Apple Snow, Red Frost
By: M. Pía Golfín M.
Tags: Snow, Talking Animal, Magic

( i. )

The time was 23:55 and Luna Llena had Claro Oscuro, her only son. She named him so because he was a half-black and half-white kitten, split down the middle of his face and spine and belly like a half-moon. Her bruja was on the couch, drinking tea for the clumps of lavender at the bottom; and Luna Llena was under the coffee table, giving birth on one of those heavy and plush baby blankets.

When the cuckoo clock sang twelve times at 00:00, Luna Llena had a molly that was all black, so she named her Media Noche. She was sure to sniff the kitten and lick her and thought to herself: could you be, maybe, cursed? but that superstition was all old wives' tales (even for Luna Llena who believed and spun her own old wives’ tales). She still thought it’d be interesting if she’d birthed the perfect cursed kitten: black as night, exactly as the cuckoo clock let out its twelfth chirp, named something such as Media Noche. Luna Llena pretended she got the names of her kittens from some otherworldly inspiration, that it wasn’t her own choice but that of an outsider’s whims. The moon herself, maybe, or the influence of her bruja’s ritual as she drank the lavender tea.

At 00:05, Luna Llena had Rosa Rosa, that is Rosa Rosa as in ‘pink rose’. She was odd in that she was a dilute calico where Luna Llena had nothing of calico. Luna Llena didn’t know any old wives' tales about dilute calicos, some birds said they were made with flower petals where normal calicos were made with the colours of the sky. Of Claro Oscuro she knew only there would be a meaningful duality about him, a clear split on his good intentions and bad intentions. He would be kind at sunrise and then cruel at dusk, and the next day it would change.

“Lunita,” said her bruja, kneeling to look at the kittens. “¿Cómo te sientes? ¿Cómo están?”(How are you? How are they?)

A fourth kitten hadn’t mewled when it felt the air. Normally a dead kitten wouldn’t be a concern for a bruja or a familiar but this kitten hadn’t even had one chance. They were named Nube Blanca because they were white as their mother. Their bruja would trim a few useful things she could use in spells and then the kitten would be buried somewhere outside the pumpkin patch so as not to invite any magic that might fancy the corpse of a familiar. The jack-o’-lanterns might get too many ideas (which was bad in all instances because they had pumpkin guts for brains) but especially when it came to trying to copy the reviving ritual Luna Llena and her bruja would do on the patch. Nube Blanca would not crawl their way out of the earth, anew. They hadn’t lost a life, they simply hadn’t had one.

For now, Nube Blanca (born at 00:10) would stay with Luna Llena and their living siblings on the blanket under the coffee table. Pretending they could suckle milk. Their bruja had to wait for Luna Llena to fall asleep to take Nube Blanca and then for her to wake up again to bury the kitten.

This may be Luna Llena’s first litter but for everything, there was already a process.

( ii. )

“Mira, mira,” said Media Noche to her siblings. “Mira, que raro.”

Strange.

Yesterday, the yard and garden had been the colour of Media Noche’s eyes: orange. The colour of her sister’s eyes: yellow. The colour of her brother’s eyes: green, but a green that was chilly. Now, the pumpkin patch was as white as Mother and half of Claro Oscuro’s face.

People had come to pick jack-o’-lanterns from the patch. Media Noche padded around the kitchen table while their bruja worked in emptying the insides of the pumpkin in a bowl (she and her siblings had been told not to eat it), it’d made the flame shining through the grin and the eyes die out. When people took the jack-o’-lantern away it was nothing more than a vegetable. “What hallowing the pumpkin do?” Media Noche asked Luna Llena. “They need that to live,” said Luna Llena, “like you need your heart and your stomach and brain.”

Media Noche didn’t know what hearts or stomachs or brains were, but she wanted to now. Rosa Rosa said they were inside living things but actual living things, not like the jack-o’-lanterns who had hearts and stomachs and brains made of orange mush. Media Noche didn’t question why when people came to pick them, the jack-o’-lanterns had to die to go with them, just took it as a fact where she might have asked about it normally. (“They would probably haunt their houses,” Rosa Rosa said. Media Noche forgot not everyone was a bruja who could protect herself from those things.)

Her brother and sister jumped to the windowsill with her and looked out too.

“It’s all white,” Rosa Rosa said, she liked colours a lot because of her name.

“Help me open the window,” Media Noche said.

“You’re not going anywhere.” Luna Llena sat on the pillow, she’d entered the bedroom noiselessly. Patchwork pillowcase clashing with a duvet of a different patchwork, the bed was still unmade. “Especially not out the window, it’s too tall of a fall for you from the roof.”

“Then we use the apple tree,” said Media Noche. “Like you do, Mama.”

“It was Media Noche’s idea,” said Claro Oscuro. It earned him an angry little mrr-ow from his sister.

Luna Llena’s whiskers twitched. “I’ll take you out myself so you can see the snow.”

“Snow?” said Rosa Rosa. “Is that what it is?”

“But we better go downstairs and use the door.”

Their bruja was at the kitchen, making eggs and cutting fruit. She hitched and hitched and hitched a sheep wool blanket over her shoulders to combat the cold, hair loose and with no pointy hat on. There were dishes and flowers inside glass vases in the sink. Plants overflowed from high places — cupboards and the top of the fridge. A porcelain bowl on the counter, by the rack holding metallic cups, was reserved for Luna Llena and a wide porcelain plate for the kittens — both were empty.

The kittens rubbed around their bruja’s ankles and she asked them in a cooing voice if they were hungry (“Bebés, ¿tienen hambre? Lunita, ¿tienes hambre?”). Luna Llena yowled, pawing at the back door. “Pero hace tanto frío, Lunita,” their bruja said, opening the door anyway. Luna Llena pushed the screen door open herself. Her kittens followed like ducklings. The jingle bell hanging from the threshold to scare away evil spirits made a sparkling sound when the door swung.

Blue Hour hour was just ending. Dead leaves were blown to the porch, and snow had fallen on the steps leading to the pumpkin patch. Media Noche stood on the lip of the porch to stare hard at the jack-o’-lanterns and maybe it was the sunlight but she couldn’t see any orange glow. “Mama,” she said to Luna Llena, “what’s happened to them?”. Luna Llena licked Media Noche’s head as if that would somehow ease the upcoming questions. Media Noche always had questions but was never satisfied with Luna Llena’s fantastical answers, with her folktales about things like 3:15am or hearing a bird screech in the middle of the night. Media Noche wanted the facts, she wanted more than anything to dissect subjects and objects for answers. Luna Llena said: “Jack-o’-lanterns sleep during the day… but also, pumpkins don’t like the cold. Those that weren’t picked and hollowed will rot.”

Media Noche kind of liked that: those that weren’t picked and killed will die anyway.

“Can we touch it?” Rosa Rosa asked, belly to the wooden planks of the floor to be closer to the snow on the steps.

“What is snow?” Media Noche asked.

“Who cares what it is?” Claro Oscuro said.

“I do,” Media Noche said.

Luna Llena said, “It’s frozen water so it’s gonna be cold.”

The trees whispered (if they were evergreens) and crackled (if they were bare branches) from the forest. The breeze that moved them reached the porch and tousled everyone’s fur and whiskers. It was already plenty cold so how much colder could the snow be? Rosa Rosa looked at her siblings to gauge if they would be taking a leap or a step onto the snow. It wasn’t deep but they didn’t know that. Media Noche blinked back at her sister, neither she nor Claro Oscuro moved, so Rosa Rosa rook the first step. She braced herself on the lip of the porch, then jumped. Luna Llena purred a laugh when her daughter mewled: cold! cold! cold! Which instead of giving Media Noche and Claro Oscuro pause, prompted them to jump after Rosa Rosa. They each exclaimed. Luna Llena didn’t get her paws wet. She watched from the porch as her kittens found their footing. Media Noche said they were swimming through the snow because Luna Llena had said it was water and Media Noche knew one swam in water. The only water she had ever been submerged in, belly-deep, was that of the bathtub: perfumed with vanilla, tinted in the rose gold light from the lampshade, with floating flowers while their bruja washed them to avoid fleas and to rub protection spells straight on their fur — since they couldn’t draw or tattoo them like she did.

A broken trill came from the apple tree and caught all of their attentions. Media Noche half-stepped on Claro Oscuro, having rolled around on a playfight and Rosa Rosa stopped on her running around them. Luna Llena walked the length of the porch. “What’s that, Mama?” Media Noche asked. Luna Llena, ears perked towards the branches, made a quick clicking sound. She’d spotted the bird, that couldn’t catch a single note, swaying in the wind with the apples that still held onto the branches. It and the apples were bright punctures of red colour against what was otherwise bleak.

“It’s a bird,” said Claro Oscuro.

“What sort of bird?” asked Media Noche.

“A red cardinal,” said Luna Llena. “You hear how bad it sings?”

“Who woulda thought some birds couldn’t sing,” said Rosa Rosa. “Think there’s cats who can’t meow?”

“When a bird can’t sing and disrupts the garden’s harmony,” said Luna Llena, “you better be quick to kill that bird.”

Media Noche asked, “Why?”

Luna Llena said, “Because it’s a cat’s job, and especially a familiar’s.”

Media Noche asked, “And why?”

“Stop asking so much.” Claro Oscuro bit his sister’s ear a little too hard and she forgot about the question to bite him back.

The answer would have been another old wives’ tale, anyway. Something that wouldn’t have satisfied Media Noche.

( iii. )

Media Noche slept under the bed in a basket with her mother and siblings. Their bruja had burned a cedar candle to cleanse before going to sleeping, and the smell of it was still in the air when Media Noche woke up. A branch of the apple tree hit the window. She crawled from the basket (wrestled free from Rosa Rosa’s hold) and jumped to the sill. The window was locked shut, didn’t budge no matter how much she pushed it. The night was without clouds and a grinning moon shone overhead, it made the snow glow. The jack-o’-lanterns glowed with their own light, though faintly, struggling in the cold.

A thump! made Media Noche jump, her tail bristled, but it was just an apple that fell from the apple tree and to the roof drain pipe. She tried to catch a better look but another sound made her jump again, a scratchy squawk coming from a bird. Her ears perked and she did the same clicking sound Luna Llena had. Media Noche stared at the apple tree, waiting to catch a glimpse of the culprit… and there it was.

Her paws shuffled around and before she could think on it twice, Media Noche jumped from the windowsill. Their bruja didn’t have a bedroom door, she had a bead curtain Media Noche walked through. She made for the stairs and started the still arduous task of going down, claws sinking on the carpet that covered the steps so as not to slip all the way to the ground floor.

The cuckoo clock chirped twice. Downstairs didn’t smell much of anything to Media Noche, though really it smelled like a little of everything: of the homemade detergent their bruja used to wash the throw blanket over the back of the sofa, of the flowers all around struggling with water soaking their stems with no roots or drying from the frame of the wide kitchen threshold, of the incense on the bookshelf, of the burnt paper from an afternoon spell. Also the rotting fruit (that would be changed for fresh in the morning) from an offering to a deity or something similar. It took up the centre of the altar underneath the stairs. Media Noche didn’t know much about deities and she would never know much of them, cats didn’t believe in gods.

Media Noche tried every window and crevice until she found a way out. The cold hit her like concrete. In what it took her to climb down the stairs it had begun to snow. The snowflakes looked as if they were suspended in the air, gentler than the thinnest of drizzles. The jack-o’-lanterns flickered in the patch and their voices came to Media Noche in staticky whispers — wondering which kitten was she, what she was doing out, laughing at her for being stupid, talking about death.

The scratchy squawk sounded again. Media Noche walked down the porch to the end closest to the apple tree. The ground around the roots was littered in bright red apples, covered in frost or half-rotted, the moon made them glow too. Media Noche knew of blood because she had seen their bruja use it during spells, she thought the apples looked like blood drops, marbelised blood. She jumped to the snow, which paralysed her for two to four seconds before the bird squawked again. She pawed the marbelised blood around; they were surprisingly easy to break, as Media Noche found by sinking her claws into their skin.

She climbed up the apple tree, reaching the empty birdhouse. Media Nochecaught her breath and kept climbing, until she reached the branches and a cluster of more apples gathering the falling snowflakes on their leaves. There was no wind but that was somehow eerier. The way the cold didn’t need to make a sound to be there, how it was just everywhere, freezing every hair of her fur and glittering her whiskers.

“Well, I never!” squawked that same bird. It hopped from one branch to another until Media Noche could see it better: white but a different white to the snow, with a long bill and uncomfortably intelligent from the way it shifted its weight. “Why you must be one of Luna Llena’s kittens!”

“You can’t be here if your trill sounds like that!” Media Noche said.

“My trill!” squawked the white crow. “This is what all crows sound like. Your mother must have taught you cats do not hunt crows.”

“Cats hunt birds who can’t sing!”

The crow laughed, ka-ka-ka! “Little thing like you I could take to my chicks to eat.”

The forest laughed too, a human laugh. Media Noche didn’t know if trees laughed with human voices or if they laughed at all, just because the apple tree had never laughed didn’t mean the trees in the forest didn’t. (It wasn’t the trees that laughed, of course, it wasn’t exactly clear who would be laughing at 2:02am and with the temperature in the negatives. Other brujas maybe, ones that belonged to a coven, maybe teenagers with a death wish.) The white crow hopped around some more on the branches, her laughter over the laughter of the forest, and knocking two more apples from the tree — which didn’t startle her but startled Media Noche.

“Birds don’t eat cats,” said the kitten.

“Crows eat dead cats,” said the white crow. “But cats don’t eat crows.”

“Who would eat a dead thing?” Media Noche asked. “Is that allowed?”

Ka, ka, ka! “You eat dead things, cosita, that meat your human gives you was a living thing. The offense is in eating a thing while it still writhes. I’m more of an opportunist, I eat what others hunt for me first.”

“Isn’t that the same as I do?”

“I eat carcasses,” said the white crow. “So, no.”

Media Noche still didn’t understand the difference.

The branches shook when the white crow hopped around again and Media Noche sunk her claws in the bark. A clump of snow fell from on top of an apple above her, it almost knocked Media Noche over in the cold shock. The white crow laughed again (ka! ka! ka!), watching her with one eye. The night filled with the sound of the wind, except it wasn’t the wind, the wind didn’t laugh. (Media Noche knew this: the wind howled). Three new crows perched on the apple, they were the colour of the sky instead of the colour of the moon.

They struck their own conversation with the white crow, using big words. From what Media Noche managed to understand, because their voices overlapped as they all tried to speak at the same time, they were going somewhere. Media Noche caught the word carcass again, a big carcass apparently because the black crow closest to the topmost branches used enormous and he mentioned something called an elk.

All four crows laughed together — ka! ka! ka! — towards something Media Noche didn’t catch. The black crows took flight once more and snow sprinkled from the branches. The white crow stalled enough to wish Media Noche a good night, she also chastised the kitten for being out in the cold (as if it had just occurred to her). “Go to sleep,” the white crow said, then she too took to the sky.

Media Noche held on so as not to be knocked off the swaying branches. When they stopped shaking so much, Media Noche climbed down and jumped over the newly fallen apples. Snow had gathered in banks during the two conversations, otherwise insignificant but Media Noche had to swim through them. It was easy to follow the crows in the bare sky. The whispers of the jack-o’-lanterns got louder as she entered the pumpkin patch, but not as loud as they had been before the frost began to rot them away. Their tops were crowned with more snow and the leaves they would usually have were all brown and dead. Their whispers of Who is this? It’s Media Noche and What is she looking for? To die in the cold distracted Media Noche because she just had to look around at their carved faces with flickering light within, and she lost sight of the crows.

The jack-o’-lanterns laughed in quiet voices. Media Noche spun, looking up at the sky, then she looked at the jack-o’-lanterns surrounding her. She would just wait for the crows, maybe there would still be elk for her to see and they could take her to it. Media Noche swam back to the apple tree and climbed, climbed until she saw the apple that had fallen in the roof drain pipe. How did the crows do it? Fly? Getting higher would be so much easier if cats could learn it. A breeze broke from the forest, trees whispering and crackling, and more clumps of snow fell from the clusters of apples that clung on. When the branch she was on crackled like the bare trees of the forest, Media Noche turned towards the roof to jump.

She missed.

( iv. )

Media Noche’s eyes didn’t work when she opened them, and neither did her lungs. She scratched around with her claws with no sense of up or down. Mewling in desperation but it only lasted a second, maybe two. Her head popped out of the earth and she saw the grey, grey, grey of the winter sky with the aftermath clouds of the snowfall. She saw the orange eyes of her mother. Luna Llena didn’t help her pull herself out the rest of the way, but she did watch intently. Once Media Noche pulled out her tail, Luna Llena stepped forward and licked off all the dirt.

“Mama?” Media Noche asked.

“Stand straight,” said Luna Llena. “Stand proud and when you see our bruja inside the house greet her with decorum. You’ve lost your first life, a rite of passage for all familiars.”

Media Noche didn’t question this. They’d been told of Nube Blanca and that Mother was on her sixth life and one day, by accident or not, they would lose lives too. What was decorum? “I don’t remember — ”

“The jack-o’-lanterns said you fell.” Luna Llena licked the side of Media Noche’s face. “But our bruja thinks the cold is what really killed you.”

“I died,” said Media Noche. “I don’t remember what it was like to be dead.”

“That’s not something you can remember. Walk with me.”