SNOW AS IT FALLS, by Patricia Correll 10/10
She turned her face away from him. She must hate him still for his faithlessness. Tears welled up in his eyes, mingling with the rain on his face. Speak! He must speak. He couldn’t let her leave him again.
“Yoko, I knew it was you.” He reached up with shaking arms and laid his hand on the crane’s bare breast, where the feathers had been pulled out and never grown back. The bird’s heart beat quick and shallow beneath his fingers. “I am sorry. I was a bad husband to you. I’ve been searching all these years…perhaps you do not remember me.”
The crane looked at him with her great dark eyes. Shigeru looked into them, expecting to see his reflection. Instead he saw himself as a younger man, with black hair and an unlined face, reflected in her eyes, and he knew she had not forgotten.
“I wanted to find you. I want to beg your forgiveness.”
The crane bent her head. He stroked the soft feathers of her neck. The tip of her wing brushed his face, and for a moment it seemed he was lying in Yoko’s arms again, her breath warm and steady on his neck, and all was well. A smile lifted the corner of his mouth. His crane wife forgave him. Before his eyes she stood smiling, her lips red as blood, her hair black as the space between the stars and her feathers the brilliant white of snow as it falls.
Long after he had stopped breathing the crane stayed with him, her graceful head laid next to his. After a time the rain stopped, and the sun came out.
Snow as It Falls is a retelling of the Japanese folktale The Crane Wife. Patricia says, "The story is very old and many writers have found it compelling. I was never satisfied with the flatness of the characters- the husband simply growing greedy and pushing his wife to work harder was never believable to me. I feel I have given the characters their own lives and motivations in this version, as well as a more fulfilling ending."
Patricia Correll has been previously published in Reflection's Edge, A Thousand Faces, The Written Word, Art Times and Magazine of the Dead. She was the 2003 winner of the Moonlight & Magnolia SF/Fantasy/Horror Short Story Contest and placed third in the 2006 Writer's Journal Fiction Competition. She is currently seeking an agent for her first fantasy novel. She lives in Kentucky with her husband and their cat.
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