A lot of things can go out of order in a lonely house over a lonely autumn and the start of winter, without other people in the village knowing, espe… - Kathleen Winter

she liked a dress you could work in and not be encumbered by seams or small openings and eyelets and finicky fastenings. She liked a dress you could pull over your head and forget about.

Everyone was trying to define everything so carefully, Jacinta felt; they wanted to annihilate all questions.

"Why would a white caribou come down to Beaver River, where the woodland herd lives? Why would she leave the Arctic tundra, where the light blazes incandescent, to haunt these shadows? Why would any caribou leave her herd to walk, solitary, thousands of miles? The herd is comfort. The herd is a fabric you can't cut or tear, passing over the land. If you could see the herd from the sky, if you were a falcon or a king eider, it would appear like softly floating gauze over the face of the snow, no more substantial than a cloud. "We are soft," the herd whispers. "We have no top teeth. We do not tear flesh. We do not tear at any part of life. We are gentleness itself. Why would any of us break from the herd? Break, apart, separate, these are hard words. The only reason any of us would become one, and not part of the herd, is if she were lost.