In the snow the girl was out of breath, her bones made of sugar. A red bird landed on her chest as she lay in the drift, then sank into her, began to suck at her ribs. When spring came, the bird sang a song everyone in town heard, then forgot. The farmers and teachers and ragged kids spent the summer searching mulberry trees for the bird, plotting to cage or kill it: to set down the song or at least force the longing to stop.