The cats were gone for good. That she knew for sure. But as she raised her small fragile head from the pillow, she couldn’t repress a dreadful sense of foreboding, the terrible sensation that they were still there, that they had been waiting for her to wake up, that they were now secretly crouching in the shadows, hidden from her view and ready to attack at any time. It had been a while since she had last experienced something like this, but whenever it happened, she could hardly stop her heart from beating faster. No matter what she did to convince herself there was no need to be frightened.

She pushed the blanket aside and woke up to an extremely cold January morning. She soon became aware that she was not only on the verge of freezing, but also that her stomach had been empty for ten hours and she was really hungry. Getting on her feet and putting on the slippers, she went to the kitchen and opened its creaky door as gently as she could, being careful not to make as less noise as possible. She was getting to enjoy the silence that reigned in the house at daybreak, when the sun was nothing but a pink-orange nail starting to show in the horizon. She had also developed a strange taste to quietly go back to her room after breakfast and go through her assignments until he would eventually come back. Sooner or later, but always before seven.

She took a carton of milk and cut a piece of yesterday’s bread. While she was preparing the coffee and toasting the slice, her mind drifted again to him and his cherubic face. The boy next door. Why they were not sleeping in the same room yet was something she couldn’t understand. She had asked him several times. Why wouldn’t they lie down in the same bed, given that they shared something more than a close friendship and were living under the same roof? But he always came up with a new excuse. She couldn’t really make out what he wanted. Hadn’t been able to from the very beginning. He was so apprehensive. First, there had been the thing about living in the same flat. He was so scared of having to live with a stranger. She had wondered what he would have done, had he gone through her experience in that old house she had shared with ten more roommates two years go. Perfect strangers. But that was what student life was all about if he hadn’t yet realised. She could sense he was gradually getting used to it and, now, with sex having turned up unannounced, she could barely refrain from drawing his attention to the subject at least twice a week. Yet, he would always make something up, and what really annoyed her was that, even though she knew it was complete rubbish, she always ended up buying it.

So there they were. Sleeping together early at night and then going their separate ways. Him leaving for the adjacent room. It was just as well, for she could also have her own moments of privacy that way, but she couldn’t help feeling there was some awkwardness to the whole situation, something which wasn’t quite right.

She pushed these thoughts away and ate everything she had prepared. She left nothing for him. She never did. Not for no reason. He never had breakfast, or at least not at home. He presumably had a little snack on his way back from the morning stroll. She couldn’t believe he had left today, though. It was crazy to go out in that cold. Just out of curiosity she drew the ethereal bone-coloured curtains aside and stared out at the street.

It was a breath-taking image. All that white. It was not that she hadn’t seen snow before, it snowed almost every winter, but its colour was otherworldly, probably a shade of white only a trained eskimo could label properly. Not her. She was just taken by its immense beauty. And then horror struck. Everything was covered in that pale mass. She didn’t know how many feet, but a good deal judging from the look of the cars: the tyres were almost hidden beneath a deep layer of snow. And snowflakes kept falling.

And he was out there. She knew that for sure. He was so damn stubborn. She placed the curtain where it belonged and looked at the fridge door. No note, the bastard. Not even time for that, had he? She stopped and meditated on the situation for some time. After having been with him for almost a year, she was certain she knew his favourite spot. He would sit there every day and contemplate the world surrounding him. Such a poet he was and always trying to undermine her work. He most probably wasn’t a convinced misogynist, but he had a streak of it in him anyway.

It was so cold... She would go after him and bring him back, whatever the consequences. God, he could have had an accident. The pavement got slippery when weather like this came. A broken leg perhaps and that would be unbearable for him and his restless nature. If he had no brains, she would have to have them for him.

She dressed up quickly and snatched her coat from the hanger in the living room. Before leaving she thought writing a note herself would be good in case he came back through one of his unknown paths before she did. So she left a message: “Went to look for you. Be back in 20 minutes if I can’t find you. XXX”. She stuck it to the fridge door and after bolting the entrance door, left with the speed of light.

When she faced the outside world, she was almost transported instantly to another reality where everything had been drained of its colours and had surrendered to the unmatched power of a blinding whiteness. And it was the whiteness she trod upon. And it was the whiteness she followed, like Alice in her journey to Wonderland, never believing her eyes and thinking she must be daydreaming. It was its purity, its sharpness and its delicacy. And at the same time the snow looked fierce, like it could swallow her any moment. She was also surprised to discover that it really wasn’t that cold. She had brought a scarf with her, but she let it remain in the pocket of her coat. There was no need for it, because all of her being was now centred around finding the easiest way to get to the park, fetching him and taking him back home. But it was going to be no easy task making her way through a snowed down city. To the difficulty and risk of simply putting one foot after the other she had to add the panic of getting lost, especially when the drifts got deeper. “Never mind”, she thought, and trod on.

And there was the white, of course. The maddening white. Why it should be so fixed in her mind she didn’t know, but she found herself somehow wanting to get rid of all her clothing and just bathe in those huge fields of toneless shades, raw as the bone and with the ancient ruins of the city throbbing underneath. Long forgotten. And then the smell of time and dust...

She kept on walking and kicking the piles of snow on her way. She was now waist-deep in it, but she was close. Five more minutes and she would be where she expected him to be, sheltering and smoking some illegal substance. In fact, she was now entering the park. The huge signpost, with its name in shabby golden characters barely readable, swung above her head. She wasn’t going to get lost in the end, as she had feared, not if she kept the pace. She really hoped to find him there, for she would have no idea what to do otherwise. But before she could take another step, something stole her heart completely. She stopped and stared at it awestruck, forgetting her march. She had heard of them in some songs and in old tales, but she had always believed them to be mere cultural inventions. Like dragons. But she couldn’t be dreaming, she was seeing them for real. They were there, in front of her face. Snow cherries. And they stood in the middle of the storm as proud and red as all berries do when ripe enough: almost overconfident, daring you to eat them, to delight in their mild sugary flavours. It was an incredible image to see that deep, raging red surrounded by such a pure white: they looked like drops of blood, defying and unmistakable.

She got close, picked one of them and drew her lips around it. She savoured every drop of the snowflakes first and then bit at the centre of the cherry, promptly spitting the seed and leaving the tasty flesh in her mouth a few seconds before swallowing it. It was juicy and the aftertaste turned out to be pleasantly bitter. Only after some time had passed did she realise she had been biting her lower lip all along. There was nothing that tasted quite like blood. And nothing that tasted half as real.

She wiped her mouth with a shy hand and proceeded. She soon reached the desired place, but he was apparently not there. Not reclining his head against the brick wall, beside the fountain, on the bench under the covered little altar. A bench with a perfect view of the lake, which was now frozen. It was curious to see some mossy stones emerging from the ice, silently pointing at the sky. They formed a little path that led to the other shore, the other half of the park. They were stepping stones. But she wouldn’t cross the river now. She could easily miss her step, die there and no-one would even notice. Besides, he never visited that other half, it was too “urban” for him, he said. He preferred the lake and the occassional sight of swans.

She was deeply horrified at not finding him in his sacred place and, crestfallen, decided to trace back some of her still visible footprints. But when she turned around she lost track of the path. And of time and space. And she probably even lost track of herself. It was just so impossible, so ethereal, so detached from reality that it took her a while to convince herself it wasn’t a dream brought on by the snow. Some kind of mystic spell only the ice could conjure.

It wasn’t.

He was there, holding the hands of the dark-haired boy and gently caressing his almond hair, streaks of it running through his fingers like liquefied copper. They were kissing, and it was not a friend’s kiss, not a lover’s kiss either. There was passion in it, but it was not unexperienced. The touch of a long-lasting relationship was there as well. It had been acquired through eternal meetings every morning. The tongues were watering each other, thirsty of the other’s dryness, and it got to the point where she could have sworn he was kissing the image of himself in a mirror. A mirror made of ice. The mingling of life ended with magnificence, no sound ever possible in that snow, and he rose his face to meet her.

He hadn’t been waiting for her, but he had to admit he wasn’t deeply shocked by her presence. He just looked at her in the eye and asked:

“How long have you been here?”

She blinked. The feeling of unreality had not yet completely faded away. She spat with less hatred than she expected:

“For the hundreds of years you have been sleeping.”

And it didn’t come out as a scream, but rather as a whisper that reached him easily and provoked no reaction. His eyes were blank. He was staring at the whiteness surrounding her. Her beauty. All that was there. And he could sense the mistake, but he realised he no longer felt pity or desire towards her. He no longer cared.

She felt all that herself, how he ceased to look at her in the way he used to and his eyes turned into that new unconceivable version of themselves. No love left for her. She would have to go back home alone, with the cutting wind piercing her bones, for now she was starting to feel the immense cold embracing her.

And suddenly they were there again. She saw them right behind the bench, right behind his crippled hair.

They were back, coming out of the snow, rising from it, perhaps even made of it, and it couldn’t be, for she was sure she had seen them disappear. All of them, never to return. But now the cats rose all at once, all one body, and they jumped over the boys, the figure now decomposing into a thousand white creatures. The purest of white cats. The furry ears, the claws, the hellish meowing that thundered in her ears, the yellowish eyes of fire and the bulging stomachs. They all came after her.

She ran for life. She didn’t know in what direction she was going, there was only the will to escape. Her instincts worked on their own. Eventually, however, she noticed she was racing accross the slippery surface of the stepping stones and a reminder of just how dangerous that was crossed her mind. She halted and thought, for a moment, she would be safe there, because it would be a sure death for them to try to follow her. The ice would crack under their feet and they would fall into the water... But the thousand cats were already running to meet her, skating on the frozen surface of the lake. They soon surrounded her and drew closer. She, on her small stepping stone, could only wait, hoping the ice would eventually break.

And it did. Then the cats were all falling around her and the snowflakes were tangling up her hair. An immense whiteness. The river could no longer be seen, just an immeasurable layer of white wet agonising fur. And there was the moan of a thousand tiny kittens drowning. And in that long wail, there was the call of the oceans, the call of death. Her eyes rolled but caught a quick glimpse of him looking her way, unmoved and unconcerned. She saw how he turned his face to the coffee-haired boy again, and a second later she lost balance.

And as she fell she saw the feline faces drowning.

Drowning in the frozen water.

Drowning in white.

Drowning in her.