Snow Child had never actually seen snow.
Or if she had it was when she’d been too young to remember it now. She had seen it in picture books and in a movie at the cinema once, but never the real thing. Snow was brilliant white, but when she’d watched that movie it had looked grey on the screen. Everything looked grey in that movie, in one shade or another. The snow then had looked like the ashes at the edge of the fire she now poked at with a twig. The ashes and cinders fascinated her, the way they looked almost solid to the touch, but actually crumbled to powder as fine as talcum when she probed them with her stick. She wondered if snow disappeared when touched. Maybe that was why she was called Snow Child. She prided herself on her ability to disappear so she could not be touched. She was better at hiding than Rose or any of the other girls, and that was the only thing that kept her safe from the guard with the bayonet. Usually.
This time she was so focused on the ashes in the fire pit that she was unaware of his scrutiny. Or the way the cold winter sun glinted on the lenses of his spectacles as he studied her from the corner of one of the dormitory sheds. There was always noise here in the Rohwer camp, always the sound of the tread of marching feet, so his were lost among the others as the guard approached her from behind. The first she knew of his presence was when the cold gleam of his bayonet flicked the twig from her hand and it dropped among the cold cinders.
Yukiko was terrified of the blade.
She let out a wordless cry, even as she twisted around to stare up at the giant towering over her. She fell on her back, the ashes puffing round her: snow falling up towards the sky.
He was in silhouette over her, but the lenses of his spectacles flared with an errant beam of light, giving him the look of a tengu — a mountain demon — as he bent to inspect her.
She thought that he must know.
Had he been aware that she had hidden under the piles of laundry in the wash-house? Had he known that she’d witnessed his attack on Rose, and had he taken secret pleasure in the knowledge? Had he come now to make sure that she never told another soul about what he’d done?
He placed the tip of his bayonet against her cheek.
‘What are you doing?’ he growled.
‘I’m… playing…’
‘In the dirt, just like a little yellow rat?’
‘It’s not dirt it’s —’ she was about to say snow — ‘ash.’
‘It’s filth.’ He stared down at her. ‘You’re filthy. Look at your clothing, your face. You have dirt all over you. Get up.’
She couldn’t rise for the steel glinting in her vision.
He leaned down and grabbed the front of her jacket.
‘Up I said. Now get over there. To the washroom and get yourself cleaned up.’
He did not release her. He held on to the front of her coat. Staring at her from behind the colourless lenses. He cocked his head left to right. She felt filthy, not due to the ash, but to the salacious way in which his lips puckered.
‘You’re a small one, ain’t you. How old are you?’
Yukiko couldn’t find the words. Her throat was pinching shut.
‘It doesn’t matter.’ He propelled her towards the wash-house, her feet barely touching ground as he half carried her there. Yukiko desperately tried to scream. If she screamed someone would come and stop the monster. If she screamed loud enough her dad would hear all the way from Tule Lake and he would come back to save her. But panic had struck her dumb. The big man pushed her inside the washroom, pausing only to check over his shoulder, ensuring that no one had seen him carrying her there. Then he followed her in.
Yukiko could feel fat tears streaming down her cheeks. They dripped from her elfin chin, pattering on the collar of her rough cotton jacket as she shivered uncontrollably. They did not move the guard to pity, if anything they excited him all the more.
‘Get them off. Those filthy clothes. Off. Now.’
He prodded her with the tip of his bayonet, hooking it under the centre button of the three on her coat.
‘Take it off, or I’ll cut it off. I might not be too careful and might also cut off your hide.’ He prodded again with the bayonet.
Her fingers trembling, Yukiko plucked open the buttons and shrugged out of the coat. It fell in a heap behind her. All she wore beneath was a shapeless off-white shift that covered her to the knees. Her legs had the benefit of knee-length socks and sturdy black clogs, but her bare arms were like twiglets protruding from the cuffs of her shift. The tip of the guard’s tongue flicked over his dry lips. He made a noise as if he was clearing a bug from his throat.
‘Take all of it off.’
‘P… Please…’
‘Off.’ His voice had dropped an octave. She would never know if the hoarseness was through anger or longing.
The door creaked open and a lady stepped inside the wash-house.
Yukiko did not know the lady’s name. She only knew her as the older sister of her friend, Harumi.
The guard spun, immediately lifting his gun and aiming the fixed bayonet at the lady.
‘Get out,’ he snapped.
The lady feigned misunderstanding. She bowed, bowed, bowed, entering the room, talking gently in Japanese. She went past both Yukiko and the guard, heading for the shower cubicles. She gave the guard a shy tilt of her head as she went by, bowed her lips in a smile. Harumi was twelve years old, while her sister was that much older at fifteen. To a child as young as Yukiko, a fifteen year old was a grown woman, a lady, in comparison. But to the monster she would still be a child.
The guard lowered his rifle, and he turned to look down at Yukiko.
‘Filthy yellow rat,’ he said to her. ‘Get outta here… and keep out of that damn fire pit in future. Next time I’ll make you scrub yourself raw.’
Yukiko grabbed for her coat and darted for the door.
She hauled it open, her only wish to be as far away as possible.
Yet she stopped and sought the eyes of the lady.
‘Domo arigato,’ Yukiko whispered. Thank you very much.
The lady looked back at her, her features a well of desperation now. Yet she straightened herself as the guard approached her, shoving her further inside the cubicle. There was no door. The guard turned around, pulling off his spectacles and shoving them into his jerkin pocket. He caught Yukiko watching.
‘Out,’ he mouthed silently.
Then he smiled at her, a silent promise that one day he would have his time with her.
Yukiko fled.
She did not see the lady again. Not alive, any way. Two days later the lady was found hanging in a closet, shamed into taking her own life after what she had tolerated on Yukiko’s behalf. She should not have been shamed: her actions had saved the little girl.
Years later, Harumi would marry Bruce Tennant. In the decades since, Yukiko had forgotten much about Harumi, but never had she forgotten her sister, the lady who gave her own innocence to the beast in order that the Snow Child remain chaste.
She also remembered the look that Charles Peterson had cast after her as she’d fled the wash-house.
It was the same one his bastard son wore now.
He also promised that he’d have his time with her, after he’d checked out the shouting and gunfire above.