The Snow Child

Mabel finds herself reenergized. She waits at the cabin window anticipating a visit. To fill the time, Mabel takes up drawing, which she abandoned after the death of her child. But the girl’s visits fit no pattern. One night at dinner, the girl at last shares her name: Faina. Mabel struggles to sketch the child’s wild beauty; “something in the turn of her head, the tilt of her eyes, hinted at a wildness Mabel wanted to capture” (121).

In mid-February, the book from Mabel’s sister Ada arrives. Although it is in Russian, Mabel delights in the illustrations of the snow maiden surrounded by forest animals. Ada’s letter provides additional information about the fairy tale from a professor cataloguing their father’s library. The tale, whatever the telling, ends in tragedy with the maiden returning to the wild and the couple left devastated. Ada closes her letter by suggesting perhaps people should write their own endings and “choose joy over sorrow” (129).

As winter drags on, food starts to run out. The couple slaughters their chickens and scours the woods for fruit.