Fall came and went and Christmas approached. Moku woke him early one morning in December with a shake. "Come and look outside!" He yanked his pants and boots on, drew a warm sweater over his head and stepped outdoors. A blanket of white covered the landscape. A light wind blew, enough to make the bare trees wave in a world of white silence. He'd never felt snow before and laughed out loud, stretching his arms out to catch the flakes in his cupped hands. He sat on the ground and let the snow have its way, turning his face skyward and licking the cold flakes off his face before they melted. The snowflakes drifting through the trees sounded like the hushed voice of the sea ebbing through the sand on the beach at Oahu, whispering as it pulled away, "Ssh! Ssh!" He gloried in the beauty of it. The fort trappers quickly devised snowshoes, in case it lingered. But before the week was out, the white ground turned a crusted gray. By then Kimo's warm Hawaiian bones felt brittle with the stabbing cold and he had few regrets when the thaw began, and turned the fort ground into a slurry of mud.