The Winter Star

Nova Scotia, 1933

Chapter 1

The first snow came early that year, soft and steady, as if the sky had decided to wrap our little cove in a blanket before anyone else in the world. I remember pressing my face against the frost-rimmed window, tracing stars into the glass while my breath fogged the pane. The wind had the sound of an empty stomach — hollow and hungry — and somewhere in the kitchen, I could hear my mother humming over a pot that didn’t smell like much. We lived in a lean house just beyond the wharf in Victoria Beach, where most of the men had traded their fishing lines for shovels and odd jobs, when they could find them. Dad hadn’t been out to sea in nearly three months. “Boats don’t pay when bellies can’t,” he said one evening, folding his hands on the table as if in prayer. The banks had swallowed the fish and the money both, or so it seemed. Still, Christmas was coming, and in our house, that meant something — even if it was only the way my mother brushed her hair differently or polished the one good teacup to sit on the windowsill. She said it caught the light in a holy way, and that was enough.

Chapter 2

I was ten that winter. Old enough to know Santa was only a story, but young enough to believe in other magic — the kind you couldn’t quite see, only feel. The kind that lived in small things: the orange my father saved from his lunch pail, or the way our cat, Mackerel, curled up by the stove and refused to move no matter how cold it got. My best friend, Rosie, lived up the hill in a house painted the color of dandelions in summer. Her father worked for the post, and they had more than most. She had a doll with porcelain hands and a real wool coat with buttons like tiny silver moons. Still, she’d let me braid the doll’s hair when the snow kept us indoors, and that counted for something. One afternoon, about a week before Christmas, she told me they were going to Halifax for the holiday. “My aunt’s got a tree taller than the door,” she said, eyes wide. “They put real candles on it. ”I nodded and tried to smile, though something tugged in my chest. “We’ll have a tree too,” I said, though I wasn’t sure we would. Rosie leaned closer. “My mother said your folks could use one of our extra ornaments. Want me to bring it?” I shook my head. I didn’t want charity — not from Rosie, not from anyone. We were poor, yes, but I liked to think we still had our pride, polished like that teacup in the window.

Chapter 3

Two days before Christmas, Dad came home with a limp and a grin. “Found a bit of work,” he said, dropping his gloves onto the table. “Clearing ice off the rail tracks for a few dollars.” His hands were cracked like driftwood, and he smelled of cold iron and salt. He reached into his coat pocket and pulled out something wrapped in paper — thin, greasy paper that had once held sugar. “For you,” he said, handing it to me. Inside was a star carved from wood, small enough to fit in my palm. It had five uneven points, and a hole at the top with a piece of string threaded through it. “Carved it on my break,” he said. “Thought maybe we’d have something to hang, if we find a tree. ”It was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen. That night, I sat by the stove polishing the star with the edge of my sleeve, until it gleamed like something that had fallen from heaven and landed right in my hands.

Chapter 4

We found our tree on Christmas Eve. It was a crooked fir, half-bald and growing out of the ditch behind our house, but Dad cut it down and set it by the window anyway. Mother wrapped the base in an old flour sack and tied a ribbon she’d saved from better years around it. We had no lights, no ornaments — just the wooden star, the polished teacup catching moonlight, and the smell of spruce in the air. For supper, we had potatoes and salt fish, and a heel of bread Mother’d saved in the cupboard. She lit a stub of candle and said, “We’ve got enough, and that’s plenty. ”After we ate, I hung the star on the tree. It swung gently, catching the light from the candle flame, and for a moment, the whole room felt warmer. Dad cleared his throat, looking at it. “That there’s our North Star,” he said. “Keepin’ us pointed home. ”I nodded, though I didn’t quite understand what he meant until years later.

Chapter 5

That night, I couldn’t sleep. I kept thinking about the star — about how it looked like something alive when the light hit it just right. I crept downstairs in my socks, careful not to wake anyone. The fire had gone out, but the embers still glowed faintly under the ash. The cold bit my fingers as I reached out to touch the star again, just to make sure it was real. Outside, the snow was falling thicker now. The whole world seemed hushed — the sea, the wind, even the house itself. Then, faintly, I heard something: singing. Voices, far away, drifting down from the road — carolers, maybe, or someone heading home late. The sound floated in and out, thin and wavering, but it made my heart ache in a way I couldn’t name. I remember thinking how beautiful it was that people could still sing when everything around them was so quiet and broken. I pressed my hand to the glass. The cold bit my skin, but I didn’t move. Above the cove, the sky had cleared just enough for one bright star to show through. For a moment, it looked just like the one hanging on our tree — steady and small and impossibly brave. I whispered, “Merry Christmas,” to no one in particular, and went back to bed.

Epilogue

Years later, when I was grown and the world had changed — when money flowed again, and the men went back to sea — my mother’s teacup cracked, my father’s hands stiffened, and the house by the wharf leaned harder into the wind. But that little wooden star stayed with me. I keep it now on my own tree every Christmas. It’s rough and uneven, edges worn smooth by time, but when the light catches it just right, I can still see my father’s hands shaping it, my mother’s candle burning low, and that single star over Victoria Beach, shining like a promise we never stopped believing in.