Asya pulled on her coat and boots, closed the pantry door and slipped away before anyone saw her disappear. Her breath streamed through her muffler and rose up into the birch branches above her head. The icicles on the eaves shed a steady stream of drops into the piled snow banks on either side of the banks: clumps of snow slid off the branches of the firs and subsided to the ground with a hiss; the upper most branches of the birches sighed and cracked in the wind. She skipped down the hundred and twenty six wooden steps to the boat house singing to
