The snow came in the night, a year after the last first snow.
The cabin woke under a quiet that had weight to it. Snow lay on the roof. Snow lay on the woodpile. It lay white on the dark arms of the spruces, all the way down to the clearing. The creek had gone silent under its first thin ice.
A year ago, four people had stood in this kitchen. This year, the kitchen held five.
June had come up in her turn of the rotation, the south counts in her bag, two days of hill behind her. Her cane hung by the door, next to the boots. Silas had come the half-day from his own place the afternoon before the snow. His knee was banded double for the road. He had arrived at his own pace, before dark, and asked for tea before he asked for a chair. The rider from the village — two days on the road with the mail — had fallen in with him at the turn. He slept in the shed loft that night. His horse stood in the lean-to, eating Rowan's hay. In the morning, the rider would take the last mail down before the roads closed.
No one had hurried. No road had shortened for anyone. That was why they were all there to see the snow.
After supper, Nora opened the register to the first clean page past the counts.
The first page held the rule, and the first winter's names. A year of counts had gone in after it. Autumn counts. The drawing's paper, folded into the back cover. The book had thickened the way a woodpile thickens. One true layer at a time.
"This page is the winter coming," Nora said. "Not the winter gone."
She wrote the heading in her neat hand. Then the names, one under the other, with their work beside them.
Rowan Marlowe — the north post, first turn. Pip Lark — the north post, second turn, and the lessons between. Nora Voss — the near line, and the book. June Mercer — the schoolroom, the reports, and the south counts. Silas Vane, sixty-eight this winter — the near line, with Nora, at his own pace.
Silas read his line twice, the way old men read paper that concerns them.
"At his own pace," he said. "That is the first true thing a book has ever said about me."
"It is a count, not a compliment," Nora said.
"It can be both," Silas said. But he said it to his tea.
June read the page standing, her cane against the table's edge. She checked the names the way she checked a report. Names. Work. No gaps a man could fall through. Her finger stopped at Pip's line.
"Second turn at the north post," she said. "Alone between lessons."
"He held the post with Bram last winter," Rowan said. "He counted the seventh at a hundred and twenty, in company. This winter the post is his by the book. The lessons between are mine."
"Then the book is right," June said. She sat down. "Write it so."
Under the five names, Nora ruled a sixth line.
She ruled it as carefully as the other five. Same length. Same care in the corners. Then she left it empty, and wrote beside it, in letters smaller than any name on the page:
For the next hand.
"Who?" Pip said.
"Whoever comes," Nora said. "Bram held the post one winter and went south. The next hand may be his. It may be a hand none of us has seen. The line does not care. It will be here when the hand is."
Rowan looked at the empty line for a long moment. An empty line in a full book is a kind of door. Not a door opened. Not a door promised. A place where a door could be, kept clean.
"Leave it," he said. "Exactly like that."
Nora closed the register and set it back on the shelf, where paper that would be read was kept.
On the table lay the other paper of the evening. Rowan's answer to Mira.
Her autumn letter had asked one question. Could a person learn plants by letters? Rowan had turned the question over all through the drawing, and the counts, and the first cold. That night, with the snow settling on the roof, he answered it the only way the school knew how. Not by saying yes. By beginning.
He wrote the heading at the top of the sheet, plain as a label on a jar.
Lesson One.
Under it, the plant. Between two clean sheets of paper, pressed flat, lay a single leaf of wintergreen. It is a low plant, no higher than a man's ankle. Its leaves stay green all winter, dark and glossy, under the snow itself. Red berries stand on it in the cold months. A man can find it in the worst week of the year, if he knows its face. That is why Rowan chose it for a first lesson. It would still be there when her letter reached her. It would still be there when she answered.
His writing went under the pressed leaf, in his slow hand.
Wintergreen. It grows low, in pine shade, and keeps its leaves green under the snow. Its red berries stand all winter. Grown people make a weak tea of the leaves for muscles that ache from work. It is a strong plant. Learn its face this winter. Do not dose anyone with it. That part waits for a teacher at your elbow.
Then the part of the letter that was not a lesson, and was the whole of it.
You asked if plants can be learned this way. We are going to find out. Here is your work. Tell me what grows by your door at Dunmere. Draw its leaf if words run short. Tell me how it smells when you rub it between your fingers. Tell me where the sun reaches it, and where it does not. Write it all, and send it when the roads open. I will read it the way I read a count. Carefully, and twice.
He folded the sheet around the pressed leaf. He sealed the packet with wax. Nothing in it spoke of breath. Nothing in it spoke of roots, or realms, or counts of trees. It was a plant, a season, a use, and a question. A girl of thirteen could carry all of that safely, the whole long road south, and it would still be true when it arrived.
"Not a goodbye, then," June said, watching him seal it.
"No," Rowan said. "A beginning with a seal on it. She gets lesson two when lesson one comes home."
He set the packet by the door, where the rider would not forget it. The rider would carry it down to the village in the morning. Rosa would count it into the mail sack aloud, the way she counted everything. From the village it would go south at a horse's pace. Two weeks of road to Dunmere, if the snow let the roads stay open that long. If it did not, the packet would wait in a dry place, with a name on it, until the roads opened again. Paper was patient. The school had learned to be.
The dawn came clear and bitter cold.
They walked down to the clearing's edge together, all five. The path took them single file where the drifts had filled it. Silas set the pace on the steep part, and the line kept his pace without a word about it. June's cane punched small round holes beside her boot marks. Pip carried the watch book in his coat, against his chest, to keep the ink from the cold.
At the clearing's edge they stopped, on ordinary ground.
Across the hollow, the Grandmother stood under her snow. No word came from her. None was expected. What came from her side of the clearing was warmth, the old warmth, steady at the edge of the trees. It asked for nothing. It offered nothing but itself. Rowan stood in it a moment, his hands deep in his coat, and was grateful in the private way a man is grateful to weather.
They took the counts, and they gave nothing.
Rowan read the birch at the clearing's edge at rest. Low and even. A tree asleep under snow, breathing the slow breath of winter. Nora wrote the slip in the watch book, her pencil stiff with cold. Silas read the young spruce by the path with his eyes only, and gave its height against his own hand, the way a man measures what his hands had never been able to feel. June counted the party aloud, out of a warden's habit, and found it whole.
Far north, beyond the last station, the old hurt lay quiet under the new snow, no nearer, by the autumn's count, than it had been a year ago.
That was the whole of the morning's work. Counts taken true. Hands kept whole. Trees left to their sleep. It was the same work as a year ago, done by more hands, and it took less of any one pair of them. Rowan did the arithmetic standing in the cold, and let the result stand without comment. That was the school. Not a wonder. A roster, and a walk, and a book going home in a boy's coat.
They turned back up the path together, in the bright cold, in no hurry at all.
At the cabin, the rider was saddling his horse. Rowan gave him the packet for Mira, and watched him tuck it inside his coat, against his own warmth. Then the rider went down the white road, with the light still good, toward the village, toward the sack, toward the long road south.
Behind the five of them, the path down to the clearing held their morning in the new snow. Five sets of tracks went down it. Five sets came back up.
At the door, Rowan looked back once. Habit made the count for him.
Five.
He let the count lie where it lay, and went in to breakfast.
End of Volume 5.