Seed Across Snow

White Bear

30 White Bear and so, after a few years, it was given to her anyway, though then certainly too late for her to have the child he would not agree to. That night she watched him go darkly from their bed to tend the fire; she did not see him, but knew he knelt naked, trembling before the chilling woodstove. Then, she heard him feed the fat wood to the embers. she heard crackling, snaps, the whoosh of flame catching hold, coaxed again from docility to rage. The clanking close of heavy black doors. The heat inside. That true noise of fire: flames beating against the firebox as if an animal just aware of its cage. and she heard him groping back to her through the unsure 31 darkness, his body again cooling along the journey from flame. she listened as he reached for the footboard, hand over hand, and then a pause, and within his pause, she heard the fine dry crack, she heard the break that did not splinter, nor tear, but split finely, cleanly; its finality racing along the long fault and though finally he lay down beside her, she had become what he could not see—a white bear, icy fur clinking like chimes in the wind, now adrift in a bed, a floe, broken free. ...