First Snowfall

First Snowfall 

We looked at each other in hesitant expectation, Flora grasped one curtain while I held the other and on the count of three we drew them back with a dramatic flourish. The morning window had come alive with blossoming swathes of clear ferns and fronds that glinted and dazzled with unfathomably complex etched patterns. Flora hung back amazed, but I put my head close to the glass, until I could feel the chill burning from it. I stuck out my tongue, and the pink tip touched the ice cold, sending an electric thrill through me, I licked my lips and laughed. 

‘This is wild!’ The crystalline feathering was as delicate as the lace on auntie Jeanie’s antique collars. Flora drew near, her hot cheeks burning as she pressed her forehead against the cold glass and I could hear her sharp intake of breath. She looked up and I followed her gaze beyond the magical window and out into a landscape completely changed. The sky and earth had merged to a white haze. No longer could we see flats opposite, identical to our own utilitarian dwelling, instead the stark grey buildings dotted outside with scrubby trees and recharging points had dissolved to a pale mist, while across our vision, tiny flakes of white spun and eddied, as if winter itself were aspirating: sighing out as the shards tousled away, then after a moment’s hesitation they seemed to rush back with giddy joy.

‘It worked!’ whispered Flora, her breath billowing in a cold smoke trail, words transmuting into substance that wreathed us both.  She looked like the faux Victorian Christmas angel we had on the tree, her flaxen hair plastered on each side of her white face, blue eyes, round as pools in wonder, the white nightie and bare feet adding an urchin look. ‘It’s a Christmas miracle! You did it Kiki!’

Such words uttered by a beatific seven year old girl on Christmas morning deserved a Disney princess chorus, instead all she got was my gruff tones.

‘Yes it worked.’ I echoed, trying to sound all big sisterly and nonchalant, but not quite believing what had just happened.

What had just happened?

 I was a thirteen year old girl who had warped the weather, was that possible? I had to get it straight in my head.

It was London 2090 and no one had seen a snowflake in a decade. Instead cool rainy winters and dry and roasting summers were the norm.  Many of the world’s capital cities had invested in silk and steel barricades that kept the temperatures relatively stable, reflecting the worst of the heat in the summer and funnelling the torrential winter rains into large canals. The picture books dreamt of snow in December and children told tales of unicorns and a white Christmas, both now mythical beasts. It was good to block out reality with fairy tales. Who wanted to hear that new strains and bacterial variants were emerging without the winter frosts to kill the bugs? We were drowning under a slurry of information:  global warming, seas rising, seasons lost and muddied. Me and auntie Jeanie tried to stop Flora from watching the news, but it was impossible, she was glued to the constant information. It popped up on our wrist-mounted modules every five minutes, warning of the next dust storm, the next flood, Flora insisted on having her mobile dialled to 24/7 rolling information because she was determined to track down our parents.

‘They will be found.’ she told me in a tone wise beyond her years. As a teenager I sneered at a seven year old’s advice,  I could see she was lying to herself to make us both feel better. She had probably heard me and auntie Jeanie talking about the last time we had seen mum and dad, telling us they were off to shack up with the ‘All Weather Cult’ and committing to depopulate the planet and restore balance. What she hopefully didn’t cotton onto was the fact they not only advocated sterilisation of large swathes of the populace but also encouraged mass suicide.

This from parents who, up until a year ago, had been more worried about mortgage rates increasing and the possibility of avocados not reaching the high end supermarkets they frequented. They were so damn stupid I sometimes wondered if I wasn’t more closely related to Jeanie, my mum’s sister.

I had my mum to thank for my name: Khione. Mum read it in one of her romance books, I guess at a time when she used to have an imagination, but everyone calls me Kiki. Flora was an afterthought, apparently Dad thought it sounded classy, as if my little sister was some delicate flower.

Try telling them flowers can have thorns! Sure, she looks cute with her golden curls and baby blues, but just because my hair is dark and my eyes flinty and grey, doesn’t mean miss cutie pie should always win. It all began with Flora, just before mum and dad left. That day she snuck into my room, and found my prize collection of posters, the ones of fish and mammals. She had drawn on all of them: big smiling faces on the pandas, wings on the penguins, periscopes for the whales, hats for the lions.

Noooo! Some of these animals hadn’t been seen in the wild for years, and now Flora was destroying my most precious possessions. Mum came running when she heard the first scream: my howl of despair. The second scream was higher pitched, emanating from Flora as I slapped her hard. Mum told me to ‘chill’, ‘it was only paper’, but then she bit her lip. Paper was hardly seen any more, most books were in electronic format and paper books had been preserved in museums, or pulped to help regenerate fading supplies, I felt a towering rage overwhelm me as I roughly grabbed Flora’s arm. She started to shake more and more, the room darkened and despite it being an intense summer heatwave outside the temperature suddenly gelid and her teeth began to chatter. She trembled, stammering out the words ‘I’m scared!’

Mum had already turned to get dad, so she didn’t see the drift of cold frosting which dusted both her daughters like icing sugar statues.

Shock made me let go and Flora sneezed. At that instant the room warmed, and everything melted, so my posters were now becoming papier mache. Dad marched in, took one look at the chaos and then lectured us both on not respecting each other's property or the environment. 

‘Get this air conditioning sorted!’ He yelled, ‘It’s dripping pools of water everywhere.’

Then he stomped off: job done, and left auntie Jeanie to act as referee and clear up the mess.

She pinned the posters above the bath, let them drip dry, and told me and my sister to make up.

‘Kiki, Flora,  you must not fight. These things seem big now, but they are very small. Don’t forget you are family. Apologise, please!’    

Flora looked truly humbled and put her small hand on mine as she said ‘I didn’t mean to make things worse, I was trying to make everything happy.’ Then she whispered, ‘Will you show me how you did that chilly thing?’

‘You’re dreaming.’ I replied, as auntie Jeanie, who was still pinning up soggy posters, looked round frowning, 

‘What are you two saying?’

Flora was about to speak, but I shook my head. ‘She’s just angry with me because I gave her the cold shoulder.’ I winked at Flora and she winked back.

After that I tried to experiment on my own, dipping my hands in some recycled water, (drinkable but still brown and silty). I would try and imagine things to make me furious, dwell on the poster incident to incite the rage, or imagine if someone stole my mobile tablet. Not one grain of ice formed, not even when I thought of losing  auntie Jeanie, I just ended up feeling low and miserable. The water’s surface would bow and quiver, tremble under my fingertips, but it remained the same lukewarm temperature. I sighed and slowly began to forget the possible wonder. Luckily I have a little sister with a sharp memory. She also has sharp elbows, nails and an even sharper tongue.

From that moment it was as if she made it her life's mission to enrage me.

I had locked the posters away, but that didn’t stop her. I really must commend Flora on her creative genius. She focused on dialling up my torment until every evening there was some trauma or other. 

Normally it involved tripping me up, hiding things I liked and sometimes pricking me with a pin, or sharp needle. Luckily these acts of aggression only lasted for about ten minutes, by which time Flora would see nothing was happening, no chilling of the  air, instead the temperature rose as I yelled at her to : ‘Leave me alone!’ Then she would be sorry, and want to hug me as her natural sweetness would surface above the need to experiment and I could breathe a sigh of relief, knowing my sister was my friend again…for that evening.

Often I would arrive back from school, through the muddy pavements, rain caked in the winter, or baked dry in the summer, but as I walked up the concrete steps to our flat, I had to focus on opening the front door and getting past the obstacle course Flora would have made for me.

Often she had laid a booby trap just inside the door: flour and dirt in a bag that would rain down and cover me, a roller skate perched at an odd angle, or a banana skin ready for me to slide into the kitchen and plop head first into a bowl of jelly. She set the stage well, and was really inventive. She even started to take videos so my slip-sliding, assault dodging and general ‘comeuppance’ would be caught and could be reviewed, like some comic strip caper.

Watching these we would laugh, but then she would frown, vexed that she had not succeeded once again.

Looking back, I realised the poster incident caught me off guard, but the rest of the time, it was as if this drip, drip of anger inoculated me against fully losing my temper. Finally desperation and inspiration met in Flora when she noticed me preening in front of the mirror, combing my brown hair that flowed like a silken scarf. I mistook her smile for sweet admiration...I am such an idiot! 

The next morning I awoke in my bunk to find several pieces of chewing gum wedged into my hair, forming a cement bond that only scissors could release. I was speechless with fury and gripped the scissors until my knuckles were white. I made Flora stand as I cut off all her golden hair before cutting my own. 

The girl was a legend, she didn’t flinch as the glossy locks came raining down, and then finally we were both shorn sheep. I had wielded the scissors rather too brutally and practically scalped us both. She stood there: mute, a bead of blood on her temple where the scissors had jabbed, and yet she looked the image of a martyred saint, her blue eyes suddenly old and wize. I started to cry. Flora turned to me and hugged me and that was how auntie Jeanie found us, looking like two pixies she said, two forlorn sprites who are in need of some magic.

She didn’t ask what had happened, instead she called us to the kitchen, made steaming mugs of hot chocolate and told us as it was nearly Christmas, we should stop fighting.

I didn’t want to fight any more, instead I slid off the chair, went to my room and returned with the posters, fanning them out in front of Flora as they were offerings to a divinity. The only sound was the drumming of the rain on the window, but Flora looked at my gifts with sadness as she shook her head.

‘I can’t give you what you want!’ I said, ‘You’ve got me mixed up with some character in a folk tale, there’s no cold and frost except what’s in your head little sis.’

‘Now that’s where you’re wrong!’ Auntie Jeanie suddenly leant over and patted Flora’s hand.

Then she took from around her neck a long silver chain that was hidden under her tunic. Dangling from the chain was a tiny image, it looked like a spindly star with six points. 

‘This is yours, inherited from our great grandmother, and forgotten for too long. You don’t need rage, despair or fear.’ 

She stared at my eyes and cupped my face. I thought she was going to tell me all I needed was love, and I was getting ready to shrug, but then she said, ‘You just need to get even!’

‘What?’

‘Even things out! Get the balance right! Things have been going one way for far too long. I used to be able to help things along, but what with looking after your mum and dad and you two, I seem to have lost my sense of purpose. My equilibrium is out of kilter, but I used to shine!’

Then suddenly I remembered Jeanie telling us stories of winter days and snowy mountains and magic in the clear ice with snowflakes like the one on the necklace she placed around my neck. I was seeing those things through her eyes. Her grey flinty eyes, just like mine. 

That’s when we decided to work our spell on Christmas eve, it was Jeanie’s gift to us, the most precious one she could give.

We sang old songs, about snow deep and crisp and even. Jeanie found some holly and mistletoe from the park nearby and we closed our eyes and imagined a calmness on the face of the earth: a smoothing of wrinkles; a cooling of rages; a tranquil blessing blanketing our world. We all snuggled on the sofa as the scent of fresh pine needles filled the air: sharp and heady, while citrus aromas cut through with zesty liveliness. All was hushed as old furies cooled, forever fled, then Flora stretched and smiled. We must have fallen asleep as suddenly it was morning and Jeanie woke us, telling us to look out of the window. I touched the necklace and heard a crackle like static, then we drew the curtains in our dramatic way and there was winter, and the frost flowers waiting for us. I shivered as I watched the whiteness build and cover the pawprints from some cat or fox that had trailed below. The marks were like musical notations, skittering between the vanishing paving stones that were slowly filled by the snow. Everything was being renewed: a brave new world, to stop, pause and rest, before life began again.

‘I want to find a snowdrop!’  Yelled Flora and if anyone looked like a snowdrop, it was her.