Snow Globe

Celia shuffled through the thick snow and stepped carefully over shivering periwinkle buds to follow the fireflies one by one. She had only ever seen them in the summer, so their surprise appearance among the winter stars had quickly rushed her out into the night. It was the time of year when the cold was a finger dragging down the back of your neck; unexpected when it hit—and it hit it did—strange and sharp, a pointed pain. Winter’s nail dug especially deep this season, but the prospect of slugging through it for months had bored her, not concerned. And she felt that the world, as the snow days lazed by, was also stuck, bored by its silent weather. So it found a way to coax out the fireflies, to bring something exciting, just for the two of them: Celia, and the night. 

Her mason jar was previously home to handmade snicker-doodles, so whenever she opened it to scoop in another firefly, a waft of cinnamon followed. It was a warm, familiar smell that kept her grounded, to remind her not to stray too far from where she came. 

But she still shouldered past some sleeping roses to go deeper in, to follow more fireflies. So many were out, endlessly scattered through the snow-eclipsed wood. Even as she went deeper and deeper to catch them, she could hear the nearby river, which assured her, as it meant that home was still along the way back. 

Celia ducked past the dolorous vines of a willow to find some fireflies that had snuck into its privacy. While there, she caught three. When she reemerged, the vines slit frost across her cheeks, falling snowflakes rushing to melt across her nose. Just up ahead, she saw a cluster of fireflies crowd around each other, slowly moving forward as one. She followed, amused, as she hadn’t seen so many fireflies snuggled up together before. 

Soon they hovered, still in the dark, that school of blinking diamonds, and she crept, paused, then swept out her jar in another eager, cinnamon-scented arc. She lunged forward with her momentum, and as she captured a handful of fireflies, the loose dirt hanging over the river gave out underneath, and she plunged into the water. 

Stockings and dress and flesh swallowed by a paroxysm of cold as the water ate at her vision and suffocated her lungs. Hands scrambled along the sand bed only to be cut by discarded and broken beer bottles; her warm blood quickly assimilated into the frigidity. She couldn’t find purchase anywhere and was forced to break the surface on her own, trying to regain her instincts, but it was impossible under the dizzying weight of it all. Gasping, shocked by the annihilation of her nerves, hoarfrost-lips formed dumbly around bad whimpers. 

She knew how to swim. She did not know how to put her head back on her shoulders. She did not know how to see in the dark, and with the sand and water in her eyes. She did not remember her extremities and how to barter for their control. But eventually, after a grueling under-and-above, above-and-under arrhythmia against the stream, Celia managed, barely, to paddle to the edge. But the nearest piece of dry land she found was the same hanging bank that had crumbled under foot, and here it sneered at her again, loosening under her grip no matter the angle she tried to purchase. She had to go along it instead, shivering like hell, until she could find the naked roots of another willow and hold on tight.

Then, as she hung there, pained and freezing, feeling wholly unhinged from her very bones, the snow suddenly stopped, and the moonlight died. She looked up, and there was a red-haired woman. 

Celia whispered for help. The woman smiled and bent over, grabbing the collar of Celia’s coat and pulling her up with easy strength. 

“Far too late for a swim,” said the woman. 

“I-I wasn’t swi-imming,” stuttered Celia. 

The woman laughed and patted Celia’s wet hair before using the fur-trim of her white cloak to wipe the slush from her face. Then she turned, and with her was a red wagon, a child’s toy, piled with glass baubles. She picked one up, and Celia, even through the fuzziness of the dark and her cold, realized that they were not just baubles but snow globes. 

Looking closer, she saw that they were drained of water—or perhaps never filled in the first place—so they were dry domes encasing meticulous figures of soldiers and cats and bent-necked angels. The woman unscrewed the base of her snow globe—its figure was that of a man in a tan coat, huddled under an unlit street lamp—and made a scooping motion with the globe. Then she showed the base and globe to Celia, before screwing it back on. Celia saw that the woman had caught a firefly. While it was hard to make out the bug’s shape, its undulating glow was unmistakable. It hovered around the figurine’s head before going to the streetlamp, providing it with the light it was built to house. The woman replaced the snow globe in the wagon and picked up another, holding it out to Celia.

“Would you like to try?”

Celia’s mason jar, clotted with fireflies, had been lost in the river. Hopefully, it shattered on a rock, freeing the poor things. Otherwise, they would be long trapped to suffocate or starve. She felt guilty. She always freed fireflies when she was done catching them for a night. 

But there was nothing to be done about that jar now, and Celia, unexpectedly enamored by the snow globes, reached out to gingerly accept it. The cuts on her hands had already stopped bleeding, wiped clean by the sterility of ice-water, by the pure snow. She couldn’t even feel the cuts, and it did not hurt to hold the snow globe.

This one had a young girl stretched out across a picnic blanket amongst minuscule macaroons and cucumber sandwiches. This one didn’t have a firefly yet. Celia recalled how the woman performed earlier and gripped the globe to unscrew it like a light bulb. It popped out easier than expected, and the glass was rime-fogged but sturdy in her grip. 

Celia pinpointed the nearest firefly and, too entranced to still care for anything else, swooped in with practiced entrapment. The firefly dazed about in the bauble, giving Celia time to screw it back closed. Then she stuck her face close to the globe so as to watch the firefly dance around. And through the crystal-clear glass, she could see the girl’s face limned so delicately, so inconsistently by the pale moonlight that it appeared her face was moving. She might have been smiling.

The woman plucked the snow globe from Celia’s possession before she could truly lose herself in it. Celia started, but calmed as a new snow globe was replaced in her palms.

“Come, now,” said the woman. She nudged a rock out from under one of the wagon’s wheels, gyrated the axle of the handle, and then began to move on from the river. 

Celia followed. 

As they traveled, they would stop and catch numerous more fireflies, so by the time they crossed the forest’s threshold and broke into a field, caked with snow, the wagon was rattling with light. Celia was holding the last of the empty snow globes. She hadn’t a moment to even look at what little epitaph was built inside this one, as she was distracted by the large, white field, bowled by a fortress of thick trees, that showcased a sleep-black house in its epicenter, silhouetted by the moonglow. While Celia wasn’t sure how far from her own home they must be by now, she at least knew of no house this far in the woods. It looked certain of itself, unbroken and clean, but also unlived in, with dark windows and an ajar door.

The woman led Celia and the wagon to the house, the snow crunching pleasantly under their feet.

At the entrance, there was a small ramp instead of any stairs that allowed the woman to easily pull the wagon up and over. She pushed through the front door without hesitation. Celia hovered at the doorway even when the woman left it open, feeling transitory. The winter at her back was no longer cold, but the fireplace in the parlor wasn’t warm. She was stuck between this liminal light of here and there. 

The woman finally beckoned Celia inside. Celia obliged. It felt instinctual, natural, even, to stay obsequious to the woman.

Celia watched as the woman rattled the wagon to the fireplace, which was already lit. Distantly, Celia felt that she should be attracted to its warmth, but she couldn’t process it in any substantial manner; it seemed more like decoration to her. 

A rocking chair shaded with blankets and chiffon shawls sat by the fire, its side table upholding a stained glass lamp and speckled ashtray. And by both furniture’s cherry wood feet was a large bag of knitting supplies, slumped over. The rest of the living room was packed shoulder-to-shoulder with shelves and glass cabinets and tables, all of them hosting an audience of glittering snow globes. 

The woman began to add to the crowd from the wagon, picking up and pushing snow globes into the tightly packed parties, the thin sound of glass scraping against glass twining with the crackling fire. 

Celia wasn’t sure what to do with her empty snow globe, so she waited until the woman noticed: “Well, go on and put it up.”

Celia began to search. As she did, the woman, who had quickly finished, smoothed her hands over one of the globes. Cooing, she moved to the next, and the next, as though she were caressing the naked heads of newborns.

Celia found an empty spot on the fireplace mantle. Just near the corner, where she could nudge away some of the snow globes to make room. She fitted hers and stepped back in satisfaction. The fire brightened the girl in the globe, which prompted Celia to finally take a proper look.

In the globe was a girl, standing on her lonesome by a stream bed and willow tree, arms wrapped tightly about herself, with glittering drops of resin or quartz, making her appear wet. The girl had hair, long and dark, like Celia’s, and wore a pink coat and hat like Celia’s, and her brow was high and her chin weak like Celia’s. Despite never having caught a firefly, Celia realized that there was another light in the globe. It wavered around the girl like a bug would, but she could see no little black body. Just the light.

Celia stared. The Celia in the globe stared back.

She peered closer at the nearby globes and saw that they, as well, housed wisps of light that completely lacked any tangible chitin, no furious wings or confused antennae. 

Behind her, Celia heard the rocking chair creak.

Celia turned to the woman, who was sitting back in the chair, hands folded in her lap, maybe asleep, but Celia felt that was untrue. She snapped around, anxious, scrutinizing the rest of this snow globe village. The circumstance was identical for them all: bugless lights, glowing above small simulacrums of various people, sitting or sleeping or standing, with saturnine faces. The shadows in the cabin became longer and darker. Celia felt goosebumps skitter up her neck. She stepped away from the snow globes, wanting to shrink from their ghastly glow, but they were everywhere. A collection of souls, unable to leave, only to watch and to be watched. Celia gasped.

“I think I need to go home.”

But the woman wasn’t there anymore. The rocking chair groaned once, then stopped. The wind quieted. The fireplace clicked its molten tongue one last time before snuffing out. Celia pressed her hands to her chest. She couldn’t feel her heartbeat. She stumbled for the door, shouldering it open and slipping down the ice-slick ramp and into the snow. It bit into her cheeks and clogged her nose, but she couldn’t feel its chill. She ran for the trees, regardless of which direction.

She did not slow even when she broke the edge of the clearing, and hurtled into the protective dark of the treeline. She kept going, and going, and going, until she crashed painfully into—nothing. A wall, but not a wall. A force she couldn’t see. Her palms flattened against it, her immobile chest and bloodless cheek desperate against a physical nothing. She blinked the snow and tears from her eyes. Of course, it wasn’t nothing. She could see the suggestion of a reflection. It was glass.

On one side, there was her, with the lukewarm snow, and next to her, on the same side of the glass, was the stream, with the willow tree behind her. Snow flurried around her for a moment, then ended. No other movement followed: no wind, no creep of an animal, no brush of a vine, even the stream had stopped entirely.

Not even a firefly.

On the other side of this glass, Celia could see the inside of the black house, blown to gargantuan proportions. 

It took a moment to realize and understand the logic of this new, maddening perspective. She was on the fireplace. And on either side of herself,  she could intimately observe the hundreds of snow globes, all occupied by a stricken face, peering through the glass at her, at the fire, at the door, at the woman in her rocking chair, feet propped on the emptied wagon. She was happily asleep, surrounded by her collection of Will-o’-the-Wisps—dead from cold or murder or hunger or carelessness—bottled up and never to be parted from her eternal collection.