Part 3

That was his first theory. “Or how about this?” he asked. “Imagine she was spurned and loveless, for some women truly are ugly or unlucky in love. Either way, after death she becomes a wraith, some wispy figure searching for fulfilment.”

The feller who told me the tale called her a revenge ghost, an onryō, which is Japanese, like him.

Now you can trace many Japanese revenge ghosts back to watery graves, remote rivers, secluded lakes, even the open ocean beyond sight of shore. The well is a favourite. They sit beneath the earth, hidden in plain sight, part of everyday domestic life yet removed from it. Dark, claustrophobic places at the lowest point of the world – the perfect place to dispose of a woman you’ve grown tired of.

But according to our traveller, the Snow Maiden is different. Mostly she issues from the heart of a snowstorm, or a drift the storm has sculpted, descending earthward as an angel down the slope of a snow-covered hill. You can tell it’s her from the jingle and jangle that trails in her wake. Most say those are icicles. Others swear – and this is where the tale grows tangled – that the sound comes from shards of glass. Maybe the remains of that witch bottle she found a way to smash. Somehow, she broke that seal, yet the bottle remains attached, hanging about her as a caution to those who’ll hear it.

Most folks are already bewitched by the way the glass catches fire in the light, the glittering pageant of ice and snow. Those who fail to avert their gaze may discern in her face the reflection of someone they once loved, and later cast aside. Such folk fall under the spell of that abandonment, seized by the urge to rekindle what they themselves extinguished.

When the Snow Maiden catches their eye, they fall headlong into an old wound. Affection that once burned bright, then got mangled, and scarred over. They see not the jilted lover herself, but the idol of that sealed-up infatuation.

The important thing is this: if ever you come upon the Snow Maiden, you must never look her in the eye, because once your gaze is attached to hers, you’ll follow her as surely as those jingling shards of glass, or ice, that trail in her wake. Once that happens, you see only what she wishes you to see, and there’s no stoppering that.

Once she arrives, she leaves no trail of footprints, for – as those who’ve pursued the matter to its logical conclusion can attest – she has no feet.

She glides over the snow without ever settling upon it. Most men, however, are too far gone to notice such trifles. Just as they are too absorbed by the rhythm of the jingle-jangle of their emotions to recall how their intense ardour had been one of indifference and aloofness only moments ago.

By then their hearts are inflamed and the blood is engorging every organ except the hippocampus and temporal lobe, that being the seat of memory. It seems women aren’t so easily fooled. Or perhaps they have better memories. Maybe it’s a circulation issue. Or maybe it’s not biology at all. Maybe it’s education and earthly experience.

There is a rare version in which the Snow Maiden ensnares another lass. You’d think plenty of men would take an interest in that variation, yet the story never really goes anywhere and for the reasons I’ve already indicated. The spell has little to get hold of. And that, I suspect, accounts for the tale’s rarity. In a roundabout way, there simply isn’t much of a story to tell.