Snow

"Then no." He waited for a second, wondering if he should say something else, but Alec was shaking his head and smiling.

"Tomorrow," he said, "when you go to the square, get a chicken. Just put it in the pot with some potatoes--make sure you pluck the chicken first, okay?--and let it cook for a few hours. Maybe throw an onion in or a carrot. Easy enough. Right?"

David nodded. It sounded easy.

He bought the chicken from a girl in the square. She was tall and thin with ale-brown hair and painted patterned hands like women in the castle used to have, decorations to show their fingers, highlight the curve of their wrists. But when she said, "Want me to do the butchering for you?"

He realized what the dark spatters on her hands were. He looked at the chicken. It stared placidly back at him from the crook of her arm.

"No," he said faintly.

She gave him a look. "Just a quick chop to the neck if you can't wring it yourself. Sharper the knife the better, and mind you, make sure you've got space, because they do like to run around a bit after." She clucked her tongue at something she saw in his face and said, "You sure you don't want me to do it? Won't take but a moment."

David shook his head and took the chicken home. When he got there he put it on the floor and got out the pot. The chicken looked at him, looked at the pot, and went back to wandering around the floor, scratching at it occasionally.

By mid-afternoon David had learned that chickens didn't like being put in pots, that they scratched, and that when they had to go to the bathroom they went, even if the spot they'd picked was in the middle of the floor right where you'd left a plate of cooling gingerbread.

He picked up the chicken as the sun started to set and looked at it. He put his hands around its neck. It flapped its wings uselessly, trying to move away from his suddenly very cold hands. Its eyes were placid, small and stupid. He took it outside, holding it gingerly, and let it go.

One of the miners found it. David heard a cry of "Look here!" as they began to trickle in, returning home. "Found myself a chicken just wandering around out in the street. Luck is shining on me today!"

"Wandering around in the street?" Alec's voice.

"I swear by all the saints. Must have gotten away from a nodding housegirl, eh?"

Alec laughed. He was still laughing when he came in.

"So I guess we'll be going out to dinner," he said.

"I didn't know I'd have to kill it," David said. "I can't--I don't want to do that."

Alec started to say something, the smile still on his face, but as he looked at David his smile faded. "You can get fish tomorrow," he said quietly. "Already cleaned and ready to cook. I'll show you where after we eat."

David nodded. "Thank you," he said softly.

"Sure," Alec said. "So where's the gingerbread?"

***

David tried to do laundry a few days later. He was able to handle the washing part well enough--

he purchased soap at the square, a creamy white bar that smelled nice and lathered up thick suds when he rubbed it over Alec's clothes -- and rinsing them was easy. But he wasn't sure about drying them and after an hour draped over a chair they were still dripping on the floor. David pulled the chair a little closer to the fire and then a little closer still. And then Gladys came and knocked on the door and had biscuits shaped like stars and by the time David got back it was dark and Alec's clothes were decidedly dry, his pants speckled with tiny holes, round blistered burns.

"Oh no," he said, staring miserably at them, thinking of how few things Alec owned and how he'd ruined one of them, and the fire sputtered and hissed and then froze over, shattering on the floor. Out in the hall he could hear the returning miners muttering about how it had suddenly gotten cold, like it might snow. Alec came in and looked at the shattered pieces of the fire on the floor, at the pile of his clothes next to it, and then at him.

"Hey," he said softly. "What happened?"

David handed him his pants.

Alec looked at them for a moment. When he looked back up at David the gentle expression on his face made David's heart skip a beat.

"You know what?" he said. "I never liked these pants anyway." He climbed up into the loft, opened the window and tossed the pants out. He turned back and the smile on his face made David laugh delightedly. Alec's grin grew wider and he said, "Let's go out. I'll buy you an ale and dinner."

"Really?"

"Sure," Alec said. "All you have to do is promise you won't ever do my laundry again."

David laughed again and the ice on the floor began to melt.

Alec disappeared when they were at the tavern. One moment he was sitting across from him, laughing as David told him why he'd forgotten to check on the clothes, shaking his head and saying, "Biscuits shaped like stars?" and the next he'd pushed away from the table, a stricken and almost panicked looked on his face, and said, "I'll pay the bill. You go on back," before he disappeared into the crowd.