The Half-a-Moon Inn by Paul Fleischman Page B

and he’d cleared the road that led down from the forest by himself and built a house at its end. Small and white with a thick thatched roof, it was stuck out on a point jutting into the ocean, where there were no other houses about, and under its gaze Aaron gleefully passed the morning.
    He skipped stone after stone on the water. He scrambled about the rocks like a crab. He imagined himself a mighty orator, addressing the waters in a thundering bass, commanding the very ocean as though he were its captain.
    â€œBreak now, waves, and split your ribs on the rocks! Let the spray fly up, let the waters foam! Fishes—swim! Snails—crawl! Sea gulls—dive for your dinners in the sea!” He could hear himself clearly inside his head, shouting out his orders in a fine, deep voice, trilling his r ’s magnificently, casting his words out over the water, all the way to the horizon.
    When he grew hungry, Aaron walked back to the house and kindled a fire in the stove. He cooked himself a bowl of buckwheat groats and returned once again to the beach, peering into tide pools and scanning the horizon, imagining himself a sailing man like his father. All afternoon he busied himself, and when the sun at last edged back behind the trees and shadows spread onto the beach, Aaron reluctantly walked back home, hungry and tired and with his pockets full of shells.
    It was growing dark in the house, and he lit one of the lamps, built a fire in the stove and placed a pot of peas on to boil. Night was coming on and the breeze picking up, with a few ragged clouds blowing in from the sea. He listened to the wind as it rushed over the house, rattling the windows and fluttering the flame in the lamp, and felt a chill pass through him.
    Swiftly the light left the sky. Outside, the waves crashed blindly against the rocks in the blackness, and suddenly the house seemed empty and abandoned, as though its last owners had long since left it to the spiders and swallows. Aaron gazed slowly about the room, at the spinning wheel, at the clock his father had brought back from his travels, at the massive loom, still and silent in the corner. The house felt as lifeless as a tomb, and he longed to hear the sound of his mother spinning, or of her softly singing while she wove.
    Aaron pulled his chair up next to the stove, his eyes alert and his ears tensed to every sound in the wind, suddenly believing himself to hear footsteps approaching, then distant thunder, then the clatter of horses’ hooves. He stared at the wall across the room, and seemed to see it almost imperceptibly bulge and sink, like skin over a heart. The wind roared over the house in a rage when he rose to fetch himself a bowl of porridge, and he ate as quickly and quietly as he could, trying to keep from looking out the windows, for fear of what he might see.
    When he was through with his dinner Aaron sat for a while, letting the fire burn down. Then he latched the door, blew out the lamp and climbed quickly into bed. He lay there listening to the wind whistling by on the other side of the wall, glanced out the window across the room and beheld an entire armada of clouds, silently riding the wind in from the sea. He watched them passing before the stars, as stealthily as spies, gazed at them endlessly migrating across the sky and slowly fell into sleep.
    When he awoke in the morning, Aaron sensed a chill in the air. He looked out the window, dashed out of bed and threw open the door in disbelief. Snow was falling thickly out of the sky.
    He darted back across the room and jumped into his clothes, shivering in the cold and with his teeth chattering at a gallop. Never had he known the first snow of the winter to arrive so early. Usually it didn’t come until Christmas—and then only a dusting of snowflakes at that. But this!
    Aaron squeezed into his boots and ventured outside, to find his feet sinking into a full half foot of snow. The fields were covered completely,