The Snow Child

The following morning, Jack, still half asleep, looks through the frosted windows and sees a small mysterious figure run into the woods. When he goes out to fetch firewood, he notices the snow child is now little more than a mound of snow and that the mittens and scarf are gone. He sees a bloody hare left on their doorstep. Small boot prints run across the yard and into the trees, but none come into the yard. Jack fears a fox, a threat to their chickens, and takes a shotgun into the woods. He finds only boot prints and animal tracks.

Mabel sees the boot prints, and Jack tells her what he thinks he saw. Days later, while feeding the chickens behind the barn, Mabel sees the child, a girl with striking blond hair dressed in a threadbare blue coat and accompanied by a red fox. Mabel follows her into the woods, but the girl disappears. Mabel frets the child must be lost and needs their help. The Bensons are coming for dinner, and Mabel is certain that Esther would certainly know about a missing child.

As Mabel obsesses over the child, Jack worries about the farm and fears he will end up in the mines. Working an apple farm in Pennsylvania had not prepared him for Alaska, wilderness “older, fiercer, stronger than any man could ever hope to be” (61). George advises him to hunt a moose; the meat from such an animal would ensure Jack and Mabel’s survival until spring. But Jack knows he has waited too long, and as he hunts the woods, he grows despondent. Suddenly he sees the girl. She runs from him, and he follows. He loses sight of her in the snow. When he turns, however, he sees a massive bull moose. He kills it with one shot. Jack realizes that the girl led him to the moose. Garrett Benson happens by and helps Jack dress the massive creature. Together they get the carcass back to Jack’s cabin.

The Bensons come to dinner the next evening, and the two families celebrate the moose (they roast the heart, the most succulent part). Esther and Mabel warm up to each other. Hesitatingly, Mabel mentions the child. Esther suggests that, given the harsh environment, a child surviving on her own is unlikely and that perhaps the child was a bit of “cabin fever” (77) on Mabel’s part. Mabel assures Esther that Jack saw the girl too. But when asked, Jack demurs. Amid all the conviviality, Mabel feels once again apart.

Despite his misgivings, Jack begins to put out food along the edge of the woods for the child. Nothing works. When he buys a small doll in town and puts that out, the next morning the doll is gone and a small basket of wild blueberries is left. Mabel is beside herself—for her this indicates the child needs their help—but Jack says the berries only confirm that the girl knows how to survive.

Mabel believes that she and Jack magically conjured the child the night of the first snow: she views the child as nothing less than a “miracle” (87). She remembers a story her father read to her as a child, a Russian fairy tale called Snegurochka (The Snow Maiden) that told a strikingly similar tale of an old childless couple visited by a magical snow maiden. Mabel writes to her sister in Philadelphia to send her the book. Through the window, she sees the girl watching Jack split firewood. When Jack moves toward her, the girl runs. Jack runs after her. It is hours before Jack returns, but he says only that he had lost her.