[Kachi]: 373.Modern Fantasy.For Love of the Snow Goddess

Another old one. It kind of has a happy ending... Maybe.

---

For Love of the Snow Goddess

  Icy cold winds bit into the skin of his face as he struggled against the solid winds of the blizzard. To have gotten lost in this weather was sheer stupidity, he knew; he had next to no chance of survival now. He silently cursed himself as he tried to pull his jacket further up, so it would cover his face and nose and keep his already raw skin away from the bitter chill that was surrounding him.

  He stumbled to a halt at the top of what felt like a hill, but the driving snow made it impossible for him to see even five feet in front of himself. He rubbed his freezing hands over his face and sighed heavily, so used to the shivering now that he barely noticed it any more. When he removed his hands, he paused, then squinted a little, painfully, at something he thought he saw. A figure...? Long hair, so maybe female. He stared a moment longer, then ran down the snowy slope again, unsure whether he was desperate to tell her to go home again, or to ask her where she'd come from.

  Sliding to a halt at the bottom of the slope, where he had sighted the long-haired figure, he looked around in puzzlement. Not only was there no one there, there were no sign of tracks at all. He didn't think it was feasible that the wind could have covered them up again in such a short time, but, faced with the definite non-existence of his perceived saviour, could surmise no other than that. He looked around desperately, turning around several times until he lost his orientation entirely. Where could she have just vanished to?! Suddenly tired beyond belief, he simply dropped backwards, falling into the snow as if he had no more fight left in him. Despite all evidence to the contrary, the snow was warm, and strangely inviting. It was so tempting... He could just shut his eyes and fall asleep in this warm ice, and sleep for eternity. One part of his mind screamed at him in terror and despair, telling him that to give in now would be cowardly and trying to beg him to struggle onwards. It was beaten down again and again by the part of his mind that was simply exhausted, the part that wanted to just give everything in now. He had nothing to live for anyway, he was a failure. It would all be better this way.

  He was just preparing to fall into the black and bottomless pit that was a snow suicide, when a faint rustle came to his ears. His eyes blinked slowly, opening slightly and trying to make sense of the blurred white world above him. Then a smell overcame him, a soft, warm, floral smell that encouraged him somehow, making him open his eyes wider and struggle up onto his knees. His eyes widened.

  Some ten feet in front him, totally visible despite the still howling snow, was a beautiful woman, with hair the colour of freshly landed snow and exquisite pale skin. Her height was indiscernible to him, and all he could recognise was her beauty anyway. She was watching him calmly, dispassionately, with eyes that were startlingly dark.
He stared at her, mouth slightly agape, for a moment longer before lunging to his feet and running towards her, his wish for a frozen death evaporating as he saw her. Yet she only turned from him and walked away, further into the snowstorm.

  Blindly he followed her, yet soon enough he was again totally lost.
This was unbelievable to him. How could a beautiful woman appear to him twice, yet each time vanish without leaving a trace?! Somewhere in the back of his mind, distant memories, tales of the Snow Woman surfaced. The Goddess of snow and winter. Of death by freezing. He tried to suppress the shudder that rose up in him, with little success. That was only a myth anyhow. A fairy story women told their little children to make them not do stupid things like vanish off into the snow on one cold night. The story had never affected him, he remembered wryly. Maybe that was why he was in this mess now.

  He sat down in the snow again, putting his head in his hands. There was nothing he could do. He was fully aware of his vulnerability, of his total helplessness in this alien and icy landscape. He was as weak as any child that had strayed away from their family and friends in a snow-packed field. It wasn't a feeling he enjoyed. And what of that beautiful woman? He could feel himself falling in love with her despite the fact he had only seen her twice, and she had never spoken a word to him. Her elegance was stunning in its simplicity. Her face was radiant in its featurelessness. Her lack of any sort of distinguishing marks, aside from her paleness, only served to make her even more awesome in his eyes and his mind. He realised that he would do anything to see her again. He realised she was the angel that gave him the strength to fight against the snow and the chill, just so he could see her again. Never before had these feelings stirred in his heart and it all felt so unfamiliar to him, this burning in his chest was an entirely new sensation.

  He stood again and stumbled off into a random direction, praying helplessly that this might be the right one, and that he might see her again. Yet after what felt an age, he was still alone and lost, and she was still eluding him.

  He slumped down against a snow-topped standing stone that he had never before seen in his life, which served only to emphasise how hopelessly lost he was. Maybe this hunt for her was as pointless as anything else in the snow. He tilted his head back and stared upwards at the heavy grey clouds. The blizzard had calmed for a while, leaving a dull, ominous feeling in the air, of a storm yet to be unleashed. Slowly his eyes started to shut again, his arms wrapped around himself to conserve heat: although being in the snow was warm, being above it was still horribly cold. He was just about to surrender himself again, to give in to everything, when again that smell of delicate flowers came to him. Now, however, he was too tired, too lost and uncaring, to open his eyes and look for the scent. He started, however, when he felt a hand as cold as an icicle stroke the side of his face. A voice that sounded as much like the blowing wind as speech whispered to him, "Why are you lost? For what do you seek so desperately, that you run blindly into a blizzard without a care in the world?"

  His eyes opened slowly at first, then, when he recognised the shape in front of him, opened wide. "Y...y...y...ou!" His voice was jittery with the cold, his teeth chattering so much he could barely speak.

  "I...I...I...I ne...eded...to s...see yo...u..."

  The pale face smiled gently, showing startlingly white teeth. "You should not seek me. I was, however, seeking you. But now I have found you, I am unsure..." She frowned a little, then raised her other hand to the other side of his face and tilting his head towards her as she leaned towards him. "One kiss would be all it takes, and yet..." She suddenly removed both her hands from him as if burnt. "No. You should go."

  "G...go... where?" He looked at her miserably. Now he was with her, he knew he didn't want to leave her side again. She was breathtaking.

  She looked away, tucking an errant strand of white hair behind her ear. Her eyes seemed strangely sad. After a moment, she looked back at him, and smiled that gentle smile again. "You are lost, but I am not. Sleep... I will take care of you." She laid one hand gently over his eyes and, wishing to do anything she told him to, he obediently closed them and swiftly fell into a black sleep.

---

  When he awoke, sunlight was streaming in through the window, making things bright even behind his closed eyes. He moaned softly and turned over, wincing a little at an unidentified pain in his body. Suddenly a squeal from his bedside made him jump violently.

  "OH! Mother! Mother! He's alive! Come quick, he's alive!" And with that, a small warm body wrapped itself around him, almost choking him to death.

  "Ah ah AAH! Get off, what're you doing!" He managed to cough out, struggling out of the grip and rolling over in the bed.

  His younger sister looked at him sadly. "I...was so worried..." She sniffed a little, wiping her nose with the back of her hand in the way he would normally have scolded her for if she hadn't looked so sad and helpless. "You were missing for so very long... And then when you came back it was like a miracle, like a fairy story... I thought you were gone forever..." and with that she clung to him tightly, sobbing a little. Unable to be angry with her, he just hugged her weakly and stroked her hair. He barely registered the door opening until he heard a faint cry from that side of the room. His mother was standing in the doorway, both hands over her mouth and a look of pure joy in her tear-filled eyes. He smiled a little at her, pathetically.

  With more restraint than his sister had shown, she walked towards him and took his hand, squeezing it tightly. "I was so, so worried... Whatever possessed you to go out into the snow like that..." But he knew she wasn't angry with him, just relieved beyond comprehension.

  Peeling his sister off him as if she was some kind of small brown-haired limpet, he sat up in bed and hugged his mother tightly. She hugged back, then started to cry on his shoulder, the tears of someone who thought they had lost one of the most important things in their life, only to have it returned to them by some mysterious force.

  The villagers called it a minor miracle for weeks after. How the boy had just come back from what may as well have been the dead was unknown by many, just that his sister, looking out of the window for him as she had done every day since his disappearance, had seen a figure that she didn't recognise walking from the house.

  She had run downstairs to try to catch them and ask them what they wanted, yet when she had opened the door, her beloved older brother was laying on the step instead.

  The runaway himself didn't know what to make of it. He had some snow burns, but he barely remembered how he got them. He barely remembered anything about his time alone in the snow. But every night when he slept, he dreamed of a beautiful woman with pale skin and long, flowing white hair like a waterfall, and eyes as blue as the deepest oceans. Soon she came to occupy his waking thoughts too: he would sit and wonder about her, about where she had come from and how she had saved him when he'd been so far from home. She was almost goddess-like, he mused, then his eyes widened a little as he remembered what he had thought as he had been lost. Yuki-Onna, the Snow Woman. Could the Goddess of all things winter have saved him?

  He shook his head and dismissed the notion from his head, labelling it a childish fantasy. After all, there were no such things as Gods and Goddesses, especially not stunningly attractive young snow women who were far more likely to take the life of a lost traveller than save it. But still...who could it have been, if not her?

  The more he thought about it, the more it began to occupy his attention every day. Becoming withdrawn from his family, he retreated to his room and tried to work it out. Yet no matter how many different angles he looked at it, there was no way that some equally lost woman would have saved him, and if the Goddess didn't exist, then what exactly did save him?

  He started to take long walks. His mother watched him go anxiously every time, willing desperately that he would come back.

  He would walk wherever he wanted, wherever his feet took him. They took him some strange places, yet never did he get lost as he tried to. Somehow he would always see something that he could recognise and that would guide him home. And the snow didn't seem to fall as heavily or as often as it used to; there were no great blizzards any more.

  Spring was coming.

  Over the year he slowly came to forget the Goddess, yet something of her seemed to lurk in his subconscious. He would shy away from relationships with other girls, because somehow they didn't match quite what he was looking for, without knowing what it even was that he was looking for. Yet to all intents and purposes he returned to normal. He got a job in the store of the small town serving customers. And over time the townsfolk forgot about the mysterious circumstances of his reappearance in the Winter and stopped looking at him strangely or talking behind their hands to one another as he walked past. After all, he seemed fine now and nothing untoward was happening around him any more.

  And yet, by late Autumn, something seemed to be stirring at the back of his memory. He would dream about a person he was sure he knew, yet he could never remember their face. As the season drew to its close, the dreams got stronger. He was sure he knew this person, and he certainly wanted to see who they were, but his mind refused to show the face of the stranger, as if that knowledge was something he should no longer see.

  He grew moody and annoyed with himself, for his inability to remember even this most simple of things, and it grew to affect his sleeping patterns. He would go to bed earlier and earlier every week, and stay in bed later and later in a drastic bid to regain this fleeting memory. His desperation for this knowledge eventually led to the loss of his job, and plunged him into even greater misery.

  By the time the snow started to fall again, he was more of a shell of his former self. His mother and sister watched with increasing worry as he went through the days mechanically, simply eating when he had to and sleeping when he could. When he was doing neither of those, he had taken to taking long walks again, wandering about aimlessly in the hope he could perhaps recreate this memory he was so hopelessly seeking.

  And when the blizzard came on one of these long walks, he was totally unprepared for it. Without warning, the snow descended from the heavy clouds, covering everything in a thick coating of soft whiteness and totally masking the landscape from him. He panicked. Yet simply turning and running back the way he came didn't seem to help, and before he knew it he was more lost than before. No matter which way he turned, the landscape all looked the same. Hills and valleys, rocks and rivers were all rendered ill-defined, and it was impossible to find any sort of landmark that would guide him back home.

  Slowly, he gave up and came to a stop in the middle of a snowfield, sitting down despondently in the middle of the white-out and wondering if he would ever get home again. Sighing a little, realising again of his total failure to make any sort of mark with his life, he lay back, wondering if ending it all now would make things any easier. He shut his eyes, then suddenly gasped out loud as he felt almost as if his life were flashing before his eyes. Yet, as he took a deep breath and tried to calm himself, it had looked more like a flash of déjà vu, as if he had been here before, had done this before. And slowly the memories of the year before returned to him, along with the beloved face he had been trying so hard to remember. He wondered a little if this was fate, that something should contrive to recreate the events of the previous year to help him find the love of his life. He tried to dismiss it as he had dismissed the idea that the white-haired woman was a Goddess, but as with that idea, it was not one that would be easily budged. He took another deep breath, whimpering a little as the cold air went into his lungs in a stinging wave, then sat up and cried out, "snow lady! Goddess! Yuki-Onna! Please!" The cries were feeble and plaintive, and he knew they wouldn't be heard above the howling of the snowstorm he was surrounded by, so he struggled to his feet, planning to try and find some high point to call her name, to beg her to come to him again. As he took a step forwards, a particularly strong blast of snow and wind hit him and he staggered sideways a little, his arm raised protectively in front of his face. When he moved it, he stared in surprise.

  A tall woman with long white hair and deep blue eyes, looking calm and serene despite the raging storm all around her was standing in front of him.

  He let out a wordless cry of delight and ran forwards, but another gust of strong wind caught him and pushed him sideways again, and by the time he had recovered his equilibrium, she had vanished. He looked around desperately, but the snow beating against him made seeing only 3 feet ahead almost impossible and he couldn't see where she might have gone again. He ran forwards once more, not caring where it took him as long as it took him to her, another blind charge through the snow with no real fixed purpose or destination in mind.

  He ran until he could barely breathe, until the chill air got into his lungs and made taking every breath sheer agony, and then he still ran forwards, as if by fighting against this storm to see her he could somehow prove his worth to her. The storm obscured his vision, he didn't know where he was or where he was headed, but he realised that he didn't care at all, as long as it meant he got to see this stunning Goddess one more time.

  Somehow he managed to see the tall black stone just before he ran into it and stopped by it, panting for breath and almost collapsing against the hard surface as he tried to remember where he had seen this before. It had the feeling of familiarity to him, and yet it was not something he remembered seeing from the area around the village.

  A voice with all the qualities of softly whispering snow on the breeze murmured to him, "so you have found my shrine once again. Your bravery is astonishing. Never before have I seen a human risk their life in this way simply to see one of the ancient ones before."

  He looked around wildly, trying to catch sight of her, but all he could see was blizzard and rock. "Where are you?! I want to see you! I've been looking for you for so long..." His voice trailed off a little as he realised where he knew this stone from before. He had sat and leaned against it on this day an entire year ago, and his Goddess had appeared to him and touched his face. And she had saved his life.

  "Do you wish to throw my act of kindness in my face, young human?" Suddenly her voice was right by his ear and he span around, coming nose to nose with his pale-skinned enchantress.

  "No... It's not that..." He didn't know what to say. Her beauty was breathtaking to him, he thought he could spend a lifetime simply gazing into those bottomless eyes and still be happy. "It's...it's... I... don' t know..." He frowned a little. This wasn't how it was supposed to go, but then, he didn't know how it should go. He had only ever spoken to a Goddess once before, and that was to the one he was facing now. And he had certainly never confessed his love to a Goddess before.

  She tilted her head a little to one side and looked at him curiously. "You run into the snow for no reason, and call my name, then chase after me... This does not seem to be the act of a rational human male. And yet...could it be..." Her eyes widened a little as she looked at him. She reached down a little, and took his hand. Despite the fact his hands had felt like ice blocks before, they felt positively ablaze in her grip. She smiled to him, that soft and gentle smile that had captivated him before.

  "If it is as it seems, you are a very brave and foolhardy human."

  He put his other hand over the one of hers that held his, and smiled slightly. "So you realise? I love you..."

  She smiled and frowned at the same time, which only made him smile more. "It is not right for a human to love a Goddess... Especially me, especially now..." She released his hand from her grip, yet his still held hers. "You cannot love that which kills, in the season of death, that which is immortal..."

  "But I do..." He sighed a little and squeezed her hands slightly. She made no move to escape from his grip. "I have loved you from the moment I saw you. It's a cheesy line, and horribly overused...but it's true. I don't care what you are, I love you..."

  "You simply love the look, the shell. You cannot love what is underneath. You cannot love that which is unlovable..." She looked sad, and suddenly so hopeless that his heart melted to her.

  "It sounds strange, but Winter was always my favourite season... without it, there would be no Spring, or Summer, or Autumn... Everything must die...and you bring about the cycle of that and create order where there is none..." He looked into her eyes, willing her to understand. "You have a pivotal role in everything... Others may dislike you or fear you, but that doesn't mean you are 'unlovable'. I...find you to be the opposite entirely..." He looked at her. For a Goddess of Winter, for someone so often portrayed as cold and callous, she looked strangely fragile, as if she was a lost child. Her eyes shone with unshed tears, and he realised that to be immortal, to be responsible for death every year, must be an incredibly lonely existence. Swallowing a little, nervously, he suddenly pulled her forwards into a hug.

  She tensed a moment, resisting the strong arms around her, then relaxed, wrapping her own icy cold arms around his back and clinging to him as if he was a life raft in a stormy sea. After several long moments, she pushed him away a little. "And yet, it cannot be."
"Why can't it?" He sounded suddenly hopeless, as lost now as she had been a moment before.

  "You have a family, you are human. You are alive. You have warmth and life. My world is that of the cold, of death. You do not belong...to me..." She bit her lip and looked away.

  He took hold of her shoulders lightly, causing her to look up at him in surprise. "But, what if I were to say that life, family, warmth...they mean nothing to me when faced with you. What if I were to say that I want to belong to you, with all of my heart? Could you deny me that wish, the one wish I have ever truly wanted to come true? I want to be with you..."

  Her resolve looked as though it was about to crack like a frozen pond carrying too much weight, and she stared up at him. "If it is truly that which you want...I should not deny it to you... But I don't know... Are you sure? Is it truly, definitely what you want? To rule over the ice and snow with me?" He nodded slowly, and took her hands again. She bit her lip again. "Then... I cannot deny you." She stepped forwards, and kissed him lightly on the lips.

  He kissed back, and they remained standing there locked in an embrace, before a blast of snow swirled round them and obscured them from all outside view.

---

  No matter how long his sister sat at her window, praying for the figure to return and bring her beloved brother back, it didn't happen. Every person that passed by in the street prompted her to run downstairs and look around for him, but it was all to no avail.

  His mother was heartbroken. Her oldest son, the one who looked the most like her deceased husband, was now lost to her too, taken by the snow and the cold. But unlike his father, his body was never found, leading to speculation around the village. Could it be that he had simply run away? Eloped? But that couldn't be it; he had shown no interest in the local girls and none of them had gone missing too. It seemed sure that the snow had taken him, that Yuki-Onna had claimed another life for herself. The puzzling thing was that his body was never found... No one could understand it. It wasn't washed up on any shores, or discovered curled up and blue after the snow had melted.

---

  His sister, a couple of years after, walking in the snow on one clear winter's day, said that she had seen him. He had been with a woman of a similar height, who was stunningly beautiful but pale and delicate, as if she might break at any moment. They had stood not twenty feet from her, and smiled and waved, then a sudden gust of wind had sprang up, pushing up the powder snow from the grass and concealing them from her. And when the wind had died down, they had both simply vanished. She had run forwards, crying out his name and begging for him to come back, but there was nothing, not even footprints to show that he had really been there. His mother told her that she must simply have been seeing things as her daughter cried in her arms that night, but secretly she wondered if the stories she had told them a long time ago about the lonely Goddess Yuki-Onna were true. She found herself wondering if perhaps he had eloped, but not with some easily-led village girl. She wondered if perhaps he had made a lonely Goddess happier. Certainly the winters of later years were a lot milder. Fewer died, lost in the cold, and plants bloomed earlier through the snow.

  Somehow, that thought was a comfort.