Snow Angels

Jenna Tobias

Winner, Winnie Davis Neely Award in Fiction, 2024

This is the fifth snow angel I’ve seen today.

Usually, this wouldn’t be such a big deal. With snow comes the angels, stamped into the frozen ground like insects spread and pinned on an entomologist’s board. If you’re quick enough, you can spot them as they fall, careening towards the ground in imperfect, glittering arcs. They’re tiny like snowflakes, easily missed, and they’re gone by the time you blink your eyes. Like snow melting on your tongue or on your palm: fragile and transient. Sometimes, I make it a game to see if I can catch sight of one before it vanishes, sinking into the earth and leaving an imprint of a corpse in its wake. Sometimes, if I’m looking right at a spot where I think an angel may land, I can see it—hear the crunch of impact, the snap of bone, the pulpy mush of spattered organs—and then there it is, twitching in its holy print, a grotesque, shattered hand clawing skyward as if it’s attempting to make it back to Heaven.

A lot of us, myself included, used to think snow angels were light incarnate, which would explain why they’re so mistakable during the day. They blend in with the snow, white as loose-leaf. But recently, I learned this isn’t the case. When they fall, they’re perfect porcelain, pale as poltergeists, and when they land, they are rotted and gaunt. From heavenly bodies to hellish haunts, snow angels are monsters.

But they have never brought us harm, so this phenomenon remains just that. Enchanting, wintry folklore for the city, if anything.

It’s weird, I used to think they were bad—that when they started falling in droves it meant an apocalypse was imminent. I used to think they were this world’s version of the Four Horsemen from scripture, but it seems as if they simply exist to die a horrible, ugly death on this lonesome planet trapped in orbit. I wonder if it’s any different up there in the clouds. Is the home of a snow angel as fantastical as people theorize? Or is it your average two-story complex with its sagging roof, shuttered windows, and bolted doors? Is it what they talk about in the Bible—a paradise in which you live in harmony with your fellow angels, and all is well because you’ve been absolved of your sins and have joined a sparkling choir in the afterlife?

This is the fifth snow angel I’ve seen today, but unlike the previous four, whose imprints were empty, this one is full. It lies flat on its back, eyes shut in peaceful permanence. I stand over the snow angel pressed deep into the ground, overlooking it like I’m some reaper of death. Its bones press up against its mottled, grey skin, which is so thin I think they might shred right through. It has short, fluffy white hair with a messy fringe that falls across its forehead in a swoop. Hanging over its head, flickering with weak illumination, is a golden-hued halo littered with cracks. I peer closer, consumed with curiosity, and notice the robes clinging to its body. They are dark like night, speckled with embroidered specks of stars, but they don’t look very warm.

The angel’s wings are feathery. Strangely enough, they aren’t broken. This angel is perfectly intact, in fact.

Just when I think I ought to pull my phone out to photograph it, it opens its eyes. Unlike the white sclera us humans have, its sclerae are pitch-black, and its irises are milky-white. It looks every bit the inhuman, alien angel it’s meant to be.

It meets my stare, silent like suffocation.

I’m not startled. I’ve caught sight of snow angels before, but I’ve never seen one this closely. Snow angels are fleeting. I wonder why this one hasn’t sunk into the ground yet.

I lower myself to the imprint, my knees folding with the motion. My skirt sweeps the snow, but I don’t mind it. Tentatively, while holding eye contact, I open the flap of my messenger bag, reach inside, and withdraw a packaged pastry. I hold it out next, offering it even though it was going to be my lunch. I’m hungry but not nearly as hungry as the angel.

It looks at it, blinking owlishly—one eye at a time. It hesitates for a single second, and then snatches it. I watch it shred the plastic with razored claws, tearing into the milk bread with monstrous voracity. Custard filling oozes between its bone-thin fingers. Its teeth are crooked and sharp, two pointed canines sinking deep.

“Thank…you,” it grunts, licking its fingers clean of sugar.

I stand there, stupefied. Its voice is mystical and melodious—soft and sweet like a birdsong. It feels more like it would match a siren’s vocal prowess rather than this skeletal angel.

“You’re a snow angel,” I say, speaking the obvious like I’ve just discovered a new species.

The angel blinks once more, toying with the wrapper in trembling hands. It sits up slowly in its would-be grave and flexes its wings. A few stray feathers flutter out. They catch fire the moment they touch the ground, reduced to ash.

Stupidly, I shrug out of my coat and drape it over the angel.

“You’ll catch a cold,” I explain, issuing a polite smile.

The angel nods, snuggling in the warmth provided by my coat. “Human ailments don’t affect me.”

“But you’re shivering.”

“It won’t kill me.”

“Still.”

“Are you not afraid of me?”

“Why would I be? You look harmless. Super weak. No offense.” And your species has a tendency to die really easily, I think. Quite literally drop dead.

It hums, unbothered. “May I ask your name?”

“I’m Marron.”

“Marron? Like a chestnut?”

I scowl. “I’ll have you know it means refined and rich!”

“Then, Miss Marron, the most refined and rich human creature of this world, may I ask something of you?”

A shudder passes through me when the angel rises to its full height, and suddenly it doesn’t look so small. Vertically, I mean. It’s still stick-thin. And it’s not because I’m scared that I shiver, but because the frost is starting to chew its way through my bones. It’s colder than I thought, and the wind isn’t making things better for me. The angel removes my coat from its bony frame, handing it back even though I try to decline. It insists, shoving it at me. Feeling foolish and defeated, I stuff my arms back inside my coat and zip it all the way up to my throat. The angel’s cloak looks out of place in this quiet, desolate park, like something from a fantasy film. Briefly, I wonder if I’m on a set and this is all part of an act.

It’s not. There are no camera crews or lighting experts or scene directors here. It’s just the angel and me.

“What is it?” I ask, utterly perplexed. Just what could an angel want with me?

“I would like to enlist your aid.”

A glacial breeze blows across the park, catching our clothes with its icy fingers. I stare at the angel.

“My aid?”

It steps out of the print to lower into a bow before kneeling in the snow, a hand held over its chest. I take a cautious step away.

“I am Famine. In just a few months, the others shall arrive, and the world as you know it shall reach its finale. But I—” it falters, looking more like a fearful, cornered creature than the disaster it is named after and embodies. “I love when I am not meant to. I love when I should destroy. But… But I can’t bring myself to shatter the terrarium I have looked after so fondly, so unfalteringly, for eons.”

I suck in a horrified breath, my heart skipping a beat. “When you say the others…”

The angel nods, mournful. “Death, War, and Conquest. I have come early to plunge this world into interminable famine. Next shall come War, who shall turn all of you against one another, and then Death, who shall fill her empty heart with as many souls as she desires.”

“And what of Conquest?”

“Conquest shall shape the world anew. A perfect world devoid of all living creatures. It will be a blank slate. A cruel cleansing. A hollowed terrarium.”

The end of the world. I exhale a slow, disconsolate breath. The end of the world…

It really is happening.

“Can’t you—I don’t know—tell whoever’s in charge up there to call it off?” I ask, even though I suspect that’s not possible.

Famine looks at me sharply. “There is no God up there. There hasn’t been for a long while.”

“So then… Well, I… How am I supposed to help? I’m sorry, but you’re asking the impossible.”

Famine deflates, its head bowed solemnly. Its shoulders shake and, much to my disbelief, it cries. Aureate tears track down its sunken cheeks, falling in twin rivers of gold. It’s sad. It’s eerie. It’s oddly beautiful.

I watch and I wait.

The end of the world…

It’s unbelievable, but what else could come of the Four Horsemen if not total extinction?

I don’t cry. It’s devastating and jarring, of course, but I just can’t feel sad. Maybe a part of me subconsciously suspected that this was on the horizon after more snow angels began to fall.

Instead, I cover the sliver of distance between the angel and myself and kneel in the snow beside it. I embrace the angel and allow it to cry into my shoulder, golden tears staining my woolen coat.

“I love this world,” it laments, hiccupping through sobs. “I love this world and its humans and its plants and its animals. Humans are the most beautiful tragedy I’ve ever beheld, you see. I love them when I shouldn’t, and I don’t want them to disappear. But even so—even if my fascination is forbidden and misplaced—I will protect this world and everything in it.”

“Why?”

Famine lifts its head to look at me. Stony resolve hardens its milky eyes. “Because no one else is willing to.”

It wraps its arms around me, hugs me tightly, and weeps.

For the first time in a while, I feel tears gathering in my own eyes.

Jenna Tobias is an aspiring author from Chicago who enjoys writing about all things creepy and strange. It is her dream to publish a novel. When she isn't writing, she's tending to her houseplants and catching up on episodes from her favorite shows!