Quick, Before the Snow Forgets
Juno went up the lane with her boots squeaking, holding the little clay pot against her coat. Mo came behind her, slow as always, his flippers printing wide shapes in the snow. Inside the pot were the last dried leaves from the summer garden, green and crumbly and sharp-sweet when you lifted the lid. One sniff and the whole warm garden came back. She had been saving them for the coldest night of the winter. Tonight the lamps had rings around them and the air bit her nose. "Tonight's the night," she told Mo. He blinked his slow blink and kept coming.
On the doorstep Mo stopped. "Juno," he said. "I knocked your pot off the step this morning." He said it plainly, the way he did everything. "Half the leaves went into the snow by the woodpile. I didn't want you to open it and wonder." Juno lifted the lid. The pot was light in her hands. Inside lay a thin green layer where there had been a thick one. Something went tight behind her ribs, and then it loosened. The snow was still falling, soft and slow, filling the lane. She looked at the woodpile. She looked at Mo. "Quick," she said. "Before the snow forgets."
They went to the woodpile together. Juno knelt and put her face close to the snow and breathed in. There it was, green and sharp under all that cold, like a garden sleeping beneath a blanket. She scooped the crust of scented snow into her mittens and tipped it into the big blue bowl. Mo found the places she missed. His old patient nose knew exactly where to go, and he pushed the snow forward with one flipper until she could reach it. The woodpile smelled of bark and resin. Their breath hung white in front of them. "Quick," Juno said again, "before the snow forgets."
Inside, the stove ticked and the kettle wore a small cloud. Juno set the blue bowl on the warm shelf, and together they watched the snow go soft at its edges. It sank. It turned to water with green flecks turning slowly through it. Then the smell came up, and it was summer, the whole of it: the path beside the beans, the hot stones, the long afternoon when she had picked the leaves and laid them out to dry. Mo lifted his head. Juno saw his eyes close partway, which was how he smiled. The window went silver with steam.
They each had a cup, and Mo's was the shallow one he could reach without stretching. Juno held hers under her chin and let the steam climb her face. "You can smell it better than me," she said. "Only because I have had longer to practise," Mo said. He told her that the sea smelled like this in the evening: wet rock, cold salt, something green underneath it all. He said he thought about it most nights, lying near the stove. He did not say it sadly. He said it the way you say the name of someone you like very much.
Juno went to the shelf and fetched the pot. There was still a little inside, enough for one more coldest night. She tipped the last of the leaves onto a square of cloth, tied the corners, and set the small green bundle down beside Mo. "For the nights you think about it," she said. Mo looked at the bundle for a long, slow moment. Then he reached under the rim of his shell and brought out a grey stone, flat, with a white ring running all the way around it. He set it in her palm. It was cold. She lifted it to her nose.
Salt. Old rock and far water and wind off a long grey beach. Juno breathed it in twice and laughed, because she had never smelled anywhere so big. Mo nudged the cloth bundle closer and settled down with it tucked against his front flipper, where he could reach it without moving. The stove ticked. The lamp laid a yellow ring on the floor, and the snow went on falling past the window, filling the lane. "Quick," Juno whispered, "before the snow forgets." There was nothing left to save now. She said it just to say it.
She put the stone on the sill where the cold could keep it, and set the empty pot beside it, and turned the lamp low. Mo came after her, slow as always, and settled on the rug by the bed, in the place the stove's warmth reached. Outside, the snow kept falling, covering the woodpile and the lane and the wide prints their walk had made. The room still smelled green. Juno let her arm hang over the edge of the bed. Mo lifted his flipper, and she held it, cool and smooth as a stone from somewhere far away.
