A warm Christmas tale

It was so terribly warm. Snow was not falling, and it was almost dark. Evening came on unnoticed, the last evening before Christmas, and Firwind was still unsnowed and gloomy. The town’s electrical had been down for some years now. The old red train had stayed put for as long. All the lights in town were off, and even the Christmas tree had no shine in it anymore.

Nobody had seen a clear sky in years. The eight inhabitants of Firry -as they liked to call the tiny town- woke up each day to find the same burnt-brown layer covering the sky.

There had been many theories about what it could be. Elsie, the choir director, was sure it had to do with the toxic fumes emanating from the cities on the other side of the ridge. Old Reed, the librarian, had his own views on the matter but kept them to himself while skimming through the pages of the books in Firwind’s library, trying to find answers. Whatever it was, it seemed to be there to stay. And it was no different on that Christmas Eve.

There was a strange quietness in town that night. Nobody was out to sing carols or share a cup of spiced wine as they would have in the old days, nobody but a stranger covered in a white tulle cloak.

The visitor stood by the old train, looking at the sleepy town on a little round hill. Most of the wooden houses in Firry were built on the hillside. But Mr Rowan’s house was set at the foot of the hill, next to a tall fir tree. It was the only lit house in Firwind, and the stranger walked towards it like a moth towards the light.

Mr Rowan sat in a draped armchair before a cosy fire; the flames lit the dark sea-green walls in shifting orange shades across the living room. He was busy mixing colours on a ceramic palette, while, at his feet, painted sheets of paper lay scattered like fallen leaves. Drops of sweat dripped from his forehead onto the pages, blurring the colours. It was warm as a summer’s day without the fire, and the extra heat made the house feel almost tropical. But that did not seem to bother Mr. Rowan, who was wearing a thick wool sweater and furry cuffs on his hands.

All of a sudden, there were knocks at the door. Mr Rowan froze. He looked through the big bay window of the dining room, but it was too foggy to see. He stood up and walked uncertainly towards the door. A gust of wind entered the house as he pulled the door handle, blowing away the painted sheets of paper.

“Good evening,” greeted a strange-looking figure, covered head to toe in a white cloak.

Mr Rowan was so surprised by the ghostly appearance that he took a good minute to reply. “Good evening.”

The stranger did not wait for an invitation and entered the house.

“It’s so hot in here. I hope you don’t mind if I hang this old thing.” The visitor took off the long tulle cloak with ease and hung it by the entrance door.

There was a moment of silence as Mr Rowan realized the visitor was a woman. She had dark hair, brown eyes and such pale skin that, as she passed by the bay window, her skin reflected the fir forest outside.

Beneath the tulle cloak, the woman wore a strange-looking dress. It looked like something an Egyptian priestess could have worn to a space gala. The neckline was straight and off the shoulders, continuing with semi-open geometric sleeves down to the elbows. The central part of the dress was a silky tunic of ivory colour, while the rest of the gown was firm and elegantly fitted.

The visitor made herself comfortable in the window’s nook and looked with sadness at the view.

“Would you like some spiced wine?” he offered, dragging every word, trying to remember how to be polite.

She nodded, grabbed the cup Mr Rowan offered her, and took a long sip. “Thank you.” She seemed to have recovered a bit of colour in her cheeks, and her mood lightened. “Merry Christmas, by the way,” she said with a bright smile.

Mr Rowan was moved by the greeting but turned his back, not to let on. “Merry Christmas,” he said for the first time in years.

He served a cup for himself and sat again in his blushed armchair. “What brings you to Firwind?” he inquired.

“The weather,” she replied with sadness. “I heard it has not snowed in this region for some time, and I had to check it for myself. I used to come every winter, years ago. It was beautiful.” She stopped for a moment, took another sip, and continued, “You could smell Rosemary’s cinnamon rolls from the other side of the valley, and the scent would lead you straight to the little round hill with the red train always buzzing, riding around the town.”

Mr Rowan remembered the smell of cinnamon and the once-shiny red train, but he could not remember her at all.

“Oh, we met,” she said, as if she could hear his thoughts. “Yes, well, it was so very long ago… But back in the day, weren’t you the town’s snow shoveler?” she asked with interest.

“Ah… yes… Yes, indeed. I was,” he answered, as he grabbed the ceramic palette and resumed mixing colours.

There was a pause, a moment for the crackling of the fire and the howling of the wind among the fir trees.

“I quite enjoyed it,” he said after some time. “The shovelling, I mean. It was hard work, but it paid off in many ways…” He stopped mixing and realized he was using the wrong primary colour. He started over, this time with yellow. “For one, I had tons of snow all to myself. I used to build snow palaces as big as you!” He pointed at her with a smile. “With bridges and towers and everything. During the night, the snow got so cold that I could work on the tiniest details. Spent entire nights moulding the towers’ roofs, carving long Palladian windows, sculpting trees for the palaces’ gardens… The children loved it!” He was smiling, staring at the fire as if he could see it all in the flames.

“And after working the whole night, I waited for the dawn. Oh, the light! The whole thing sparkled under the light as if coming to life. I used to think that it could have been a town inside a fortress and imagined the people that would live in it, how their lives must have been, how their music must have sounded…” His voice broke at the memory of music, and he fell silent again. It had all been so long ago.

Something about that stranger reminded him of the way Firwind used to be, the way he used to be. He could almost breathe the smell of snow again, which, unlike rain, locked the firs’ scent in flakes forever, or for as long as it was cold. He used to open the window on nights like these and listen to the gentle pour of snowfall by his bed as he fell asleep.

He closed his eyes as he had then and did not even notice that soon dawn would come. He might have missed it altogether if it wasn’t because she began to sing.

Smooth but sweeping, her voice filled the room like morning light. The words she sang were foreign, yet he could understand that the song spoke of a lost time, of another world under the stars. It was such a haunting melody that Mr Rowan got up from his seat and looked at her in the same way he used to look at the sunrise. At last, he remembered her.

She sang until the fire dimmed, and when her song came to an end, he picked up one of the papers from the floor and painted the colour he had been working on.

“This is it,” he said, astonished.

“What is it?”

“Gold,” he replied, ecstatic. “I have been trying to find gold for so long…”

The familiar woman sat by his side and looked at the wrinkled paper. Indeed, he had painted a bright golden colour. It even looked a bit sparkly with the fire nearby.

“Ever since the sky turned brown, we have not had any light. Nothing but this brown haze,” he explained, looking at the reflection of the sky in her pale skin. “The train stopped working the same day,” he continued. “The music we used to hear every Christmas never returned. The choir girls forgot the songs. Even Elsie could not remember them. And then it got so warm that the little snow left melted. People began shutting their windows and locking their doors… anything not to see how Firry was disappearing. I have not had a conversation like this with anyone since… This is the first time I…” He choked but continued without realizing that the lady was looking at him in awe.

“The paint in the village’s houses cracked and peeled away, all colour gone. I believe I am the only one still repainting my walls, fixing little things here and there… But not even I could fix the Christmas tree, because I just could not remember the colour gold. I have been mixing and remerging colours every evening, but the best I could do was this yellowish brown.” He waved at all the paper sheets on the floor, blurred with sweat and brown shades. “Until tonight,” he said as he looked up at her.

She put her arm around him, and he felt chilled to the bone. Chilled, and at home.

Suddenly, all the books and paintings in the dining room smashed against the floor. The earth was shaking violently, and even though everything was trembling, the lady’s arms felt steady and safe. Mr Rowan shut his eyes and saw no more.

***

“It was this!” said Ori Hookaday to her sister, in shock.

Maple got closer and checked the snow globe in Ori’s hands. She could hardly believe it. They had not seen the snow globe for decades but there it was, a bit ragged but in one piece.

Wow! Can’t be! Where did you find it?” asked Maple.

“At the bottom of the big closet,” replied Ori, pointing at a brown oak wardrobe.

“I thought it was lost,” said Maple, puzzled.

“Well, it was lost. I think the last time we put it out was for Christmas, 30 years ago.”

“But the song we heard! It could not have come from this snow globe. It was a woman singing, and the snow globe used to play Christmas carols, right?” asked Maple, clicking the little button that turned the snow globe on.

They waited, but nothing happened. Ori shook the snow globe, but there was no music, lights, or snow.

“The batteries are dead,” she concluded. She opened the drawer where they kept the new batteries and replaced them. They tried again, and this time the snow globe lit up with shiny snow, and the music played as merrily and Christmassy as it used to.

“Oh, Ori! I looove this snow globe,” said Maple, thrilled.

For a moment, Ori and Maple Hookaday stood next to each other, staring at the winter scene inside the snow globe. There it was: the little village of Firwind, as they had named it when they were kids, with its wooden houses on top of a perfectly round hill in the middle of a rocky valley.

They had made that snow globe themselves many winters ago. They had built a beautiful fir forest with the help of their grandfather, and their grandmother had painted all the houses’ roofs in red and blue. But the paint had worn away over the years, and only Mr Rowan’s house had kept its sea-green colour. The shiny red train wasn’t as shiny anymore, or as red, but it buzzed as always when it completed a ride around the hill.

“I can’t believe we found this at Christmas, of all days,” said Ori, amazed.

“Right on time for sunrise, too,” Maple said, looking through the window and seeing the break of dawn among the pine trees.

The view from the flat was beautiful at this time of the year without all the tourists.

The two sisters shared a little roof apartment in a seaside city where it was always summer. They had no complaints; they led a simple life restoring odd pieces washed ashore by the sea. Even though they had both travelled quite a bit in their youth, they had settled in the family’s second residence a while back, after their parents had passed.

They usually woke up when the sun was well set in the sky, but Christmas was an exception. It had been a Hookaday family tradition to be up with the first light on Christmas Day, a tradition that was getting harder to keep in their autumn years. They would have overslept that night as well if it hadn’t been for the strange melody that got them both out of bed.

“They are all where we left them,” stated Ori, inspecting the villagers’ figurines with the help of the sunrise light. “Elsie and the choir girls, old Reed, and… Rosemary, the baker.” The tiny clay figurine of a rosy-cheeked woman stood against an old bakery, a tray full of pastries in her miniature hands.

“Oh, and Rowan! Wait… Wasn’t Rowan always carrying a snow shovel?”

“I guess not,” said Maple matter-of-factly. “Though they seem older without fresh paint on their clothes and hair,” she observed.

“We all got older,” Ori smiled at her sister, who somehow still had the same curious look she had when she was young.

“Everything looks washed out except for the Christmas tree,” said Maple, admiring the decorated fir tree at the foot of the hill. “Look at the gold glitter! As if we had just repainted it.”

The Christmas tree inside the snow globe was shining under the morning light. The gold was so bright that neither sister noticed that, not far from the tree, somebody had built a small fortress of fresh snow with towers and bridges, and gardens of ice trees.