HOW LIKE A WINTER

By Otter (otter@fadedpress.com)

The chapel in Bixton was small and cold, nothing but whitewashed wood and neat little rows of neat little pews. Book hesitated in the doorway and watched his breath as it drifted toward the rafters, and then he walked with slow, soft, measured steps toward the front of the church, and the big wooden cross on the wall.

Mal was standing at one of the windows, wearing nothing heavier than his duster, as if unwilling to admit that such a thing as the weather could influence any of his choices. He was looking outside, over the little churchyard, but he couldn't have been seeing much through the mist that his breath was casting over the glass. Book lowered himself gingerly into the second pew, folded his hands together and closed his eyes. He could still see the cross, like it was burned onto the back of his eyelids.

He said a short prayer, silently though his lips were moving, and then he eased himself to his feet again, wincing at the stiffness in his cold knees. He joined Mal at the window, swiping a hand across the glass to clear away the fog that shrouded his view.

Outside, the pallbearers were letting the ropes slip through their hands, slow inch by slow inch, gently lowering the rough wooden coffin into the ground. Jayne's head was lowered, his eyes fixed on the dark of the grave. The snow clung to his hair and the rough, dark wool of his coat, and it drifted down into the pit, too, as if the world were intent on burying the body so the mourners could go home and grieve. Jayne's sisters all stood together at his back, huddling like livestock against the cold weather. Their mother stood alone, and she hadn't moved through the entire service, so Book wasn't sure whether he'd imagined her shudder when Jayne and the other men picked up the shovels and started pitching rich black soil back into the hole in her life where her son used to be.

Mal turned away, leaned against the wall and let his head fall back. He looked thin and worn through, as if it wa