My Mother She Killed Me, My Father He Ate Me: Forty New Fairy Tales

NAOKO AWA. First Day of Snow

IT WAS A COLD DAY IN LATE AUTUMN. ON A PATH RUNNING STRAIGHT through the village, a young girl crouched down, looking at the ground. She tilted her head and breathed deeply. “Who was hopscotching here?” she wondered aloud.

Hopscotch rings, drawn in chalk, continued endlessly on the path — across the bridge and toward the mountains. The girl stood up. “What a long hopscotch!” she cried, widening her eyes. When she hopped into a ring, her body became as light as a bouncing ball.

One foot, one foot, two feet, one. With her hands in her pockets, the girl hopped forward. She hopped across the bridge and down a narrow path through cabbage fields, then past the only tobacco shop in the village.

“Oh, you have a lot of energy!” said an old woman who minded the shop. Panting for breath, the girl smiled proudly. In front of the candy shop, a large dog barked and bared its teeth.

“Who on earth drew a hopscotch this long?” the girl thought as she hopped. When she reached the bus stop, snow flurries began to blow. The hopscotch rings kept going. The girl kept hopping, her red face sweaty.

One foot, one foot, two feet, one. The sky had turned dark, and a cold wind blew. The snow started to fall heavily and left white spots on the girl’s red sweater.

“It may turn into a blizzard,” the girl thought. “Maybe I should go home now.”

Then she heard a voice from behind her: “One foot, two feet, hop, hop, hop.” Surprised, she turned around and saw a snow-white rabbit hopscotching after her.

“One foot, two feet, hop, hop, hop.” When the girl looked closely, she saw another rabbit behind that one. As the snow kept falling, many more white rabbits began following her. She gaped in amazement.

This time she heard a voice from ahead. “White rabbits behind you, white rabbits in front. One foot, two feet, hop, hop, hop.”

When she looked ahead, the girl saw a long line of white rabbits hopping. “Oh, I had no idea.” She felt as if she were in a dream. “Where are you going?” she asked. “Where does this lead to?”

The rabbit in front of her answered, “To the end, to the end of the world. We’re snow rabbits who make snow fall.”

“What?” The girl was startled. She remembered a story her grandmother once told her. On the first day of snow, a herd of white rabbits came from north. They went from village to village, dropping the snow. They moved so fast humans saw only a white line.

“You have to be careful,” her grandmother said. “If you’re caught in the herd of white rabbits, you can never come home. You hop to the end of the world with the rabbits and turn into a chunk of snow.”

When the girl first heard this story, a chill ran down her spine. Now she was about to be taken away by the rabbits.

“I’m in trouble!” the girl screamed inside her head. She tried to stop. She tried to stop her feet from stepping into the next ring.

Then the rabbit behind her said, “Don’t stop! We’re right behind you. One foot, two feet, hop, hop, hop.” Her body bounced like a rubber ball, hopping along the hopscotch rings.

While hopping, the girl remembered her grandmother telling a story. Her grandmother had stopped sewing for a moment and said, “Once there was a girl who came home alive after being taken away by rabbits. She chanted with all her might: ‘mugwort, mugwort, mugwort in spring.’ Mugwort is a charm against evil.”

“I’m going to do the same,” the girl thought. As she hopped, she imagined a mugwort field. She thought about the warm sunlight, dandelions, honeybees, and butterflies. She took a deep breath. When she was about to say, “Mugwort, mugwort,” she was interrupted by the rabbits’ singing.

The girl covered her ears with her hands. But the rabbits’ singing became louder and louder and spilled into her ears through the gaps between her fingers and kept her from chanting the mugwort charm.

The herd of rabbits and the girl went through a fir forest, crossed a frozen lake, and reached faraway places she had never seen. She saw villages lined with small grass-roofed houses, small towns strewn with sasanqua blossoms, and big cities crowded with factories. But no one noticed the rabbits and the girl. “Oh, it’s the first snow of winter,” people mumbled and hurried away.

As she hopped, the girl tried to chant the charm, but her voice was drowned out by the rabbits’ song.

The girl’s limbs were numb with cold, as cold as ice. Her cheeks turned pale, and her lips quivered.

“Grandmother, help!” she thought. Then she hopped into a ring and found a leaf. She picked it up and saw it was a mugwort leaf, bright green. On the back, it had fluffy white hairs.

“Oh! Who dropped this for me?” the girl thought. She held the mugwort leaf to her chest. Then she felt someone cheering for her. She felt many small creatures rooting for her.

She could hear the voices of seeds under the snow, breathing, enduring the cold beneath the ground.

A wonderful riddle came into her mind. She closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and cried, “Why is the back of a mugwort leaf so white?”

Hearing this, the rabbit ahead of her tottered. He stopped singing and turned around. “The back of a mugwort leaf?” he said.

“I wonder why?” said the rabbit behind her, stumbling. The rabbits’ singing broke off, and their pace slowed down.

Seizing the moment, the girl said, “That’s easy. It’s rabbit fur. Rabbits roll around in the field and shed their hair on mugwort leaves.”

“Yes, you’re right!” said the rabbits, delighted. They started singing a new song:

Then the girl thought she smelled the fragrance of flowers in the air. She heard the chirping of small birds. She imagined herself hopscotching in a mugwort field, bathed in the spring sun. Her cheeks turned rosy. She closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and shouted, “Mugwort, mugwort, mugwort in spring!”

When she opened her eyes, she was hopping alone along a strange path in a strange town. She saw no rabbits ahead or behind. Snow flurried. The hopscotch rings were no longer on the path, and the mugwort leaf was gone from her hand.

“Ah, I’m safe,” the girl thought. But she couldn’t take another step.

A crowd of strangers gathered around her and asked for her name and address. When she told them the name of her village, they looked at each other, muttering, “I can’t believe it.” They didn’t think a child could have walked from such a faraway place beyond many mountains. Then an old woman said, “She must have been led away by rabbits.”

The townspeople fed the girl warm food and put her on a bus home before dark.

— Translated from the Japanese by Toshiya Kamei