Snow blanketed the valley like a white map, and my grandmother's house glowed with warmth by the Winter Road. I was returning there for the first Christmas after her passing, with a boot full of poppies, gingerbread and silence. The Beskid wind rang against the gutters, mingled with the scent of spruce, and the sky swept over the village. Borscht was simmering in the kitchen, and Dad kept saying that without Grandma's Christmas tidbit, we would miss something. We left an empty plate for the wanderer and a place on the bench, as we had always been taught. On a branch hung an old Bethlehem star made of walnut, smeared around the edges as if it had once passed through a fire. A senderless parcel also arrived, wrapped in checked paper, left by the wicket, right next to the snowdrift. Inside lay a twin nut, equally smoked, with the date 1989 and my name written in a thin steel scraper. - 'She couldn't,' Dad whispered when I added that I wasn't there yet at the time, and the writing looked like hers. I leaned the star against the glass, and something clattered from inside the nut, as if the ice on the pond had cracked. A blizzard came from the west, dampening the neighbours' lights in a flash, and the old clock in the hallway lost half the hour. A carol in an odd metre flowed spontaneously from the attic radio, restless as a step on thin ice. I went to check the door; there were boot tracks on the threshold, but the path ended halfway across the courtyard in empty snow. I returned to the table, intimidated by the silence, and saw that someone had pushed back a chair by the empty plate. The first star in the sky came out, and I handed out the wafer, feeling the rough cold of the nut under my fingers. Mum dimmed the lights to make the candle flames bolder, and we began to exchange hugs, perennial and yet tentative. Then the wicket bell rang, a single tone, then another, and the wind fell silent as if on command. - 'Don't open it,' Mum asked, but Dad was already standing, and I saw that the smeared star was trembling. The doorknob moved from the outside, quietly, as if someone remembered the house better than all of us. By the time Dad reached the hallway, there was a drag under the door, and a thin envelope stopped on the doormat. The paper bore our address, but the sender was the sign of a star inscribed in a circle, unknown and yet close. I tore it open on the doorstep; a thin wafer and a sheet of paper fell out from inside, written in the same slanted character. I read aloud, as if the words needed to be disenchanted: "Prepare a place for the guest who remembers before you remember". As I lifted my gaze, the glass in the door fogged up from the warm breath from outside, and someone sang the first two bars. The melody was grandmotherly, interrupted half a sentence ago, and the doorknob vibrated once more, slower, like a request and a promise at once.