Cinnamon Romance

Winter Wonderland

Ariadne Tay

Two children from a tropical village learn about winter.

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It was another sticky night in our little village. The calendars we got from the city said it was winter. I didn’t understand what that meant, because winter, summer, there was no difference. Always hot, humid, sleepy. Sometimes the air was so thick, breathing made me tired. But it wasn’t too bad this night.

I helped dry the dishes and bowls after dinner, and then I went into the village to find Chanchai, my best friend. Chanchai and me always played together and worked together and got into trouble together. We knew each other for seven years, which was a long time. It was almost our whole life.

I found him as he was coming out of his house. He called to me when he saw me. “Phassakorn!”

I ran to meet him. “Can you play now? Is your mom letting you come out?” I hoped he could play. Sometimes he had to stay at home to help his parents with something, like cleaning.

“Yes,” Chanchai said. He was so happy. “I can come play. Let’s go to the pond by your house!” He ran under some laundry that was hanged up and I chased him.

Chanchai ran onto a little path behind my house, and then he turned around. I almost crashed into him! But I stopped just in time.

“Come on,” he said. We walked to the edge of the little pond together.

I looked around. “What did you want to play?”

He shrugged his shoulders. “I don’t know. Uncle Somchai says it’s winter.”

“I know. My mom told me, too.” She talked about seasons, but everything was still the same.

Chanchai sat down by the pond and I sat next to him.

“Did you hear Uncle Somchai’s stories about the North?” Chanchai asked me. Uncle Somchai was always travelling. He brought our woven baskets to the cities and came home with all sorts of strange things.

I turned my head. “Which stories are you talking about?” His uncle had so many tales and I always got them mixed up.

“The ones about winter. He says that it’s cold when the sun’s out!” My best friend waved his arms.

“Cold? Under the sun?” That sounded like crazy talk to me. 

He nodded. “Yeah! Can you imagine? He says it can get colder than the refrigerator.”

“Colder than a refrigerator? That sounds awful.” I shivered at the thought.

“Even colder! He says frozen rain comes down and everything is covered in it.”

“Frozen rain?” Now it all just sounded like one of the myths my grandmother told us.

He nodded his head so fast, it made his hair flop around his face. “Uncle says it gets so cold, even the rain freezes! But he says it falls really slowly, and it piles up on the ground like super cold sand.”

“Cold sand from the sky?” I stared at him.

“Super, duper, duper cold.” Chanchai looked serious.

“Wow, how do people live like that?” All of these things sounded so magical.

“He said the people there are bigger and they wear more clothes to stay warm. It must be so hard to wear so much clothes,” Chanchai said thoughtfully.

“It sounds very uncomfortable,” I remarked. Wearing a shirt was already more than I liked. Wearing two shirts? No thank you!

We sat quietly. I thought about what it would be like to be in the cold. I think Chanchai was wondering the same thing.

“Phassakorn,” he whispered. “Did you see the book Uncle brought back?” I didn’t know why he whispered. Everybody knew that Uncle Somchai always brought new books to our village. We loved his books.

“Which one?”

“‘The Friendly Yeti.’ Uncle says it’s about winter in the North.” Chanchai was smiling.

“Oh! It was about some big monster in a white mountain, right?”

“Yes! Do you remember the pictures?”

I tried to remember but there were so many books with so many strange creatures. I shook my head.

“The monster looked like a big white hairy macaque. It was funny.” Chanchai laughed, and I laughed too.

Then I remembered a little bit. “There was no trees in the book.”

“Yes there was.” He looked at me like I was stupid.

“Why are you looking at me like that?”

He crossed his arms. “It was all the little green spiky triangles.”

I crossed my arms too. Chanchai was wrong. “Those aren’t trees.”

But he shook his head. “My uncle said they were trees.”

“No way.”

“He said he saw them, too. So they have to be real!”

I put my arms down. “I guess.” I stared at the water in the pond. Triangle trees on a mountain and frozen water-sand in the sky? With a giant hairy macaque? It was hard to imagine it all.

Chanchai looked at me. His eyes were so big, they were like snake eggs. “What if we went to a mountain in the north?” 

It was a crazy idea but I liked it. “We could finally see winter!” My eyes got really really big too.

“We could climb the spiky triangle trees,” he suggested.

“Do you think they’re tall like a tualang tree?” I asked. Tualang trees had such long trunks and reached all the way to the sky. It was hard to imagine the spiky triangle trees that tall.

He lay down on the ground and stretched his legs. “Sure, but I think there’s more branches. If there’s vines hanging from the tree, we can climb it.”

I lay down next to him and stared at a fuzzy cloud. “So what do we do after we climb the trees?”

“Look for a giant macaque, of course!” Chanchai laughed. “Big and white and running on the frozen sand.”

“So hairy,” I added. “He will be big and white and hairy on the mountain.”

“And we could ride them!” he exclaimed.

We looked up at the stars in the sky. They twinkled through the trees, and the moon was very bright, too.

“One day, when we are big, we can go to a mountain and see this winter wonderland together.” Chanchai whispered. 

“One day,” I promised with a smile. “When we are big.”