In old Nippon, in the city of Edo, there was a lonely daimyo. He was a minor lord, arbitrator and administrator for a modest section of the city, wherein lived simple artisans and rough tradesmen. His wooden house was only slightly larger than those of his subjects, but it felt to him like a palace, because of how empty it was. He lived there by himself, with only a single servant to aide him besides. In the mornings, as he sat facing the spectacle of the slopes of the great mountain, he could hear the footsteps of his servant echoing out and back against the walls. There was no laughter, no rustle of silk clothing or clinking of tea service to interrupt the hollow noise. The daimyo was lonely, and felt as if the echoes would last forever, and be his only legacy.

He was not a relative of the shogun, but his rank afforded him the occasional visit to the palace. On each of these visits, the daimyo lusted for the shogun’s wives and consorts, not just for their bodies, but also for their grace, the shushing of their slippers on lacquer, the pleasure of their dance. It would have been a sentence of shame to have said anything, so the daimyo pretended to look away from the women, involved himself in minor business whenever they performed for the shogun.

One winter, upon waking in a cold bed, the daimyo felt his loneliness grow to its sharpest, bitterest point, like a sliver that had worked its way to the surface of the skin and then must be plucked out. He fell into a depression, convinced he lacked the tools for the necessary surgery. At a gathering of other minor daimyo, he let slip his jealousy of the emperor and, though his peers made no direct condemnation, he knew, as his servant carried him home, that he would not survive as daimyo for another season, that his time was over.

His depression deepened. Though his professional life had brought him shame, his focus was more than ever on his lack of companionship. His servant, fearful of being tossed to the streets, set out to remedy his master’s problem. He spoke to magicians, who told him there was nothing they could do. He spoke to spirits, who said that love of any kind is impossible to force a spirit into. He spoke with the creatures of the forest, the tanuki, who are practical and wise and the masters of transformation. They told him that the spirit need not be bent to love, but that a vessel for love might be created. They were pleased to have bested the magicians of the servant’s own race. They instructed him to travel to the slopes of the great mountain, there to fetch a cartful of ice, and then to find kimura-gumo, the spinning spiders, and to capture a score of them in mid-dance. The servant would then need to sculpt the ice into the form of a human, and to harvest the silk of the kimura-gumo to create a garment. If this garment were to be laid on the sculpture, the sculpture would come to life, with the purity of new snow and the dance of the spiders.

The servant thanked the tanuki and set out to collect the ingredients. First he hunted the kimura-gumo, and from their silk he fashioned a black kimono. Then he traveled to the slopes of the great mountain and fetched a cartload of new snow and ice. These he brought to his master, and explained what the tanuki had told him. 

The daimyo seized upon the opportunity, but he thought to himself: I am already shamed; I could not bear to risk further scorn by letting it be known that I fashioned a companion for myself. He decided that, instead of using the pure snow to form his consort, he would mix the melted water with dirt from his own garden, so that the creature would be tied to the land, unable to set foot beyond the walls of his house and risk embarrassing him.

With his plan thus crystallized, the daimyo set to crafting his companion. He had his servant do the work, but he watched carefully the shaping of the arms, the legs, the neck, the face, and made suggestions where necessary. There were rumors in the air of the shogun forcing the daimyo to relinquish his post when the sculpture was finally finished. 

With trembling hands, the daimyo draped the kimono around the clay body. Immediately, a light shone from within the creature’s head, and its delicate mouth cracked wide. A thin laugh pealed through the room and the creature seized the daimyo by the arms. Together they circled the room in a clumsy peasant’s dance. The creature stamped heavily on the wooden floors, shaking the walls and stumbling. It wasn’t sure on its feet, but it continued to laugh and, before long, began to sing. 

The daimyo was concerned. This creature of awkward motion possessed nothing of the graceful beauty of the shogun’s wives. As he was spun through the air, a clarity came upon him, and he realized that the creature was no better than an apprentice effort, suitable for nothing but scrap and slip. He ordered the creature to stop, but it would not. It gave a joyous shout and stumbled out of the room, onto the house’s small balcony. The daimyo heard a sound like the tapping of chopsticks and looked down. The creature’s legs were forming web-thin cracks where the clay had dried improperly.

All at once, a peal of answering laughter came from below. The peasants had gathered in the street to watch the daimyo be carried about by his foolish creation. Again, the daimyo ordered the creature to stop, but it gave no indication of having heard him. The daimyo tried to struggle out of the creature’s grip, but could not. As they spun near the railing, the daimyo kicked out with both feet, unbalancing the creature and himself. The creature swept its laughter into one long, thin wail and overbalanced, falling to the street and taking the daimyo with it. As they hit the packed dirt, they upset a charcoal brazier that stood in front of the daimyo’s house. The brazier tipped against the door, and the lacquered wood exploded into flame. 

The creature had been utterly destroyed by the fall, its pieces scattered for yards around. The daimyo struggled to his feet. With the heat of the fire on his backside, he stared at the half-circle of peasants that were staring on. Not one among them could hold back a smile, though several had darted away to fetch buckets of water. 

Without a word, the daimyo turned on his heel and entered his burning home. 

The fire spread quickly, from wooden house to wooden house, and soon the whole street was ablaze, the paths choked with peasants with their carts of possessions and invalid family. The daimyo’s servant had collected such a cart as soon as he saw the fire, and then waited in front of the door to his master’s house. When it became apparent his master was not coming, the servant did as selfish men are wont to do: he gave his past a single glance over the shoulder and pressed forward. He stooped once to the ground to retrieve the kimono, now torn and stuck with clay dust.

#

In 1863, a Basque man came to Tokyo, speaking very little of the language. The children of the street marked him and followed him, giggling to themselves as he entered one boarding house after another, unable to make the simple request for a room. When the day had nearly waned, the Basque found an establishment which was run by a polyglot. As he stood in the receiving hall, waiting for the innkeeper to light the fire in his room, the bravest of the children snuck up behind him and picked his pocket, relieving him of a slightly-tarnished silver watch. The Basque turned, having felt the lift, and tried to snatch at the child, but the child danced back and ran for the door.

Just as the child reached the threshold, the innkeeper slipped out of the shadows and caught him around the neck. The child struggled, but the innkeeper’s grip was firm. “Do you have children?” he asked the Basque in Spanish.

“No,” replied the Basque.

“They are surely the purest of joys.” With that, the innkeeper yanked the child off his feet and retrieved the Basque’s watch. Singing a string of high-pitched syllables, the child regained his balance and ducked away from the innkeeper, sketched a mock bow, and darted out the door. 

“The police will deal with him?” the Basque wondered aloud. 

The innkeeper shook his head and handed the watch back to its owner. “It is not a very good watch,” he said. 

“There is certain sentimental value,” said the Basque. 

The Basque found good company in the innkeeper, and that night they sat together in the common room, drinking sake talking. The Basque was interested in stories of local history, and the innkeeper seemed to have a wealth of such stories that had been building pressure on his tongue as water presses on a dam. Of all the stories, there was one that stole all of the Basque’s attention, so that after hearing of it, he quite missed the rest of what the innkeeper had to say. 

“Tell me again about the mad daimyo and his black kimono,” said the Basque. 

The innkeeper smiled. “Yes, that is one of my favorites, as well.” Then he stood and beckoned. “Come. I have something you would like to see.” The Basque followed the innkeeper back through the kitchen to a basement cellar. The innkeeper fetched a kerosene lamp and led the Basque down. The cellar smelled of mildew and tubers; it was cold enough that the Basque could see the mist of his breath. The earthen walls were lined with sacks of vegetables, pots of honey, and casks of fruits. “Look here,” said the innkeeper, dragging a small wooden chest out from the shadows. It was fastened shut with bamboo pegs, which the innkeeper knocked loose with the sole of his shoe. “Try not to breathe,” he said, and lifted the lid. 

The stench of rotten sulfur billowed out into the room. The Basque coughed and gagged while the innkeeper, his face passive and smiling, leaned into the chest and withdrew a sheet of linen, covered in the sulfur dust. “The moths do not eat through the sulfur,” he explained. He set the linen on the ground and reached into the chest again. This time, he came out holding a thin garment of black silk, barely a whisper of a shadow. “My honored ancestor once served the mad daimyo,” he said. “And we, his children, have kept this as a mark of our modest origin.”

The Basque let his hand drop away from his nose and gaped. “Does it work?” he stammered. 

The innkeeper shook it out. Large triangles of fabric hung loose from the body, like flaps of dead skin, but yards of whole cloth remained undamaged. “I have never tried to use it,” he said. “I have no need for companionship, and lack the skills to craft a suitable figure, besides. It is an heirloom, nothing more.”

The Basque took a step forward. “I will buy it from you,” he said. There was a catch in his voice, a force that suggested he could not have made the offer any quicker, or said the words more hopefully.

The innkeeper smiled faintly and turned what was left of the kimono into the light, to better appraise it. “What message do you take from the story of the mad daimyo?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” said the Basque. He hadn’t let his eyes wander from the silk.

“I believe that the story is a warning against selfishness, and against mistaking such an impulse for love. The daimyo was not destroyed by the creation of the surrogate lover. He had aimed himself toward doom long before that, when he allowed that his jealousy of the shogun’s wives might be deflected to another vessel rather than purged from his thoughts. My ancestor’s role in the story was as catalyst, as it is with we who serve unselfishly.” The innkeeper glanced over to see if the Basque had caught the slight witticism, but received no response in word or gesture. “It would be most expensive,” the innkeeper concluded. “I could not part with it for anything less than a minor fortune, you understand.”

“I have little of value,” said the Basque, now breaking his stare and shifting his gaze to his feet. “My home was destroyed by rioters, and my possessions were taken by looters. The money I had in the banca I’m sure would not begin to pay for such a prize.”

“Your watch, then,” said the innkeeper.

“It is but silver,” he said. “A wedding gift from my wife.”

“She would be upset to learn you had traded it for a bundle of tatters, would she?” asked the innkeeper. 

The Basque held the watch in the palm of his hand, spidery shadows from his fingers masking the reflections from the lantern. “No,” he said. “She is dead.” The innkeeper stood in respectful silence as a decision worked its way to the fore of the other man’s tongue. “I shall make the trade,” said the Basque, extending the hand that held the watch. 

The innkeeper first pressed the fabric into the Basque’s hand, then retrieved the watch. There was an inscription on the back in flowery Spanish, which, out of respect, the innkeeper did not try to read. The Basque rubbed the silk between his fingers, his attention absorbed in consideration of its strength, color, and texture. “Thank you,” he said. 

The innkeeper shrugged it off and mounted the stairs. “What value has a story?” he asked. “None, if the audience gives it none.”

The Basque left Tokyo the following day, riding for Kyoto, whence he could hire passage back to Spain. Throughout the long journey, he kept the silk close at hand. When he had the privacy, he engaged in the sewing necessary to fashion a proper garment from the remainder. Having little skill and only an old fishing hook as a needle, his work was necessarily crude, but functional. When his feet hit the familiar dust of the paths that surrounded his home, he had a woman’s shawl in black silk tucked under his arm.

The village was no longer his, though he had grown up there. Rioters had swept through like a plague of locusts. The Basque was still unsure of the motivation — whether it was religious, political, or something less defensible — but he had experienced the effect first-hand. In the night, the rioters had come upon his modest house while he worked late at his job assisting the village lawyer. Perhaps as premonition, the Basque had been discomfited throughout the whole day and requested at last that he might be able to return home to take a tonic and calm his mind. He had arrived at his house as the last of the rioters whooped and crowed over the flames they had built to consume it. With a thought for his wife, the Basque had leapt toward the flames, giving the rioters a wide birth. As he ducked into the house, he glanced over his shoulder and recognized the face of one of the rioters. It was his son, a young man who had never known his father. In that instant, with the flames searing his left side and a wash of shame boiling his right, the Basque felt as if he had lost everything. 

He had gone straight to the bedroom he shared with his wife, covering his nose and mouth with his sleeve. He found her unconscious in bed. He carried her out the back door, unwilling to face the young men again. He tried in vain to awaken his wife as the house and all his possessions burned behind him. All were hot coals and ash by the time he finally gave up and wept over her body. They had grown distant in the recent months, because of her desire for a child, and his unwillingness to give her one. As he thought about all the things he ought to have said to her, the air went cold and the last of the fire was smothered in a shroud of light rain.

That had been nearly a year previous; the Basque had spent the intervening time wandering the world in search of distraction, an explorer of low means.

He didn’t know who now ruled in the village, so he waited until nightfall and then crept with his package to the church yard. He found his wife’s marker, already decaying as though it were made of soapstone. Working with no light but for the half moon, the Basque dug with sticks and hands until he heard them strike pine. He had prepared a paste of sulfur, which he applied under his nose before opening the coffin. 

His wife’s body was dark, like wet clay. Her burial shroud had been eaten back from her body, exposing crossed, desiccated arms and a nakedness that held no secrets. The Basque lifted her gently, as though she were a cake about the crumble, and set her against her gravestone. 

He knew that there was a disappointment lurking just under his skin, and that it was seconds away from bursting through. He bent down to his wife’s body and said: “You must be cold.” Then he wrapped the black silk shawl around her shoulders.

Immediately, her body began to shake as though taken by a heavy fever. The Basque took her shoulders and stared into the pits of her eyes. “My love,” he said. “There is something I should have told you years ago.”

A dry hiss came from deep within her lungs and the smell of her rotten air nearly overwhelmed him, even through the sulfur. She struggled against his hands, shaking this way and that, and he realized that she was trying to stand.

“No, listen,” he said. “I have wandered far in search of the means to forget my contributions to the failure between us, but I have not been able to do so. I wasn’t meant to forget, so let me speak.” Her hips bucked under him and the hiss became a stuttering laugh which sounded, by necessity, cruel. The Basque tried to continue. “Years ago, when we were first married, I did not love you. You were cold and distant, a young girl from her father’s house and not the wife of mine. I found comfort in another woman, the wife of a merchant. I got her with child, though we were careful to avoid the possibility. For both our sakes, we never saw each other again, though I did see her from time to time around the market, walking with her son.

“I watched the son. He grew up mean and naughty, chasing girls, drowning frogs, and seeming to resist all urges to grow out of the mood. My lover, she was not a rough person, nor was her husband. I had thought that neither was I, but seeing my son, the child of my brutish seed, forced me to look inward to my soul.

“If my offspring could overcome the fairer nature of its mother and instead turn to the animalistic, a side I did not even know I had, then there was no hope between you and me of having children, for I could not bear to chain you to such an unfulfilling life. As we grew closer together, you and I, our balance shifted. I became colder and more distant, because I could not provide you with that which you most wanted.”

The dead body could not take the waiting any longer. The Basque finally let it go, and it struggled to its feet, unbalanced as a newborn fawn. It began a slow twirl, and the dry wheezes that must have been laughter began again in earnest. The Basque felt tears prick the corners of his eyes and cold trails slicked his cheeks. 

Suddenly, a pair of rotten hands grabbed him by arms and, though they had no strength, helped him to his feet. His dead wife spun him round and round, her head thrown back, bones clacking, laughing like a snake. The wind dried the Basque’s tears and stung his eyes and, when he could not bear the dreadful dance any longer, he reached up to the body’s neck and cast away the shawl. 

At once, the body went inert. Its momentum carried it over the edge of the exhumed grave and back into the coffin, where its joints popped and broke. The Basque, on hands and knees, peered down into the dark, but from six feet he could not make out her ruined face, and his memory refused to supply one for him. He leaned against the tombstone and wept because he had nothing left of his wife.

#

The Mckinleys had emigrated from a coal-mining village in Scotland just south of Glasgow, and ended up in almost the same coal-mining village in Colorado. The miners were mostly Scottish immigrants, the schoolmarm taught Gaelic alongside arithmetic, and even the working hours were the same.  

In 1945, Mrs Mckinley had a daughter while her husband was underground. She named the child Asha, which means “hope.” Asha grew up going to the one-room schoolhouse three days of the week, and helping her mother with housework on the other four, except during the heavy Colorado winters, during which the school was closed and all the children spent hours trying to escape their chores to go dig tunnels in the snow with their friends. 

One summer, when Asha was twelve, Mr Mckinley was killed in a mining accident, and the two women were forced to make ends meet by serving as tailors for the whole village. Asha stopped going to school so she could keep up with the stitching that had drifted on their kitchen table. She attracted a new nickname: Asha Shutup, because she always had too much work to come outside and play. 

The Christmas after Mr Mckinley’s accident, Mrs Mckinley’s brother came to visit. He had done well for himself in the coal prospecting business, and had spent the better part of the year touring Europe. When he arrived at their doorstep, he was wearing a black pea-coat so thick he seemed to be a globe; his boots were buckled with silver and brass, and a black top-hat perched like a snide joke on his head. Asha had never seen him before, so she was cautiously polite, but after only a few moments of his booming voice and welcome, warm breath, she was giggling like mad at his jokes and even returning a few of her own. 

Mrs Mckinley was not so pleased, and referred to her brother as “His Highness” all throughout the evening, complaining that they wouldn’t get any work done that night. Asha was grateful for the respite, and His Highness could tell. He suggested that the women needn’t do any more work that night, that he would gladly treat them to a Christmas turkey, with as many trimmings as could be mustered in the isolated village. Mrs Mckinley reluctantly agreed. The dinner was magnificent; the oven labored for so long that the whole house took on a rosy glow. After dinner, His Highness told stories of his adventures in restored Berlin, in Moscow, in Madrid while Asha listened in rapt attention, her eyes steady on her uncle, her imagination far away and getting further by the second.

Asha slept fitfully that night. Two things kept waking her up: the spark of wanderlust that His Highness had instilled, and the rustling of her mother as she fussed with the work that had been ignored. In the morning, it was clear to Asha that her mother hadn’t slept a wink. She was about to apologize when His Highness announced himself with a tremendous yawn and a morning wink for his niece. 

“There’s coffee on the stove,” said Asha’s mother.

“You needn’t have done that, sister,” said His Highness. “I brought a packet of the most exquisite French roast.”

“We got what we got,” said Asha’s mother.

“Well, at least let me give you some,” said His Highness. “It can’t be easy to get coffee way up here.”

“Don’t mind it,” said Asha’s mother. “We do all right.”

His Highness gave Asha an exaggerated shrug and collapsed at the table. “What is on the agenda for this fine day, my dears?” he asked. “Shall we go for a stroll on the green? How about an auction. Are there any going on today?”

Asha’s mother gave no answer but a snort that lacked the force of humor. “I’d like to go to school,” said Asha.

“Absolutely not,” said her mother. “Do you see how much we have to do today?”

Asha knew better than to answer the rhetorical, so she sat back in her chair. His Highness broke the silence. “Do you mean to imply that this dull effort has been preventing my niece from attending to her schooling?”

“Things are rough,” said Asha’s mother, winding a bobbin. 

“Outrageous!” said His Highness. “Things could never be so rough as to distract a young mind from education. They mustn’t be. If it weren’t for simple knowledge, we would be no better than the peasants of the Dark Ages, picking at burlap with bone needles and tearing coal from the mountain with forks of wood.”

“Please, mother,” Asha interjected.

The whir and click of the sewing machine stood as an answer. Asha sighed and leaned forward to retrieve her thimble, but His Highness slapped his hand over it before she could. He stood and beckoned her to her feet with a wag of his eyebrows. “We are going out,” he announced. 

Asha’s mother sighed and bent tighter over her sewing. “This house is not yours to govern, brother,” she said. 

“Nor is this life yours, dear sister.” His Highness fetched Asha her coat and, as she fumbled into her mittens, he plopped his old silk hat on her head and adjusted its angle. He stepped back and appraised her with a finger aside his nose. “It doesn’t match your coat,” he decreed. Despite herself, Asha giggled.

Her mother glanced up once more to say: “You look ridiculous.”

“And you’re nearsighted,” said His Highness. “I will bring her home straight after the lesson,” he added.

“I expect so.”

The temperature was kissing right up to freezing, so the snow was wet and sticky: perfect for snowballs. His Highness delighted in their creation almost as much as he did in their qualities as weapons. He coaxed Asha into playing one-ups with him, where the victor gets to name the next target. Neither of them could hit the steeple. 

His Highness sat in the back of the classroom as Asha sat in her lessons. The bit of chalk and lap-slate felt good in her hands again, and the teacher was kind enough to ignore, just this once, the whispered conversations that the girls passed around. 

After lessons were over, His Highness walked Asha home. “I would rather stay with my friends,” said Asha. Behind them, in the town’s single street, the boys had taken note of the snow’s exceptional qualities, as well, and had declared a war on the fairer sex. Asha felt as though she were caught between abandonments: on the one side were her friends and gender, on the other her work and mother. In the space between, she felt cold, and realized she would much rather flee and help bring ruin to the boys than huddle near the stove, darning other people’s socks. She said as much to His Highness.

“Have we encroached enough upon you r mother’s good graces, do you think?” he asked. Asha didn’t answer. She trudged forward with guilt taking over as motivation. “I’ll tell you what,” said His Highness. “I’ll stand lookout, if you will promise to peg that brat who was sniffling all through lessons.” 

Asha grinned and beat her arms as if she were a bird cut loose from a trap. She made to remove the top hat, but His Highness stopped her. “It’s an old, and seen worse than a bit of wet weather, if you believe the stories. Do you like it?”

“Very much so, uncle,” said Asha, fluttering her eyelashes just to test out the effect. It made His Highness smile.

“Picked it up in the south of France,” he said. “Some curiosity shop, where the owner babbled on about vivre, life. Consider it a gift for my darling niece.”

“Oh, thank you!” said Asha, throwing her arms around his thick frame. Then, she slid headlong down the path to the main street, where she caught one of the boys in the ear with a handful of slush. His Highness leaned up against the side of the church, every so often aiming a snowball at the steeple.

The air filled with childish screams and giggles. The Carver boys hunted Asha through the thin alleys with double-handfuls of snow. They got her separated from the other girls and cornered her by the grocer’s. She kicked at them and screamed for help, but was cut off mid-laugh by the sound of her own name being hollered by her mother. She straightened up and turned in the direction of their house. Her mother was standing by the church, arms folded, trying to divide her icy stare between her brother and her daughter. His Highness seemed relaxed, his hands in his pockets, but Asha felt her spine tense up. Just then, the Carver boys yanked open the back of her coat, dumped their snow down, and ran away crowing like soldiers. The action had focused her mother’s gaze, but standing there in a growing puddle, Asha felt unreachable, as if the game had widened now to include both His Highness and her mother, and there was no way His Highness was on the boys’ team. 

“I’m already cold!” Asha yelled at her mother, then ducked behind a building to plan a counter strike on the Carver boys. 

From time to time, as the games wore on, Asha glanced up toward the church. The first time, she saw her mother and His Highness engaged in an animated argument, their arms stabbing at God, the ground, the mountains. The second time, they were turned away from each other, and each had their arms folded tightly. The third time, both had disappeared; and the last time, His Highness had reappeared, holding his suitcase in one hand. 

“Are you leaving, uncle?” Asha called out as he drew nearer. He didn’t answer until he was close enough to put a warm hand on her shoulder.

“I’m afraid so, my dear. Consider this yet another brief stop on my whirlwind passage across the globe. Why, I barely stayed this long in London, and there are loads more pretty girls, there, to coax me to stay.”

“Mother is making you leave,” said Asha.

His Highness sighed and sank one knee into the snow, the better to catch his niece’s eye. “Your mother wears a lot of pride on her back. What pride does, my dear, is kill you from the moment it enters your life. Now, dignity, that’s different, because the world gives you that, and respect, well, that’s a gift from outside, too. You can accept those. But watch out for pride.” His Highness winked. “Because once you have it, you can’t drop it or your whole life will shatter.”

“I don’t understand,” said Asha.

“Nor do I expect you to,” said His Highness. “But I fully intend to be a specter in your memory, and I shall be disappointed if my hauntings do not cause you to understand, some day. In the meantime, I urge you to take your best stab at it.” He grinned and stood, dusting snow off his trousers. He opened wide his arms and enveloped Asha wholly in his coat. As he released her, she felt something pressed into her hand. “Keep it out of sight,” said His Highness, and, with that, he was gone, waving at the children on his way to the train station.

Asha looked at her hand. Wadded in her fist was a bundle of bills that her scant knowledge of arithmetic couldn’t sum. She slid the money into the pocket of her coat and buttoned it down.

The snowball fight had slid into truce; all the children were sitting on the front steps of the school. Asha could almost feel the weight of chores undone, and added her own. The children sat, warming their hands in their armpits, and listened to the sound of snow melting. “I’m bored,” said one of the Carver boys. 

“So do something,” said Asha.

“Like what?”

“I don’t know,” said Asha. That wouldn’t do, the specter of His Highness admonished. “Let’s build a snowman,” she said. The Carver boys thought it was a great idea, and leapt into action. In order to make a snowman, large snowballs have to be created, and large snowballs have to begin life as small snowballs. Despite the minor fights that broke out, the dozen kids managed to roll three icy boulders from the main street, leaving criss-crossed dirt paths like worm trails behind them. They struggled to raise the man, and were streaked with freezing sweat by the time he stood upright.

While the girls relaxed on the steps, thinking about what to name their new friend, the boys fetched coal and sticks to form his eyes and arms. Together, they admired their creation. One small boy said: “Tell us a story!”

“He’s not quite finished,” said Asha. She took her uncle’s hat from her head and stretched on her tiptoes to set it on the snowman’s head. Before her heels had returned to the ground, a wild electric taste filled her mouth, and a wide, thunderous laughter boomed from somewhere deep in the snowman’s chest.

A mouth melted open beneath the eyes, which now were burning orange and releasing lazy curves of smoke. “Dance with me!” called the snowman. Its stick-arms came up and hooked into the folds of Asha’s coat. One of the girls screamed, but the snowman laughed all the louder. He began to bob and bounce as though on the water and then he leapt into a simple dance of circles. 

Asha’s tongue had frozen stiff but, as she was spun by the magical man, she felt a freedom overcome her fear; the sound of rushing air beat back everything but exhilaration. She spun with the man until she was so dizzy she couldn’t keep the world under her feet. By that time, the Carver boys had joined in and expanded the circle, and Asha’s girlfriends were close behind. One of the Carver boys helped her to her feet, and someone else put a hand under her arm to keep her upright, and the dance went on. 

Somewhere, beneath the snowman’s laughter, Asha could hear her mother yelling: “Come in from there! You look ridiculous!” The other children heard their parents, too, but none of them paid any mind. They danced until the hidden grass burned from the friction; they danced until the mountains with their hidden coal nearly tumbled down around their ears.