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ripped
away by the restless wind. But the person he’d seen, or thought
he’d seen, was gone.
    He was about to go back inside when he was overcome
with the sensation of being watched. The shifting sheets of falling
snow parted, likes the curtains on a stage, to reveal someone
standing on the hill across from the dock.
    Byelii, the name whispered through his mind,
rising from the dark recesses of his childhood memories. As a child
he had been cared for one summer by an ancient Slavic woman who was
as wide as she was tall. Teddy never learned what her real age was,
but it was a fair bet that she was on the other side of seventy,
yet even with her massive girth she was light on her feet and
entertained him, if it could be called that, with antique tales of
the old country.
    She had grown up during the German invasion, in a
little village that escaped most of the atrocities that had
occurred along the eastern front. Of little military significance,
the advancing armies of the Third Reich had bypassed her village.
It helped that they had hung a warning at the edge of their little
village, a simple sign that to the advancing German armies meant
the plague was present. If there were anything the Germans feared
more than a Russian bullet, it was disease, especially a disease as
devastating as the plague.
    Other villages had tried the same thing with varying
degrees of success. Depending on their location, the warning
resulted in either the village being burned to the ground while the
inhabitants were trapped in their homes, or being bypassed entirely
and left to die at its own leisurely pace.
    One day, his Nanny told him, the Germans had camped
outside the village. That night her grandmother had prayed in some
forgotten language to an ancient entity she could only translate as
meaning White One. That same night a fierce winter storm accosted
the village, which was strange as spring had already established a
foothold. A steady wind screamed down from the north, carrying with
it the cold artic air of the vast northern plains.
    The following morning the Germans were gone. Their
tents, bedding, weapons, and even half-eaten food still in metal
mess kits, was all that remained. It was as if they had simply laid
down their possessions and walked off. No one in the village knew
what had happened; there was wild speculation, but no reason for
their disappearance was ever uncovered. Her grandmother had
remained silent throughout the day, a knowing smile on her face,
and when she asked her later that evening what happened to the
German soldiers, her grandmother had simply said the White One had
led them away.
    The memory faded and Teddy was once more on the dock
as he gazed into the swirling snow, trying to catch sight of
whoever was out there. It never once crossed his mind to take care
of himself first. Ever since he had been a child he’d had this
natural desire to protect those around him, strangers included. He
had tried out several times to join the local fire department but
he just didn’t have the physical ability to do the job, forcing him
to settle for being an EMT. He’d been blessed with a very skinny
frame. Wiry is what his aunt once called it.
    Then he saw him, standing on the bank directly
across from him. One moment he wasn’t there, and the next he
appeared as if he had stepped out from between the sheets of
shifting snow. They watched one another across the intervening
space and Teddy realized that the stranger was smiling at him,
nodding in recognition of the memory his presence had stirred.
    Was he the White One his nanny had spoken of?
    As if in answer he felt the presence of that
creature all around him. It was of the storm that was even now
battering at the walls of the building. Its voice the shriek of
that wintry wind that swirled around him like the waters of a
whirlpool, threatening to drag him down into the black depths of an
eternally frozen world. Its touch was the caress of frozen
snowflakes that clung to the