Read Chapter 10: First Snowshoe Lesson

The snowshoes waited by the door like an accusation.

Camille had been avoiding them since the broken strap incident, avoiding the shed where the repaired pair now hung, avoiding the memory of her ungainly flail through the drifts. She'd told herself it was the sabotage that kept her indoors, not embarrassment.

Antoine didn't buy it.

"You walk in them like a heron with a head wound," he said, holding the snowshoes out to her. The morning light through the kitchen window caught the frost on his beard. "Proper technique, you stop fighting the snow. You float."

"I don't fight anything." She took the snowshoes from him, and their fingers brushed. His were warm despite the cold. "I was doing perfectly well until someone—"

"Until someone cut your strap, yes. I know. But you also fell three times before that."

Camille opened her mouth to argue, found the argument hollow, and closed it. He wasn't wrong. The snowshoeing had been less than graceful.

"Marcel says there's a packed trail behind the chalet," Antoine continued, already shrugging into his coat. "Good for learning. No deep powder. You won't sink past your knees if you make a mistake."

"If I make a mistake."

"When." He didn't smile, but something moved at the corner of his mouth. "Mistakes are how we learn. Or so I'm told. I don't make them myself."

Camille snorted despite herself and began lacing the snowshoes onto her boots. The new strap was thick leather, freshly cut from a piece Antoine had produced from his workshop. He'd worked on it in silence the night before, his hands precise, while she'd pretended to read a book she couldn't see properly without her glasses.

"It's a figure eight," Antoine called from the doorway, his voice muffled by the scarf he was wrapping around his neck. "Like for skis. You lace through the eyelets, not over them."

"I know how to tie a—"

"Your third fall was because you tied it over. The strap slipped. I watched."

Camille gritted her teeth and re-laced. The cold air bit at her cheeks as she stepped outside, and the crunch of packed snow beneath her feet felt steadier than before. Antoine was already waiting on the trail, his own snowshoes strapped on with practiced ease, his silhouette dark against the white expanse of the treed slope behind the chalet.

"Okay," he said. "Show me your stance."

Camille planted her feet wide, knees locked, arms out."That's the posture of a man about to get hit by a bus," Antoine said. "Relax. Bend your knees. Let your weight drop into your hips."

"I'm perfectly relaxed."

"You look like a coat rack."

She forced her knees to bend, hating the surrender of it. The snowshoes shifted beneath her, and she wobbled.

"You're fighting the ground. Stop. The snow is your friend." Antoine circled around to her front, his boots crunching softly. "When you lift your foot, you have to lift it like you're clearing a step, not like you're walking. The tail of the snowshoe drags naturally. If you try to clear it with every step, you'll exhaust yourself in ten minutes."

Camille tried it, lifting her right foot high with an exaggerated motion. The snowshoe swung forward and slapped down on the packed trail. She overcorrected and staggered left.

Antoine was there, his hand at her elbow, steadying her. His grip was sure but not firm. "Good. That was better."

"It felt ridiculous."

"Ridiculous but functional. That's the secret to most things in winter." He stepped back, giving her room. "Now try the whole length of the trail. Slow. Don't think about the technique. Think about the rhythm."

Camille took a breath and stepped forward. Lift, swing, plant. Lift, swing, plant. The snowshoes tracked behind her, leaving clean tails in the packed snow. The motion settled into something almost natural within a few strides, and she felt the muscles in her back begin to relax.

"Better," Antoine said behind her. "You're still tensing your shoulders."

"My shoulders are not—"

"Like you're clenching your ears together."

Camille laughed, and the sound surprised her. It had been days since she'd laughed at anything that wasn't ironic. "Says the man who hunts his own food and reads the sky like a newspaper."

"Newspapers lie. The sky doesn't."

She turned her head to glance at him. "That's surprisingly poetic for a man who communicates almost entirely in grunts."

"I grunt with poetry."

The trail curved through a copse of frozen birch trees, their white bark luminous against the grey sky. Camille's breath puffed in front of her face, and the cold felt less hostile than it had in days. The rhythm of the snowshoes, the soft crunch of packed snow, the silence of the forest around them—it was almost meditative.

"You're doing it," Antoine said from behind, and there was something approaching approval in his voice. "You're not fighting anymore."

"Is that a compliment?"

"Don't get used to it."

They reached the end of the packed trail where it opened onto a small clearing, ringed by spruce trees heavy with snow. Camille stopped, leaning on her knees to catch her breath. The exertion felt good. The cold air in her lungs was sharp but clean.

"We can rest here," Antoine said. He unslung his pack and pulled out two thermoses. He handed her one. "Maple tea."

"Maple tea?"

"You're in Quebec. The trees give us everything."

Camille unscrewed the cap and inhaled the steam. The scent was sweet and woody, comforting in a way she hadn't expected. She sipped, and the warmth spread through her chest like a small fire.

"This is good," she admitted.

"Of course it's good. It's maple."

She laughed again, and this time it was easier. The phrase came back to her, something Marcel had said in rapid Quebecois French that she'd only half understood. "I'm starting to understand the local vocabulary. 'Depanneur' is not 'depanneur.' 'Char' is not 'char.' But 'c'est correct' seems to mean everything."

Antoine's eyebrows rose. "You've been paying attention."

"I'm a translator. That's what we do. We pay attention to words." She paused. "Even when we don't know what they mean yet."

He was quiet for a moment, watching the treeline. A chickadee landed on a nearby branch, scolding them briefly before flitting away.

"There's one you should know," he said. " 'T'es ben mieux qui le grand nord.' "

Camille tilted her head, parsing it. " 'You are better than the far north'?"

Antoine laughed, and it was a real laugh, low and warm. "Close. It means 'you're better off where you are than where you're not.' Used when someone's complaining about a difficulty that's smaller than the alternative."

"Like a broken snowshoe versus being stranded in a blizzard."

"Or a broken pair of glasses versus no glasses at all."

Camille's hand moved toward her face, remembering the snapped frames. The magnifying glass Antoine had improvised sat on her desk in the chalet, still awkward, still humbling.

"I hate depending on other people," she said quietly.

"I know." Antoine's voice was gentler than she'd ever heard it. "I've been alone longer than you've been helpless. Both are stupid ways to live. But they're easier."

"That's the first time you've made—" She searched for the word. "—an empathic statement without a grunt attached."

He shrugged and looked away, his cheeks reddening from more than the cold. "I told you. I grunt with poetry."

Camille laughed so hard she nearly lost her footing on the snowshoes. Antoine reached for her arm, steadying her, and when she looked up at him—his beard rimmed with frost, his eyes crinkling with mirth, the tension between them dissolved like breath on a cold window—it was the first time she saw him not as her reluctant host, not as the stranger who'd invaded her solitude with his brooding silences and abrupt kindnesses, but as something else entirely.

A man who laughed. A man who had lost his father and his mother and still had room for a maple tea thermos and a phrase meant to ease someone else's winter.

The sky had shifted while they stood there. The grey had darkened to bruise-purple along the eastern horizon. Antoine noticed it the same moment she did, and the smile faded from his eyes.

"We have to head back," he said. "The storm is coming sooner than I thought. Tomorrow—" He hesitated. "The logging roads will have to wait."

The plan unsettled. The promise of answers pushed further away. Camille nodded, and they turned back toward the chalet, their snowshoes falling into a synchronized rhythm that hadn't existed an hour ago.

When they reached the door, Antoine paused with his hand on the latch. "I give you the wrong word I was taught," he said, his back to her. "When someone makes you angry or makes you soft, you say 'tu me fais brailler.' It means 'you make me cry.' In Quebec, we use it lightly. To mean you're getting under my skin."

Camille found herself smiling as the door opened and warmth rushed out to meet them. "Then I'm glad I learned one Quebecois phrase today: tu me fais brailler, Antoine."

He glanced back at her, and in the warm light of the chalet kitchen, she saw his brief, fleeting smile before he disappeared inside, the way a fish flickers beneath the ice. Out on the porch, Camille paused before she followed him.

A sound. A soft snowmobile engine's hum in the distance, moving away from the chalet, toward the abandoned logging roads they were supposed to reach at dawn.

It was still there when she stepped inside.