We were strangers there, drawing the attention of first children, then parents and grandparents who emerged from warm houses to see what we wanted. I asked for Annalise, and followed the child who ran to fetch her; I did not want to talk to her in front of her entire village. She met me at a doorway near the far end of the village, wrapped in a wool shawl and with anger tightening the lines of her face.
"Our debts are settled in the city," I told her quietly. "I've brought the wages we couldn't pay you a year ago, and if you'd like to return to the city to work, I'll ask Glover to come in the spring and offer you safe escort. Mostly I wanted to say I'm sorry, Annalise. I'm sorry you were pulled down into this with all of us. You deserved better."
Agreement and surprise, still dominated by anger, fluttered across her face. "I did." She took the purse of coin and folded it against her belt, glaring at me. "What work could I find now, after disgracing myself by running away with you? Your references would be of no use to me."
I made a face. "Being the center of gossip got us better prices on some things than we might have expected. Returning to the city as the only intimate witness to our downfall might be enough to find you an excellent place. If you decide you'd like Glover's escort, write to us. We'll do what we can. I am sorry," I said again, then left her alone to make her decisions. The village folk didn't bother waiting until we'd driven away to converge on Annalise's home. I hoped I'd done her some good with the visit, even if it delayed us by a few hours, and left us unable to reach home the night we'd planned to.
"Tomorrow," Father said cheerfully, as we tethered Beauty and tied the wagon cover tight to keep us warm. He had been cheerful since we left the city, as if selling the Spidersilk had lifted some last weight from his shoulders, releasing him forever from the mistakes he'd made in the past.
"Tomorrow," I agreed, but we were both wakened in the smallest hours of the morning, not by the sound, but by the silence. I sat up to peek through the puckered O of the wagon cover, and cursed softly.
Snow had begun to fall again, with such swiftness that the world was already freshly buried in it. Beauty muttered and stomped almost noiselessly in eight or ten inches, scowling at me when I scrambled out to brush its depth from the wagon seat and to begin harnessing her again.
"It may be better to wait it out, Amber."
"It would have been better if we'd stayed at the last village, or gone on to the next," I replied. Neither, though, had appealed to us; the villages were more isolated in this part of the country, or farther off the track, as Annalise's had been. Staying in the last one would have lost us half an afternoon's journey, and going to the next would have lost us half a night's sleep. "Beauty will probably be all right if it just keeps coming straight down like this, but the wind is likely to pick up, and she's too exposed. Either we go into the forest to try to build a rough shelter, or we hitch up and go on."
I looked back to see that, although he'd objected, Father was clearing more snow from the wagon bench before he pulled one of the straw-filled pillows from beneath the wagon's cover to sit on. Once I had her in the harness, I gave Beauty a nose bag and a scratch beneath the forelock. She gave me an impatient eye roll in return, but she put her head down, started munching oats, and plodded forward through the snow. I leapt onto the bench to sit beside Father and, wrapping my cloak around myself, peered toward the horizon.
We were hours from dawn: there was no hint of light anywhere, only the noiseless snow softening the edges of the world and weighing tree branches until they bowed and scraped our wagon's cover. Father, breath steaming in the cold, said, "You should climb inside, so when I'm frozen through you can drive."
"Imagine how awful this would be if you were alone." I did as I'd been bade, nestling back into what warmth remained, and, to my surprise, I fell asleep to the sounds of wheels squeaking faintly as they packed snow, and of Beauty's steady footsteps.
I awakened hours later to a jolting stop and a curse. Alarmed, I pushed back out of the wagon to find Father with a lap full of snow and a disoriented expression. "Father?"
"I fell asleep." He stood, brushing snow off his lap, and shook himself. I climbed all the way out, standing beside him on the footboard, and looked around us in dismay.
Daylight had arrived in the form of dusky, snow-laden grey light that did hardly any more to light the way than full night had, but we were clearly no longer on the main road. We hadn't been for some time, it appeared: trees grew up around us almost close enough to touch, the path beneath us no more than a single track. The snow immediately surrounding us was no more than ankle deep, but five steps ahead of Beauty, it rose feathery-looking and chest deep. Beauty, undisturbed by this, took a few steps forward, then paused to look back at us, as if making sure we wanted her to go on.
The snow in front of her dropped to ankle depth for as many more steps as she'd taken, and remained banked tall and relentless beyond that. Father said, "Whoa," to her, weakly, and after a moment of gaping I scrambled through the wagon to look out the back pucker.
There was no sign of our passage what-so-ever. Five steps behind us, snow lay chest-deep again, as if it had lain undisturbed since winter began. I called, "Back her up a few steps, Father," as if there might be a way out of a thing I already knew in my bones. The wagon lurched and backed up, and, after five steps, pressed against the bank of snow. The snow gave a little, collapsing and sliding under the wagon's belly, but it most certainly did not disappear the way it was doing in front of Beauty. After another step or two backward, the snow impacted enough to stop the wagon's progress. Up front, Beauty nickered impatiently and eased forward again into unimpeded space.
l sat hard onto one of the benches, a sick flutter of missed heartbeats occupying my attention for a few unpleasant breaths. Then, cold with more than the weather, I made my way forward again to say, in a strange voice unlike my own, "We've been enchanted."
"Yes." Father sat on the bench again, heavily, and I sat beside him, the two of us staring wordlessly at the tall snow beyond us. There was nothing to be done about an enchantment, and no value in protesting that such things didn't really happen. No one properly believed they did happen, or at least, that they still happened, but sitting in a twenty foot rolling rectangle of shallow snow made it quite clear that they did still happen on occasion.
"We're going to have to go forward," I said after a while. "We might as well, before we get cold. The snow is still coming down."
Father shook first himself, then the reins, and Beauty, with a tail twitch that suggested it was about time, plodded forward. Enchantments, it seemed, did not distress enormous grumpy mares. Nor did I feel distressed, precisely. Stunned, perhaps, but—but, well, Pearl was a witch, and the Border Wars had been fought against faeries, and our country's queen was old beyond reason, and if those things could be, then a forest might be enchanted too, and we were lucky it hadn't gotten us before.