Blankets of crystal-clear snow press against my boots.
I had been traversing the tundra for four days, no – five. Or… seven?
Someone can only take so much glimmering white powders now before losing their sanity. It sure didn’t help that I had found myself traversing countryside of a country I didn’t know.
‘さっぽろ雪まつり’, signs I would pass would say. I couldn’t translate it – but I believe it had to do with the famous snow festival that was taking place in Sapporo city. I was long gone from the city now, having left the slumber of my hotel blankets in the middle of the night days ago.
Had I slept? Well, yes – I just don’t remember when last.
It could’ve been somewhere between two to fifteen hours ago.
Some hours into my travels I had lost my phone pummelled under the vast white while I was asleep. I had clawed and clawed at the ground but all that I got from those futile attempts was a grape-purple tint to my stiff fingers. If I kept any longer, the hypothermia would’ve kicked in, so I had to bite the bullet and give in.
This is how I die. From the cold.
A layer of diamond dust sprinkle the white atmosphere that clouded me. It wasn’t aggressive nor was it overwhelming. I could place my hands in the air and feel the light prick of the ice up against my fingertips, jolting me awake and alive for another brief moment in time until I needed another recharge.
My friends are probably confused, maybe even scared, wondering where I’ve gone.
We’d travelled here together, and a sudden disappearance is cause for alarm – but I haven’t seen any emergency helicopters. No one looking.
I can imagine them shouting “Angus” trying to find me.
In the distance I see a woman: traditionally Japanese in garb – wearing a powder blue kimono, only broken apart by a red obi belt. The ribbon-like appearance – decorated with vein-like patterns and black decors gave the impression her body was chopped in half – cut, mutilated, with her flesh white and pale as the snow like a zombified maiden. She seemed ethereal yet grotesque, gracefully walking on the tips of the snow without any shoes, so lightly on the ground that no footprints were left, but her hands appeared to be that of a claw rather than a palm of a hand.
I had first seen her: in the middle of the night. She came knocking on my hostel room door – throat dried and in need of cold water.
She pauses her walk; and uncontrollably I stop too – feeling the urge to hide behind a nearby tree.
“Have you been following me? Mrs. Anya McDonnel?” She calls.
I can’t see her and yet I can feel her piercing gaze on me: as if she has eyes all around the frozen forest – blinking from inside the trees themselves.
“Your name is Anya, no? Why do you not speak?”
I can’t move: the fear of this unknown situation wants me to leave but my feet feel rooted in the ground.
“It’s… It’s… Angus. Angus McDonnel.”
From above: one of the leafless branches break off and hit me on the head; leaving me stumbled to the ground. In eyesight of the woman.
“That’s what you tell your friends. But I’m not your friend – I don’t care what lie you tell the world, Anya.”
The fear in me grows. Anya. The name I would call myself from the comfort of my own bed. How did this woman know?
“W-who are you?” I call forth.
She giggles – walking towards me, now clear enough for me to see she’d actually been floating this whole time.
“You can call me Yuki. The people of these cities know me, and you do not?”
“I’m not native to these cities – I’m from Ireland.”
“Oh.. Island. I’ve always wanted to go there. But unfortunately I can’t.”
In her movement, her face becomes clearer- a blend of light grey and blue flesh that glistened in the light more than a disco ball.
“I asked… who are you.”
“My name is Yuki. The people from these cities know me. They fear me because I take their men, and leave their wives and children crying. That was my intent when I saw… you.”
She giggles into her fan: patterned with a similar print to that of the scenery that was around me.
“Yuki-Onna – a… snow woman, I take it?” I ask.
The tale was something I remembered my Japanese friend Katsuo mentioning in the lead up to our trip. None of us truly understood what he was saying and yet… here she- uh… it is?
“Thats the name, darling.” She says; twirling her kimono in the snow. “I was going to do what I normally do with you – but… you’re no man. Even I can tell that.”
The woman places her hand on my shoulder – the piercing sting of a freezing cold aggressively hitting me with a gust of wind.
She waves her hand towards a little girl – laying in the middle of the tundra curled on a ground in a foetal position. Crying and shivering.
The woman grasps my hand, and leads me towards the child. While she floats, I trip on my feet trying to catch up with her pace. My fingers start to sting and ache, a burning sensation that seems to linger as I try to fight off the tight grip that she had on me.
As I am pulled closer to the child, more details from the pale white come into frame. She had copper hair, like me – however only the fringe was visible from underneath the mint green beanie she was clinging onto. The blue eyes of hers were a scarily similar shade to mine. She looked like if I had a child. She was not reactive to us; and wasn’t responding to our movements towards her.
“Who is she…?”
“She’s lost. A lost soul, you could say.” She pipes back at me.
I was now stood ahead of her: staring down at the shivering child. I can feel not only to the freezing-cold winds from surrounding the snow woman, but also from breath of the child beneath me wafting on my ankle.
“She’s… cold.”
“Cold and lost.” She responds. “Go hug her- warm her up.”
I didn’t want to, but I felt my muscles shake and my body start to move. I was walking a guided path that seemed out of my control, and yet, I didn’t feel pressured or forced. I was gliding in the snow to the kid, the same feeling of intrigue leading my steps that I felt when I saw the Yuki-Onna outside my hostel.
I kneel down, and around the chest of the shivering child – I cuddle her.
A blanket of snow seemingly covers me – colder than the peak of Mount Fuji, and the cold is hypothermic, scary and borderline boiling. Its a painful feeling, excruciatingly painful pressed up against every bone in my body. I feel the world caving in. I drown in its hypothermia, and the blankets become to smother me to the point that I can’t even speak – let alone mumble.
I feel myself drift away in its heaviness.
My eyes drift awake – to the sight of the girl I had been cuddling. But she was staring at me. The mirrors glass was fragmented in shades of arctic blues, lilacs, mints and greys – as shards of glass stained reflected back at me. When I moved, the girl moved – lifting our hands up as roughly above our head only to jump back at the shock. Turning around, mirrors seemed to line all the walls with the girl herself staring back at me no matter how far I spun.
“Where- am I?” I ask.
Almost ironically, the little girls lips moved and punctuated the same words as me. No matter which crystal clear mirror I faced she mimicked my bafflement and confusion. Pressing my hand to one of the mirrors, I begin to glance further down to see I was no longer accompanying the body I once walked in.
I was the girl.
The same frilly mint green dress she was wearing in the snow – now unweathered and torn like it once was. She… well, I was dressed to the nines, with the beanie now gone and replaced by a fancy hairdo; braids wrapped around her head.
I keep spinning and spinning, hoping that I will no longer see this child behind the layer of semi-translucent icicles that made up the glass. Much like an old stop-motion animation drawn up on pieces of paper that flip with the flick of a finger – I saw the world of this little girl transform, though something felt off. Her parents were mine. My mother and my father were present – holding a baby version of her in their arms; they were present teaching the girl how to ride a bike. My mother was reading a book about the growing pains of puberty, while my father was sitting patiently as she put makeup on his face so bright and messily he looked like a distraught clown. In some still reflections, my sister, Caitlin stood with. She giggled and laughed as the girl blew out her birthday candles, and tugged her by the arm to dress up as princesses.
I wished I had that relation with my sister, but… she never returned the aspiration.
“Happy Birthday Anya” my family cheer.
The name consists – an ever present overlay of them shouting the name Anya in every scenario kicks in.
“You’ve got this Anya, you’re riding the bike!”
“I wanna be the pink princess, Anya.”
Anya, Anya, Anya. At a certain point as I spin around – the name is the only word that is said – much like the way cats meow or dogs bark.
The name doesn’t even sound like a real word anymore. Just some gibberish.
Let me out.
The thought grew in me.
Why was I seeing this, what did it serve me? To show me how tragic my life is and how much better it could have been if only I was an Anya, not an Angus.
Let me out.
Let me out.
The words bubble and begin to boil, my lips now staggering and quivering.
“LET ME OUT!” I scream, the thought finally out of my lips. With the words now burst out, the mirrors one on one shatter – with the screams of the people inside echoing even when all of them were shattered.
I feel the woman next to me – the powerful gale of cold wind brushing my face in her arrival.
“What was that for? The fun hadn’t even started.” She questions.
“I didn’t need to see that… I didn’t need to know that.”
“The fact things would’ve-“
“Been better if I was a girl, yes. That the very thing I wish could be, won’t ever be. We can’t turn back time.”
I look at her – not noticing the remains of the mirror fragments dissolving into pieces around us and bringing us back into the frozen snowscape. I needed to feel my gaze now.
“Thats true, I guess.” She giggles. “Theres no going back or changing whatever happened. But, unlike the weather – the snow on these hills. Or the sun on the beaches of Kyuushuu – the future isn’t predestined. It isn’t fixed, Anya.”
The sound of helicopter choppers begin to ring from up above, with a megaphone calling out my name. It seems they have managed to track me down after all.
Wind begins to blow in the woman’s hair and the snow around us.
“Your journey will be hard, but you’ve been through it hard enough. Don’t let that fear avalanche over you.”
The helicopter above descends onto the ground, the whirring of the fans overpowering the noise of her voice.
“You’re… lucky you’re not a man.” She giggles. “You wouldn’t have been found if I treated you as such. Please… take this, Anya.”
She extends her hand – with the Japanese fan of hers laying on top of it. From her grasp, I grab the fan. Her hands that once seemed freezing cold, now, I had become accustomed to, and as I grab the fan – she dissolves into a gust of white light like that of the snow around her and vanishes from thin air.
A guy from the helicopter, now landed on the ground, comes up to me – somewhat panicked.
“Angus McDonnel, what are you doing all the way out here?” He asks, wrapping me up in a warm blanket.
I take a second to formulate an answer.
“I was just… stargazing.” I giggle, staring at the fan now held in my hand.
Stargazing. Yeah, that’s what I’ll tell them.
That’s the new thing I’ll hide from everyone.