Chapter Four

The snowfall grew heavier again. Pinpoint specks became big fluffy flakes, falling all around us, sticking to our cloaks, melting then steaming off over time.

We plodded across the valley floor. Progress was slower than I wanted. Marching through the snow was tiresome for all of us, but it was worst for Marisa. Our group could only be as fast as our slowest member, and she was the shortest of us. She sank in to her knees with every step.

“Marisa, here,” Reimu said behind me at one point.

I glanced back, and saw Reimu had unwrapped a biscuit. She had brought snacks of her own, which I hadn’t noticed before now. She broke the bread in two, giving half to Marisa and keeping half for herself.

As she took a bite, Reimu’s eyes met mine.

“Shorry,” she said past a full mouth, then chewed and swallowed. “I only brought enough for us two.”

“It’s fine. I have my own.”

“Ain’t much of a meals,” said Marisa, taking a bite. “Gonna be big-hungrys for good dinners at my place tonights.”

A snowflake flew into my eye. I squeezed my eyes shut, then wiped my face with the back of my glove.

“Assuming we’re not buried alive out here.”

The wind picked up, blowing more snowfall into our faces. We pulled our cloaks tight around ourselves. Reimu let out a frustrated Grrrgh! noise.

“So tired of this! I wish you could stab the weather to death, Sakuya.”

Again, my heart beat hard just once. My jaw clenched.

“There are problems my knives can’t solve,” I said.

Reimu hmphed. “Not for a lack of trying.”

I shot an angry look back at her. She was venting from old trauma and present frustration, and she was owed that. It still annoyed me.

“Listen,” I said. “You’re not—”

The weather itself shut me up. The strongest gust yet slammed into us, along with a thick wave of snowfall. We were forced to a standstill. I grasped at my cloak and tried to cover my face with my hood.

“Damn it!” I yelled, but I could barely hear my own voice. The storm had all but blinded and deafened me.

A gust is supposed to die down after a couple of seconds, but this one didn’t. The wind kept blowing, and the snow was so heavy that it began building up on my left side. I had to adjust my footing to keep from being knocked over.

“Reimu! Marisa!”

I yelled their names into the storm. No reply came, but I probably couldn’t have heard their voices anyway. I reached out an arm, trying could grab either one of them, but my hand found nothing.

The wind blew even harder, overwhelming my balance. I fell down on my right knee, and my right arm went into the snow to steady me.

“What is happening?” I shouted against the wind.

I didn’t expect a reply to that, but one came.

“Be still, human! Or all snow in Gensokyo will be upon you!”

This voice boomed with a similar sound to Cirno’s voice augmented by her giant snowman, but it wasn’t the same. It wasn’t as loud, but it was deeper and rang with authority.

I tried to look up and around, but the snowfall was too violent for my eyes to stay open.

“Who’s there?” I yelled. “Show yourself!”

“Yes, see she who judges your crime. Cirno, choose a spot so I may form beside you.”

---

All at once, the storm stopped. The last of the snowflakes fell to the ground, and the air was empty behind them. The wind slowed to stillness.

I tried to bring up a hand to wipe my eyes, but my hands were both stuck in the snow. I blinked a few times, then looked down to see the snow on the ground had frozen around me. I bucked my shoulders up and down, trying and failing to free myself. My legs were stuck too. No amount of rocking forward and back or side to side helped. I was trapped.

Looking up and around, Reimu and Marisa were nowhere to be seen. There no footprints leading to where I sat half-buried in solid snow. The scenery of wintertime Gensokyo was pristine all around me.

I wasn’t alone. The ice fairy stood over me. Her bare feet didn’t sink, the snow instead holding up her weight as if it were solid earth. Her arms were folded, and she looked down on me with a gloating smile.

“Right here, Letty,” she said.

Cirno held her arm up to her side, as if holding hands with an adult. Snow from the ground leaped up in two ribbons, twisting and braiding like a pair of snakes. The snow reached up to Cirno’s hand and grasped it. More snow climbed up, and more after that. The mass grew and shaped, until it became the most precisely-designed snowman I had ever seen. Or rather snowwoman, if the shape of its body was a clue. The snow shattered off her, all flaking to the ground as if it had been a paper-thin shell.

There, holding Cirno’s hand, was a tall woman. She wore a vest and long dress of alternating blue and white. Her eyes were bright lavender, and her hair was the same color, waving like wind-blown snowdrifts. She wore a white lady’s cap, and an odd four-pronged brooch was pinned to her lapel. Like Cirno, she stood on the snow and did not sink into it.

“Know you who I am?” said the snow woman.

“Uh,” was the most intelligent response I could offer.

I have lived with youkai my whole life. I’ve seen some extraordinary things, but never before had a woman materialized from snow and spoken to me.

“Dumbstruck?” said the woman. “Letty Whiterock, spirit of Gensokyo winter, and the patron of colder youkai. Who are you?”

My social conditioning took over. I couldn’t bow while doubled over in frozen snow, so I gave her a deferential nod.

“Sakuya Izayoi,” I said. “I serve Remilia Scarlet of House Scarlet, the mansion on the lake.”

“A pleasure,” said Letty, a sneer plain in her voice. “Though a greater pleasure to bring justice for how you abused poor Cirno.”

“Justice!” The fairy pumped a fist into the air. “Poor Cirno!”

“I was defending myself,” I said. “She attacked us unprovoked.”

“It was provoked,” said Letty. “Cirno came to collect a debt long past due, owed her by another human you were with.”

“That debt isn’t mine. She attacked all three of us alike, though I owe her nothing.”

Letty knelt down on the snow before me. With one hand, she took hold of the flaming bird above my head that represented the warmth spell. She made a fist, crushing the bird, extinguishing the spell with a burst of colorful sparks that sank to the snow and vanished. Icy air folded around me on all sides. My arms and legs stuck in the snow could feel the cold again, biting into my skin.

Using two fingers, Letty lifted my chin and met my eyes with hers.

“You owed her nothing then,” she said. “You would be ignored, had you stood aside and allowed Cirno her business. After they destroyed Cirno’s Gunky, you beat her and terrorized her with a blade.”

My teeth started chattering. The cold affected me far faster than usual, just being in the presence of Gensokyo’s winter elemental.

“W-what are you g-gonna do with me?” I said.

“Please understand,” said Letty, “you would already be dead, were we not to recoil from the thought of your blood befouling the snow. You have one chance to apologize to Cirno, and only by offering a service or token that she desires.”

“A-and what does C-cirno desire?”

The ice fairy stabbed a finger down at me. “Freezing all three of you! You’ll go get your two friends, bring them to me, and Cirno will freeze you all into the most beautiful sculpture ever.”

“S-sounds the same to me. E-either way, I end up d-dead.”

“But if you take your chances with me,” said Letty, “it will last much longer. Gensokyo’s historian will add a footnote.”

My whole body was trembling now. Letty’s fingers on my chin brought a burning freeze to the skin she touched.

“So?” she said. “What say you?”

A good question. I couldn’t fight my way out of this. Being stuck in frozen snow made my shift useless. I couldn’t throw any knives, and they wouldn’t hurt her anyway. I couldn’t run, but even if I could, where would I go? Letty was everywhere during wintertime in Gensokyo.

She... she was wintertime in Gensokyo.

That was an idea. I might have a way out of this that didn’t involve getting impaled on an ice spire.

“I c-can offer a different service,” I said, “but I h-have a condition for ex-explaining it.”

Letty scoffed, humph!, the noise of a noblewoman looking down on a commoner.

“Why should I accommodate?” she said.

“Because I offer this s-service to you as well.”

“Do you? You assert this service is of value to both Cirno and myself?”

“Y-yes.”

Letty lowered her hand from my face. The sharpest edge of the cold faded. The shaking through my body calmed.

“What is your condition?” she said.

I took in a breath. “That I explain the service to you alone, and Cirno not hear it.”

“Aw!” said Cirno. She kicked at the snow, sending a short spray at my face. “That’s not fair!”

“The one you owe is Cirno,” said Letty. “She has a right to know how amends are made.”

“You’re her patron,” I said. “You can judge on her behalf whether the service is worthy.”

“I can,” said Letty, “but understand. If I humor your condition, and I judge the service unworthy, then your apology is considered forfeit immediately.”

In other words, talk fast or die. I nodded.

“Good. A moment.”

Letty stood up and turned to Cirno. She put a hand on the fairy’s shoulder.

“Go play in the snow, little one. The human and I must speak in private.”

“Nooo!” Cirno moaned. “Cirno never gets to spend time with you. Why are you always so busy?”

“We’ll meet again shortly. Go now.”

Under her touch and words, Cirno’s body relaxed. Her shoulders slumped. Letty put her palm on her forehead and gave her a push. The fairy fell flat on her back and sunk into the snow. It enveloped her, as if she had fallen into jelly.

“Swim,” said Letty. “Wait for me.”

I could barely hear the crmp crmp crmp of snow moving under the surface as Cirno burrowed away from us. I couldn’t tell which direction she went. She left no trail, and the sound was soon gone.

Letty looked back to me, the two of us now alone.

“Your condition is met.”

“Thank you.” I bowed my head to her. “She said you were busy? Am I taking you away from something important?”

Having lived with youkai, I know some traits they share with humans. They love talking about themselves.

“Yes, human. The protracted winter has also protracted my workload: a long and unappreciated labor, keeping alive the flora, fauna and youkai of Gensokyo. Especially since this is a task to which the winter spirit is unsuited.”

“Should the spring spirit have taken over by now?”

Letty nodded. “The next season is hers, my peer Lily White. She has been absent. I search Gensokyo from one side of the Boundary to the other, but nowhere is she found.”

“I know who to blame for her disappearance. A short, cloaked woman with a sword—”

“Yes,” Letty cut me off. “She who possesses the enchanted blade, allowing her to travel anywhere in Gensokyo instantly. She deploys a device which gathers the spring, then retreats through a gate on the far side of the magician’s wood.”

My breath caught in my throat. That was a lot of information to hear at once.

“Then that’s the service I’ll offer,” I said. “I’ll find her and return spring to Gensokyo.”

Letty was taken aback. She blinked at me. Then she laughed, again like a disdainful noblewoman. A ha ha ha ha!

“Will you?” she said. “Why might I deem that a worthy service? Cirno hates nothing worse than winter’s end. You saw her frolic in the snow.”

“I also saw her concern for you. If I return the spring for your sake, Cirno will be happy to see you become well again.”

“Already am I well, human. My life and the winter are one.”

“Exactly. It’s May. You’ve been stretched beyond yourself. You need rest.”

Silence fell on us. The air was still. Letty looked away from me, and her shoulders drooped. Dark circles appeared under her eyes. She seemed shorter than she had a minute ago.

“You... speak not falsely.”

As if Letty no longer willed me to be trapped, the snow around me softened. My fingers and toes were going numb, but I could move again. I dug myself out and stood up, brushing snow off my dress and cloak.

“I know how youkai live,” I said, “and how they die.”

Letty kept changing before my eyes. Her hair faded from vibrant lavender to brittle, snowy white. Her face sagged, running through the wrinkles and care lines. Her eyes grew gray and rheumy, and bags hung under them. She stooped forward as the top of her back arched into a hunch.

“I tried to hide it,” she said. Her voice was dry, craggy. “How could you tell?”

“It was just an intuition. You were beautiful a moment ago.”

She laughed again. This time, it was an old woman’s cackle. Gya heh heh!

“Meaning that I no longer am. As little faith as I have in your ability to carry out your offer, it more than balances your hurting Cirno. If you can accomplish it, I would then be indebted to you.”

Letty closed her eyes, and she kept aging. Her eyelids were transparent sheets of skin. Her cheeks drooped into jowls. The skin and muscles hung off her arms in pendulous flaps.

“Weariness beyond description burdens me,” she said. “I yearn to melt and become the mountain runoff.”

“Then throw in something extra,” I said. “Clear the debt that Reimu owes the ice fairy.”

“Gladly, if you return Gensokyo’s spring.” She tried to stand up straighter, wrenching the ancient bones in her spine. “But if you fail, your life is mine.”

It would be regardless, whether Letty herself did the killing, or her season starved Gensokyo to death. Maybe she understood that, and so spoke in a double entendre.

“So it is.”

“Then we are agreed,” said Letty, and she dissolved.

Her body and clothes all turned white, just as when she first materialized from the snow. She shrunk and deformed, flattening out like a wax statue melting. When she had completely melted, there was no puddle left behind, only smooth snow.

I stood alone in an open field, in the middle of snowed-over Gensokyo. A light breeze lifted my cloak. A few pinpoint snow flakes blew by and stuck to me. There were still no footprints leading to me or away from me.

I turned around, and saw the Forest of Magic stretching wide in the distance. I looked straight up to the solid gray slate of cloud overhead. It was impossible to tell the time exactly, so I had to assume I had less than half of the daylight hours left.

After pulling out a spellcard and renewing the warmth spell on myself, I started walking. I was tired and too hungry for the cakes in my bag to sate me, but at least I could keep a better pace without the other two slowing me down.