The Snow Weavers

It was summer when the snow fell.

I was only 8. I'd never seen snow before, except in videos and online.

But from my bedroom window, I saw a white dusting. No, heavier than a dusting... A blanket, like linen laid across the yard and into the fields beyond the fence.

Even the bare trees (long dead; poppa couldn't spare the water from the farm...) they looked funny. Like awkward stick men with their arms sleeved in white.

I knew snow wasn't normal for summer. In fact, it wasn't normal for Oklahoma period.

I wanted to feel the ice crystals on my skin. I wanted to make a snowball and throw it at poppa. I pulled on my boots, tucked in my pyjama bottoms, and ran downstairs.

Poppa was at the back door, pulling shut the fly screen, then the door, bolting it, then he turned–

I will never forget his face.

His expression stopped me cold. Whatever joy drove my feet immediately drained.

"You stay there, angel."

I'd seen him like this twice before. Both times it was because of crazy weather. The tornado in February. And the previous fall, when it got so hot I cooked an egg on his tractor hood. He didn't much like that.

The climate had ruined poppa's farm. But where else could we go?

I walked over and he pulled me tight.

"Can I see the snow, poppa?"

"Honey, we're just gonna wait inside."

I looked through the metal gauze of the screen and strained to get some sensation of this strange new world outside.

There was no sound. The snow seemed to muffle it. There was no breeze either, not a blade of grass was moving. Just this perfect white stillness.

"I already put my boots on, poppa. I'll get my jacket so I won't get cold–"

Then we both heard it: a sprinkling on the roof. I looked at the sky, at the dark grey clouds, but I couldn't see flakes falling.

"Are they snow clouds, poppa?"

The sprinkling sound was spreading, from the front of the house towards the back, over our heads... I craned over the window frame, trying to see the snowflakes landing. But there were none.

"Where are the snowflakes?"

Poppa looked at me. His eyes were both sorry and sorrowful.

"That ain't snow, sweet thing…"

The way he said it chilled me.

Any other time I would've just asked him what he meant… What else could it be but snow? But somehow I just knew I didn't want to know.

The speckling, stippling noise was coming down the walls now.

Dark spots were appearing all over the snow. Like when raindrops land in dust. But there was no rain.

The noise wrapped around us like an itchy blanket.

I stretched up on my tip-toes and stared down at the nearest patch of yard.

Then I realised what I was looking at.

It wasn't snow.

And those weren't raindrops.

It was a web.

And they were spiders.