The Winter That Bound Us

• Chapter 1 The Frost Between Houses
• Chapter 2 Ash and Pine
• Chapter 3 Across the Frozen Divide
• Chapter 4 Breath Upon the Glass
• Chapter 5 Inherited Embers
• Chapter 6 Footprints in the Drift
• Chapter 7 The Silent Mill
• Chapter 8 Whispers Under the Lantern
• Chapter 9 Blood on the Snow
• Chapter 10 A Shiver of Defiance
• Chapter 11 The Shrine Beyond the Ridge
• Chapter 12 Fires That Cannot Warm
• Chapter 13 The Midnight Gale
• Chapter 14 Two Solitudes
• Chapter 15 Secrets Carved in Bark
• Chapter 16 The Blizzard's Shadow
• Chapter 17 A Pact in the Frost
• Chapter 18 Echoes Across the Ravine
• Chapter 19 Fractures in the Ice
• Chapter 20 Stolen Warmth
• Chapter 21 The Gathering Storm
• Chapter 22 Betrayal at Dusk
• Chapter 23 The Weight of Centuries
• Chapter 24 The Longest Night
• Chapter 25 First Melt
• Chapter 26 The Thawing of the World

The cold in Highfrost was not a seasonal visitor; it was an occupant that had long since signed the deed and refused to leave. For three years, the skies above the mountain basin had remained the color of wet slate, refusing to yield a single day of true spring. The snow did not fall in delicate, powdery flurries anymore. It drifted down in heavy, fat flakes that settled into the crevices of stone walls and packed tight against oak doors, turning the village into a labyrinth of white trenches.

On the northern side of the frozen gorge sat the Mercer timberlands, where pine needles crackled like glass underfoot and the air tasted perpetually of resin and bitter frost. On the southern ridge sat the Hale foundries, their chimneys belching thin ribbons of black smoke that did little to warm the ice-encrusted stone beneath them. Between them lay the Great Ravine, spanned by a rotting wooden bridge that had not borne the weight of a wagon since the blizzard of the second year.

Eira Mercer leaned against the frame of her family’s woodstore, her breath blossoming into a thick white cloud that dissolved against the icy rafters. She adjusted the heavy woolen wool cloak around her shoulders, her fingers stiff inside her sheepskin gloves. Her father, Bran Mercer, stood twenty paces away, split-ax resting against his thigh as he surveyed the dwindling stack of seasoned oak.

"Three cords left," Bran spat, his beard dusted with white frost that never quite melted, even when he sat by the hearth. "If the Hales keep choking the coal pass down in the lower valley, we’ll be burning furniture before the month turns."

"The coal pass is iced over, Father," Eira said, her voice dry and steady. "Lukas Hale isn't sitting on a mountain of coal just to spite us. The drift in the pass is twenty feet deep."

"Lukas Hale wouldn't dig out his own mother if she were trapped beneath a snowslide unless there was a price to be extracted," Bran grunted, turning his back on the gorge. "Keep your mind on the timber, girl. The Hales have iron in their blood and ice in their bellies. They’ve been eyeing our timber stores since the second frost."

Eira did not argue. Arguing with Bran Mercer on the subject of the Hale family was like trying to scrape black ice off a cobblestone with a wooden spoon—noisy, frustrating, and entirely useless. The hatred between the Mercers and the Hales was older than the endless winter, born in a time when the sun still warmed the valley and water ran freely in the river. Back then, it had been a matter of property lines, water rights, and a missing herd of cattle that both sides claimed had been stolen. But three years of darkness and biting wind had reduced all old grievances down to their sharpest, most lethal edge: survival.

Across the ravine, half a mile away through the hazy white blur of the falling snow, Lukas Hale wiped a smear of soot and frost from his forehead with the back of his bare forearm. The heat from the forge was a localized mercy, extending no further than three feet from the red-hot coals before the mountain air snuffed it out.

"Drop the bellows, Lukas," his uncle, Garren Hale, barked from the darkness of the forge’s rear corner. "You’re wasting anthracite. The wind is picking up from the north. That means another drop in temperature by dusk."

Lukas eased his weight off the iron lever, watching the orange glow in the hearth dim to a dull, sulking red. His hands were calloused and stained black deep into the lines of his palms, the skin cracked around his knuckles despite the tallow he rubbed into them every night. He walked to the wide, glassless window of the smithy that looked out over the northern slope.

"The Mercers are clearing the road to the upper stand," Lukas observed quietly, leaning his elbow on the stone sill. The wood was cold enough to sting through his wool tunic. "They’re cutting green pine. They must be desperate."

"Desperate or stupid," Garren replied, clinking two iron pitons together as he sorted his inventory. "Green pine burns smoky and leaves pitch in the chimneys. Let them creosote their roofs and burn their own houses down. Saves us the trouble of driving them out when the grain runs out."

"There won't be any grain left for anyone if the low pass isn't cleared by midwinter," Lukas said. He watched a solitary figure on the far ridge—a tall girl in a dark cloak standing near the edge of the Mercer woodstore. Even at this distance, he recognized the sharp, upright posture of Eira Mercer. She didn't stoop under the cold like the older folk did; she stood against it as if she were made of the same hard oak her family harvested.

"Don't concern yourself with the low pass," Garren snapped, stepping into the forge fire's weak light. His face was a map of deep scars and grime, his eyes hard as flint. "The Mayor’s council meets tomorrow at the town hall. We’ll demand the Mercers surrender half their timber rights for the southern quadrant, or we shut off the iron fittings for their sledges entirely. No iron, no timber transport. See how long Bran Mercer holds his chin high then."

Lukas didn't answer. He turned his eyes back toward the ravine. He had watched Eira Mercer across that gap for three winters now. He had seen her haul logs that would have broken a lesser man’s back, seen her stand toe-to-toe with her father when Bran’s temper flared hot enough to scorch the walls. In a village where everyone was slowly shrinking under the weight of the ice, she seemed to be the only thing holding her ground.

The village of Highfrost sat directly in the center of the conflict, caught in the crossfire of two families who would rather freeze in their beds than ask each other for a spark. The town square was an uneasy neutral ground, marked by a sunken stone well whose water had frozen solid two years ago. Now, the well served as the town notice board, covered in thick sheets of ice over notices of missing livestock, ration limits, and warnings about wolves descending from the upper peaks.

By noon, the snowfall eased into a needle-sharp drizzle of sleet. Eira walked down the winding northern track toward the square, a heavy wooden bucket slung over each shoulder on a yoke. Water was scarce; what little they had came from melting clean ice brought down from the higher glaciers, a grueling task that required two hours of chopping for a single tub of gray, mineral-heavy water.

As she reached the cobbles of the square, her boots crunching through the crusted snow, she saw Lukas Hale approaching from the southern track. He carried a heavy bundle of iron bars bound with leather thongs, his shoulders braced against the weight.

They met near the frozen well, the wind howling down the narrow alleyway between the tailor’s abandoned shop and the bakery.

Neither stopped, but their paces slowed. In Highfrost, a Mercer did not speak to a Hale unless witnesses were present and weapons were drawn, but the emptiness of the square gave them a brief, unauthorized solitude.

"Your fire is smoking, Hale," Eira said as she passed him, her voice barely carrying over the rattle of the sleet against the wooden shingles above. "Your uncle using wet coal again?"

Lukas paused, the iron bars creaking against his chest. He turned his head slightly, his gray eyes catching hers beneath the dark hood of his cloak. "It’s dry enough to keep us warm, Mercer. Which is more than I can say for those green logs your father’s dragging out of the north wood. You’ll choke your own people before the week is out."

Eira halted, the wooden yoke creaking as she turned. She looked him up and down, taking in the soot-blackened coat and the frost caught in his dark hair. "We cut what we have to cut. If your foundry didn't hoard the cross-cut saws, we’d be able to fall the dry timber higher up."

"We don't hoard," Lukas said, his voice dropping an octave, losing its defensive edge and settling into something flatter, more tired. "The steel is brittle from the cold. Two saws snapped yesterday just trying to cut plate for the church stove. The metal doesn't hold up in this weather any better than the people do."

Eira looked at the iron bars in his arms. She could see the micro-fractures in the gray metal, tiny white lines spider-webbing across the surface where the extreme frost was eating into the iron's core. He was right, though she would never admit it aloud to her father. The cold was breaking everything—stone, wood, iron, and patience.

"The bridge at the ravine is sagging," Eira said softly, looking past him down the empty street. "The main support beam on the south side cracked during last night's freeze. If that goes, there’s no crossing at all, even on foot."

Lukas followed her gaze. "It’s been unsafe for six months."

"It’s the only way to the medicinal storehouse on the high ridge," she reminded him. "If someone gets the lung-rot this winter, there won't be any willow bark coming across from our side."

Lukas shifted the weight of the iron bars, his knuckles turning white against the leather strapping. "My uncle wants to chop the bridge down entirely. He thinks you'll use it to raid our coal sheds if the frost gets worse."

A bitter half-smile touched Eira’s lips, though her eyes remained cold. "Tell your uncle that if we wanted his coal, we wouldn't bother with the bridge. We’d walk across the ice in the gorge. It’s hard enough to hold a horse now."

"Don't try it," Lukas warned, stepping a half-pace closer, the heat radiating off his wool coat carrying the faint, metallic scent of the forge. "The ice in the gorge looks solid, but the undercurrent from the hot springs near the base creates air pockets. Break through that, and you’re under the shelf before you can scream."

"I know the river better than you do, Hale," she said, raising her chin. "I was skating it while you were still burning your fingers on your father's tongs."

"And I’ve pulled three drowned deer out of the lower eddies since the ice set in," he countered plainly, without anger, just stating the grim reality. "They looked fine on top, too."

For a moment, the space between them felt less like a battleground and more like a shelter. They were two young people standing in the ruins of a world that was slowly choking on white dust, linked by the shared knowledge of just how close they all were to the edge.

The sound of heavy, nailed boots crunching on the ice down the alley broke the silence. Garren Hale’s gravelly voice echoed off the timber frames. "Lukas! Where are those straps?"

Eira didn't wait for Lukas to answer. She adjusted her yoke, turned on her heel, and walked briskly toward the Mercer quarter, her boots cutting deep, sharp tracks into the pristine snow. Lukas stood by the frozen well for a second longer, watching the edge of her dark cloak disappear around the corner of the carpenter’s shop, before turning back toward the warmth of the black smoke.

The soot from the Hale foundries did not rise; it hovered. In the heavy, sub-zero air of the southern ridge, the black exhaust from the coal fires drifted downward, dusting the pristine mountain snow with a grey, greasy skin. Lukas Hale stood at his workbench, his nostrils burning with the familiar, acrid stench of sulfur and scorched iron. His knuckles were raw, the skin split in tiny red fissures that refused to heal in the biting draft that whistled through the gaps in the stone masonry.

He picked up a heavy rasp, his movements methodical and slow, rhythmic in a way that kept the blood moving through his freezing limbs. Beneath the tool lay the iron hinge for the town hall’s double doors—cracked through the center during the great freeze of the previous week. Metal in Highfrost had become as brittle as dried pine needles. If he worked too fast, the friction would warm the iron only for the sudden shock of the room’s ambient cold to fracture it again.

"You’re dreaming again, boy," Garren Hale said, stepping out from the shadow of the coal bins. He dropped a heavy sack of anthracite onto the stone floor with a dull, dead thud. "A man who dreams in this weather freezes before he wakes up. Keep that file moving."

"The iron is too cold to take the teeth of the rasp, Uncle," Lukas said, not looking up. "If I force it, I’ll strip the tool. We don’t have the charcoal to temper another set of files this month."

Garren grunted, leaning his thick, scarred forearms against the top of the brick forge. His face was the color of old lard, lined with grease that had worked its way so deep into his pores it seemed a permanent part of his skin. "Then warm it. Use the slag-heap sweepings. We’re saving the high-grade coal for the spring melting—if the spring ever decides to show its face."

Lukas looked at the pile of grey, ash-heavy detritus in the corner. It was garbage, mostly slate and shale that would burn with a sputtering, yellow flame and produce more suffocating smoke than actual heat. But in the southern quarter, coal was currency, and his uncle hoarded every black pebble like a jeweler with diamonds.

"The Mercer girl was down by the well today," Lukas remarked, his voice deliberately flat, matching the rhythm of his rasp. He kept his eyes on the grey metal beneath his hands, watching the tiny silver curls of iron falling onto the dark wood of the bench.

Garren’s head snapped up, his small, dark eyes narrowing under bushy brows that were frosted grey at the tips. "And what was she doing there? Looking for a handout? Her father’s woodpiles must be rotting if they’re trying to burn that wet pine they cleared from the swamp-edge."

"She was carrying water," Lukas said. "Or trying to. The ice in her buckets was three inches thick before she even reached the square."

"Let them drink ice," Garren spat, walking over to the tool rack and selecting a heavy sledgehammer with a handle bound in greasy leather. "The Mercers have been skimming the best timber from the common land since my grandfather’s time. Now they’re finding out that you can’t eat sawdust when the blizzards set in. If Bran Mercer wants iron nails to keep his cabins from collapsing under the snow-load, he’ll have to bring us dry birch. Not that green scrub he’s been hauling."

Lukas didn't reply. He knew the argument by heart, just as he knew the counter-argument he would have heard had he been born on the northern side of the gorge. The Mercers claimed the Hales had diverted the mountain spring fifty years ago to power their stamping mills, drying out the lower timber pasture and causing the great rot that killed off the valley’s ancient oaks. The Hales claimed the Mercers had deliberately set fire to the southern timber buffer to starve the foundries of charcoal.

The truth was likely buried five feet deep under the ice, alongside the boundary markers and the bones of the sheep that used to graze the slopes. In this endless winter, history had ceased to be a series of events; it had become an inheritance of hatred, passed down like an old coat, worn until it was thin and stiff with grease but never discarded because there was nothing else to keep the cold out.

Across the Great Ravine, Eira Mercer was dealing with her own inheritance.

The northern woodstore was a drafty timber barn that smelled of damp bark, turpentine, and the cold, sweet scent of mountain air. It was a cleaner smell than the southern ridge’s sulfurous breath, but it was also emptier. It was the smell of a cupboard that had been scrubbed clean and left to dry in the wind.

She stood on a rickety three-legged stool, stacking split logs of green pine against the back wall. Her arms ached with a dull, deep throb that felt as though the cold had seeped into the marrow of her bones. The green wood was heavy, saturated with sap that had frozen into sticky, amber ice. It clung to her sheepskin mittens, leaving grey smudges on her woolen sleeves.

"Not like that," her father, Bran, shouted from the doorway. He walked in, his boots caked in yellow clay and packed snow. He carried a double-bitted ax over his shoulder, the steel head dull and pitted with rust. "You’re packing them too tight, girl. Without air-gaps, the damp will rot the center of the stack before the frost can dry the sap out. Leave a fist’s width between the tiers."

Eira climbed down from the stool, her knees cracking in the silence of the barn. "If I leave gaps, the wind will blow the drift right through the stacks. We’ll be burning ice-clogged wood by January."

"Then we’ll burn it," Bran barked, his eyes bloodshot and watery from the constant glare of the snow. He was a big man, but the last three years had shrunk him inside his clothes. His heavy sheepskin coat hung loose from his shoulders like a hide draped over a fence post. "But we won’t let the wood rot. Rot is a lazy man’s harvest. We’re Mercers, not those soot-stained rats across the ditch."

"The 'soot-stained rats' have dry coal, Father," Eira said quietly, brushing a stray pine needle from her cheek. "I saw Lukas Hale in the square. Their chimneys are still running black. They have enough heat to run the forge three days a week."

Bran’s face darkened, the color rising in his weathered cheeks like blood rising through bruised skin. "Lukas Hale is his uncle’s dog. He barks when Garren tells him to bark, and he licks the grease off the anvil when he’s done. If I catch you speaking to him by the well again, I’ll throw those water buckets into the gorge and you can drink from the drift like a dog."

"I was talking about the bridge," Eira said, her voice dropping into that steady, stubborn register that usually made her father turn away. "The southern support is slipping. The ice has got into the socket where the timber meets the stone. If we don’t bind it with iron bands before the next heavy snowfall, the whole span will drop into the creek."

"Let it drop," Bran sneered. "We don’t need their iron, and they don't need our timber. We have enough deadwood on our own slopes to keep our stoves warm for five winters if we hoard it right."

"And when the winter lasts six?" Eira asked.

The question hung in the cold, dead air of the woodstore, heavy and unanswerable. Bran looked at her, his mouth twitching slightly beneath his grey beard. For a second, she saw the fear in his eyes—the raw, naked terror of a man who had spent his whole life commanding the forest only to find himself trapped by a white wall that didn't care about his name or his axes. Then, the stubbornness returned, hard and flat as a slate tile.

"It won't last six," he said, turning back toward the door. "The old ones say the cycle always breaks after the third year. The sun will come back by May. It has to."

He stepped out into the grey light, leaving the door swinging on its leather hinges. Eira watched him go, his silhouette swallowed almost instantly by the thick, falling sleet. She did not share his faith in the old ones, nor in the month of May. The sky had been the color of an old kettle for thirty-six months. The mountains had forgotten the smell of grass, and the earth had grown hard as anvil-iron.

She walked to the small, square opening that served as a window in the timber wall. From here, she could see across the white void of the ravine. The Hale foundries were visible only as a cluster of darker shadows against the grey-white bulk of the southern ridge, their chimneys occasionally coughing up a pale, greasy puff of steam that was torn away by the north wind before it could rise twenty feet.

She wondered if Lukas was still standing by his forge, his fingers black with carbon and his face warm from the embers. There was a strange sort of comfort in knowing he was there, three hundred yards away through the white-out, fighting the same silent war against the ice. He was the only person in the village who didn't look at her with either pity or suspicion. To her father’s men, she was Bran’s daughter—a useful pair of hands but too quiet, too stubborn, too prone to looking at the southern ridge with eyes that weren't full of spit and vinegar. To the Hales, she was a Mercer—a thief of timber and a hoarder of green wood.

But to Lukas, she was just Eira. The girl who knew how to skate the black ice of the river before the drifts grew too high, the one who didn't flinch when the winter wind howled down the chimney like a dying wolf.

By mid-afternoon, the sleet had turned back into dry, granular snow that hissed as it hit the cold timber walls. Lukas Hale left the smithy with a bundle of iron nails and three sharpened wedge-pins tucked into his leather apron. He was supposed to be delivering them to the miller’s widow on the eastern edge of the village, but his feet took him toward the old sheep-track that wound down into the Great Ravine.

The path was narrow, cut into the limestone cliff and now filled with packed, slippery drift that had been beaten down by wild goats and the occasional desperate hunter. The wind here was different; it didn't blow in steady gusts but swirled and trapped itself in the narrow stone guts of the gorge, roaring like a furnace draft.

He reached the northern abutment of the old wooden bridge. It was a miserable structure, built eighty years ago during a brief period of peace when the two houses had agreed to share the cost of a cart-track. The main timbers were black with age and moisture, the grain swollen and split by decades of frost.

Lukas knelt at the edge of the abutment, brushing away a three-inch layer of dry snow with his gloved hand. He peered down into the crevice where the massive white-oak support beam rested in its limestone socket. Eira had been right. The freeze-thaw cycle of the early autumn had driven water deep into the stone joint, and now the ice had expanded, forcing the timber three inches out of its seat. The wood was splintering under the uneven pressure, long, pale yellow shards of oak sticking out like teeth from the dark trunk.

"It won't hold another freeze," a voice said from above him.

Lukas didn't start. He had heard the soft, crunching sound of boots on the drift thirty seconds ago. He stood up slowly, wiping his hands on his apron, and looked up the track.

Eira stood on the ledge ten feet above him. She had her hood pulled low, her face shadowed except for the tip of her nose, which was red from the wind, and her dark, sharp eyes. She carried a small bundle of dry birch twigs under one arm, probably gathered from the lower thickets where her father’s men didn't bother to look.

"The stone is splitting," Lukas said, pointing with the toe of his boot toward the crevice. "The lime they used to mortar the socket has turned to sand. If the wind shifts to the east tonight, the pressure will shear that oak clean off."

Eira scrambled down the short slope, her movements quick and sure-footed. She didn't offer him her hand, and he didn't reach for his iron. They stood three feet apart on the narrow wooden platform, the empty space of the ravine yawning just inches from their boots. Below them, through the gaps in the rotting planks, the river was a grey, motionless ribbon of ice, locked between walls of black stone.

"Can you fix it?" she asked, looking at the iron wedges in his apron.

"Not with these," Lukas said, drawing one of the iron pins out and showing it to her. It was six inches long, tapered to a sharp point, but the metal was dull and grey. "These are for soft-pine rafters. If I hammer one of these into that limestone, the head will fly off like a gravel-stone. I need tool-steel. Tempered. And I need a four-pound drill to make a guide-hole first."

"Your uncle has tool-steel," she said.

"My uncle has three bars of it left in the lock-box under his bed," Lukas replied with a dry, humorless laugh. "He counts them every night before he goes to sleep. He’d rather see this bridge in the bottom of the gorge than see a single inch of that steel used to keep a path open to your side."

Eira looked down at the splintered beam. She reached out with her foot and tapped the timber. A dull, hollow vibration ran through the structure, followed by a faint, wet cracking sound from deep within the stone socket.

"My father wants to cut the approach timbers on our side," she said quietly. "He says if the bridge goes, we won't have to worry about your people coming over to poach the north-slope birch."

"My uncle says the same about your people stealing the coal scrapings," Lukas said. He looked at her, his grey eyes steady beneath his dark hair. "They’re both fools."

"They're old," Eira corrected him, her voice softer now, lacking the defensive bite she used when her father was watching. "Old people have lived so long with their grudges they don't know how to stand up straight without them. My father’s father told him the Hales killed our well. He believes it like he believes the sun will come back."

"Did they?" Lukas asked. "Kill the well, I mean?"

Eira looked at him, her dark eyes reflecting the dull grey light of the sky. "It doesn't matter if they did. The well has been ice for two years. Even if the spring ran sweet tomorrow, we couldn't drink it because the ground is frozen six feet deep. We’re fighting over a graveyard, Lukas."

It was the first time she had used his name without its family prefix. It sounded strange in the cold air, softer than the wind, more natural than the creak of the rotting oak beneath them. Lukas felt a small, unfamiliar warmth stir in his chest—a sensation that had nothing to do with the forge fires or the heavy wool of his coat.

"I have some scrap steel," he said after a moment, his voice dropping to a whisper. "Not tool-steel, but old file-ends. If I weld them together and draw them out under the hammer, I might be able to make three bands. Wide ones. We could wrap them around the timber and bolt them into the face of the cliff."

Eira looked up, her eyes wide. "That would take three days of work. And you’d have to use the forge when your uncle isn't there."

"He goes down to the lower village on Thursdays to haggle with the salt-merchants," Lukas said. "He’s usually gone from noon until the night-bell. If I work fast, I can have the bands ready by dusk."

"And the bolts?" Eira asked. "You’ll need expansion bolts to hold the iron in the stone."

"I have some old mine-bolts," he said. "They’re rusty, but the threads are deep enough. I’ll bring them down."

"I’ll help you," she said.

Lukas stared at her. "You? If your father sees you on this side of the gorge with a Mercer ax, he’ll have you locked in the grain-loft."

"My father doesn't look down," Eira said, her chin rising in that stubborn way he had come to recognize. "He only looks north, toward the timber stands, or up at the sky to see if the snow is clearing. He hasn't been down to this bridge since the first year of the frost. He thinks it’s already dead."

She stepped closer, her hand reaching out from her cloak. For a second, he thought she was going to touch his arm, but she stopped, her gloved fingers hovering over the bundle of birch twigs she held. "If we don't save this bridge, Lukas, we’re locked in. Both of us. Our houses will freeze from the outside in, and we won't even be able to hear each other scream when the roof-beams give way."

Lukas looked at her hand, then at her face. The sleet was beginning to settle on her eyelashes, turning into tiny, brilliant beads of ice that caught the grey light like diamonds. She was right. The village was dying, not with a roar, but with a slow, silent stiffening of its joints. If they let the bridge go, they were consenting to the isolation their fathers had spent forty years building. They were choosing the ice.

"Thursday," Lukas said. "When the noon bell rings at the chapel, I’ll be here with the drill and the first band. You bring the grease-pot. We’ll need to grease the bolts if we want them to bite into the cold stone."

Eira nodded once, a sharp, decisive movement. "Thursday."

She turned and began the climb back up the northern path, her dark cloak fluttering behind her like the wings of a jackdaw against the white hillside. Lukas watched her until she reached the top of the ridge and disappeared into the grey mist of the timber stand.

He looked down at the iron pins in his hand, then tossed them into the snow. They were useless anyway. The cold had already won the first round; the metal was dead. But as he turned back toward the southern ridge, his boots felt lighter on the frozen path. The sulfurous smoke of the foundries didn't seem quite as thick, and the wind, though still bitter, carried the faint, green scent of pine from the far side of the snow.