The Short Way Home
The snow stopped falling just as Ren pushed open the baking shed door. The air went still and bright. Bram waited on the step with snow on his striped face, shaking it off one ear at a time. Ren held the basket close. Six warm buns sat inside under a cloth, and the warmth came through the wicker into their mittens. Somewhere behind the houses, a well handle turned. Cree-crawk. Cree-crawk. It was the sound the village made all winter, early and late. Ren looked down the lane, which bent left, then right, then left again, all the way around to their own blue door.
The lane was long. Ren knew it the way they knew their own name: past the wool shop, past the sledding hill, past the three stone steps that were slippery even in summer. But there, between two woodsheds, was a gap Ren had never walked through. Snow lay in it, soft and unmarked. Beyond it, a lamp burned low and orange. "This is the short way, Bram," Ren said. Bram looked at the gap. Then he looked at Ren. Then he went first, pressing the snow flat with his wide feet so Ren could follow without sinking.
The gap opened into the goat yard. Four goats stood together, breathing clouds, their coats dusted white. They watched Ren the way goats do, calm and a little surprised. Ren walked around the edge so the goats would not have to move. The fence took them left when they wanted to go right. Then left again. Cree-crawk, said the well, somewhere off behind a roof. Ren turned their head to listen. The sound seemed farther away now, not nearer. Bram made a small noise in his throat, which was the noise he made when something was funny and he was being polite about it.
Past the goats came a wall of firewood, stacked higher than Bram's shoulder and longer than a boat. There was no way through it. There was a way over the snowbank beside it, though, and Ren climbed, and slid down the other side on their boots with the basket held up high. The buns did not spill. Bram came after, slow and solid, and arrived at the bottom with snow on his nose. They were in a narrow lane with washing lines above it, each line wearing a white rope of snow. Lamplight lay on the ground in soft squares.
Bram stopped. He was looking up the lane toward the mill, where the big wheel stood still and frozen. Ren knew that look. "The icicles," Ren said. Bram had talked about them since the first cold night: the longest icicles in the village, hanging under the mill wheel like the pipes of some enormous instrument. It was not the way home. It was not even near the way home. Ren shifted the basket to the other arm and felt the buns, still warm through the cloth. "We have time," Ren said. Bram walked faster than Ren had ever seen him walk.
Under the mill wheel the icicles hung in a row, longest in the middle, shortest at the ends. Water moved inside them, slow as honey. Ren counted eleven. Bram counted them too, in his way, touching the smallest one with one careful claw so it rang, a thin high note that went on and on. Cree-crawk, answered the well, from somewhere close now. Ren lifted the cloth and gave Bram a bun, and they ate standing up while snow slid off the mill roof in soft heaps. The basket was lighter. Ren's mittens still smelled of baking.
They came out from behind the mill into a yard Ren knew. There was the well, with its handle still swinging. There were the three slippery steps. There was the wool shop, and the sledding hill, and the blue door with the boot scraper beside it. They had gone all the way around the village and arrived from the other side. "This is the short way, Bram," Ren said, and Bram's shoulders shook, and Ren laughed into their scarf. The lamp over the door was lit. Four buns were still warm. Nothing in the whole evening had gone wrong.
Inside, the stove ticked and the kettle sighed. Ren put the basket on the table and the cloth back over it. Their coat steamed on its hook. Bram lay down along the warm side of the stove, and Ren lay down beside him with a blanket pulled up to their chin. Outside, far off and slow, the well handle turned one last time. Cree-crawk. "This is the short way, Bram," Ren said, almost asleep. Bram put one broad paw out, and Ren held it, and the lamp burned low, and the snow kept everything quiet.
