Winter Wonders

The snow descends in thick, peaceful flurries, and accumulates, heavy, on the bare branches of trees and green firs. I watch it all from behind the glass of my bay window as I sit on a cushion bench tucked underneath it. I sit and stare. I reminisce and hope.

I hope I am right, that all of it was real, and that it will happen as I expect it to.

For you see, when I was seven years old, an event happened that changed me forever. An event that promised reoccurrence.

And though now, at 87 years old, I tend to forget most of my childhood, these few minutes in a single winter day have never left me.

***

Shortly after I was born, my parents bought a beautiful farmhouse which, oddly enough, had not been built on a farm, but at the edge of the most tranquil forest where my sisters and I imagined many games filled with forestfolks. We put magical fairies at the heart of every flower, playful gnomes under every mushroom, and majestic nymphs swimming in the nearby pond. None of it was real, of course, but it was enough to give us a happy childhood weaved from joyful memories where magic and stories were common occurrence.

Charlotte was the first one to grow out of it. As the eldest, she tired of our games when she entered high school and a new game began to occupy her mind as she took her first steps toward adulthood. Cassandra was next, of course, as second eldest. Camila followed shortly after; she was not even ten years old.

And I was left alone in our secret world.

By all logic, I should have given it up, too, but my knowledge of things past and possible things to come kept me from forgetting the magic of the forest.

I grew up, became a banker, a wife, a mother until finally, I grew old. My sisters are gone. My husband, too. And I now live alone the farmhouse I bought back from our parents. In the end, I returned home, walking again the paths I walked before. I wander the same halls I did as a child, look out the same windows, sit on the same porch. And I wander that same forest I used to know so well.

I still know it.

Trees are creatures of habit. Even though in our childhood games we lent them some legs and the will to uproot themselves, in reality none of them did. The firs, the birch and the old oak trees are all where I left them.

I walk the path and know exactly when it will split and where it will lead. I know the sounds, the sights, and the smells. Come summer, spring, or fall, daytime or nighttime, I know every looks my forest ever don.

And I know the forest’s secret.

***

I had barely turned eight years old. My sisters—who were all older than me—had better things to do than to spend time with me. But it mattered not; I had become well versed in inventing my own games, most of which took place inside our roomy farmhouse. I explored cupboards, hid under the stairs, or sat on windowsills and invented stories. Great battles were waged in our home, great mysteries, solved.

But after a while, the walls restricted my imagination. I missed my forest. My parents, however, wouldn’t have it. “It’s dangerous on your own, Connie. Maybe ask your sisters?”

But none of them would join me.

And I would accommodate myself of the situation. Except for that one morning.

It was overcast but not gray. The sky had just wrapped itself in white fluff and fat snowflakes fell from it in a slow, graceful ballet. It had snowed all night, and my beloved forest was now covered by a thick, heavy blanket. How I longed to run outside and just throw myself on its perfectly even ground!

But it isn’t safe.

I pressed my forehead against my bedroom window on the second floor. A heaviness washed over me: would I be forbidden to return to my beautiful forest forever? But then a thought entered my mind: it was still very early. Everyone was asleep.

A smile stretched my lips, and it felt like my forest was smiling back. Like an understanding between us. No one else would know.

It would be our secret.

I left my room on tiptoes and closed the door behind me as if I were still asleep in there. I walked downstairs, avoiding every creaky floorboard, and pulled my snowsuit on right over my flannel pajamas.

I unlocked the back door and scooted onto the porch. And I froze.

The scene in front of me was surreal. It was not so much what I could see rather than how it made me feel.

The silence surprised me first.

I knew the silence that accompanied snowfall but that silence had taken it further. It felt as though the snow, the wind and I were all that was left in the world.

The light was the second thing I noticed. It was soft and pure, diffuse as if it came from everywhere instead than just the one sun.

Colors seemed to have gone, and all that was left behind were shades of gray and the purest of white.

I paused on the porch because even then in my child’s heart I’d felt it: something had happened during the night—a veil had been torn—and I was now standing in a world that was not my own.

But I felt no sense of danger. I walked down the porch’s steps, leaving deep imprint on the snow accumulated there, and reached the ground, unsure of what to do next. I had set out to play but even from the wisdom of all of my eight years spent in this life, I could tell that this morning was meant for something else. For silence and reflection. There was reverence in this moment. And even though I didn’t fully understand what the word meant, I still felt it. This deep sense of awe and calm. My breath was slow and shallow, my pulse deep and steady.

I looked up at the sky, but I couldn’t see the snow fall; it blended perfectly in the white blanket of clouds. So I closed my eyes and let the snowflakes surprise me as they landed on my face.

I stayed that way a minute or two until an uncomfortable tingle crawled up the nape of my neck: I was being watched! I opened my eyes and looked around, but saw nobody.

I was completely alone.

Which made it all the harder to explain the footprints that had just appeared in the snow, marking a path between the forest and me.

Maybe I should have just turned around and returned home, but I couldn’t feel any fear. Only amazement.

And so, I set out to follow the footprints.

They were neither big nor small. Bit bigger than my own feet, perhaps, but these were not the feet of a giant, not even a full-grown man. They were humans, probably, although back then I wished differently. But what made them all the more surprising was that there was only one set of them, either coming or going, so whoever had made them had either already been there with me in the backyard, or it had come out of the wood and was now waiting somewhere by the house.

As a grownup, neither of these thoughts seem reassuring, but as a child, it only created a mystery I wanted to solve.

Lifting my knees high to walk against the snow, I passed under the tree branches that framed a path into the forest. When the footprints veered left, I followed them, knowing full well that they were leading me to the pond.

It was an area that my mom had warned me about in the winter. The pond would freeze then thaw lightly then refreeze again throughout the season, making it a dangerous area to walk, especially once snow covered it enough to hide its contours. I would have to be careful, or I’d fall in the water and get an earful once I returned home wet.

The trees retreated a little, allowing the path to grow wider. And finally, I reached it: the end of the footprints, and the beginning of the pond.

But all my mom’s warnings were proven wrong: I could see the pond very well. Snow didn’t seem to accumulate on its frozen surface, leaving it a cold shade of blue and shiny.

And at its very center, a woman stood.

She paced the length of the pond slowly, looking regal and graceful. She was of medium height and slender built, and had long, wavy white hair that cascaded out of her droopy hood. Her dress seemed made of heavy silk folds that somehow floated around her at the slightest gust of wind. Her skin was like alabaster. And when she turned to me, I could see that she had dark eyes and lips. On her head, barely visible under the hood, rested a crystal tiara.

I stood immobile. Speechless. She was beautiful, but impossible. In my child’s mind, I could sense the magic in her, the improbability of her existence, even if I couldn’t word it. I knew she shouldn’t have been there. I doubted she should have even existed.

And yet, there she stood, sending me halfway between panic and wonder. I wanted to run, but I couldn’t decide which way. Would I run toward her? Or should I run back home? Would she chase me? Was she evil?

Even in my young years—thanks to my sisters, I had heard of such tales where fairies and ethereal beings weren’t all that kind to humans.

But every shred of fear in me melted the second she smiled. She said nothing and lifted a hand, inviting me forward.

As in a trance, I stepped forward.

My boots met with the frozen surface of the pond as ribbons of snow pushed by the wind raced on the ice. I took care not to slip and fall, and when I finally reached her, I could only be dumbstruck by her beauty. I wanted to talk to her, but no word came. She didn’t seem like the talkative type anyway.

She gave me another warm smile and looked at the skies. She caught a snowflake in the palm of her hand, and it didn’t melt! She then laid it at the heart of one of my mittens.

I’d like to say that it was the most beautiful snowflake I’d ever seen, that it was ten times the size of a normal snowflake and made of the purest of crystal, but it wasn’t. It looked just like any other snowflake, tiny and fragile. And yet I could tell it was different somehow.

She wrapped her fingers around mine, making me close my little pink mitten over the snowflake. And when I looked up again, she was gone.

I scanned my surroundings, surprised to find myself suddenly alone on the icy pond’s surface. But I was even more surprised when, out of the woods, an old woman came out from under the trees.

“Finally,” she said. “I was afraid you wouldn’t come. I’m not getting any younger, you know.”

“Do I know you?” I asked.

“Oh no, not yet. But there will come a day when you won’t see much of anyone else.”

The old woman tentatively stepped onto the pond’s frozen surface, walking toward me. I took a step back.

“I should be going back,” I said. “My parents are waiting for me.” It was a lie, of course, but I wasn’t about to tell that strange woman that my family wouldn’t wake up for at least another hour.

But the old woman called me out on it.

“Oh, you clever girl. Lie to a stranger to protect yourself when you know your parents are still sound asleep. It’s okay, it’s okay. I don’t want to hurt you, I promise.”

I took another step back. “What do you want then?”

“Just to give you a gift and then make a trade.”

“I don’t think so.”

I wanted to go back home, but the old lady had showed up on the path that led me back to the house and now, I would have to walk around her to reach it. Unless I made a run for it through the forest and never mind the path?

“You’re thinking of running, aren’t you?” the woman said. “It’s okay, I won’t come any closer.”

She was close enough already. Six feet away at the most. “Look,” she said as she bent down to her knees, probably trying to prove that she was no threat. She then took out a small plastic case and showed it to me before sliding it over. “It’s for your snowflake,” she said. “Normally, it would melt away, but this is not an ordinary snowflake so you can just keep it safe in there.”

“How did you know—?”

“I have a snowflake, too,” she explained before I could even finish my question. And to prove that she did, she took a similar case from inside her coat pocket and showed it to me.

I opened my mitten-covered hand and was astonished to find the snowflake still there, it hadn’t melted away. Was the old lady right? Was it a magical snowflake? Seeing as how I had acquired it, it made sense, didn’t it?

I shrugged and figured the old woman couldn’t do much to me through a tiny plastic case. So, I bent down too, opened the tiny case and shook my mitten above it. The snowflake fell in the plastic box and I closed the lid. Oddly enough, the old lady had told the truth: my snowflake didn’t melt. Instead, it just rested there at the bottom of the case.

I stood back up.

“Thanks for the gift,” I said to the old woman. “I’ll go now.”

“Wait! What about the trade?”

“I don’t want to trade anything with you,” I told her.

She smiled at that.

“But it’s nothing important.”

“Then why trade?”

“It’s nothing to you. It means a lot to me.”

I was intrigued. I decided to hear her out. After all, I could always refuse after she’d said what it was.

“What do you want then?”

“Your snowflake,” she said.

“No way! It’s mine! The fairy gave it to me.”

“I know; I have one, too, remember? What I want is to trade yours for mine.”

I frowned. “Why?”

She slid her plastic case over to me. “Because yours is new,” she said.

I picked up the case and compared the snowflakes. And I was stunned by what I saw: her snowflake was twice more beautiful! While mine was white as snow, hers shone like silver. Mine had a normal shape—branches leading out of its center and growing needles like the branches of a fir—while hers had elegant flower-like patterns in it.

“It’s so pretty,” I said.

She smiled again. “Time made it that way. But it’s yours if you want it. So, what do you say: trade?”

***

I am nothing special by anybody’s standards. Yet I’ve been given a gift that many—if not most—would envy. And today, finally, the snow is back.

I have made many attempts in my elder years to no avail. But I know today will be different. I know because the silence surprised me first. Then the light. And so, I know the time is right. Finally.

I wrote two letters: one to my children, and one to myself, just in case—I’ve never known what happens on this side of things.

Then I put on my coat and I step out into the woods.

The snow is not as high as I remember it, which makes sense since I’ve grown taller a bit. Everything is as it was, and I am relived to find them again: footprints in the snow that traced a path between the woods and the house.

I follow them.

Thoughts swirl inside my head, like a storm. Excitement rises within me. To think of all the things I would be able to experience again! Sure, it is too late for the games with my sisters, but the memories should refresh which would be almost as good as living them.

Besides, there is more to life than just childhood games. I would learn and forget again, fall in love again, be hurt again. I would discover books, movies, places for the first time all over again.

And all for the price of two tiny plastic cases.

I veer left and arrive at the pond in time to see the ethereal woman vanish, leaving behind a little girl in a pink snowsuit looking lost. She sees me and her expression changes; she is weary of me.

I smile. “Finally,” I say. “I was afraid you wouldn’t come. I’m not getting any younger you know.”

And with the warmest smile I can muster, I tentatively step onto the ice.