Issue 136 January 2025

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Editorial: Winter Folklore

by Carina Bissett

January 2, 2025

As a child growing up in Colorado, I equated winter with gut-plunging snowbanks and crashing icicles, cold blue days and crystalline nights. Later, I moved to Arizona, and while winter in the Sonoran Desert wears its own brand of beauty, I missed skating on the rippled ice of a frozen mountain lake, the deep quiet of snow-mantled forests, and the wonder of fat, fluffy snowflakes melting on my tongue. Life’s path often leads home, so perhaps it’s no surprise that I eventually returned to Colorado only to discover the season shorter, less severe than the ones from my youth. Yet, the call of winter remains strong for me.

When searching for a theme I wanted to explore, I reflected on time I’d once spent with a Navajo medicine man. He taught me that certain tales can only be told in winter when the world is at rest. This tradition can be found among cultures around the globe. In a way, this issue extends the conversation featured in last month’s The EcoFutures Issue, albeit with a darker twist. Lately, my news feeds loudly proclaim the approach of an impending “new little ice age,” a prediction that at first seems at odds with current concerns associated with global warming. Yet, as temperatures race towards those that preceded Earth’s last climate collapse, this is exactly what might happen. After the heat comes the cold.

And so, this issue celebrates the cold quietude of my favorite season with stories that lean into winter folktale and oral traditions, which is perfectly illustrated by the cover art by Jeanie Tomanek, a self-taught artist known for exploring archetypal images from fairy tales, folklore, and myth. In Tomanek’s “Winter,” an ominous shadow looms in the background, as much of the landscape as the barren trees and the snow-covered field. And the girl in the center, that archetypal figure in red, stares back. Whether in fear or acceptance, defiance or denial, is left up to interpretation. Isn’t that what folklore is all about?

This issue opens with Allison Pang’s “A Promise of Persimmons, a haunting tale of an avalanche victim who refuses to stay buried and, instead, returns home—a changed woman. The theme of love and loss continues in “The Heartbreaker’s Apprentice” by Catherine George. Apply for the job if you dare. “The only qualification: You must have a heart of ice.”

Sometimes, the price we pay for love is more brutal, more shattering, than a broken heart. In “The Northerner’s Tale,” Jason P. Burnham explores the sacrifices a desperate father is willing to make in order to save his dying daughter. But, as we learn soon enough in Daniel Roop’s “Spoon, Fork, Knife,” family and sacrifice can take an ominous turn, especially when it comes to cutting weather. Darkness falls, but the promise of persimmons stains the snow red.

And then there are the stories of endless winter. You know the ones. What will it take to break the bitter loneliness trapped in the enduring cold? An old woman climbs a mountain to find the answer to that question, and more, in M. R. Robinson’s chilling tale “The Hag of Beinn Nibheis.” But not all are eager to see the end of winter, including a researcher of urban legends who finds her true purpose when her truck breaks down on an isolated road in “Moist Breath of a Cold Stranger” by KT Wagner.

At the end, as this issue comes to a close, we are reminded once again of home and what it means for each of us. I realize I am one of the lucky ones. When I wearied of sweltering days that stretched into years, I had a homeland to return to, jagged peaks that still embrace winter, even as so much of the world continues to melt. In the final story of this issue, “The Ice Cutter’s Daughter and Her Looking Glass,” Nadia Born turns the reflection back to the reader and the future we might share if we continue on this path of a perpetual global summer, a place where “there’s no such thing as ice” and snow-filled skies are but a distant memory.

* * *

Ⓒ Carina Bissett

Comments

  1. Nana Maryam oluwole says:
    January 28, 2025 at 2:29 pm
    Wow so interesting

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A Promise of Persimmons

by Allison Pang

January 3, 2025

The snow crunches beneath the soles of my boots. My footsteps echo, as though I walk upon the skinned hide of a drum, and when I pluck the last persimmon from the tree, I feel the rumbling swell. I run.

The avalanche is the thundering of a thousand horses, hooves dispatching the crushing blows of bruises, pushing me beneath the surface, dainty and terrible and final. The golden glow of the sun glitters all around me, blinding.

Fear chokes my mouth, the pure essence of the snow forcing its way between my lips and into my ears, taking root in my nose. (But don’t look too closely because there’s dirt in it, isn’t there? Pine needles and sap and a whisker from a hare skirting above the rippling drifts, escaping to the rocky ledge where I could never dare to follow.)

For a scant moment I see my upended basket of persimmons tumbling away, broken straw, the vermillion fruit bright and bloody.

My womb is hollowed out, my lungs flatten, the cracking of tree branches…but no, it is the splintering of my wrist, the curving, delicate bird-like elegance of the ulna sliding through the folds of skin, peeling back to expose the bones.

Am I screaming?

I might have been. The white has become shadow, a pocket of space between my lips and the snow filled with only the memory of breath.

My limbs struggle against the horses, but they are gone, gone, gone. I am floating in between these worlds, cocooned against life itself.

I lick my lips, astringent and cutting, delicately probing the edges of a cracked tooth with a tongue thicker than salt. Frost packs behind my eyelids. The tiniest shaft of light shunts through a minute passage cutting through the depths of the snow, flirting freedom for a mouse.

The cold becomes comfortable, swaddling me in its arms, a pearl within the protective recesses of a shell. Above me shouting, but I can no longer draw breath to cry out. My chest shudders with each shallow inhalation until a thin membrane of snot and ice rimes even the smallest of apertures upon my face, blocking the last vestiges of air altogether.

* * *

When I awake, the shaft of golden light is gone, leaving me in nothing but darkness and the ragged sigh of a passing storm. My ears ring with this quiet, though my heartbeat does not.

If I stay here, I will die.

Using my good arm, I start to dig, ignoring the torn nails, the numbness searing the fingertips. It seems as though I simply dissolve; my body slides past each crystalline snowflake slicing into my skin. A thousand small cuts, and yet I don’t bleed.

Perhaps there is no blood left in me.

I emerge from the hole some time later; it is night and the snow falls thick and heavy. It blankets my shoulders, my hair.

One of my boots is missing but I cannot retrieve it. My toes are blue, the nails black.

The landscape is changed, broken trees littering the path, a scattering of dead leaves.

My shattered arm swings useless by my side, the bones glinting in the moonlight. My hand dangles, the fingers curled, but I can not feel it.

Home, home, home.

Where is it? I head off down the valley, where the village fires burn on the other side of the wall, the thatched huts and the warm hearths calling me.

The snow picks up, covering my tracks, the frozen tangle of my hair crackling past my face, blinding my already blurry vision. But still the flame in the lantern outside our door catches my attention.

The wind howls as I howl, my husband’s name whisked away before I can voice it. The door is shut tight against my harsh mutterings, against the cold, the wind. Against me.

I claw at the windows, broken fingernails scratching, scratching.

I’m so cold. Let me in.

My cries become accusations, curses, sobs; the noise prickles against the back of my throat, coated like dust from an urn.

My husband cracks open the door, the whites of his eyes filling me with pleasure, the sea pouring into a broken cup. His pulse flashes at the base of his throat, rich and thick and warm.

I smile and he shudders.

“Yuki-Onna.” He croaks it out, gathering our infant son into his arms. “Of course, you would return as such. But then, you were always cold to me, weren’t you?”

Yuki-Onna. Snow woman. The hostility of the word settles, unsettles. The baby whimpers and my breasts ache in response, the milk leaking hot against my skin.

“Mine.” I hold out my hand to the child, but my husband pulls away before I can brush my fingers against the swaddling blanket.

“You cannot have him. And if you take me, he will die.” He turns his head to the inside of the house sharply, his mouth moving though I do not hear what he says.

A pair of women’s boots crouch just outside the door, coy and unfamiliar.

Had he sent me out to find the persimmon trees on a warmer day where the sunlight bathed the peaks in a golden haze? Perhaps the cracking of the ice told him of this odd thaw, or perhaps the simple scream of a hare beneath the talons of a hawk would be enough…

Enough to bring the mountain down.

My dangling hand, hanging by a thread of tendon, uncurls suddenly like a flower, revealing a perfect persimmon, guarded and unbroken in the seashell curve of my palm.

The fruit falls from my fingers to rest at his feet.

I become water, melted, clear, empty. I puddle on the floor and sluice through the floorboards, while above me my husband screams and screams and screams. Little Kenta cries, his face buried in my husband’s shoulder.

The last bits of me have thawed and I am free, drifting away into the falling snow.

* * *

Ⓒ Allison Pang

Comments

  1. Bev says:
    January 10, 2025 at 12:12 pm
    This piece I felt was pretty boring and I just skipped through yo the end. Not a piece I would ever recommend.

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The Heartbreaker’s Apprentice

by Catherine George

January 7, 2025

Long ago, in the city where we live, there was a heartbreaker.

(By which we mean, a woman who broke hearts for a living—sliding scale, pay what you can.)

None of us knew how she did it, but we had a hundred theories, told a thousand stories: she takes a hair from his head and burns it; she steals a tear from his eye, freezes it; she inks curses on skin with a blood-stained finger.

Does it matter? murmured the woman sitting beside us on the late-night bus. Who minds how she does it? Only that it’s done—

We nodded. What mattered was that she broke them, left them in ruins. Shattered them so completely they could never be rebuilt.

* * *

We only hired the heartbreaker for the worst offenders: the one who tattooed another woman’s name on his bicep the night before the rehearsal dinner; who slipped something into a drink at the pub, and laughed while we stumbled home, a black hole in our memories where the night had been; who wrote songs spilling our darkest secrets, and thanked us for inspiration at the open mic.

And worse—

Who turned us into cautionary tales and statistics—

Who abandoned us to establish Rome—

Who drowned our sisters by a willow tree—

And worse.

* * *

But this isn’t our story. This is the story of the heartbreaker’s apprentice.

* * *

A job ad, posted online. The only qualification: You must have a heart of ice.

For months, no-one answered—we clicked away, shivering—but one day a woman, lost in a snowstorm, pushed through drifts to knock on the nearest door. 

Come in, the heartbreaker said. I’ve been expecting you.

* * *

How long have you been doing this? the woman asked, over bowls of tinned ravioli at the kitchen table.

Eternity, it feels like.

The woman (let us call her Kay) looked around: old windows that rattled in winter storms, threadbare cushions on the couch, the faint smell of drying roses. You make an okay living?

I get by. The tax returns are a pain.

You think I can learn?

The heartbreaker ran an icy finger down Kay’s cheek. (Perhaps she had bad circulation; perhaps a heart of ice pumps colder blood.)

Yes, she said. I do.

* * *

Kay said she would stay a while and think on it.

For a time, she watched us, poured us tea while we laid out our grief on the patchwork couch, while we marked another for heartbreak:

The one who called us sluts on the CBC—

Who jilted us to marry a king’s daughter—

Who ghosted us after the second miscarriage—

And worse.

* * *

Do you think it’s enough? Kay asked, one day. It feels like a small thing, for some of them.

Had we heard her, we might have answered: we have seen the broken. We do not think they can love again, and when the heartbreaker is done with them, we do not think they will be warmed by another’s love.

How can you ask? the heartbreaker said, her breath a bleak north wind. Have you never had a broken heart?

* * *

For an apprentice heartbreaker, there are many quests.

Kay grew antlers; galloped through the aurora and out the other side; made labyrinths of ice, hiding something unnamable at their centers; armed herself with a thousand snowflakes; pricked her fingers on the thorns of dead roses; called lies in a raven’s tongue—

And more.

After each quest, she returned to the heartbreaker’s house, and they sat together talking deep into the night. The heartbreaker had been alone a long time, and loneliness held no fear for her, but now she counted the days until Kay’s return. And—worse—she counted the dwindling number of remaining quests.

Kay—who had wandered for years, never finding a home—counted too:

How many smiles she might win from the heartbreaker.

How many touches from those chill fingers, on her hand, her wrist, her arm—

Is this the last quest? she asked, each time, afraid of the answer.

No, not yet, the heartbreaker said, smiling. Next, you must—

* * *

The day came, finally, when Kay understood how one might break a heart.

There’s one last thing you must do, the heartbreaker said, before you may wield that power. You must have—

She paused, and looked away, but Kay already knew:

A broken heart.

* * *

For the length of winter, Kay went into the city, seeking a broken heart, but never seemed to fall in love.

I can’t do it, she said to the heartbreaker, as they curled together on the patchwork couch. I have a heart of ice. You’ll have to keep doing it alone, and you shouldn’t have to carry that burden, you shouldn’t—

The heartbreaker silenced her with a kiss.

 (She knew, they both knew, they’d known all along: Kay had fallen in love long ago, in a snowstorm, over tinned ravioli.)

Come with me, the heartbreaker said, and took Kay up the stairs, to a room beneath the eaves, where it was warm, where there were no more quests, where two hearts of ice could come together, melting.

* * *

In the morning, the heartbreaker was gone.

* * *

There is a heartbreaker in the city where we live. And if you look, now, in the city where you live, you may find a heartbreaker of your own.

If you find her, if you ask (sliding scale, pay what you can), she will break a heart for you; she’ll break a hundred hearts for you.

We know the price she paid, now. Remember it, when you search her out; remember it, when you seek her services, for the one who discarded you on the steps of the abortion clinic—

Who catfished our widowed mothers—

Who hung his wives’ corpses from the coat-hook—

And worse.

Remember:

She gave her heart for you.

* * *

Ⓒ Catherine George

Comments

  1. Folakemi says:
    January 7, 2025 at 11:31 am
    Beautiful. Haunting,
  2. Shaun says:
    January 10, 2025 at 10:41 am
    I loved this, melancholy almost to the point of… well, something some apprentices learn
  3. Angelou says:
    January 15, 2025 at 1:18 pm
    This is such a wonderful short piece! I was looking for flash fiction inspiration for my creative writing class, thank you 🙂

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The Northerner’s Tale

by Jason P. Burnham

January 10, 2025

Urtif vaulted the snow-covered log and pressed himself hurriedly but soundlessly into a recess beneath the felled tree. He stifled his breath into the sleeve of his fur-lined tunic hoping desperately no condensation was visible from his laboring. 

That which chased him no longer had a name, at least not among those still living. His father had told him it had once been human, but Urtif knew no human could survive in this place of desperation.

Through the muffled quiet of snowfall, he could just discern the crunch of feet. But were they hooved or clad in large, black boots? The ancient scrolls always noted the black boots. Only tellers of tales noted the hooves, emphasizing that those who’d looked upon the hooves never’d succeeded in writing down what they’d seen…

Dread grew within Urtif. As the steps approached, doom reverberated across the icy forest and into his bones. He was at his end; he felt it. Why not look upon it? To know this creature at his last? Perhaps the ravens would whisper his tale for tellers to tell. And lo, before his most untimely death, hidden beneath a log, desperately hoping the creature didst ignore both him and the snowdeer he’d slain for his daughter, Elya, ill with winter’s wasting sickness, did Urtif look upon the creature’s feet to find that they were…

The footsteps stopped. Near, yet not upon him. Urtif dared turn and slide his finger gingerly along the freshest of snow beneath the log so he might look out.

The sky had darkened in the moments he’d been hiding. He couldn’t recall if this was a trait of the creature’s presence or if he’d merely lost count of the hours—the snowdeer hunt had been a long and arduous one.

Through the slot cleared by his fingers, a sliver of moon reflected blue off the snow. For a moment, he saw nothing as his eyes focused in the dim light.

Then, there were crystals of the creature’s breath, billowing warm into the night.

Urtif blinked the cold from his drying eyes. The creature, hooved he now saw, walked away from him. Hooved, dark brown fur. It moved away from him, much to Urtif’s relief, though only temporarily.

The two hooves approached his snowdeer.

Elya…

There were so few snowdeer remaining. And nothing else would temper Elya’s winter wasting sickness but the medicine woman’s antler tincture.

A sob caught in Urtif’s chest as the hooved beast moved closer to the snowdeer’s body. Then, his breath caught along with the sob. Instead of two hooves, a pair of large, black boots stood. Had the…hooves become boots?

The boots walked to the snowdeer carcass and knelt, the man inside them draped from head to foot in a garment the color of long-coagulated blood. Urtif recognized it—the pelt of a winterbear, a creature one was only capable of skinning if it had died of natural causes. Any other attempt would result in certain death.

When the man reached the snowdeer, Urtif cried out. The man froze. Urtif clapped his hands across his mouth. He couldn’t believe he’d given himself away. On the other hand…

“It’s for my daughter. She’s dying.” Urtif’s voice shook, and as the snow ate the echoes of his words, a shiver ran through him.

The man turned and stood, rising to a great height. Urtif had never seen a person so tall. Skin hardened as bark, he seemed more tree than human, though the great white beard certainly was not of the forest.

The man’s dark eyes pierced Urtif, but he said nothing.

Urtif tried his luck further, much to his conscious mind’s surprise. “I beg you—she’s my last child. The others’ve succumbed to winter’s waste. I cannot lose her and this snowdeer is my last—”

A great red hand stopped Urtif mid-sentence. The man looked to the heavens and after a moment, Urtif followed his gaze to the bare overstory and an overcast sky.

“I had a daughter too,” said the man in a voice more thunder than speech. “Before they poisoned the sky. Before I became this.”

Urtif flinched when the man moved suddenly, but he was only kneeling down over the snowdeer. He appeared to speak to it, then gently removed a point of antler. Holding the antler to the sky, he loosed a shout that shook snow from the trees. He lowered his hand, showed the antler to Urtif, and crushed it with his fist.

“Save your money for the medicine woman. This will serve.”

Urtif’s jaw dropped.

“Come now. Hold out your hands,” the man said gruffly.

Urtif watched powdered antler drop into his hands, freezing into crystals as it fell through the frigid air.

The man spoke again over the snowdeer, rubbing his hands along the pelt. Urtif stared in disbelief at the frozen antler crystals.

“Thank you,” Urtif said, hot tears forming and freezing as they wound down his face. “I-I’m sorry about the snowdeer,” he added quickly, sensing this was of great import.

There were two grunts. One from man, one from snowdeer as the two stood.

Dizzy, Urtif braced against a nearby tree.

“If you run out,” the man pointed at the reanimated snowdeer, “find Omitis. He will grow another for you.”

The snowdeer shook the snow from its antlers, and Urtif watched as it disappeared into the forest. When Urtif looked back to the man, he was gone.

Urtif studied the antler crystals to confirm their purity, then carefully placed them in his pouch. He hurried across the snow. Elya needed him.

Had he not required such haste, he might have noticed a trail of hoofprints that followed alongside him until he was home.

* * *

Ⓒ Jason P. Burnham

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Spoon, Fork, Knife

by Daniel Roop

January 17, 2025

Fantasy

The persimmon seeds, Grandfather always said, revealed the winter to come. Tear the ripe flesh, dig out the round seeds, split them in half, and you’ll see the icy translucent interior, and in the center of each, one of three white shapes. A spoon, a fork, or a knife. Spoons mean heavy snowfalls. Forks foretell a mild winter. Knives predict cold, cutting winds.

Every October, Grandfather would gather us around, when Mother and Liza were still with us, and use his pocketknife to crack the seeds on the weathered oak table in the center of our cabin. We counted each shape. I see now it never changed how we prepared. It was just something to tie us to the old ways, to keep us circling like seasons under his gravity. Until the year a fourth shape appeared.

That October I turned twelve, and Mother had been gone for two years, running off from our home on Molly Ridge with a traveling kitchenware salesman without even a moonlit peck on the cheek to tell me goodbye. Grandfather said he tried to stop the fella, but they outsmarted him. “Always expected better of your mother,” he said, as he whittled by the fire, shavings piling up around his cracked boots, the smell of cedar wafting with the smoke.

Liza had been gone since February. She’d been so excited just months before, at her last seed splitting, as spoons piled up on the table. “Snow, Kinzey! We’ll have so much snow!” And we did, and Liza got to play in it, once that winter, the last time in her thirteen years with us that she acted like a child.

Whenever the snow fell on our eighty acres on Molly Ridge, the sky hung like slate overhead, the world turned monochrome. We lived inside a daguerrotype. Tree trunks black against white snow, the boards of our cabin and that season’s firewood weathered gray amongst the sycamores. So when Liza stood up from making a snow angel during our last December together, the red stain on the snow between her legs was the only color in the world.

I ran to her, panicked, but she just laughed as she reddened the snow beneath her. “It’s fine, Kinzey. Mama told me—it’s just a regular thing. I’ll tell you about it soon. Don’t worry.”

I worried, of course, but I also trusted Liza. She went inside, she said, to “get a flannel pad,” and she’d be right back. A few moments after she’d closed the door, Grandfather opened it and peered out at the angel glistening crimson. He furrowed, nodded to himself, and closed the door.

Shortly, Liza came out but stopped at the porch. “Grandfather says I can’t come out. He said that can attract boars. He said to stay inside with him.” She smiled sadly. “You have fun for both of us.” I tried my best. I made snow angel after snow angel and, making sure no one watched from the windows, I scooped a spoonful of red snow from Liza’s angel and placed it at the center of each of mine.

Liza didn’t smile after that, or go outside. She stayed inside with Grandfather while he sent me outside to play. Then, one cold February morning, he sat alone by the fire as I woke to fry the bacon. He rocked and whittled and said, “Liza left us last night, too. Ran off with some boy from that Baptist group come through last week.” He shook his head. “Just us now.” Shavings fell at his feet.

That whole year felt colorless. I worked, I tried to play, I slept, I worked. That October, the fourth shape appeared. Grandfather and I stood over the table as he split the flesh. The count was easy. Twelve seeds, eleven white knives. The last seed was a bright red shape. It looked like a spoon, but broader, with a loop at the end. He stared for a moment, then swept the seeds into the fire. “Cutting weather,” he said, and went back to whittling.

Despite the lack of spoons, snow fell heavy that winter. Grandfather said, “Seeds ain’t always right.”

The world, without Mother and Liza, continued to be colorless, except for the boar. That December, I found tufts of bristly red hair in the rhododendrons near my window. One night I heard snuffling and looked outside. A scarlet boar stood in the moonlight. It looked right at me then trotted away. I didn’t tell Grandfather. He hated boars. “They make a awful mess—tear up everything you grow.”

On the sixth night, the boar didn’t trot away. It walked slowly to the persimmon tree, stopping every few feet to look back at me. It stopped and rooted, gently, at the base of the tree. It looked back at me, then was gone like shavings in fire. The snow beneath the tree shone bright red. I understood. I got out of bed.

Grandfather, who had begun to mention as he whittled that I’d be a woman soon, lay snoring on his side. I picked up his knife and slid it between his ribs from the back, slicing towards the center. “Cutting weather,” I told him. Color flooded the world.

I took the iron tongs and dropped a log from the fire onto his bed. I pulled on my coat and boots and stopped at the root cellar to get the fourth shape. The shovel. I walked to the persimmon tree. The snow beneath me reddened with each step, and it was my own. I began to dig, already knowing what, already knowing who, I would find. They had been buried separately, but I found them with their hands intertwined.

I laid above their grave and made a snow angel. I scooped a handful of the snow from my center in with them, said my goodbyes, and covered them back up. I walked off Molly Ridge, red steps shining behind me in the orange flames.

* * *

Ⓒ Daniel Roop

Comments

  1. Anupam Rajak says:
    January 17, 2025 at 12:27 pm
    Never expected this ending.

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The Hag of Beinn Nibheis

by M. R. Robinson

January 21, 2025

In the Dead Month, Brigid goes to the mountain to speak with the hag. She does not know what else to do.

Beinn Nibheis towers black and rimeslick over the Narrows, taller than any peak of Nature’s make, but Brigid’s fear of the climb is a small thing next to her fear of this unyielding winter. It is the coldest in her memory, and her memory is long indeed: she has spent seventy winters in the mountain’s shadow. If the hag does not relent—if she does not leash this storm—Brigid knows she will not live to springtime.

The foot of the mountain is not so far, but Brigid moves slowly in the cold. Snowdrifts snatch at her legs; frost blisters the wolfskin on her shoulders. Her hands begin to tremble around her walking stick well before she reaches the path. A small mercy: she is alone. There is no one left in the village to laugh at a foolish old woman stumbling through the snow.

No, no. There is no one left at all.

* * *

As she climbs, Brigid practices the words she means to speak to the hag. Anything to keep her thoughts steady even when her feet slip upon the scree beneath the snow. Oh, fair Beira, Brigid will say, curtseying as low as her body will allow, will you not make peace with the Summer King? We are starving in the valley. We are dying—

“We are dying,” Brigid cries, unable to hold her tongue. “Have pity! Have pity!”

But she cannot outshout the storm, and the wind whisks her words away, smothering the sound in a snowbank like some sickly winter-born babe.

* * *

Brigid walks through the night. Sometimes she must retrace her steps to find a safe path through the ice and snow, but she dares not stop longer than a breath. The dark makes no difference—it has been months since the hag’s cloud-curtain parted—and no matter how desperately she longs to rest, she knows well that sleep means death.

Once, half-dreaming even on her feet, Brigid thinks she sees a woman on the path.

“This is a sorry sight,” the woman says. “You will not live to see the summit.”

“I am surely close—”

“Not so close.”

“I mean to see the summit,” Brigid says, though her voice comes out slurred, words sticking to frozen lips like wet flesh to cold iron. “I mean to see another springtime.”

Brigid cannot see the woman’s face beneath a frost-laced veil, and if the woman speaks again, well—Brigid hears nothing but the wind.

* * *

When Brigid stands atop Beinn Nibheis at last, she cannot find her practiced words; she cannot curtsey. She can only stare.

The hag peels back her veil. She looks just like the stories: blue skin, black lips, one glinting white eye and a hollow for the other, a creel of stones upon her back. Her face is as wrinkled as Brigid’s own; the fingers wrapped around her staff are gnarled, mottled, cold-swollen.

“I am Brigid of the Narrows,” she manages. “I have come to treat with you.”

“I used to treat with gods and kings,” she says in a voice like rolling thunder. “These mountains were my stepstones, and when my winter lingered overlong, your kind sent offerings of handsome boys and blushing girls. Why should I treat with you?”

“I used to dance the maypole,” Brigid says too sharply. “Now your back is as bent as mine, and there are no handsome boys and blushing girls left unburied in the valley. There is only me—an old woman in search of a little warmth. You must treat with me.”

The hag’s thin lips twitch. “I have no warmth to offer,” she says, “but you are welcome here, Brigid of the Narrows. Come. Rest by my hearth tonight. Tomorrow we shall speak of springtime.”

* * *

No fire crackles in the hag’s hearth, but it matters not: no fire could warm Brigid’s blackened fingertips.

“Frostbite,” the hag says, making the word sound like a lover’s name. She touches Brigid’s arm, leaving a trail of hoarfrost in her wake. “You will lose the hand. Perhaps the arm.”

“Take the arm,” Brigid says. “Call it my offering. In return, end this winter.”

The hag bares a mouthful of rust-red teeth. “And if I do? What will you do then?”

“I will go home—”

“Who waits for you?” the hag asks.

Brigid stares at her ruined hand: black fingers, red-raw knuckles, thin bruised skin. She cannot answer. The hag’s blue fingers curl around her wrist.

When the hag has taken Brigid’s right hand and three fingers from her left, they sit together and watch the sky swell with stars. The hag’s spellwork has turned the stump of Brigid’s wrist as blue as her own. But with the frost of the hag’s touch like lace upon her skin, Brigid does not mind the cold; she does not mind the pain.

“No one waits for me,” Brigid says softly. “I had a son once, long ago. I do not now.”

“I had many sons,” the hag says. “They are lost to me.”

“It is lonely in the valley,” Brigid says.

“It is lonely on the mountain too.”

Brigid takes a breath, filling her lungs with air so cold it burns like fire, and lets her gaze slide across distant, white-frothed peaks. She thinks of the dead beneath the snow; she thinks of her cold hearth and her empty bed. She thinks of the stories of the wicked woman on the mountaintop.

“Perhaps I might wait out the winter here,” she says at last. “If my company would not trouble you overmuch.”

“You will be no trouble to me, Brigid of Beinn Nibheis,” the hag says. And when she smiles, her smile is sure as snowmelt, sweet as spring.

* * *

Ⓒ M. R. Robinson

Comments

  1. Matt Hollingsworth says:
    January 30, 2025 at 2:41 pm
    Lovely writing. Engaging.
  2. Fabian Elfeld says:
    February 1, 2025 at 2:10 pm
    Lovely story, short, to the point, well crafted, I loved every word!
    Thank you.
  3. Chris Carrel says:
    February 2, 2025 at 7:20 pm
    Lovely story. I enjoyed the surprising turn it takes as she reaches the peak and the way the story addresses how age and loss can change your perspective and goals

Leave a Reply

Moist Breath of a Cold Stranger

by KT Wagner

January 24, 2025

Neve’s breath billows white. Two miles back, the heater in the borrowed pickup truck rattled and died. She thrums her fingers against the steering wheel. It’s the shortest day of the year, and the sun won’t rise for another three hours. The narrow country road is claustrophobic at five in the morning.

The only working headlight illuminates a fog of swirling ice crystals. A week earlier, while chasing a story lead, she drove this route to a remote ice fishing camp and ended up accepting a cook’s assistant job instead. She needs the money.

The ditches on either side of the asphalt loom large in her memory. Innocuous in daylight, but invisible pitfalls in the dark.

Neve was born with a hardy constitution her adoptive mother claims. A strong, north country girl. Not strong, weird, the neighbours whisper. She’s seldom bothered by cold, but the truck windows are fogging up. Annoying.

Two years past, she escaped to the south but didn’t fit in there either. The heat made her lethargic, but at least people didn’t make warding signs when they thought she wasn’t looking.

Glancing at the dashboard clock, she swears. Damn. Late for her first kitchen shift. No lights ahead or in the rear-view mirror. The rest of the staff will already be there. She’ll be lucky to keep the job. How else will she finance the production of her videos debunking urban legends and myths?

Research will be tough this winter given few in the valley town will talk to her. After all, it was the irrational nature of the locals that drove her to leave. Frost giants descending from the hills to eat babies and replace them with their own? What nonsense. She laid their ignorance bare to the world—or at least her few dozen subscribers. Subpar parenting and a high rate of birth defects contributed to above average infant mortality. The town never forgave her.

Thump. The truck veers, floats, weightless. Heart pounding, she steers toward the center while gently pumping the brakes. Did she hit an animal?

The wheels continue to skid. Her stomach curdles and drops. No, no, no. A part of her brain remains calm, detached. Once set in motion, some things are inevitable.

The truck grumbles to a stop. The lone headlight shines into scrubby bush on the far side of the ditch. She rests her head on the steering wheel until her breathing slows, then reaches to release her seatbelt.

At the corner of her vision, movement. Neve startles, then barks a laugh. She doesn’t spook. Ever. Sceptic is her middle name.

She refuses to allow death to trap her in this northern armpit. Hell would be an eternity buried in the frozen dirt of this backwater. Rejection defined her life here—from the unknown mother who abandoned newborn Neve at the freight entrance to the supermarket in December, to the kids at school who relentlessly bullied her for speaking the truth, to her adoptive family where she never really fit in.

It was a mistake to return. Her adoptive mother lured her home with an offer of free room and board, but also this loathsome place has pulled at Neve for months.

Likely, she simply needs to exorcise childhood demons. The locals have warned about the same monsters and legends her entire life. The cold has frozen their common sense. She needs to set things right. Open their eyes to the truth. Banish the superstitions.

Neve yanks the sleeves of her cardigan over her hands. She can almost hear her mother’s lecturing voice, “Not feeling the cold doesn’t mean you’re impervious to it.” With her first cheque, Neve should purchase a winter coat instead of a new microphone. Or at least borrow a jacket from her mother.

She reaches for her backpack and pulls out her phone. No cell service. So much for calling a tow truck. Hopefully, someone will drive by soon.

In the meantime, she’ll record a message for her followers about the perils she’s currently exposed to. There’s no real danger, but it will be a dramatic intro for her next reel. She searches for the perfect phrase to begin the narrative. In a land where people believe in frost giants, anything can happen…

Movement again. This time in the corner of her other eye. Most likely eye strain.

A humid breath whispers along the back of her neck. Needles of hoarfrost paint feathers on the driver side window, opaquing the glass. She rubs her eyes and is struck by the odd blue-grey pallor of her hands. A trick of the predawn light.

Neve slaps the door locks and hugs herself. Frost nips her nose. Move. Return to us. Outside the wind picks up, humming, moaning, and buffeting the truck. The vehicle shudders, and slips. Squeezing her eyes shut, she murmurs an entreaty to an entity she’s never believed in. Until now.

Thump. Thump. Thump. The truck’s in motion. It sways and shakes. She grabs her seatbelt with one hand and shields her head with her other arm. Boom.

Neve trembles uncontrollably. The truck’s still again. Cold silence cocoons her, pressing in. The air is moist.

Finally, she relaxes and opens her eyes. Light sparkles through the frosted windshield. Cracking the side window, she squints into the gap. The cracking of dawn paints the scrub landscape in shades of indigo and silver. The air’s crisp. Frosty.

Neve climbs out of the truck. Unfolds her limbs. The truck’s tires are flat. Her boots are too small. Constrictive. She steps out of them, kicks them away, curls her toes into the snow. Her breath no longer creates clouds. She barely glances in the direction of the ice fishing camp. Humans are beneath her notice now. Perhaps they always were.

Turning toward the hills she starts walking. Her cell phone lies, abandoned, on the front seat of the truck, the record button blinking.

* * *

Ⓒ KT Wagner

Comments

  1. Ted Anton says:
    January 24, 2025 at 12:11 pm
    Wonderful story
  2. Firsttime Reader says:
    January 25, 2025 at 9:34 pm
    Great title. Delivery on its promise falls way short.
  3. Matt Hollingsworth says:
    January 30, 2025 at 2:35 pm
    Fun story! Write on.

Leave a Reply

The Ice Cutter’s Daughter and Her Looking Glass

by Nadia Born

January 31, 2025

The ice cutter’s daughter dreams that her world is melting. She knows the theory of thawing from common things: how candle wax weeps or sugar hisses in a skillet. But she’s not prepared for the severity of the sun.

She can’t hide her glee. After all, what young woman doesn’t secretly delight in the destruction of everything she knows?

In the dream, she’s carrying a brick of ice to her father’s sleigh when the groaning starts. The frozen lake cracks into lacework beneath her. Then the trees begin to sweat, puddles silvering over the walking path. In a blink, the ice in the sleigh vanishes.

Soon others come out of their houses, undoing buttons, zippers, and clasps. The shore becomes riddled with clothes as they slip into the lake. The daughter is certain: their bodies are more perfect than anything ever carved from ice.

* * *

The ice cutter’s daughter is convinced this place is real. A summerland where all things are melted and wild. Her father has heard tales of this kingdom, but it’s far off – a lifetime away.

When she refuses to cut ice any longer, her father weeps knowing she will leave for good. At least where I’m going, she says, your tears won’t freeze into pearls.

He doesn’t know what parting gift to offer her. Only one thing occurs to him: his name. Winter herself christened me, he tells her. Don’t forget it.

When the ice cutter’s daughter begins her journey across the cold continent, it’s her father’s name on her lips. She curses with it, prays with it. She says it so often that her tongue feels like a tuning fork, vibrating with its syllables.

She walks for a long time without footprints. Snow and wind are lovers in this country, erasing all evidence of her trek. She gets blisters, runs out of bread, loses her way. After a time, she only whispers her father’s name. She’s so focused on it that she doesn’t notice when she starts to sweat. Soon after, she unbuttons her coat.

The cold of her homeland has dissipated. At last, she’s arrived. 

* * *

In this new country, there’s no such thing as ice. The summerfolk scoff at her former trade: ice cutter? She might as well say sunlight carver.

The daughter has yearned so long for this place that, somehow, her desire has gone stale. She wonders if dreams have an expiration date—if hers is now sour.

Little by little, she sheds her skin of winter. She remembers her dream. At the marketplace, she revels in the pinwheel parasols, the bare shoulders, the stink of sweat and salt. She peels her first tangerine, the juice sliding down the length of her vein. 

The ice cutter’s daughter learns to love this sun-kissed land. Heat softens her bones, rearranges them, shapes them into another woman. She begins to take lovers, all species of sun-men. There’s still something within her made of ice, and she wants them to melt it. None of them succeed.

At times she misses the frost. She squints at the ocean, imagining it a quilt of ice. She realizes she hasn’t said her father’s name in a long time. She writes him a letter, but when the mailman asks for the address, for directions to her old world, she discovers she no longer knows the way.

* * *

The ice cutter’s daughter is desperate for some souvenir of her father. She goes to the local alchemist to recreate ice. She’s heard of his great collection of colored glass and hopes it’s a cousin to cold things.

It’s not, the alchemist says. He’s surrounded by a dozen silver bottles. She wonders what’s in them – rumor has it that his powers come from names. He fiddles with the labels. I don’t know the magic of ice, he says. Only silver and gold. 

The daughter turns to leave, but the alchemist stops her. Wait, he says. He unhooks a small plate of clear glass. Free of charge. She looks through it. In a certain light, it could be ice. It’s just missing that luster, that ancient cold. 

I could add bottled silver, he says. It would look more like your ice. He unstoppers it, waits for her word.

She snatches it from him. The price is steep, he warns. 

Anything, she says. She pours his silver over the glass. The liquid slips over the surface, smooth as a drum. She tilts it in wonder. She’s not interested in her reflection – only the polished surface, the tiny lake in her palm.

The ice cutter’s daughter studies the mirror, imagining her father’s sleigh running across it.

The price? she says.

Paid in full.

She’s distracted by the mirror, doesn’t yet understand how she’s purchased it. In truth, she’s keen to shatter it. To see the puzzle of ice as it once looked in her dream.

At that moment, she discovers she can’t remember her father’s name. She feels it close, just beyond her grasp, stolen from her tongue. The alchemist’s price, she curses. She turns to him, but he’s already vanished with her father’s name in one of his bottles. 

* * *

The ice cutter’s daughter knows now that the world is a mirror. She keeps the looking glass, even though it reminds her of the alchemist’s theft. Sometimes she lets summerfolk see their reflections for a penny a piece. She never gazes at her own.

Instead, she traces her finger over the looking glass. Its smooth sheen takes her there, to the frozen lake. She pictures herself crouched over the snow-crusted surface, waiting for her father to come down the path. It won’t be long now, she thinks. She scrubs her mitten against the ice, making a window. She squints into the guts of the lake. There, below all things, she almost remembers her father’s name. 

For a moment, the looking glass turns cold to the touch.

* * *

Ⓒ Nadia Born

Comments

  1. Anupam Rajak says:
    January 31, 2025 at 6:30 pm
    I have to learn writing short stories from you. ????????
  2. Robert Feld says:
    February 1, 2025 at 9:38 am
    I love this.

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