Tag: memory

A Blister on the Land: Excerpt from The Snow Witch by Jaclyn Wilmoth

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The Snow Witch Fantasy Novel Cover The boreal Witch Series

This post is an excerpt from the fantasy novel The Snow Witch by Jaclyn Wilmoth. You can find The Snow Witch at all major retailers in both ebook and paperback by clicking here.

To Lumi, Arctic Town was just too creepy. The birds were always watching and she stuck out like a sore thumb. 

From the air, the domed city looked like a blister on the land. A blemish where the pus of the place boiled out of its skin. They had arrived in spring as the snow melted down the dome, creating honeycombs of ice around the lower walls. 

“This,” Cole swept his arm out in front of him as they came in to dock, “is Arctic.”

As they stepped out of the dirigible terminal, the world of Arctic Town sprawled before her. The brightness of the place smacked her. The sun at this angle seemed to be magnified by the dome in which the city was built. 

It was more than just a town. It was an entire manufactured experience, like stepping back in time. The streets were bustling with people. The buildings had facades that looked like a frontier town. 

From inside, you could hardly see the outside world at this time of year. A thin veil of water ran between the dome and the ice-comb, making the forest outside shift and change in unnatural ways, its reflection distorted for those inside. It gave Lumi an uncomfortable feeling, as if nothing was what it seemed, as if she couldn’t trust her own eyes. 

Cole moved into the crowd and Lumi weaved her way through people to follow. 

Lumi felt herself drifting away on the stream of people as Cole wrapped his hand around her waist.

“You can always spot the tourists.” He gave her a knowing smile.

“How?” she asked, looking around. There was something off about it. The people swarming the roads all looked so similar. The same pale eyes, the same fine hair, the same set chins.

“The newness of their clothes.”

Lumi looked closer. The clothes looked old to her. Old-fashioned, like each person had just stepped in from a hundred years ago, as if they’d been riding horses, but there were no horses to be seen. Frontier clothes, horse hands in pristine condition. Everyone almost seemed to be in costume, as if they were wearing clothes that didn’t quite fit them. Denim and leather that hadn’t been worn before. The jeans were bright blue, the leather stiff and uncomfortable looking. 

Cole fit in here, in his denim shirt and tan moleskin pants. Lumi felt garish in her bright blue dress, out of place in her tattered but contemporary clothes. Here everyone else wore stuff that was old-fashioned but new. She wondered if they were even in uniform, the sameness was so exact. 

“But how can you tell? Everyone’s got new clothes,” she called ahead to Cole.

He smirked back at her. “Everyone’s a tourist.”

Lumi wondered what this said about a place, that everyone was a visitor. The trees even seemed transplanted. Even they looked uncomfortable, as if they too wore costumes that didn’t quite fit. 

There were birds everywhere, but no other animals. Each tree lining the street had several birds of different species looking down into the street, heads whirring from one side to another.

Lumi looked to the ground, wondering if there should be birdshit everywhere. There was none. 

The light shone bright in Arctic Town. She had to squint against it. Then claws clamped down on her shoulder. She shouted, swatting and trying to get away.

It was a magpie, perched on her shoulder even as she tried to run from it. As it moved next to her ear, she could hear the machinations beneath the feathers. This was no biological bird. 

The movement on the street around her had frozen. Lumi looked around. Everyone was staring at her. 

“Oh, it’s okay,” Cole said. He leaned his mouth toward the bird, as if he were talking into it. “Just her first time here.”

He nudged the magpie up onto his finger and flicked it into the sky, on its way.

The crowd murmured and slowly returned to the bustle it had been.

“Turning heads everywhere you go,” Cole said. “Good thing we’re here.” And he guided her through a wooden door as he opened it. 

“I feel like I’m being followed,” Lumi told him.

“It’s the birds,” he said. “You get used to it.”

They were only passing through, so she didn’t get used to it. 

Just as she had stepped back into the stream of vintage-clad, starched bodies, she felt a brush of fur and a firm grip on her arm. Some soul so old that Lumi couldn’t tell if it was a man or woman, so wrinkled as to be unrecognizable and covered in so many furs that the person seemed not to have a body at all. Just a wrinkled face and wrinkled hands in a ball of dead animals. 

The hands held Lumi’s wrists, and she looked toward the elder.

“Whatever you do,” the voice seemed to be garbled, as if it came from beneath the pelts. “Do not come here with child.”

Lumi pulled her hand away.

“You will disappear,” the elder said, releasing Lumi’s hand. “They are watching.”

The aged soul looked up to the birds in the trees. Lumi followed the gaze and when she looked down, the ball of furs was gone.

She was on edge for the rest of the time they were in the dome. Each time she looked outside, each time they went out, she saw fur rushing to hide. 

The Snow Witch, Jaclyn Wilmoth

Jaclyn Wilmoth lives in the boreal forest of Alaska, where she teaches creative writing, grows very large kohlrabi with her husband, and tries to keep her daughter away from no-no mushrooms and berries. Hauling water is her least favorite chore. 

You can follow her on Instagram and on Facebook.

Find more of my creative writing here. You can check out prompts and inspiration for your own writing here. And for posts about how to add more magic into your own life, click here.

Dying Cranes: Excerpt from The Snow Witch by Jaclyn Wilmoth

Jaclyn3 Comments
The Snow Witch Fantasy Novel Cover The boreal Witch Series

This post is an excerpt from the fantasy novel The Snow Witch, by Jaclyn Wilmoth. You can find The Snow Witch at all major retailers in both ebook and paperback by clicking here.

The forest made different sounds in the snow. The wind whistled in winter, and sometimes even howled, as if the sharp points of the quakenbush’s bare branches were cutting its belly. Still, there was a beauty to it, and to Lumi, a novelty. 

Cole had noticed that she had been spending more time in the cabin since it started snowing and encouraged her to go outside, which she had been avoiding, and take a walk, which she almost never did alone.

This stretch of road looked so strange, like a whole other planet from the road Lumi had come to love in the summer. In summer, the willowherb grew taller than her. By August, it was so tall that it could barely hold itself up and the stalks bowed in toward the path so that it created a little tunnel for her to walk through. Now the stalks had turned to hard, hollow paper and the flowers had erupted into small tufts of smokey seeds, waiting to be carried off by the wind. These were the last of the seeds, the ones that weren’t taken in time. Snowflakes rested on them.

She listened harder to the sounds. A raven. A squirrel. A crunch. Lumi glanced over her shoulder, wondering if she had in fact heard someone. The forest was still. 

It was unlikely. They were far enough away from the small village nearby that there wasn’t much foot traffic. It was probably more likely an animal. And yet.

As her foot stepped down onto the snow, she felt a different texture below her foot. And then, snaps. She looked down to a pile of feathers, partially covered over with snow. As she stooped, she saw what had snapped. Bones. 

They were bigger than she had expected, but unmistakable. Swampland crane bones. She reached down to brush the snow away. The bones were nearly as large as her own arm bones.

And there it was again, that crunch. She looked behind her and held her breath. Silence again.

She rubbed a finger over the smoothness of the bone. The snow melted on her fingertips, and pulled her into a memory.

*

I stand on the bridge and actually, the water looks completely still from here. It must be moving, flowing, but the river looks like it is holding its breath, waiting to see if I will really do it. There’s a reverberation on the water, a ping that catches my eye. Then another, and another. I pull on the sapphire earrings that are swishing in the rain. A gift from Luis that I would never wear in public. A secret all our own. The wet tinkling makes a melody that will stay with me.

The tears are freezing on my face. They pull at my skin as I try to wipe them away. I am so far up. It’s so, so far. Like I have climbed a mountain. Like the whole world is below. 

Only it’s just water. Just the swirl of river against rock. Just a gray that doesn’t stop. I can feel it. I can feel the kicking beneath my navel. I can feel the way even it wants out of this body. 

The wind is pushing me back, trying to keep me on the bridge. It doesn’t know. Doesn’t know the way the world works, that what awaits me surely must be worse than death. 

The water is pulling and the wind is pushing and I know that it’s me that has to break the tie.

It is beginning to rain. All those raindrops have fallen so much farther than I would. And when they land, they disappear. They are home. I want that too.

I lean my shoulders forward and put my arms out wide.

Then I feel hands on my belly.

*

Lumi was certain she heard footsteps then. The swish in the snow of quick strides. She turned toward the noise, and another snowflake skimmed her cheek and another memory overtook her.

*

A crane steps gingerly onto the riverbank in front of me.

It is purposeful in the way it moves, silent. It looks me in the eye. They have come. 

It is our bodies that the whole pandemic revolves around. So here I am, lover of all the sick, on my knees in the river. The commonality in all cases is our own bodies, and so the whole village has come to watch, to make sure that we are washed away by the water. I look toward Hannah. There are, at least, others with me. I try to send her this thought, to draw her attention to the crane. She won’t look. Her eyes are scared from beneath her mask and the long beak of it is quivering. I hope that it still smells of the calming herbs. 

But it is our bodies that cared for each of those bleeding, melting bodies. And yet, we are not sick. We held the dying and comforted their souls, and now they are sure that we must be witches.

Another crane calls above us. I hope that They see.

It is our bodies that cleanse the wounds, and so they demand to see. Amid the jeers, I can hear the sob of my mother. My clothes are torn off. But all I see are bubbles as the water rushes past my face.

*

Lumi didn’t remember Cole finding her whimpering. She didn’t remember him pulling her out of a huddled ball in the snow, heaving for air. She didn’t remember the walk home or him wrapping her in blankets next to the woodstove or how long they sat there in silence.

All she remembered were the visions in the snowflakes.

Jaclyn Wilmoth lives in the boreal forest of Alaska, where she teaches creative writing, grows very large kohlrabi with her husband, and tries to keep her daughter away from no-no mushrooms and berries. Hauling water is her least favorite chore. 

You can follow her on Instagram and on Facebook.

Find more of my creative writing here. You can check out prompts and inspiration for your own writing here. And for posts about how to add more magic into your own life, click here.

Her Memories Are Round. (Winter 2012.)

JaclynLeave a comment

 They sit on the mantle and she fingers them slowly one by one, as if touching them brings back the sights and smells more fully.   They are self-contained, held in proper place by perfectly spherical glass walls, so that the snowflakes of experiences and emotions of each segment do not intermingle. Each one collects its own dust, attracting mites to its cause with sparkling reminiscences.   For each memory, an ornate, dainty pedestal calls out the name of the place and cradles the round, full memory that it holds.

Prague.  One of the few globes that has snow in it.  You almost can’t tell what century it’s from.  Bridges over the Vltava and Gothic architecture with snowy-tips.  It holds days that were ripe with inspiration.  It seemed that lightning was everywhere.  Circuses popped up in her favorite park and artists chased the buildings.  It was a country ruled by writers and it seemed that Milan Kundera was on every street corner.  Gargoyles caught the eye of old Communist statues from across the river and dared them to join in staring contests.  On tram rides to school, everyone was a character.  War widows and Russian spies, past lives and secrets sat all in a row waiting for their stop.   “Better Red than dead!” her grandmother joked, reminding her of past generations who once lived in this land, when it had another name and held a shameful family past.  This memory holds side trips to Cologne and Vienna, Budapest and Bratislava.  It’s one of the few snow globes that holds pieces of her family.  Aunt and uncle, mother and grandmother, all curious about this homeland.   Nightclubs filled with expats and whispers of absinthe.  Maybe if she drank what they drank, she could write like them.

The house itself is sparse.  Her movements make noises that echo off empty walls and bare floors.  As she places the snow globe from Prague back on the mantle, the noise echoes an emptiness, bouncing off bare walls and floors.

Alaska.   A summer that was constant spring.  The trees were always that new shade of green, as if they were permanently fresh.  Mountains grew into glaciers.  Snow was stuck in crevasses so that it didn’t float as you shook the snow globe.  This was closer to what she remembered anyway.  The water in the globe seemed to be cold to the touch, as if it had just melted, as if it had been melting these past 8 years.  It was bright blue, but not clear, like the run off from ice age giants.  There were toothpaste tubes hidden from grizzly bears and games to show you how to run zig zag away from moose.  Even the plants seemed like overgrown prehistoric remnants, with mammoth leaves and sabretoothed thorns.   There was no electricity or internet there.  Unconnected, but somehow much more connected.  She was sure she herself sat on one of those glaciers, too small to be seen, wrapped in the inciting cold.   The water was 39 degrees, and still she couldn’t keep from swimming.

She wonders briefly how many people have seen this globe.   She doesn’t keep her snow globes in order, chronological or otherwise.  They cluster together in the center of the mantle, as if vying for attention, at odds with each other.   Alaska might be in back most days.

San Francisco.  There are no row houses or piers in this one, like most people would expect.  She didn’t take home that Bay Area.  There was no Golden Gate Bridge jutting out from the water or Coit Tower thrusting up over the bay.   Instead she captured potlucks in the park and quiet BART rides.   No-pants parties and the murals of Mission Street swirled fancifully around pirate stores and parks and parks and parks.  The water in this globe churned, far from pacific, but alive all the same.  There were misplaced bison, grazing on grass from the Golden Gate Park.   At 4pm every day, the fog rolled in, keeping the globe fresh, sheltered.

And all the people from San Francisco stare back at her from inside the globe.  They don’t speak or move any more.  They stand as they were then, snapshots of friendships that only live in this one memory.

Thailand.  Water from the Chao Phraya fills the dome, so packed with life that you can’t see inside.  Water monitor lizards hide in the water as ochre-robed monks send turtles into the waves and birds into the air.  The globe gives off a mishmash of smells, each indistinguishable one setting off a strand of memories that seems unending.  Dried squid and fresh rain and jasmine and incense and sewage mix until you are no longer sure if you want to inhale deep or hold your nose.  Bodhi trees and strangler figs burst from the cracks, tiny parodies of each other.  Rambutan and mangoes and durian bob to the top of the riverwater, beckoning and repulsive in the same call.  Water hyacinth spurt purple blooms and ladyboys call to tourists from beneath temple gates.  Bangkok sparkles with grime and seems to drown in its own development.

Her hair had gotten darker in Thailand.  It went from a fiery red to an anonymous black.  She lived inside that globe so long that she could no longer look through the murky river out into the world.  This globe was both the majority of her adult life and also so, so far away.

The Bahamas.  Tiny sea biscuits float in what she likes to imagine is a little piece of the Atlantic.  Tiny periwinkle shells swim through the water and dance around a junkanoo parade.  The drummers are paused mid-beat and ready to strike.  Horns are held to lips as if they may scream any minute.  Feathers reach every which way.  The sand is pink, reflecting millennia of queen conchs sticking their tongues out at the waves.   The roosters never know what time it is, but it doesn’t seem to matter on the island, as long as you make it to the beach by sunset.   The globe held its own miniature Sargasso Sea, hiding the mystery of deep-blue depths and the growth of sea turtles and eels.  Mermaids’ purses and conchs burst with song.

This snow globe is her newest.

It is sudden and confusing when the house begins to shake.  At first it’s as if someone very large is trampling down the stairs, but in the back of her mind, she knows she is alone.  As it gets stronger, she holds the corner wall that hugs the fireplace for balance.  The snow globes begin to jostle and bounce, dancing side to side and right off the edge of the mantle.  They throw thirty years of dust into the air like confetti and she briefly wonders what they are celebrating.  They jump, glass heads first, freely into an ocean that begins to form on the floor, free diving out of their prescribed places.

The ocean they create is choppy and alive.  Gargoyles and Buddhist monks swim like fish amongst each other.  Gothic buildings and Alaskan mountains jut out from the sea like islands.  Friends from Thailand stare in awe at the aurora borealis that plays on the water.  Lizards play junkanoo while park-bison dance along.  The interactions are rich and charged.  Alive and fresh.

Creative Commons love to http://www.flickr.com/photos/_vini/ for the photo!