The Snow That Fell Up

"It's going the wrong way," says Mira, with her mitten flat against the window.

Her breath fogs the glass and she wipes it. Outside, the snow is going up, past the porch light, past the bare maple, past the steeple on Fourth Street, and it does not stop when it gets there.

"Snow doesn't do that," her mother says, and keeps stirring.

"Come and look."

Her mother comes and stands with the spoon in her hand while the porridge catches behind her.

"Is it going to stop?"

"Not while it's got nothing."

"My mother had a saying for this," she says at last. "Snow that goes up is out looking for something to carry, and it doesn't go back down until it has it. Don't hand it anything you want returned."

"Did she ever see it happen?"

"Once, when she was younger than you." Her mother sets the spoon down. "Boots. And the good coat, not the thin one."

"You're not coming?"

"It didn't come for me."

"What do I take?"

"Nothing you'd miss." Her mother stops. "No. Take what you'd miss."

Out in the yard the flakes come up past Mira's cheeks instead of down, and they are cold on the underside, which is the wrong side of a snowflake to be cold on. She lets a palmful of loose snow go, and it does not fall. It leaves her skin like a moth. She has lived seven winters on this street and every one taught her the same thing: rain comes down, the ball comes off the roof, the kite went into the river the summer the string broke, and down is what the world does.

She follows it past the fence, past Mr. Alvarez's mailbox shaped like a barn, past the creek where the water has never gone anywhere except down, and up the hill behind the school, and there, with no ladder and no rope, her boots come off the ground. Nothing about it is like flying: something has her by the collar. Mira grabs the crooked pine as she lifts past it and gets both arms around it, because down is what she trusts and the branch is the last of it.

"Mira!"

Her mother is on the porch, a long way under her, both hands on the rail.

"I've got the tree!"

"Have you got it good?"

"Yes!"

"Then hold it," her mother calls. "And if you can't hold it any more, don't you let go for nothing. You hear me? Not for nothing."

"I hear you."

The branch scrapes and her arms begin to ache while the snow goes up around her without her, patient, in no hurry, and she hangs there a long time deciding, and then opens her fingers one at a time and lets it take her.

She rises past the water tower with the paint coming off it, and the town gets small underneath her, and smoke stands up out of every chimney in silver columns, and steam comes off the creek, and her own breath unwinds like a thread off a spool and climbs after it. Everything down there is going up too.

Then the snow around her slows and stops and hangs, and turns over, and starts back down toward the ground, taking her with it, and taking nothing else. That is the part Mira cannot let stand, because her mittens are the brown ones her grandfather knitted, the winter before his hands went bad, and there will not be another pair out of him.

"Not for nothing," she says.

She works the left one off with her teeth and holds her bare hand open.

"Here. This one's yours, and I'm not asking for it back."

The mitten lifts off her palm, turns once, and goes up past her face toward the gray, getting smaller and then smaller than that, until there is only cloud where it was, and her bare hand burns, and on the other is a brown mitten that has stopped being one of a pair. The snow takes it, and lowers her, past the water tower, past the crooked pine, and sets her down in the yard, and begins, all around her, to fall.

Her mother opens the door with the burnt pot in her hand.

"Well?"

Mira holds up the bare hand, pink to the wrist.

"It was out looking for something to carry," she says. "So I let it have one of the brown ones."

"Your grandfather's brown ones."

"The left one. It wasn't for nothing."