The woman began to say something—perhaps a greeting of her own, perhaps a comment on the weather, perhaps a wish or a warning—but whatever she meant to say was lost in a stammer and without a word the innkeeper rushed her to the fireside to warm her.
He settled the traveler into his chair, taking her wet cloak, relieved to see she wore another cloak layered beneath, one as white as the snow she escaped from. He brought her a cup of warm tea and stoked the fire while the wind howled outside.
Slowly the woman’s shivering began to ease. She drank her tea and stared at the flames and before the innkeeper could ask her any of his many questions she was asleep.
The innkeeper stood and stared at her. She looked like a ghost, as pale as her cloak. Twice he checked to be certain she was breathing.
He wondered if he was asleep and dreaming, but his hands were chilled from opening the door, a small cut stinging where one of the latches had bit into a finger. He was not asleep, though this was as strange as any dream.
As the woman slept the innkeeper troubled himself with preparing the closest room though it was already prepared. He lit the fire in its smaller hearth and added an extra layer to the bed. He put a pot of soup on to simmer and bread to warm so that the woman might have something to eat if she wished when she woke. He considered carrying her to the room but it was warmer by the fire so he laid another blanket over her instead.
Then, for lack of anything left to occupy himself with, the innkeeper stood and stared at her again. She was not terribly young, strands of silver ran through her hair. She wore no rings or circlets to indicate that she was married or otherwise promised to anyone or anything but herself. Her lips had regained their color and the innkeeper found his gaze returning there so often that he went to pour himself another cup of wine to keep his thoughts from distracting him further. (It did not work.) After a time he fell asleep in the other chair nearest the fire.
When the innkeeper woke it was still dark, though he could not tell if it was night or day blanketed by snow and storms. The fire continued to burn but the chair next to him was empty.
“I did not want to wake you,” a voice said behind him. He turned to find the woman standing there, no longer quite so moonlight pale, taller than he remembered, with an accent to her speech that he could not place though he had heard accents from many lands in his time.
“I’m sorry,” he said, apologizing both for falling asleep and for failing to live up to his usual high standard of innkeeping. “Your room is…” he began, turning toward the door to the room but he saw that her cloak was already draped by the fire, the bag he had left by her chair at the end of the bed.
“I found it, thank you. Truthfully I did not think anyone would be here, there were no lanterns and I could not see the firelight from the road.”
The innkeeper had a general rule about not prying into the matters of his guests but he could not help himself.
“What were you doing out in such weather?” he asked.
The woman smiled at him, an apology of a smile and he knew from the smile that she was not a foolish traveler, though he could have guessed as much from the fact that she arrived at all.
“I am meant to mee
t someone here, at this inn, at this crossroads,” she said. “It was arranged long ago, I do not think the storms were anticipated.”
“There are no other travelers here,” the innkeeper told her. The woman frowned but it was fleeting, gone in an instant.
“May I stay until they arrive?” she asked. “I can pay for the room.”
“I would advise staying in any case, given the storms,” the innkeeper said, and the wind howled on its cue. “No payment will be necessary.”
The woman frowned and this frown lasted longer this time but then she nodded.
As the innkeeper began to ask for her name the wind blew the shuttered windows open, sending more snow swirling through the large open hall and annoying the fire. The woman helped him shutter them again. The innkeeper glanced out into the raging darkness and wondered how anyone had managed to travel through it.
After the windows were shut and the fire returned to its previous strength the innkeeper brought soup and warm bread and wine as well. They sat and ate together by the fire and talked of books and the woman asked questions about the inn (how long had it been there, how long had he been the innkeeper, how many rooms were there, and how many bats in the walls) but the innkeeper, already regretting his previous behavior, asked the woman nothing of herself and she volunteered very little.
They talked long after the bread and the soup were gone and another bottle of wine opened. The wind calmed, listening.
The innkeeper felt then that there was no world outside, no wind and no storm and no night and no day. There was simply this room and this fire and this woman and he did not mind.
After an immeasurable amount of time the woman suggested, hesitantly, that she should perhaps sleep in a bed rather than a chair and the innkeeper bid her a good night though he did not know if it was night or day and the darkness outside refused to comment on the matter.
The woman smiled at him and closed the door to her room and in that moment on the other side of the door the innkeeper felt truly lonely for the first time in this space.
He sat by the fire in thought for some time, holding an open book he did not read, and then he retired to his own room across the hall and slept in a dreamless sleep.
The next day (if it was a day) passed in a pleasant manner. The traveling woman helped the innkeeper bake more bread and taught him how to make a type of little bun he had never seen before, shaped into crescents. Through clouds of flour they told stories. Myths and fairy tales and old legends. The innkeeper told the woman the story of how the wind travels up and down the mountain searching for something it has lost, that the howling is it mourning its loss and crying for its return, so the stories go.
“What did it lose?” the woman asked.
The innkeeper shrugged.