From within a voluminous hood there came a muffled, brittle laugh; then the hood was pushed back to reveal the thin, pretty features of Sura, wife of Borst. "It's hardly that, Erwal." Sura had dragged her own slop pail across the drifts; now she dumped her waste alongside Erwal's. As she worked Sura's shapeless fur blanket fell open and Erwal made out a bundle suspended over her thin chest, a sling of skin from which protruded tiny hands, a small, bare leg. Erwal frowned; the baby's exposed flesh seemed blue-tinged.

Once Sura had finished Erwal held her head close to the girl's. "How are you, Sura? How are your family?"

"Borst is ill." Sura smiled, her eyes oddly bright. "His lungs will not clear; he has been barely able to stand." Absently she patted the bundle against her chest.

"Sura, will you let me visit your teepee? At home there is only myself and Damen..."

"Thanks, my friend, but I'm sure I can manage." Again that bright look entered the girl's pale eyes and she brushed a wisp of hair back from a high forehead. "The child is a burden, but she's such a comfort."

"I'm sure she is," Erwal said evenly. The pain of her own lost child -- stillborn soon after Teal's first mysterious voyage away from the village -- was too long ago to mean anything now, and the dismal fact that she and Damen had proven unable to bear another child had come to seem trivial compared to the huge, greater tragedy sweeping down over their little community.

"How is the baby? Will you allow me?..." Erwal opened Sura's blanket just a few inches, tenting the flaps so that the snow was kept from the child, and ran her fingers over the hot bundle. Sura looked on, a vacant smile hovering about her mouth. The child's breathing was rapid, ragged; the tiny hands were as if carved from ice. "Sura, you must take the child indoors. Keep her covered. I am afraid her limbs are frozen--"

"She needs air," Sura said, her voice high. "It's so musty in the teepee."

Erwal stared into Sura's eyes. Her skin was smooth but her eyes were ringed with dark shadows. Sura was little more than a child herself. "Sura," Erwal said urgently, "you aren't thinking clearly. The child is too cold."

The shallow smile evaporated. Sura brushed Erwal's hands away resentfully, and began to paw at the baby. "She'll be all right." She cupped one tiny hand in her own and began to rub vigorously.

"Sura, take care, I beg you."

"She just needs to get warm--"

There was a soft crackle, as if a thin crust of ice had broken.

It was a sound that Erwal knew she would remember to her dying day.