Snow, Slowly, Not Indoors

The first letter came up to the observatory in the westbound post. It was folded very small and addressed in pencil to THE PERSON IN THE OBSERVATORY WHO LOOKS AT THE SKY, SKY-MEADOW. Nobody at the post had to think twice about where to take it.

It was written in careful capitals, every letter standing on the line as if it had been told to and meant to be good about it. Here it is in ordinary letters, which are easier to read in the dark.

Dear Person Who Looks At The Sky,

My name is Dilly Ashdown. I am eight and I live in Lantern Hollow, in the house with the blue step.

In the Hollow we hang our mittens on the door for the week before Midwinter, and people put small things in them. This year there was a card in my left mitten. It is called Snowfall, Slowly. It has a coffee ring on it and a sooty thumbprint, and on the back somebody has written Sky-Meadow, very small.

At the Midwinter lamp supper in the Glowmarket, after the pudding, anybody who wants to can stand up and play one card for the whole square. I want to play this one. I have wanted to since I found it.

But Mum’s rule is that you don’t play a card whose maker you can’t name. Nobody in our house put it in my mitten. I asked Mum, and Dad, and my brother Ned, who is two and says no to everything, so he doesn’t count.

You are the only person in Sky-Meadow I know about. Do you know who made it?

Yours sincerely, Dilly Ashdown

P.S. The supper is in eighteen days.

P.S. I have not played it. I have only held it.

P.S. Mum says it is a good rule, and usually it is.

P.S. I am sorry about the other three P.S.s. I kept thinking of things.

Maren read it on the step, twice, the second time aloud to the apprentice. Then she went in to find paper. The paper was under the maps and the maps were on the bread, so she answered on the back of last night’s sky reading.

Dear Dilly Ashdown,

I am the person who looks at the sky. My name is Maren. My apprentice and I have read your letter, and we agree that the fourth P.S. was not necessary and was the best one.

I don’t know who made your card. Yet. I would very much like to.

Please lay a thin piece of paper over the front and trace it, every line, stroke by stroke, in the order you think it was drawn. Send me the tracing and I will try a copy here. A copy tells me things a card keeps to itself. If you go wrong, don’t rub it out. Leave it in. I want to see what you did next.

And one question. Is the coffee ring a whole ring, or is there a gap in it?

Yours, with great interest, Maren

P.S. Your mum’s rule is a very good one. Tell her a charter said so. She may not be impressed. Most people aren’t.

The reply was thicker. It had the tracing in it, done on the grey paper the Glowmarket wraps cheese in. It had a ruler, drawn by hand on a strip of card. And folded inside a clean handkerchief, it had the card.

Dear Maren,

Here is the tracing. It took all of Sunday. I went wrong twice and left them both in. The first one is where Ned jogged my elbow. The second one was me.

The coffee ring has a gap at the bottom as wide as my little fingernail. It looks like a C lying on its back.

Mum says you can have the card as well, because a card is better off with someone who might name it than in a drawer with nobody who can. Please send it back before the supper.

Yours sincerely, Dilly Ashdown

P.S. I have put in a ruler in case the observatory measures differently. I drew it myself. It is in Hollow inches.

P.S. I did the thumbprint on the tracing too, and pressed my own thumb next to it so you can see it isn’t mine. Mine is smaller. Also I washed it first.

P.S. You have an apprentice. Is your apprentice good at it yet? I am asking because I am not good at tracing yet, and I would like to know if that is allowed.

P.S. My mitten is back on the door. Mum says that is optimistic.

P.S. Fourteen days.

Maren’s answer came four days later. It was the longest letter anyone in the Ashdown house had ever had, and Dilly read it out to the whole kitchen, including Ned.

Dear Dilly,

Your tracing works.

I drew it out on the field board, stroke by stroke, following your pencil, both wrong turns included. Thank you for leaving them in. It was cold, and I won’t wear a coat, so I meant to do it at the table. My apprentice took the board out of my hands and said, “Not indoors.” I suspect there is a story there. I suspect it happened in the loft. We went out to the step.

And it snowed. It snowed on the step and nowhere else, and it snowed slowly. Not slowly the way snow usually is. Each flake took as long to come down as it takes to say a short sentence, and turned over once on the way, so I could see both sides. I believe the turning over is Ned’s wrong turn. Please thank him.

My apprentice caught one flake on each fingertip, ten in all, and stood very still, and I read them aloud. They can be read, Dilly, as plainly as handwriting. Most of them say nothing a person could use. One said fork, fork, hook, fork. One was very nearly a capital D, in careful capitals. I put it in a drawer to send to you, and it has melted, and I am sorry.

The soup went cold while I was reading. I heated it, and went back out because there were more flakes, and it went cold again. The biggest flake was half a Hollow inch across. We measured it on your ruler, which agrees with ours exactly. I have written that down.

Now your question. Under the last stroke you traced a little mark, very faithfully. You may have thought it was a smudge. It is a maker’s mark, and it is my apprentice’s.

Your card is one of the first my apprentice ever finished. In the autumn it was traded to the Wandering Comet, down by the pond, for stardust. I went down last night to ask about it. I hurried, which the Comet dislikes, so I sat on the bank until I had stopped. Then the Comet said, “Six stardust. I was paying for the ring. The card came with it.”

The ring is mine, I’m afraid. My cup has a chip at the bottom, which leaves a C lying on its back, and I put it down on whatever is flat.

The Comet would not say who had the card next. “I don’t keep faces. I keep cards.” So I can tell you who made it, which was your question. I can’t yet tell you how it got into your mitten.

The thumbprint isn’t my apprentice’s either. I had my apprentice press a thumb beside it, in soup, which is what we had. Not a match. The one on the card is wider, and it is lamp soot. I have written that down.

Whether you may play it is not mine to say. I gave your letter to the maker.

Yours, very pleased, Maren

P.S. My apprentice read your third P.S. twice, then took the card up to the loft.

P.S. The card is coming back to you with this letter, in your handkerchief. Something has been written on the back. I was not shown. I have been very good about not looking. I mention it so you know how good.

* * *

The next letter from the Hollow came the week after Midwinter. It started out very short, and did not stay that way.

Dear Maren,

On the back it said, Yours. Play it outdoors.

Mum read it twice and said that was as good as a name, and better than most. So I was allowed. So I played it.

Thank you, and please thank your apprentice.

Love from Dilly Ashdown

P.S. After the pudding Warden Iona called up the cards. Old Thrupp played a Kind Gust that turned everybody’s hats round. Juniper Bellrunner played one that rang a single bell, once, and said that was her holiday. Then it was me. I stood on the bench under Linnet’s awning and played it outdoors like it said, because the whole Glowmarket is outdoors. I checked.

For a moment nothing happened. Then the first flake came down past the lamps, and it took so long that Ned said no to it twice.

The snow came down over the whole square so slowly that people could walk between the flakes, and they did. Grown-ups went across in their good shoes, taking tiny steps and turning sideways, and nobody touched one. Juniper Bellrunner went corner to corner and somebody beat her, so then it was a proper race and they had to run it twice more. Warden Iona danced between them. Mum walked between them carrying Ned, who said no the whole way across and was laughing.

I read one flake, the way you did. It said nothing a person could use. I liked it anyway.

Linnet sold every hat on the stall, and all the mittens. Then she sold a scarf from under the counter that had been knitted for the observatory. It went round the man who bought it four times. Linnet said, “Too warm for wool, they told me in August.”

It snowed slowly right through the second pudding. Then it stopped, and the flakes that were still in the air came down the rest of the way, taking their time.

P.S. Mum says to tell you the rule still stands, and that I had to say so.

P.S. The card is in my drawer with the ruler. I have drawn myself another ruler.

P.S. This is the last one, and it is a question. Who put it in my mitten?

Maren answered by return of post, on the back of the sky reading for Midwinter night.

Dear Dilly,

It was Tansy Nightjar. She carries lamp oil up to the Hollow, and she brought ours up the knoll the same morning your letter came. She bought your card from the Comet in the autumn, because she liked the ring. On her next run she saw a left mitten on a door with a blue step, with nothing in it yet, and she said that wouldn’t do. She trims the lamp on her cart at every stop, and her thumbs are sooty from now until spring. The Comet doesn’t keep faces, but Tansy keeps every one, and she told me all of this before I had finished asking.

I have been delighted about it all morning. The soup has gone cold again.

So now you know who made it and who gave it, and so does your mum.

Yours, Maren

P.S. Tell Linnet I don’t mind about the scarf. I wouldn’t have worn it.

P.S. Tell Ned thank you again. I know what he’ll say.

Dilly read that one at breakfast, and then to Ned, who said no. Then she got out a clean sheet and wrote, in careful capitals, DEAR TANSY NIGHTJAR, THANK YOU. Under it she put five P.S.s, because she had thought of things, and she did not apologise for a single one. She folded it round a clean handkerchief, for the soot.

On Thursday Tansy came up the street with the oil, and Dilly was waiting on the blue step. She tucked the letter into the cuff of Tansy’s left mitten. Tansy talked about it all the way to the next house.

Then Dilly hung her left mitten back on the door. Mum said that was optimistic, and it was. But Dilly had played her card in front of everyone, and a whole square had walked between her snowflakes, and Tansy Nightjar had a clean handkerchief for her thumbs. She thought optimistic was exactly the right thing to be.