She doesn’t speak except on snowy nights in spring, and the mornings after.
“Mama, mama…” she whispers to the dark window, perhaps mistaking the reflection of her own aged face for the woman she inherited it from. Her mother was decades younger than she is now, but back then, she was only a child. Or maybe, on these snowy nights, she forgets the time that’s passed, and calls out to her mother hoping that she might step out of the darkness and come back to her.
No one closes the curtains or offers her any comfort, because no one understands her. I don’t close the curtains because I want to pretend that I can’t. But I can’t pretend anymore.
It’s a family mystery why she doesn’t speak, or what became of her mother, or her baby brother, or why she wasn’t with them, or how she came to be alone in grandfather’s barn drenched in blood, yet completely unharmed. But she knows, and so do I.
On snowy nights in spring, her mind is in the mountain forest again.
The snow is deep enough to swallow her whole, so mama carries her and her baby brother, each in one arm. It’s cold, but there’s a roaring heat behind them, from their burning home. Their entire village is in flames. She buries her face in her mother’s hair to hide from the smoke and frigid air, but there’s nothing that can be done about the piercing screams.
When the flames are far behind them, her brother begins to cry. Mama sings to him in a cheerful, but hushed, voice. A tear drops from her mother’s chin onto her neck, and she realizes mama is crying too. She feels a burning in her eyes, sour in her jaw, and tightness in her throat, but holds in her tears.
Each step her mother takes carries them further from one danger into another.
The night is colder, and, deeper into the mountain forest, the snow is above her mother’s knees. Her mother’s breath is labored, and each step is even slower than the last. But she can’t afford to rest. There’s so much further to go to reach warmth and safety, and the soldiers, stronger and unburdened, might have come after them.
Another warm tear drops on her neck as her mother presses forward.
Freezing, she clings onto her mother as tightly as possible. Mama struggles against the snow, now almost up to her hips, and she wheezes with each breath. Aside from her mother’s breathing, the forest is deathly silent, that is, until her brother bursts into a fit of screams and tears. Mama tries to calm him, shushing and singing, but he cries even louder. Mama says he’s hungry, and needs to put her down so she can feed him. Her mother places her in the path she made, where the snow isn’t as deep.
Mama seems relieved to set her down.
She watches mama feeding her brother, rocking side to side, humming sweetly as he drinks, as if they were home and everything was alright, as if papa wasn’t shot dead in the doorway of a house that is by now a pile of ash. Mama’s humming soothes her so, that for a moment she thinks this is all just a dream.
The cold wet soaking through her clothes reminds her it’s a waking nightmare.
Once her brother is done with his meal, mama bundles him up again, then bends down to her and takes her face in her icy hand. She stares deep into her eyes, as another tear drops, this time onto her brother. “Mama?” She asks, but her mother says nothing. Instead she kisses her forehead, looks at her once more, then stands without picking her up. “Mama?” She asks again with her arms outstretched, but her mother ignores her, turning and trudging on into the snow. “Mama!” She cries out, and tries to follow after, but she can’t, as the snow is far too deep for her even on the path. “Mama! Mama!” She cries again, but mama doesn’t come back.
Her mother hums to her baby brother, but it doesn’t bring her any comfort.
“Mama, mama…” she cries over and over, even when she can’t see her mother, or hear her humming, anymore. Alone in the mountain forest, on a snowy night in spring, she calls to her mother, not knowing what else to do. Her skin burns, her eyes are frozen shut, and the cold is seeping into her bones. Then into her soul, until all of her is ice.
And then, she isn’t cold anymore. She is warm, as if the snow surrounding her was blankets and feather pillows, which she, exhausted from crying, lays down to sleep in.
A strange voice awakens her. Is it a soldier that’s caught up?
She opens her eyes, no longer frozen, and sees that the thing looming over her is not a soldier, or a man, nor any earthly beast, though it reminds her of a stag. It also reminds her of a stone cathedral, immense and imposing, with glowing windows and pointed spires. Emanating from it is a heat that melts her snowy bed, and a scent like fresh cut lilacs and rotten meat.
It speaks to her, in strange words that she’s never heard, and yet, she understands. It tells her it’s a friend, and offers to carry her home. She tells it, in those same strange words, that her home was destroyed. It asks if there’s another place for her to go. She tells it her mother was taking her to her uncle’s farm in the valley on the other side of the mountain.
Agreeing to take her there, the thing reaches down, with a hand akin to a gnarled tree, plucks her from the ground, and places her atop its behemoth head. She grabs onto one of its countless antlers as it strides through the forest with ease. The blur of trees is nauseating, so she watches the ground ahead. Below them appears a fresh path through the snow, and she thinks mama isn’t far ahead.
She asks the thing if it would carry mama, too. It says it will.
Soon after, they’ve caught up to mama, who doesn’t notice their presence until she’s almost underneath the thing’s torso. Warmth or stench, something alerts her mother, and the moment she sees the thing towering over her, she screams even louder than when the soldiers marched through their front door.
To calm her mother, she tries to explain that it’s a friend, and that it’s here to help, but her words come out strange. They buzz like a fly caught in a hand. Mama doesn’t understand, and tries to run, but the thing’s willow hand snatches her up.
Her baby brother tumbles from mama’s arms and disappears in the snow. He screams too, but his voice is muffled.
Holding mama up to its face, near the treetops, it asks her, in deep, vibrating words that mama can’t understand, “How could you leave your own daughter to die alone in the snow?”
Mama responds with screams and wails. She struggles to break free, but the thing’s twisted fingers are unmovable. It raises her up higher, above the tips of its antlers.
Looking up to her mother dangling above, she sees that mama’s face is contorted into an expression of absolute terror. A single tear drops from her mother onto her forehead.
Like a butcherbird does to its prey, the thing skewers mama with its crown of antlers. Hot blood rains down on her, soaking into her hair and clothes, warming her skin. She tries to scream, to call to her mother, but her voice is like a beehive.
That moment on, everything’s black, until the barn door creaks open, dousing her in morning light and revealing her bewildered uncle.
She’s lived at her uncle’s farm ever since. In all those years, nearly a century, she hasn’t spoken, except for on snowy nights in spring, and the mornings after, when she tells me her story, not in words, but in a buzzing tune that everyone, save me, mistakes for humming.
This farm has always been my home, because her uncle was my own grandfather. I never met him. He passed away before I was born, leaving his niece in his children’s care, which is why, when my mother married a local man, he came to live on our farm.
This farm is my home, and I intend to stay, even when there’s no one remaining to care for.
Sun shines bright in this valley, despite the looming mountains and dark forests that surround it. Once spring takes hold, the mountain snow melts into dazzling streams that nourish the valley’s earth. There are songbirds and carpets of wildflowers. Butterflies dance in the air, rabbits hop in the fields, and the crops are always bountiful.
There is life here, but there is also death.
It lurks in the shadow of the mountain, and in my cousin’s memory. I’ve tried to ignore it, and ignore her. I understand her, somehow, and I don’t want to know the reason, but I can’t keep on pretending like I don’t, because this valley is my home and I want to stay, but something is encroaching, creeping out of the darkness and into the light.
I can hear it, calling out for me, in those same strange buzzing words my cousin speaks, from somewhere deep in the mountain forest.