if he noticed anything strange about that smile, it was too late. Whatever resistance he might have offered vanished the moment he caught her gaze. And as the woman’s face gathered foamily together, he saw only the face he was familiar with.

He stepped back, perhaps on muscle memory alone, the shock outrunning his thoughts and reaching his body first.

He smiled awkwardly.

“Fancy finding you here,” he said. “I thought I’d buried you in the backyard.”

And without waiting for her answer, he apologized for the deceit of telling the neighbours she’d gone to stay with her sister.

Then he noticed her hair.

His wife’s hair had been raven-black.

Well – now it was silver.

Time changes people, he thought.

And if further proof were needed, he realized time had changed him, too. For he was suddenly very happy to see his wife again. Euphoric, in fact.

He walked her home, the dog grumbling along after them and stopping every now and then to howl much as it did when its belly was empty. That stomach could growl for days whenever its master was on a bender. Or sleeping one off. This time, his master was drunk on love, not whisky. Not so far gone, however, that he forgot to swing round and deliver the punch to the dog’s snout he’d held back earlier.

They were barely over the threshold before he’d bundled her inside, and pressed her flat against the door. The air filled with a symphony of moans and the flap of the letter box caught up in the train of glassy ice his wife had dragged in. It all fell into a strange rhythm with the dog’s yapping, a chorus of wet mouths slathering open and shut.