Fairy Tales (gruesome)

The Yoki Onna (2)

One of the tales of the Yoki Onna goes like this:

A young mother lived with her two children at the base of the mountains. The winter in that area was always long and troublesome, and the people living there often had to deal with heavy snow storms. Same as this year and the time of the long, lonly night came and with it the cold and the snow.

The mother sent her daughter one day to the neighboring village, to get a few things. Her younger brother wanted to come with, and although he was only 4 years old, the mother trusted her daughter enough to be responsible and take care of him.

The children weren't even on their way one hour, as the sky suddenly darkend and one of the dangerous and feared snow storms started brewing. Even at this time of year, it was odd for the weather to change so rapidly. The strom grew stormier, and the mother began to get worried, since she knew that her children couldn't have reacher the other village yet. They were still out there and probably lost as well, because they also didn't come back home. Sick of worry, the mother left to look for her children.

She had a hard time finding her way through the storm, blind and shaking due to the cold. Eventually she lost her orientation and was left stumbling through the deepening snow, calling out the names of her children until her lips were numb and her throat was sore. The tears on her cheeks froze to sparkling pearls of ice and fell into the snow at her feet.

After hours of searching, she still didn't find a trace of them, and slowly lost the hope of ever seeing them again. All of a sudden, her tired eyes viewed a silluette of a person, against the white, formless background. She called for help as she made her way through the snow, towards the silluette.

The person was not facing her, but because of the long black hair and the dainty body, she recognized that it must be a woman, who's white kimono swayed in the wind and was almost indistinguishable from the surroundings.

The woman turned around in one calm and elegant movement, but kept looking at the ground so the mother could not make out her face. Her hair was moving weirdly; almost as if it was underwater. The mother, who's own hair was moved ruthlessly around by the wind, didn't notice this though; she could only pay attention to the small, wrapped up, bundle in the arms of the strange woman, who had it cradled in her arms and seemed to be singing a calming song, from which the words were undistinguishable, to it.

Thinking it was her son, the mother grabbed the bundle out of the other woman's arms and pulled back the blankets. But then she realized that wrapped up in them wasn't her son, but a hard, cold block of ice.

She raised her head and looked at the strange woman, who's face she could now see clearly for the first time. It was so emotionless and cold, just like the chunk of ice in her arms.

She opened her mouth, questioning and despairing, but it was already to late: she had touched to ice. Her numb body was filled with unbearable pain, and froze. The blood became thick and slow, as more and more small ice crystals formed, and her heart only stopped beating after it was completely covered in a thin layer of ice. The last thing she saw, before her eyes closed for the last time, was the swaying hair of the Yoki Onna in the subsiding snowstorm.

The next morning, fellow villagers found her dead, frozen body, half burried in freashly fallen snow. Also they found small deepenings in the snow, which led, at regular intervals, away from the body. The children were never found.

Be warned: should you be one day out in a snowy landscape, and you see these small deepenings, then RUN!