She wore pure white: a white pleated dress so long it touched the floor, and a white wool sweater knit as fine as a spider web. The clothes were impractical for life in the cove — sure to get dirty, hard to clean — and the bottom hem of the dress was already soggy from traipsing through snow outdoors. Steck must have worn this outfit when she went on her own Visit… as if she were pretending to be Mistress Snow Herself, come to bring cold serenity to the world.

The girl still held the mug of tea in her hands. She lifted it and sipped, her eyes on Zephram. With anyone else, the gesture might have been coy or seductively blatant — when I was female, I used that move myself — but Zephram assured me Steck was simply using it as a "thank you": wordlessly showing she was grateful for his efforts. He took this as a cue to leave and gave her a good-bye nod; but she held up her hand and motioned him back to his chair.

Zephram sat — the wary way you sit on the edge of your seat when you don't know what's happening and some part of your mind wants the option of retreat. Steck walked back to her bed and knelt beside it, giving Zephram a twinge of sexual panic… or perhaps hope. But she was only crouching down to pull out something stored under the bed: a violin case.

(When Zephram said that, it jolted me. Yes, Steck had played violin in the marsh; I'd thought, however, that the Neut had taken up music during Its time down south. If Steck had already been a violinist twenty years ago in Tober Cove…)

Zephram watched as Steck carefully took out the instrument and tuned it — not sounding the notes with the bow or even pizzicato plucks, but with delicate rubs of her finger that barely set the strings vibrating. The sound would never carry outside the house, which was obviously the girl's intention; Zephram didn't know if Mistress Snow's Silence applied to violins as well as voices, but Steck clearly didn't want to be heard rippling the quiet.

When she was happy with the tuning, Steck came back, pulled the rocking chair close to my father — close enough that their knees touched — then she settled down to play. She didn't tuck the instrument under her chin; instead, she held it like a guitar, resting it on the gentle roundness of her stomach. Steck let her eyes lock with Zephram's for a moment… then she bent her head and softly stroked the strings.

The tune was "Lonely Hung the Clouds," a song I knew well myself. Wherever I played, you could count on the song being requested at least once a night… partly because the melody was dreamy and beautiful, partly because the sentiment struck a responsive chord in many listeners. The first half of each verse describes how the singer has "lived with empty hands" and held "many a conversation with cold bare walls"; the rest of each verse is a surprised and grateful confession that everything has changed — presumably because she has found someone to love, although that's never said explicitly.

Lonely hung the clouds

But now the light has come.

Cappie sometimes sang the piece to me when she was a man… not that she was ever directly lonesome, but in her male years she brooded about the future possibility. I could imagine Zephram listening to the same tune in the stillness of Steck's cabin: each note brushed out of the strings so softly it barely had the strength to cross the small gap between Steck's body and his. Notes whispered in the still and magic dark. The entire world shrank to a man and woman, their knees touching in the firelight.

I didn't need to hear any more of the story; I could guess how the rest unfolded. Nothing would happen that night — Steck was too pregnant, and Zephram too burdened by the memory of Anne to abandon himself immediately. In a few months, the child in Steck's belly would be born. In a few months, the wound in Zephram's heart would heal to the point where his pulse could race again. They would be lovers before spring… and remain together until summer solstice.

When Steck Committed Neut.

When she was exiled from the cove.

When Zephram had no choice but to adopt Steck's newborn child.

"I was the baby," I said. "Steck's baby, right? That's why you're telling me this?"

"Of course," Zephram answered. "Of course."

"My mother is a Neut?" The words choked out of me.

"Your mother was a woman," Zephram answered. "A troubled woman with a desperately caring heart. Not that anyone realized how vulnerable she was, except me and Leeta. Steck was too independent for Tober Cove to understand her. There was a reason she was living alone in one of those log cabins that are supposed to be for couples. I've always hoped she had an easier time down south."

Zephram hadn't heard Steck spilling out resentment beside Leeta's campfire: "Driven down-peninsula to cities we don't understand, where we're despised as freaks. Shunned by friends, separated from my lover and child…" No, Steck hadn't had an easier time. Being a Neut and being so chip-on-the-shoulder "independent" had killed all chance of a welcome from strangers.

"And when Steck left," I said, "she didn't take me with her?"

"She tried," Zephram answered, "but there was a mob on her heels. They ripped you out of her arms, then drove her off. The Warriors Society harried her through the forest and mounted a guard to make sure she didn't come back. She tried once anyway and got speared in the stomach; the Warriors wouldn't say whether she was dead or not, which means she got away. If they'd actually killed her, they would have paraded her head through town. But that was the last anyone saw of Steck."

"You never tried to find her?"

Zephram shook his head. "I had to take care of you. It was Hakoore's ruling — yes, I'd be allowed to stay and yes, I could adopt you, but only if I swore never to remove you from the cove. You're a Tober, Fullin, and a child of Master Crow; Hakoore refused to expose your god-given blood to the 'materialistic contamination' of the South. The vicious old bastard made me choose between you and Steck… and I knew what Steck would want. Her own parents were dead. If I didn't take you, you'd go straight into the hands of the people who exiled her."

"And no one ever told me the truth."

"People thought it would be kinder not to. They were eager to be nice to you after the hysteria died down — after the evil Neut was gone and they began to think about what shits they had been. They twisted themselves double pampering you, so I'd tell them that what they'd done wasn't so bad." Zephram sighed. "I'm not a man who can hold a grudge, Fullin. Heaven knows I tried, for Steck's sake; but I couldn't stay angry with them, not as long as I should have. I let myself go along with the lie."

He closed his eyes tight, fighting with something inside him. Guilt? Anger? In a moment he pushed the feeling down and spoke rapidly. "So. Steck was gone and the whole town decided to tell you your mother was a paragon of virtue — accidentally drowned and nothing more."

A question popped into my head: "Does Cappie know about this?" It surprised me that I could care what she thought, but I did.

"She shouldn't know," Zephram answered. "All the children were supposed to be told the same story — otherwise, they might spill the truth to you. It's possible her parents told her when she was old enough to keep a secret… but why would they? The town just wanted to forget."

He pushed his chair away from the table, though he'd hardly touched his breakfast. Taking his plate, he began to stash the uneaten food in the ice chest. "I suppose," he said without looking at me, "Leeta decided to mention Steck to you because it's Commitment Day. She's always regretted that she couldn't protect her apprentice. Leeta brought up Steck's name, but didn't tell you the truth?"