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Hallelujah, Abraham says Looks like we found ourselves a place to not freeze to death

Inside, the cabin looks like it was abandoned h, but nothing is out of place It isn’t until an hour later, after they have hauled their things up fro the bricks out of the collapsed chi the porch, that the Vestal Amata finds the dead man

There’s a pond behind the cabin, its surface frozen over Under the fallen snow, it’s hard to tell how large the pond is, but the trees around it are cleared to the size of a baseball diamond

I didn’t even knoas there until I slipped on it, the Vestal says

They can see the place where the Vestal slipped, the snow has been dusted away fro a clear patch

Look, she says and points Slug under glass

They gather around the cleared patch and look down The ice is clear, and caught under it, like some kind of horrible fish in an aquariuone soft and bloated froone pale, nibbled at by fishes, his skin peeled off and floating around hiht hiht dead if it weren’t for the fact that his eyes are blinking up at theishly As they watch, the dead hostly by the freezing water in which he is entoainst the undersurface of the ice

Moses knows it to be a grasp of hunger, but because the dead ers, the outspread pal or welcome The eyes continue to blink, slowly

It is pathetic and awful, the slug trapped underwater and undrownable – like ahis goodbyes as he descends, floating down peaceful into the great black

There is a darkness to nature – the unhurried ways of birth and death

Jesus, Abraha that for weeks now every time I close my eyes

It’s sad, says the Vestal Amata He’s trapped

I wish I hadn’t of seen it at all, Abraham says I don’t need my brain haunted like that

What do we do? asks the Vestal

Nothing to do, Abrahaht thaw out co dead by then Coet back

Abraham turns and head back to the cabin

Mose? asks A at the man beneath the ice He wonders how much the dead man can see – hoell those eyes still work What , fish nibbling at your skin, your eardrums rotted to blissed silence

It’s like Abraha to do

He rises and walks back to the cabin, and the Vestal follows soon after

Except athered dry wood and started a fire in the fireplace, after they have settled on accommodations – Moses and his brother on the double bed, the Vestal on the couch – after Abraha of the e and hissing, the firelight casting dra has settled to haunted inaction, then Moses finds he cannot sleep

He rises in the dark, puts on his boots and overcoat and steals out quietly into the night

Twentyprayer-like over the ice, when the Vestal Amata finds him

Don’t be startled, she says and comes up from behind him It’s just me

I know, he says

Well, I didn’t want you shootin

He does not respond, and she stands over hihter around her

It’s too cold for you out here, he says Get on back inside

I been colder, she says

When? he asks

What?

When’ve you been colder? Tell e in his voice, because she doesn’t respond Instead, she kneels down in the snow beside hiht, staring up at the There are hoot owls in the trees, and they make a lonely sound

Finally, Moses speaks, but he does not look at her – nor does she look at hiaze down at the bloated, cloudy face beneath the water, as though a dead man were the only kind of true hearer of tales

You ain’t holy, he says

No, she replies quiet I ain’t

Are you a whore?

I’ve been a whore, she says without flinching I’ve been lots of things For a while I just wandered When you ain’t got a destination, you find yourself going down all kinds of different roads

How cos