Witches of Winter

 

The world is a frozen picture of white as people’s hearts are stolen with the sun.

The desperation to seek warmth is like a disease; pallid faces and blue lips as icy

fingers grip your ankles and beg to be taken to a better place. A place like home,

perhaps. A nice cottage in the nook of the white valley, where a warm stew brews

in a pot that bubbles over the stove, and a Persian rug, so soft and mesmerising,

cushions you underfoot as you trace the patterns and slurp your soup. Soon the

people are bulging at the bellies and bundled with scarves and coats, bidding their

thanks after a satisfying meal.

I scribble words into my notebook, observing the peculiar behaviours of these frozen

people from the top of the hill, their blood so cold but their hearts warm with generosity. Soon it will all be over, and I can return to my sunburnt land, before setting off to see another winter, different to the last.

I flip through the thick papers of my notebook, blurred images of long gone winters playing like an old movie. So many years and so many winters, all held within the smooth leather book I carry with me in my hands; a history of the cold. It makes me wonder if it is all worth it, keeping all these records close to my heart; like I keep the chain with a pendant of half a snowflake - containing my mother’s soul - under my collar. And the camera that hangs around my neck, always ready to capture a moment forever.

I think back to that night, so long ago, when I watched my mother's spirit disappear into the blizzard of stars from my bedroom window, the tears dissolving on my lashes. That was the same night I left the sunburnt land with an empty book, a dribbling fountain pen and a black camera, the only companions of my journey. I let the hope in my heart and the light in my eyes guide me forward, following the endless white to this day.

Ribbons of smoke curl from the chimneys and disappear into the colourless sky as I slide off the log and crouch by the lake, covered in a thin layer of ice, so when I tap the surface with my pen it shatters into a million tiny ice floes, revealing a fossilized fish in a block of ice that stares back at me with bloated eyes. I focus my camera on the shimmering scales of the frozen creature and press the button that closes the shutter like an eyelid, saving another memory.

My boots crunch on the fresh snow as I weave through the trees, silent as death and sparkling with ice crystals dangling from their fingers like diamond claws. I lift the camera lense to my eye and snap the glittering forest, slipping the glossy photo through the pages of my notebook.

I wander until the sky darkens, smells of supper wafting over me from the valley below. Flakes of powdery snow land on my hair, stinging my cheeks. It feels like magic, like tiny little stars falling from the heavens, and I tip my head back to watch them fall relentlessly from the darkness, specks of white melting on my tongue.

Bleak gusts of shivery air swell up my lungs as I hear the soft sound of a flute from the edge of the forest, hidden amongst the trees. There’s a flicker of amber light in the shadows, so I follow the enchanting melody of a harp, plucking the silence and harmonising with the flute. The steady rhythm of a drum throbs with my heartbeat and it takes me to a cave that erupts with light and warmth, where shadows dance with wild spirits and boisterous laughter echoes into the night. But as I approach the cave, I notice the people twirling about are wearing thin white cotton dresses that whip the air and hug their slender figures, their feet scuffing the dirt. A ghostly mist hangs about their heels, as if they are floating on clouds.

Their features are chiselled to perfection like ice sculptures with a cruel beauty; eyes as deep as the sky and cold as the dew-sprinkled dawn, hidden behind curtains of hair as black as ebony, laced with snowdrops and sizzling sparks. Who were these fire dancers that float on clouds?

Before I can switch on my camera, one of the women drags me in with a hand so smooth and cold it sends a bolt of icicles through my bones, her breath a chilling breeze as she whispers, ‘Come.’

Something about her is familiar, like a warm embrace, or a place like home. I hold her gaze and see myself in her features, like a mirror of the future, and as the snowflake on my collarbone crusts over with ice particles, a wave of recognition drowns me.

‘Mother?’ I barely utter the word, like a foggy exhalation on a rain streaked glass. I try the word again, feeling it in my mouth, tasting the candy I had been forbidden to have all my life.

Mother nods and reaches out her lean, taut limbs to wrap me up, and though I expect her to be cold, I am surprised to find her tingling with heat, cloaking me with her love.

‘I thought you were dead,’ I say, the words trembling on my lips.

Her voice is as sweet as honey as she replies, ‘No, my dear. Never.’

‘Then what -’ but she silences my question with a finger to her lips as she drags me into the electrifying atmosphere of the dancers, so I find myself joining them, bubbling with laughter and sweet melodies. They chant a rhyme that I soon memorize, and with each line, my heavy clothes transform into a billowy cotton dress that licks the fire as I move, and my feet fly on a pale mist of ice clouds. I become one with the flute, breathing the notes that sweep the air, and throw my arms to the sky as the harp strums my frozen heart that slowly defrosts with every word.

“The silver of winter is smoky with rain

The witches have cast a spell once again

Join the witches that dance in the fire

Join us if you dare to retire

To an eternal spirit that roams the night

Spreading frost and piles of white…”

Mother shoots me a smile that strikes me like a bullet, and when I look down I find my snowflake pendant glowing, just like the one around Mother’s neck. I lead her away from the dancers and into the night, bursting with questions. The stars reflect in Mother’s eyes as I ask, ‘Why did you leave me?’

Mother’s smile plummets into sadness as she takes my hands and replies, ‘The witches called me.’

‘You mean, you’re one of them?’ I gesture to the cave, struggling to understand. Mother nods. ‘Why didn’t you take me with you?’

‘I did,’ Mother murmurs, pointing a long bony finger at my pendant. ‘You followed me wherever I went.’

‘The notebook,’ I mutter with realisation. ‘So all those winters – ’

‘We witches of winter make that happen,’ Mother tells me. ‘And your task was to capture it all in your innocent poetry and soulful photography.’

‘You watch over me?’ I ask.

‘Of course. Like how you watch the snowflakes fall and the sky darken and the lakes freeze over, all the workings of the witches,’ Mother explains. ‘You have a purpose, and I have mine.’

‘A purpose?’ I repeat. All my life I was so sure it was a mindless way to pass the time, until now. ‘I have a purpose?’

‘Everyone does, and I suppose you have just realised yours,’ Mother says. She leaves those words hanging in the still air before adding, ‘Unless you want to join me.’

‘Join you?’ I echo, contemplating the idea of spreading frost and piles of white.

But Mother just takes my half of the snowflake with nimble fingers and joins it with hers, thus forming a whole snowflake. A smile shivers through her features as the snowflake pendants glows an icy blue before fading away.

‘It’s your destiny,’ her eyes seem to tell me, so I let myself be swallowed by the flames, twirling in the firelight with the witches of winter as an eternal spirit, never returning to the sunburnt land, or the silence of a heartless winter.

My notebook sits in the corner of the cave, abandoned like the life I once had, but I know it can’t go to waste. I pick it up and ask, ‘What will become of this?’

Mother takes it from my hands and beckons me to follow her out, so I do, and I watch her flip through the pages so fast a wind rustles her face, and the pictures of winter turn to snow that fills the sky and covers the land once again. I catch the picture of the frozen fish on my palm before it dissolves into white and melts into my hand.

‘You made snow,’ I say. Mother grins.

‘That’s the magic of the witches,’ she says. ‘Now your pictures will return to the world like a gift.’

‘What about my camera?’ I ask, pointing to it around my neck.

‘We will give it to the next girl to capture winter,’ Mother tells me.

‘The next girl? Are there more like me?’

‘There are many of us, all around the world,’ Mother says.

‘I hope she will know what to do,’ I say, holding the camera for the last time.

‘Of course she will know,’ Mother says. ‘It’s her destiny.’

A smile tugs at my mouth and my heart; a flame of freedom igniting in my soul and the numbness evaporating from my veins as I unravel the meaning of my life. I was an observer before; a witness of the world. But I have a purpose now, so I follow the witches on a mist of white and a path of stars onto the next valley of victims, pursuing my destiny.