South of Winter, Two Singulars

       For a change, the Gunman led them away from the coast and into the low, wind-scoured mountains, but well south of where he had hunted the storm-demon. They moved without haste, with time to gather nuts fallen from the trees, to study the intricate lacework of rotted leaves and the veined marble outcrops. They listened to birdsong familiar from northern summers, sought the easiest fords across streams and gullies, and watched tatters of fog lick at the dense green of the slopes, the bone-white rocks, and the crumbling arches of ancient aqueducts. One such tatter of cloud proved not fog at all, but steam rising from a cascade of small pools terraced down the mountainside. A hot spring. Snufkin quite liked them. True, only if there was not another soul for miles. But the Gunman, perhaps, did not count. He didn’t pose a threat or break the mood. He wouldn’t be confused or scared at the sight of another’s scars—he had enough of his own. And enough of discretion as well. After stacking his pack and guitar on the stony lip of the pool, the Gunman announced he would scout for a campsite for the coming days, and vanished between the moss-bearded trunks, the crackle of branches underfoot fading into the mountain’s silence. Snufkin saw no sense in denying himself the joy. All conditions aligned: the pleasant weariness of the trail, the cool bite of the mountain evening, and across the gorge, the sunset cleaved the far wall into indigo shadow and orange, fire-lit summits. He stripped quickly, tested the water with a toe. The Gunman had chosen the perfect tier of the cascade, where the water was no longer scalding but had not yet cooled to tepid. With a sigh of pleasure, Snufkin sank in. He found a hollow where he could sit chest-deep, his back resting against a smooth, water-worn stone, and let go. The mineral scent of the water, the blissful heat seeping into his bones, the deepening colours of the mountains, the first tentative whistles of nightbirds—it all flowed into him. So, he caught the rustle in the grass at once. From the direction of his pack. He looked. Indeed, a stalk swayed a few paces off. A Woodie or other small-folks, most likely. Snufkin called out to the creature, quiet, not to scare it off. The lurcher went still, then resumed its rustling, softer now but drawing closer. Then the edge of his dirty-white scarf, draped over the pack, twitched. It began to slide, slowly, in little jerks, down the canvas. Well, that was bloody bold. “Hey! Stop that!” Snufkin rose, shivering, to his feet. He scooped a handful of water and flung it toward his things. At once, with a desperate clatter of wings, a crow heaved itself from the grass, the scarf tangled in its claws and beak. Snufkin lunged after it, but carefully, mindful of the slick stones. He saw already he wouldn’t make it. The crow would reach the terrace edge, cross the gorge, and that would be that. Against the pale sky, something small flashed. The same moment, the crow let out a strangled, outraged shriek and tumbled over the edge. Snufkin reached the lip and peered cautiously down. The scarf glowed white in the thicket of branches of a crooked tree, leafless and stark. Indignant crow-curses and the thrash of wings sounded from further below, hidden by twilight and foliage. Snufkin returned to dress. As he hurried to lace his boots, the Gunman slid down the slope from above, gave a nod, and continued his descent. Snufkin grabbed his cane and followed. Sliding down the carpet of sodden leaves would have been quick, but treacherous. Snufkin sacrificed speed, moving sideways, step by careful step. By the time he reached the scarf-bearing tree, the Gunman was already emerging from the undergrowth, the crow clamped in his hands. The bird was silent only because he held its beak shut. “See what befalls thieves,” he said, almost amiably, though from him it sounded like a doom. “I see you near another’s goods again, it’ll be a stone I throw, not a nut.” He sat on the trunk of a fallen tree. “Now. Be still. Let’s see this wing. I won’t tear it off. Don’t fret.” “Murder,” the crow muttered, its voice muffled. “Robbery, in broad daylight. Tyrants and monsters, begrudging a scrap of fabric! I need it more. Karl will finish his nest first, and Clara will fly to him… And now I’m crippled, farewell my matrimonial prospects…” Snufkin smothered a glimpse of pity. He might have cut a scrap of the scarf for a finch or a warbler. It would never satisfy a crow. Besides, the bird was large, clever—it could find its own materials. In principle, crows were like any creature; there were slippery types among them. “Drop that act,” the Gunman pronounced his diagnosis. “One feather broken on a branch. You can fly. You’ll moult in autumn, good as new. And white cloth is a poor choice. Gives the nest away. Fly down the gorge to the stream below the three-horned crag. There’s a boar’s wallow under the ledge, hair in clumps all about. If you work instead of whining, you’ll do it in time.” “Oh, stuff it,” the crow grumbled. “Maybe I like a good whine… Hey!” The Gunman tossed it into the air. It beat its wings in a frantic, ungainly rhythm, setting a course westward, toward its appointed task. And Snufkin was already pulling his boots off again. He’d sized up the tree (which out of pure spite was a blackthorn) and the branch where the scarf was snagged, the spines upon it. If there was a single stroke of luck, it was that the blackthorn was not dead, merely winter-bare. It should bear the weight of a smallish mumrik. Now to summon the hunting spree in his blood, to leap, to sink his claws into the moss-softened bark… He had always been a fair climber, but with claws on all fours he went up with a swift, startling ease. On the horizontal branch he slowed; here the thorns began. The wood groaned and swayed but held. The next task was harder: to unpick the scarf from the spines one-handed. Then to unpick it from his own claws. Then to knot it around his neck and tuck the ends firmly inside his collar, where they could snag on nothing else. Then came the hardest part. A year and a half ago, while getting used to the claws, he had tried climbing the linden in the Moominhouse parlour. He’d made it up, after a fashion. And in the finest feline tradition, found he could not get down. His foot was still mending then, he was afraid to trust it. Moomintroll had fetched a stepladder from the shed to retrieve him, to the gleeful cackle of Little My. Please don’t let him get stuck now. Not that the Gunman would laugh, at least not in any unkind way, but worse, he might feel obliged to help. And he kept his claws trimmed to the quick, and was heavier, and… No. He wasn’t climbing. He was just picking his way to the slope beneath the thorn. “Don’t catch me,” Snufkin requested. “If I fall, I fall. No big deal.” And he began his slow descent, like some southern sloth-beast, one limb at a time. The moss on the bark was slick and crumbled, the thorns pricked and snagged. But at last, with a collection of splinters and the scarf secure, he dropped to the earth. “‘A mumrik wouldn’t cling to a thing’?” the Gunman quoted, not without irony, the very phrase Snufkin had uttered weeks before when returning the lost mitten. “It’s a gift…” Snufkin mumbled, embarrassed, working a particularly nasty splinter from his foot. Moomintroll had given him his own childhood scarf that autumn after the ill-fated business with his father on the Isle of the Kind Daddy Jones—or rather the Isle of Chancellor now, a replacement for the one lost there… Irrationally, keeping it felt important. Like a promise to see his dear Moomintroll again, safe and sound. It was a foolish, vulnerable piece of magic, and he felt laid bare by it. The Gunman watched him, said nothing more. Maybe he wouldn’t share this little piece of sentimentality but sure would understand. He simply turned and started back up toward the terrasse and backpacks. Pitching the tent and eating their supper, they descended again to the bathing terrace in the dark, to steep themselves once more in the warm water before sleep. Uninterrupted now. A sickle moon had cleared the peaks and dipped its pale horn into the pool. Snufkin trailed a hand through the water, and shards of moonlight scattered across the dark surface like silver petals. The Gunman had removed only his boots. He sat now on a stone, his feet in the water, smoking his pipe. There was no wind, yet the smoke drifted away from them, a pale ghost against the deeper black of the gorge. Snufkin didn’t ask why his brother didn’t join him; surely the wounds had not knit enough for a full soak. The Gunman always knew what he was doing. He knew what to expect, when to relax and when to buckle the gunbelt over his jacket. When a look from under his hat-brim would suffice, when a hand on the holster was needed, and when the trigger must be pulled. Snufkin could only guess at the weight of knowledge a man must carry, the calculus performed before every step, to bear the consequences of his acts with such apparent ease. It takes to live a life in unsavoury places, perhaps. Or to possess a mind built for such ledgers. All he could do was push down the memories of a similar night, a similar sliver of moon, under which the seeds of hatifnatters had sprouted by the power station wall. Or the twitching paws of the sentry on the gatehouse floor… Snufkin shook his head. Don’t, he pleaded with himself. Please, not now. How many more good nights would be eaten by such regrets? Perhaps… he could ask? “What do you do,” he said, his voice quiet in the dark scented with loam, wet soil and decay, “with the regrets? For things you’ve done? One can’t never err.” The Gunman took a long draw on his pipe. The ember glowed, a tiny slumbering volcano, then faded. He watched the smoke blend with the night. “You just bear them,” he said at last, his voice a low rasp against the gentle creaks and rustles around. “As a deadweight. Or as a balance beam, or compass. Up to you. It’s a past fact, a part of you—” “But it hurts.” Snufkin cuddled into a ball, feeling that pain fresh and almost physical. The Gunman shifted his feet in the water, a slow, deliberate movement. “Yeah. And will always hurt while you’re alive. It is when it stops hurting that you should worry.” That sounded familiar. And sort of funny, so Snufkin exhaled slowly to unwind the tension until he was able to chuckle properly. “Just as a doctor says plucking out a piece of lead out of your leg.” “Exactly.” The Gunman stood up, shaking feet in turns to dry. “Enough. As I reckon, it’ll be okay not to sit watch today.” Snufkin sank down to the nose one last time, letting the water embrace and encourage him, then stepped out of the pond and hurried to dry at least some of water with his scarf and pull the clothes on. The knitted fabric was vaguely reminding short moomin fur, the colour held even starker semblance. As if Moomintroll himself patted him on the shoulder, saying I’m here, by your side no matter what weight you bear. No, he didn’t regret climbing the blasted blackthorn tree or robbing the crow of the heat insulation material. “Though I might have it easier,” the Gunman pondered as he walked first, a light grey spot between black branches, balancing over treacherous stones and roots. “Regrets for shooting get counterbalanced by the regrets for not shooting. And each new decision is to be made from scratch and facts, not emotions.” His pipe ember was a beacon now, even if Snufkin could already discern their tent in a clearing ahead. “Yet I hope you never go through what makes you know it,” his brother added, barely audible, and shook his pipe over the dead fireplace before diving into the tent. Snufkin paused to put his cane down—and to gulp down the knot in his throat at this other way to say I’m here, by your side, to protect you from damned choices. “Good night,” he said, crawling inside and zipping the flap behind him. “And thank you”.