Groom of the Yuki-Onna

"Wake up, Kenji. If you sleep, she’ll die."

The words reached me through the wolf-like howls of the wind and the hammering of hailstones on my sanctuary, startling me alert in the numbing cold.

I lurched back against the blocks of the igloo, cracked freezing eyelids apart.

“Wh-what..?”

I spoke, and the winds whistling into the igloo through its narrow opening took the word to feed the blizzard outside.

My chin had dropped onto my ice-dusted parka for just a moment, but in that moment it felt like an eternity had passed. In that moment, Aiko Takahashi had returned to life.

“Your wife needs you. If you keep her warm, you can prolong her until they get here.”

I wanted to look over, to see if she really was talking, but it was easier to stare down, at snow-covered legs I could no longer feel and the bundle lying between them, its upper half resting on my chest beneath a frost-covered fur.

My wife?

Yes, my wife of three days.

My wife, who was heavily pregnant.

My wife, who was not of this world.

“She’s…not my wife,” I lied, as though to spare her feelings. Why? She hadn’t guessed. She wasn’t being sarcastic. She knew. Maybe I’d said something upon entering the igloo, when I saw her wrapped in the thermal blanket she’d been left in.

Or maybe she’d spotted the ice-ring on my finger.

I knew Aiko had carried a torch for me. There had been talk of mutual comfort when the expedition ended, regardless of what we discovered, hope or despair. It pained me she had to see me wrap my arms around another, rub my hands over her back to generate warmth, feel relieved when I felt a slight shudder.

Pained me alone, not Aiko.

Because, unlike Fuyumi, Aiko was dead.

“She’s not?” my friend, colleague and potential lover challenged, playful mocking tone in her voice. “So you impregnated a girl out of wedlock? Kenji, never thought you the type.”

“Impregnated…” I repeated, offering a morsel to the wind. The word sounded wrong. Not because I had been intimate with this girl only once, on our ‘wedding night’ two nights before, but because what had resulted from that interaction was not normal.

Human females do not conceive then surpass two trimesters in two days.

But with child she was. I slid one hand beneath her fragile form, onto her distended belly, which was clad in a flimsy kimono. Even through fleece-lined gloves I could feel her coldness, which exceeded that of the snow beneath, the ice behind, the needles of frigid wind stabbing my face.

Instinctively, I pulled the wolf pelt tighter around her head as I dipped my own to shield it, tucking away the strands of her black hair that adorned my chest. Not long ago, I’d chosen to use this unwanted bride as a means to an end. Now I was cradling her like I would the child she carried.

How was I to know her health would fade so fast and her stomach swell so quickly when we left the Valley?

How was I to know I’d feel guilty watching her collapse?

“Kenji! You’re drifting, eyes open!”

Eyes open! Head up! Wincing into the wind and the stinging hailstones it flung my way as the storm thickened.

Thickened as Fuyumi’s power waned.

“Where are they?” I groaned, turning my head, not towards Aiko but towards the brass gong embedded in the ice, from which a wooden mallet hung on a cord. How long since we’d entered the igloo? How long since I’d struck the gong? Had they not been summoned? Should I hit it again?

“You don’t have to hit it again,” Aiko said. “They’ll come. Like before. For you and your bride. Not me. They didn’t want me. Just you and Daichi. Does Daichi have a new wife too?”

Words that sounded accusatory cut through me. Three of us had entered this igloo a week before, but only two of us had been removed. By the Women. Of the Valley. Daichi and I. Not Aiko. They left her, because she was…

Briefly, the thought occurred to me–how did she know about the Women? I’d been unconscious, on the threshold of death, hadn’t seen them arrive to take me away. I almost asked, but a fresh caress from the wind’s prickly spines reminded me: she wasn’t real.

Her voice was being conjured by my frost-adled mind and had access to all of its knowledge. She would claim she was speaking from beyond the grave, where the dead knew all, but I knew better. In life, Aiko had been a believer in the unseen, the unknown, the otherwordly. I had indulged but never joined her in belief. Not even at the end, when she claimed she’d seen ghosts in the blizzard, before we lost control of our PSV.

Daichi and I surmised the Women who caused the snowmobile’s instruments and guidance systems to fail, not some supernatural element like Aiko insisted. Putting us in a spin, placing us on the edge of an unmapped ravine. Forcing us to abandon the Leopard before it fell, near an igloo at the edge of the Valley.

The igloo.

Daichi, Aiko and I, huddled together. Daichi, frozen unconscious, me slipping away behind him. Aiko, shivering, spotting the gong, suggesting it was there for a reason. For desperate souls like us to summon help. From who? I didn’t know. How could I? As far as any of us knew, nobody had explored the White Eye. But someone had built the igloo, someone had embedded the gong in one of its blocks. A gong that hadn’t been ravaged by the elements. Someone. For a reason. So I hit it.

Then followed my friends into darkness.

Nagano’s Hida Mountains were difficult terrain to reach. Even after the Eye was discovered in '48, nobody cared to risk lives and resources exploring anything other than solutions to re-cool the planet. Aiko, as Chief Cryosphere Researcher in the Japanese Climate Restoration Authority, believed we needed to understand why this one part of the Alps remained frigid, why a blizzard discovered by satellites ten years before had never blown out, had only grown stronger, even as it diminished in size.

With measures to combat skyrocketing temperatures failing, the JCRA finally authorised her to explore, though with minimal resources. Namely, the Polar Survey Vehicle ‘Leopard’; the navigator and survivalist Daichi Sato; and me, Kenji Mori, meteorologist, snow physics enthusiast and Aiko’s long-time assistant.

Aiko believed the blizzard was the result of unnatural forces. Daichi and I disagreed. Neither of us thought we would find anything other than a strange microclimate. Katabatic winds funnelled through narrow passes. Neither of us thought she might be right.

“Talk to me,” the voice I dreamed insisted, and the wail of the wind intensified as if to agree. “Tell me what happened when they took you.”

“Why?” I replied, to a corpse. “You already know.”

“Assume I don’t,” the voice refused to quiet, the words louder than my own. “Assume my knowledge is confined to what happened here. Where did they take you? What did you see? Was I right?”

“The Valley,” I offered in surrender, distracted by what I thought was movement on my lap. I could feel Fuyumi’s weight but the pelt concealed her completely. I was afraid to lift it, even slightly, to see how she looked.

“They took us to their Valley. I slept for 2 days. Daichi came to a day before me. He wasn’t as frost-bitten. All his extra blubber, he said. Kept the hypothermia away. He was by my bed when I awoke but he wasn’t alone. They were with him. The Women.

“Yes, Aiko. You were right. There are things beyond our understanding. Other worlds. Other beings. Like the Yuki-Onna of yokai lore.”

A higher pitch wail than before blustered into the igloo, carrying its wildest flurry of hailstones. They peppered my face, rained down on Fuyumi. I saw the pelt twitch, heard a moan.

“Tell me about them,” Aiko said, closer, and I turned my head the slightest degree towards her body. It hadn’t moved. It was like an ice statue that had melted and refrozen, its beauty remade as a disfigured lump. “It will pass the time ’til they arrive.”

“They are many, which might surprise you. Legends tell of just one. They assembled in Hida as their habitats melted. Snowfields. Frozen forests. Glacial valleys. All vanishing. They retreated North, found this last bastion of Winter and chose to defend it. Made it their refuge and shut out the world.”

“Apart from the men they lure in as lovers,” Aiko whispered, and I imagined her over my shoulder. “Like in the legends.”

That tone again. Men? Yes. We’d only seen outsider men. Had there been women? Do women explore treacherous mountains? There aren’t many like Aiko.

“To prolong their species,” I felt the need to explain, as much to myself as anyone else. “To father Yukinko. Snow children. Offspring to replenish the Onna’s numbers, to reinforce the stormbelt so their Valley can survive inside the storm. The White Eye shrinks as their numbers dwindle. The blizzard loses its power. This is how they survive. We thought we were first but others have entered the Valley. And never left.”

Fuyumi stirred. A jerk of her head, the wolf pelt disturbed, her frost-speckled hair spread onto my parka. The words I spoke weren’t for her but she could hear them and they seemed to help.

Encouraged, I continued as the voice from my head urged me to explain. “Why?”

“The men we saw. We assumed they’d been gathered like us, saved from the storm by the Onna. Men who’d chosen to stay, who’d embraced the tribal ways. Unspeaking. Communicating through gestures. Becoming husbands, fathers, harvesting crops, building homes, fishing and protecting the village.”

Fuyumi’s fingers slid from the pelt. The alabaster fingers of a hand that remained.

“It made sense. Why would they leave? If they’d gone seeking salvation, an escape from our dying world, hadn’t they found just that? Hadn’t we? The Valley is idyllic. Temperatures are cool but pleasant. The sky is a shield of protective hail. The mountains are secured by this blizzard, which repels the heat. And there are the Onna, with their grace and ethereal beauty.

“They fed us, gave us medicine, nursed us to health. I was soon on my feet with Daichi, exploring the village, the frozen rivers, the ice-fields, winter farms and hills. Three days we wandered, watched over by the Onna. Never by the men. That’s when we felt something was wrong. When we started paying attention. Seeing how they froze when not needed. Stood, sit or lay and just stared. In that state, nothing could stir them. Nothing but a summons from their Onna.

“Two days ago…we decided to state our intention to leave. We needed to…reclaim your body. Take you home. We approached the ones who’d overseen our recovery. They listened, they nodded. They gave us our medicine. But it wasn’t the same.

“I remember my limbs growing heavy. Falling into a fugue. Being led, with Daichi, through a crystal grove into a hollow. The trees were skeletons of ice. Garlands of frozen flowers trailed between them. Lanterns of blue flame hung from their branches. And the Yuki Onna had gathered at the edge of the clearing, kimonos flapping in the breeze, white skin tinged blue in the light.

“I don’t know when I realised what was happening. Maybe it was when they placed us at the altar and the Yukinko were brought forth, daughters of the Valley who were of age. Maybe it was when the rings were frozen onto our fingers. Or in the tents they’d prepared for us, to spend the night in, to…mate.

“Or maybe it was the morning after, when Daichi shook me awake, devastated that he’d been unfaithful. We’d stumbled into more than we knew, had no desire to become like the men in the village. We had to get out. So we fled.

“Daichi had collected hides from his tent. My wife…” I looked at the snow-speckled pelt covering Fuyumi, watched as it rose and fell beneath swirls of snow. “Fuyumi didn’t stir when I slipped away. The Yuki Onna remained sleeping also, in the clearing where they’d lain down after the ritual celebrations of the night before. I felt like I was moving through a dream. The herbs they’d given lingered in my system. Daichi had overcome their effects. Aided by thoughts of Maiko, the one wife he loved.

“He led the way. Out of the hollow, through the grove, past the village of outsiders, men who might have tried to leave once but who had accepted–or been forced to embrace–the White Eye.”

I paused again, expecting imaginary-Aiko to say something. Her words didn’t come. The wind, too, had fallen quiet. Through the igloo’s opening, the blizzard seemed to be calming. No, not calming. Parting. They were coming. I could feel it. Fuyumi could too.

That’s why she was trying to sit up.

“It didn’t work,” I continued, to no one. “We trudged for hours to the edge of the storm. Wrapped ourselves in furs. From that side, the blizzard looked gentle. Daichi didn’t hesitate. Follow me, he said, then he stepped across the threshold and…”

My words fell away as Fuyumi’s head rose up. Her flawless face, pale blue eyes, thin lips. Delicate nose and obsidian hair. I didn’t have to speak it aloud, her stare seemed to say. There was no one to hear how the storm had erupted when Daichi entered, how it hurled him to the ground, rained blows down on him.

I didn’t try to help. Didn’t have to. Suddenly, they were there, the Onna, with Fuyumi and Shiroi, Shiroi hurrying into the tempest to reclaim her husband, forcing the storm to retreat. She was a benefactor of the storm and it would not harm her.

I have no desire to recall how Daichi looked. How his face was torn, how his eyes leaked crystallised blood. They took him back to the village, in customary silence, Fuyumi walking beside me. Slowing when I faltered, waiting when I stopped. Smiling that soothing smile, as though nothing mattered but following her mate. I sensed she would go wherever I led. I knew what had to be done.

Nightfall came.

Daichi had been taken to an Onna’s hut. I was not allowed to see him. It was for the best. He didn’t need to know I was leaving. If only to get help and return. At least, that was the plan.

I held Fuyumi’s gaze as I thought these things, watched her sit astride my legs, shuck off the pelt, reveal her frail body. There was more to her left arm now than when I brought her in. Its elbow had regrown, part of the forearm. Her right leg, too, was reforming, a thigh reassembled, a knee. She didn’t show distress. She just gazed, fondly, as before.

Fonder, now I’d chosen to save her life.

I hadn’t coerced her to come. When I left the village, she followed. Through the mountains, back to the storm. Daichi hadn’t hesitated. I did. For a moment. But the only way to test my thesis was to enter the maelstrom, so I did, holding Fuyumi close.

As with Shiroi, the winds and snow bent around us, offering passage. I didn’t celebrate. I was leaving Daichi, albeit temporarily, I felt no triumph or joy. I just walked. Trudged. Though knee-deep snow with my unspeaking bride all night long. All the way to the igloo.

It marks the edge of their world, Aiko. They can’t venture further. Whatever force sustains them is housed in the Valley. Straying from it makes them dissolve. We’d scarcely passed it when Fuyumi stumbled and slipped from my grasp.

I thought she was just exhausted. I hadn’t been paying attention. Had I pushed her too hard? When I stopped, to let her rest, I saw her stomach. Six months pregnant in less than two days. Impossible. But so was the fact she was dissolving, her body breaking apart as I watched. The fingers of her left hand went first, then her right foot. She was crumbling in my arms, pieces of her drifting away to join the snowflakes cascading around us. Though not as distant as they’d been.

Her power was fading with her body. Her ability to keep the blizzard at bay. I don’t know how long I stood there, holding this woman, this Yuki Onna, the mother of my child who was disappearing.

What choice did I have? Drag her on, til nothing remained? Hope she’d last long enough to see me out of the storm? She wouldn’t. Death awaited ahead, for me and for her. Life awaited behind, after a fashion.

Life, Fuyumi, our unborn child and Daichi.

So there we were. And there were they, outside. The Onna. Four of them, peering in. Come to retrieve their Yukinko and her groom. I watched them reach in to help her out. Then extend their arms back inside for me.

What was I to do? Stay and freeze to death, like Aiko? No. I had a wife and child to protect. Even in some zombie-like state. That’s what I was going to do. For as long as they could nourish their storm.

“Not long,” I heard Aiko say as I ducked out of the igloo, and her words made me snap my head around. My eyes went first to her ice-sculpture body. Then to the shimmering copy that stood alongside. “Godspeed, Kenji. We’ll do what we can to prevent others sharing your fate.”

We. Aiko and the others. A trio of similarly dressed women who were suddenly beside her. For the blink of an eye and then gone.

Swallowed by the blizzard like I.