The Heart of Yuki-onna

Before father's eyes stopped on her, she knew. Before he had told them that there were too many mouths to feed in winter, before her mother had fallen to the ground weeping, she knew.

"Yuki-onna," he said.

She lowered her head and nodded. Over the sound of her mother's weeping, she stood up and walked to the door. But before she opened it, she paused and half-turned back to face her family. She did not look up into the granite face of the man who had given her life--and now wanted to take it away. Instead, her eyes focused on the ground.

"Will it hurt?" she asked softly.

Her mother wailed. Her father's face, glimpsed out of the corner of her eye, seemed frozen into a mask that had no meaning. No one answered her quiet question.

She took nothing with her when she walked outside into the blizzard. She wore her kimono, but no shoes; they would be needed by the younger ones. The first touch of the snow was sharp like glass, even against her hardened soles. The winds blew through her thin kimono as if she wore nothing at all.

Staggering, she put a hand out to the cherry tree to steady herself. It was bare, as all the plants were bare, but her fingers glimpsed a hint of warmth beneath their tips, as if the tree had sympathy for her. With no other destination in mind, she sank down beneath its gentle branches and huddled upon herself.

She didn't know how long it was before the winds faded. "Yuki-onna," she heard from somewhere, and with the voice came warmth and light. She glanced up, but her lashes had frozen together and her hands didn't seem to be working properly as she tried to bat at her eyes to open them. Standing up on numb legs, there seemed to be a burning fire beneath her now. It was not unpleasant, but she longed suddenly to take off her kimono, to bathe in the waters of fire as she bathed in the meadow stream in the summer.

"Yuki-onna," she heard through the distant sounds of the storm. She reached out her hands--to what, she didn't know, as she still could see nothing through the driving snow.

There was pressure now upon her fingers, as if someone had taken them in a firm grasp. She smiled, felt herself falling slowly through the air, as if she had all the time in the world, as if each second had become a century. Her eyes were closed, but she could still see the brilliant light and feel the fires burning, burning through her until she was as light as ash. She could feel herself dissolving.

The next gust of wind picked her up and blew her away.

In the morning, the storm was gone, and in its place was an unbroken ocean of white. When Hisao went outside, he knew what he would find.

But he did not find it.

Under the cherry tree, he noticed a round hollow, as if someone had lain there for a long time, but no sign of Yuki-onna. On the trunk of the tree was a perfectly white handprint, as if burned into the bark itself by a strong fire. Farther out, the fields were pristine and empty.

He went inside and told his wife. Like the night before, she fell to caterwauling until he drew back his hand and silenced her. After that, the tears dripped from her face, but she made no sound.

"She can't have gotten far," he told her. "I have better things to do than search for her."

So he did them. He chopped wood, carried in snow to melt for the cookpot. He checked his snares, and was pleased to discover a rabbit in one of them. But the whole time he worked, he felt as if he were missing something. He felt as if someone were watching him, which was absurd. Yuki-onna couldn't have survived the storm. Perhaps he merely felt her dead eyes following him around from the shelter of some convenient nook where he hadn't found her body. Well, he would discover her in the springtime when the snow melted, that was for sure.

That night, Kenshin, the youngest, wouldn't stop fussing. "I want Yuki-onna!" he cried. His older sister had often let him into her warm bed at night and held him when the moaning of the wind scared him, singing lullabies. Without her, he was cold and frightened.

Hisao shouted for Kenshin to be quiet. When he wouldn't stop asking for Yuki-onna, Hisao yelled, "She is holding back the winter for us!"

Finally, the little boy stopped crying. Hisao and his wife went to sleep.

The next morning, Kenshin's bed was empty. When Hisao went tearing outside to look for his son, he found no sign of him. No trace of footprints in the snow, although no new snow had fallen since the night Yuki-onna had left. He found absolutely nothing at all.

"He must be in the house," he roared, storming inside. They looked in the cupboard, lifted up their sleeping mats, but there really weren't many places to hide.

This time, his wife was silent as she cried. But her eyes seemed to stab into him, and he could feel the gazes of his remaining children waiting for his reaction.

"I will… check the snares," he told them. He put on his boots and coat slowly, trying to think. When he stomped out into the snow, his feet left deep imprints, but there was no sign of any other marks. He walked in and out of the woods at the edge of the clearing, poked at the branches above his head, called out Kenshin's name. The echoes of his voice came back to him, but no sign of his younger son.

He returned home at dusk, empty-handed. His wife's eyes cut across him and his children turned away.

That night, Hisao slept fitfully. Every hour, he would start awake and go to check on his remaining three children. They had pushed their mats and blankets together and slept curled in a mess of thin, tangled limbs. His one remaining son and two daughters, all with his own coal-black eyes and their mother's rosebud mouth. His children. Near dawn, he finally fell into a deep sleep.

He walked through the woods, but the sunlight was thin and cast the ground in shadow. Snow trickled down from overhead, but the light remained constant and dim. Nothing stirred in the forest except for him--the birds were silent, the small creatures rustled no leaves and did not leap from branch to branch. Everything seemed to be hiding away, and he walked deeper into the forest with a sense of dread.

Far ahead, he glimpsed a shining white light. Sanctuary! He picked up his feet, trying to run as the wind pushed the snow into his face, as the flakes grew thicker and fell faster. He could feel the skin of his cheeks turning cold against the brutal assault of winter.

The shining ahead of him dimmed. "No!" he cried, reaching out. He pushed his legs faster, staggering in the deepening snow. The drifts were up to his ankles, his knees, his thighs. He grabbed at passing tree trunks, and the touch through his gloves raced up his arms like icicles, instantly numbing them. The white light flickered and flickered again, and he noticed that it was topped by a sea of glowing black.

Then the light grew brighter--the creature, turning. He saw that it was a woman in a white kimono, her long black hair blown back by the wind. Her lips were blue as the sky in high summer, and her coal-black eyes burned him like ice. Despite this, her face was familiar, if terrible.

He crouched down before her, bowing his head. "I am sorry, my daughter," he told the apparition.

The ghost made no answer. It reached out one long-fingered hand, the skin as white and final as death. At the last moment, he looked up and saw behind the figure the small forms of his two sons cowering behind her.

Hisao shouted, sitting upright. His wife cried out, waking up and turning to look at him. "What is it?" she demanded.

He shook his head. He didn't know what to tell her. Was it a true dream, or only a nightmare? He threw back the covers and got to his feet, although the light was still dim. He hadn't been asleep for long, perhaps only moments since the last time he'd checked on the children.

In the small house, it took only a few steps to reach their sleeping mat. He stared down at it, unbelieving.

Two children lay sleeping on the mat, their limbs entwined in sleep. His two remaining girls.

His only other son was gone.

Hisao spent a long time looking down at his sleeping daughters. His wife was sitting up on their mat now, but didn't rise to her feet. From where she was, she could see the two children. She could guess what it meant.

Still, Hisao went to the door and opened it to look out. His boot marks from the two days before were all over the white snow, but there were no other footprints. He gently closed the door, returned for his boots and coat, and went back outside without a word to his family.

His wife never knew what happened to him, for Hisao never returned. When night fell, she found a rabbit on the doorstep, frozen solid as if dipped into a vat of ice. She thawed it, skinned it and cooked it for supper, and she and her daughters ate until their stomachs were round. Every couple of days after that, there would be an offering hung on the door latch--sometimes forest creatures, sometimes cattails or baskets of nuts or piles of daikon or renkon. All the offerings were completely frozen, the nuts delivered in a basket composed of ice that melted when she put it in the stew-pot.

When spring came, the offerings ceased. But their fields sprang forth with a higher yield than they'd ever seen, and they had plenty of food set aside by the time winter returned and with only three mouths to feed. But for the rest of their lives, anytime in the winter that their supplies ran short, they would find food on their doorsteps to tide them over. The widow and her daughters became known for their generosity to others, and the village where they lived prospered. The daughters married well, and their husbands were kind to them and their children.

But, still, they never forgot their sister Yuki-onna or the day she walked out into the snow, never to return. Until the day they died, late at night when the winds moaned, they would swear they heard a voice outside singing lullabies. And once in a while, travelers through the region would stop at the village and speak about a moving light in the snow that guided them to safety in a storm. To them, the light appeared to be a woman and two small boys, glowing with a shine as beautiful and serene as the moon.