Free After the Snow by S. D. Crockett

Willo.”
    “Willo,” she repeat it soft. “My name is Mary.”
    “I know that,” I say. “You got to keep talking, Mary, cos it’s good, and then I’m gonna make you a brew and it gonna get right inside you and melt the ice in your stomach.”
    “I’ve got ice in me stomach?”
    “No it aint real ice just cold that feel like ice but the brew gonna make you good again and after that you gonna sleep warm and safe.”
    “What about me da? Our kid Tommy?”
    “We’re gonna talk about them tomorrow,” I say. “You just look at the fire and talk to me, and maybe I’m gonna tell you the story about the silver trout again.”
    Well, I aint gonna bore you with all the stupid kid stuff she talk about. I near fall asleep with it cos I been tired and done in after that kind of day. It been hard to think only a few days ago I been at home with Dad and Magda and the others and now they
all gone. Just gone—and I aint got no clue where they are, and they aint got no clue about me either.
    Except now I got the girl Mary. Even though she’s just a pesky starving girl who gonna eat my food and get heavy on my back, she still gonna know where I am and what I been so I aint quite alone. That’s it—I aint alone now I got the girl here and it feel better than before even though I don’t know her or nothing.
    I close my eyes easier thinking that.
     
     
    When I wake at dawn, she’s still asleep. But alive. Curled up tight. I’m gonna make up some warm clothes for her out of an old coat. She’s gonna freeze otherwise.
    But I aint gonna stick my nose in and ask a thousand questions. She’s gonna see that. She’s gonna be fine with me. Magda gonna be proper pleased with me if she see how good and kind I been with this kid.
    Tomorrow we’re gonna have a good walk to my place on the Farngod, and then I got to take her down to the road under the power lines. Power lines run from Wylfa all the way into the city. Trucks always coming by. I reckon Mary can get a ride back that way.
    After working on her clothes a bit I go outside on the ridge. The sun shine out. My eyes blink it shine so bright out here. I can see the whole of the Rhinogs behind me and the craggy white mass of the Farngod up in front. Can’t believe there been such a snow in the night.
    “Are you there?” come the girl’s voice from inside. “Where are you, Willo?”
    “I been outside on the ridge.”
    “Are there any dogs out there?” she ask.
    “No, there aint no dogs. Just you and me.”
    “No dogs?”
    “No, you been safe here from dogs I reckon. But I’m gonna come in—I make you some gloves and things. You want to see?”
    “Yes.”
    I crawl back inside and she’s sitting up, eating from my pan of yewd.
    “I make you a warm pair of gloves and fix up Magda’s coat so you aint gonna be cold again. Look. I done it all myself while you been asleep.”
    She reach out and I show her the gloves. They aint no work of art and only an old cut-up rabbit, I know, but they’re warm gloves all the same.
    “They’re magic,” the girl say. She just stroking those shoddy old rabbit-skin gloves.
    “And I fix up the coat, see. All the same, nice and warm. Do you like it?”
    She put the coat on, her cheeks a bit rosy now. It been a pretty good thing to see after her being so waxy white and near dead yesterday. I pull the coat over her head and she got to put her skinny arms up in the air and she laugh quite a bit and so do I. She’s all swamped in it and she look like a big rabbit. It really got a laugh up inside me good and proper. It been the first fun I had in a fair while really.
    “Thanks,” she say, and it make me feel clever and useful even though she only been a stick-thin girl.
    “I can make them much better—if I got more time,” I tell her.
    “Well, I think they’re magic. I’ve never had fur gloves before, never had nothing made wi’ fur.” She look at me all sad. “Is me da coming back?”
    It’s all she been thinking on I