Mira stood on the wide porch step of the bathhouse, peeking past the hanging towel to watch the board path. The morning snow was smooth except for one neat line of prints that turned once, then stopped. Right beside those prints, a thin ribbon of wool had snagged on the edge of the path like a little red thread. Mira knew that ribbon. It was from Toma’s mitten string.
Inside, Sena was humming over the steam buckets. “If Toma is late again, he can carry the ash pail by himself,” she called, though her voice sounded more amused than cross.
Mira leaned farther out. No Toma. No fresh prints past the stopped line. Only the soft wind slipping over the hilltops and a faint dragging mark in the snow, as if something small had been pulled away near the black pond.
She touched the snowflake pin in her braid. Toma never forgot his mitten strings. Toma also never let anyone else find the first clue before him. So where had he gone?
Mira had three ways to follow the day: she could hurry to the black pond and look for the dragging mark; run inside to tell Sena exactly what she had seen; or head toward the carved skis shed to check whether Toma had gone there first. Each choice would send her after a different kind of answer, and Mira could already feel that only one of them would keep the clue from fading away.
What happens next?
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