South of Winter, Two Singulars

       No one would have noticed, but Snufkin wanted to admire the sea without the roadside gorse getting in the way, and so he left the path. He said nothing to the Gunman—they had long agreed to wander off on their own business without a word, to catch up later. He let his gaze slide first from left to right, across the whole thunderous expanse, then from the high white feathers of cloud down to the white fleece of the breakers, the horizon’s equator a sharp line between. And down below, something odd caught his eye—a small white creature, it seemed, moving on the cliff-face beneath his feet. But squinting, he saw it was the wind toying with a mitten, caught in the thorny grass on a tiny ledge. A knitted mitten, white wool with red and green patterns, the kind from lands far to the north. Here, even in December, snow lay only on the highest peaks, and the trees held their leaves. Interesting. The ledge was just too far. He couldn’t reach it from the cliff-top, even lying flat on the stone. Snufkin shed his pack, took out his fishing line and hook, and on the fifth cast, snagged the mitten. As he stood, brushing white limestone grit from his belly, the Gunman was there, squatting on his heels, clearly ready to grab him if needed. Seeing his brother’s prize, he raised a brow. Snufkin shrugged. “Well. It seemed strange…” And then it seemed strange again. As if at the edge of his vision, a pale creature had stirred, taken a step away. No. Fixed by a stare, the mitten lay as it had. Snufkin felt fine, did not consider himself suggestible. So what was it? “You see anything?” he asked, just in case. His brother shook his head in silence. So Snufkin decided to test his hunch. He began coiling the line, glancing not at the mitten, but just beside it. And again, the same thing. A furtive movement, even, he thought, a faint, plaintive whimper. The Gunman, in answer to his questioning look, shook his head once more. After hearing the report, he merely hummed and turned back toward the road through the scrub. Snufkin hurried after him, tucking the white mitten under his pack strap. It felt damp, and the red and green patterns stared up like lost, unblinking eyes. “It happens,” the Gunman said a hundred paces on, not turning. “If someone clings to a thing as if it were alive, with a sincere and desperate heart, they can… grant it life, of sorts. Not literally. In the plane of meanings. Creatures with a certain kind of sight might catch a glimpse of it, out on the edge.” “And you?” “My peripheral vision is as sharp as what’s in front. No liminal zone. It’s more efficient.” Without turning his head, the Gunman threw out his arm to the side, as if holding an invisible gun. Squeezed an invisible trigger. That stood to reason. “Well,” Snufkin said. “The owner lost a favourite mitten. And it desperately wants to get back.” “You propose to help it?” “Why, yes.” It would be amusing. Interesting. Appropriately absurd. Just the right thing for a springtime tale to tell Moomintroll about Adventures in the South. And the mitten’s owner was surely distraught: judging by its condition, still relatively clean, it was lost recently. And the brothers were in no hurry. They could afford any detour. He placed the mitten in the crook of his elbow and looked past it. The little creature seemed to strain forward, down the trail. It gave him a vibe of a puppy dog. Snufkin quickened his pace, overtaking the Gunman, who merely chuckled and ceded the lead. At trail-crossings, Snufkin consulted the mitten. It was easy to look past it. There was so much beauty to distract the eye—the sea, the fantastical wind-carved rocks, the hypnotic rows of vineyards, enigmatic pyramids of white flat stones piled on the hilltops. “It’s like a tail!” Snufkin realised, as the first stone hovels came into view after another climb. The town surely lay in the wide gorge running down to the sea. “You can’t steer it consciously. Only with the edge of a thought. I’ve been practising not concentrating on my tail, that’s maybe why this comes easy to me.” “Tail?” the Gunman replied, not with surprise, but a pure question. Ah, right. He might not know. Snufkin himself hadn’t heard about the claws and tail from the Joxter until much later, and this brother had spent even less time with their father. Though he knew of the claws; he just refused to use them. And so Snufkin told him what he knew of mumrik tails, of his own experiments and conclusions. “I see,” was all his brother said. The word hung in the salt air, a simple acknowledgement of a shared, hidden inheritance. They walked on, the white mitten a silent, yearning compass in the crook of Snufkin’s arm, pointing the way toward someone’s loss and grief. But on the edge of that pretty seaside town, the mitten faltered. It trembled on his forearm, spun as if on a pivot, losing the scent. No matter. They could reason the rest. “Its owner is from the north,” Snufkin declared with certainty. “They are from the north,” the Gunman corrected. “Only a child loves a toy like that. And a child doesn’t come this far from home alone. Unless it’s a mumrik.” “A mumrik wouldn’t cling to a thing.” “Exactly. So, we look for a family from the north.” “With a crying child,” Snufkin finished the description. In the town, however, they had to part. And not to hasten the search. Even without a rifle over the shoulder, the Gunman inspired no trust in the all-seeing gossip-mongering old ladies who inhabited benches by their doors. They would not say if any tourists had passed, nor who might rent villas or apartments to civilised travellers. Snufkin had to make the inquiries alone, while the Gunman went to find a tavern and establish contact with the idle men there. Perhaps it was not for nothing that Moomintroll called his friend cute; the housewives listened far more kindly to his questions about a northern family, to whom he wished to return a lost, important item. They gave possible addresses. And at only the second, a low, whitewashed house with a garden, he heard from a distance the sound of a man and a woman quarrelling. At once, the mitten fretted. Snufkin leaned on the picket fence, listening to the voices from an open window. The woman accusing the man, clearly her husband, of ruining her life (nothing new), his muffled retorts, then a bark that these were her duties… Snufkin was bracing himself to call out and receive his share of the wrath, when the mitten leaped from his hand of its own accord. It fell fingers-first, pointing towards the thick bushes of magnolia… beneath which he saw the hunched back of a small creature, crouched facing the leaves. “Hey,” he called to the back. “You lose something?” From the dark, glossy green, a pointed snout emerged, with long, sadly drooping ears and red-rimmed eyes. A hare? A sniff? The child sniffled and nodded. “What, exactly?” Snufkin asked, just to be sure. “My dog,” the child wept. “His name is Fluffy. His tail’s a curl and his ears are floppy, and he’s very happy and loves to jump, and he’s white with spots, and he’s the be-e-est…” And now the tears came in three streams. Snufkin, bewildered, compared the description to the mitten on the ground. No, he had to compare it to what he saw at the edge of his sight! Then there was a resemblance. He bent, picked up the mitten, held it out. “This?” A fist of four fingers smeared tears and snot away. Eyes searched the offered thing. “Yes!” The child sprang up and charged straight through a bed of peonies to the fence, snatched its prize with grubby hands, and a second later was dragging the mitten by a hidden thread, laughing with joy. Didn’t even say thank you. On its feet were no shoes, and cloven hoofprints marked the flowerbeds. Ah, a wolpertinger. Just no horns grown yet. Well. The “dog” certainly could jump. Snufkin smiled, called out to the child not to lose Fluffy again, and turned back down the street toward the town centre. He found the Gunman in the tavern in the tiny main square. He sat alone at the bar, finishing the last clear, potent dregs in his glass. “Well?” Snufkin asked, sceptical. “Decent grappa.” “So you didn’t even try to look.” “Why would I?” the Gunman wondered, but a spark of mirth danced in his eyes. “I knew you’d manage on your own.”