The Snowflake

A family hopes to escape a dying world

Image generated by Midjourney

Isabel’s eyes opened wide when she heard the front door squeak. 

“Daddy’s back!” Isabel bent at the knees, coiling energy in preparation for a dash to the door, but Angeline pinched the back of her blue and white striped dress, holding her in place. 

“Don’t run, sweetie. You’ll get hotter. That’s not good for you.”

“Okay, Mommy.” Isabel walked across the living room in exaggerated slow motion, lifting her feet high and swaying her arms like windmills. Angeline could see rivulets of sweat running down Isabel’s neck, depositing salt lines in their wake. Her long, black hair matted to her dress. 

Angeline Tan had tried to cut Isabel’s hair numerous times, but each time Isabel protested, “I like my hair! I like my hair!” Although short hair would be far more comfortable, Angeline let Isabel have her way. There were few pleasures a little girl could enjoy in this world, with fewer to come.

In a single, fluid motion, like a Cirque du Soleil performer, Samuel rested his carry-on bag on the tile floor and scooped up Isabel. “How’s my little girl? I missed you.”

Isabel clasped her hands around Samuel’s back and wrapped her legs around his waist. “I’m hot, Daddy. It’s been horribly hot. You’re hot, too, but I want you to hold me. ’K?”

“I missed you, sweet pea. I’m glad I’m home.” He carried Isabel into the living room. 

Angeline leaned forward on the couch, leaving a large wet stain where her back had been. She opened a white paper fan adorned with cranes and fanned Isabel and Samuel. “I’m sorry, babe. They just cycled off the power. No electric fans until after sunrise.”

“I know. No elevators, either. I walked up.” Clutching Isabel with one arm, Samuel wiped his brow with the back of his other hand. Even if he released Isabel, she wouldn’t fall; sweat welded his shirt and Isabel’s dress together. Samuel reached into his pocket and withdrew his paper fan, pale blue, with a white Merlion in the middle, and snapped it open. He chuckled. “It seemed like such a good idea in the before-time to get an apartment on the thirty-seventh floor.” 

“Ooo, a breeze,” Isabel said. “You’re the best fanner, Daddy.” Isabel turned her head. “And Mommy, too. You’re both the best fanners in the world!”

Isabel raised her arms, a signal she wanted down. 

Samuel sat beside her and continued fanning. 

“Can I have ice water?” Isabel asked.

“There’s no ice, sweetie. Mommy’s sorry.” Angeline was grateful Isabel couldn’t see where her sweat ended and tears began. “I can bring you regular water. I’ll get you a glass to drink and drizzle water on your head, and then wave my fan real hard to cool you.”

“’K.” She turned toward her father. “Do you have to go back to Japan? I don’t want you to go again. I missed you.”

“No, sweet pea. I don’t need to go to Japan. In fact, I caught the last flight back to Singapore. After today, there are no more flights.”

“Not to Disneyworld?”

“Not anywhere in the world. It’s too hot and humid for planes to fly.”

“Will I go back to school?”

“Maybe, sweetie. Maybe you can,” Samuel said. He pushed the wettest parts of Isabel’s hair off her face and fanned her faster.

Angeline slid to the edge of the couch. “Were you successful?”

Samuel extended his wrist and aimed a steel watch with a white dial at his wife. “Yes.” 

“A watch?” Angeline scrunched her face. “That’s it? You went all that way, risked never seeing us again, and all you got was a wristwatch.”

“Yes. It’s called a ‘Snowflake.’”

“What does it do? Does it make snow? Because if it doesn’t make snow, we’re screwed. We’re already screwed on this hot, dying world, but a trinket for your wrist is worthless.”

“It doesn’t make it snow. What it does, I can’t explain. I can only show you.”

“What are you planning?”

Samuel rested his finger on Angeline’s cracked lips. “If we’re going to escape, we must do it asap, babe.”

Angeline cocked her head to the side to get a better look at the watch’s dial. Snow drifted across the watch face as if blown by a zephyr. A daydream popped into her head. She stood barefoot in the snow, curling her toes into the white flakes below. For a moment, Angeline tasted crisp, cool air.  

Samuel followed the rumors from Singapore to Tokyo. While there was still a functioning internet, he stitched together fragments from forums, message boards, academic papers, and websites that catered to the scientific and mystical. His research was like assembling a jigsaw puzzle without having any idea of what the final image should look like. Sometimes, pieces of information meshed together perfectly; sometimes, they felt like they belonged to an altogether different puzzle.

The clues led to an antique watch shop in Ueno, Tokyo. 

How could it be that a watch shop in Japan was the only habitable place on this scorched planet? What kind of magic did this shop possess? The clues spoke to a promise of paradise, but they were only clues.

There was only one way to find out. Samuel would fly to Japan, a trip that had once taken six and a half hours but now required fifteen because jets were no longer allowed—only propeller planes. The flight would pass near Vietnam, which, over the past two years, had intercepted multiple commercial flights, forcing them to land. Nobody knew what happened to the passengers. 

Samuel would bring Angeline and Isabel here if the shop was the exit from this hot, dangerous world. 

If he made it. 

Samuel’s heart broke when he entered the shop, a place as miserably hot as the rest of the world. 

Shelves of old watches covered the store’s far side. Inside a cracked glass case were as many watch parts as watches. The stench of mold assaulted his nose; the wood floor wobbled, and Samuel kicked a sandstorm around his feet. All those weeks of hunting for answers, begging, and bribing for a flight to Japan—useless. Samuel should have known better. 

He shouldn’t have chased hope because hope was a mirage. He wished he had stayed with his family. 

Now, all Samuel wanted was to return to Singapore. 

Hinata Miyazaki pushed aside the curtain that separated the store’s main room from his living space. “Welcome, Samuel-san,” Miyazaki said as he bowed. Miyazaki appeared close to eighty, but few people looked their chronological age anymore. Everyone appeared older. 

“How do you know my name?”

“Your investigations on the internet were noticed. I’ve been expecting you. Welcome to my shop. Flights all around the world will stop soon, even the propeller planes. You made it just in time.” Miyazaki retrieved a wristwatch from his pocket. “The Snowflake watch. This is what you’ve been looking for.”

Miyazaki strapped the watch to Samuel’s wrist. 

He handed Samuel a water bottle. “And this, too, I’m sure.”

Samuel unscrewed the cap and downed the water. “Thank you.”

“Now that you have a Grand Seiko Snowflake watch, you’ve completed half your mission.” 

Samuel stared blankly at him. Despite the water, dehydration still ravaged his body. 

“You don’t understand.”

“No, I don’t. I’ve come all this way for a watch with a white dial? That’s it? You pass me a watch, and we’re done? I thought your shop was an oasis in this desert world. What’s this watch supposed to do, hypnotize me so that when I eventually succumb to the heat, I’ll die thinking snow surrounds me? That’s what this is about—a way to trick my mind?” Samuel's arm flopped to his side, and he shook his head. “I’ve come all this way, and it’s just a watch, it’s just a watch.” 

Samuel collapsed to the floor.

Miyazaki knelt beside him. “You must take this watch to Kamikochi in Nagano prefecture and set it in the snow.”

Samuel looked up at Miyazaki and shook his head. “There is no more snow; not in Japan, not even in Japan’s alps, not anywhere in the world.”

“There is. The last snow in the world is in Kamikochi, high in the mountains. But you must go immediately because the snow will melt soon.”

“That’s it? I just put the watch in the snow next to the shrine in Kamikochi?”

“Almost. You must walk to Kamikochi, Samuel.”

“That will take days and days. It’s hot. I won’t make it.” Nobody’s going to last much longer, Samuel thought. 

“You made it this far. You will complete your journey for your family’s sake. When you are done, return here for a blessing.”

“And then what happens?”

“And then you and your family will be safe.”

“I don’t believe—”

“But you believe, otherwise you wouldn’t have come all this way. You already know you are the key to your family’s salvation but don’t know how or what that salvation will look like. All will become clear.”

It took Samuel seven days to hike to Kamikochi and another seven days to return to Miyazaki’s Watch Shop. His feet were a mass of blisters, his legs acres of pain, his brain trapped in a fog that accompanies a mission beyond reason and endurance. When Samuel returned to the watch shop, he found Miyazaki standing exactly where he had been when he departed, wearing the same clothes. The cat that had been drinking from the water bowl was still lapping the water. Samuel glanced at the clocks on the wall, all showing the same time, 1:18 p.m., when he had begun his five hundred kilometer journey.

“What just happened?”

“How long were you gone?” Miyazaki asked. 

“Fourteen days. My family must be worried about me.”

“I’m sure they are. But not because you were gone for two weeks. Two weeks have passed from your perspective, but it’s been seconds in real time.”

“What?”

“You stepped out the shop’s door and walked right back in.”

Samuel’s aching body disagreed. And yet everything was as it had been when he left the shop, even the footprints he made in the dust. 

Miyazaki continued, “You traveled through the intersection of science and magic. In our universe, twenty-seven percent of what we call matter is unseen—dark matter. Sixty-eight percent of the energy in this universe is dark energy—energy we can’t detect—but it is as real as the energy we use. Could someone who lived two hundred years ago understand nuclear power? To them, splitting the atom would be unimaginable. Even with the most powerful instruments, we can only visualize five percent of the cosmos. Isn’t that interesting? What is the other ninety-five percent? Mustn't that ninety-five percent include magic? Just because we can’t see or touch magic doesn’t make it unreal. Both magic and physics are about the imperceptible.” 

"Who are you?”

Miyazaki remained silent. 

“What do I do with this watch?”

“The same thing that brought you here. Take a leap of faith.” Miyazaki put his fingertips on the smooth crystal and chanted in ancient Japanese. When he finished, he locked eyes with Samuel and said, “The Snowflake will take you away from this misery, but you are the magic’s catalyst. Now, go to your family and do what you must.”

Samuel took Isabel’s and Angeline’s hands and guided them to the balcony. His skin burned when he touched the metal door. 

“Ow,” Isabel said. The fiery sun roasted her face. 

Samuel looked thirty-seven floors down. He nodded to Angeline. 

“Are we going to—?”

“Look at the watch when we do it.” He kneeled, cupped his hand under Isabel’s chin, and lifted her head so her eyes met his. “Sweet pea. We’re going to do this one thing. We’re going to a place where it’s never hot. A place where the climate is liveable.” Samuel kissed Isabel’s forehead. “All you need to do is look at Daddy’s watch and keep your eyes locked on it. Okay?” 

“It’s so high. I’m dizzy.” 

“Look at the watch. Can you keep looking at it, no matter what?”

“Like the way I stared at the puppy in the pet shop when I was five?”

“Yes. And don’t be afraid.” Samuel hoisted Isabel to the balcony railing and held her right hand. A slight breeze unsteadied her, but Samuel gripped Isabel tight. Angeline climbed onto the railing on his other side. He stuck his left arm out, his wrist twisted so the Snowflake’s dial faced them. “Everyone look at Daddy’s watch. Remember, keep looking—eyes on the snowfield on the dial.” Samuel took a deep breath. The air seared his lungs. “One, two, three!”

They jumped. 

A calloused hand grasped Samuel as he lay flat on his back. Samuel blinked, then blinked again. A man with gray eyes and silver hair said, “Sit up slow. It’s best you don’t move too fast at first. You’ve got acclimating to do.”

Samuel looked to his left and right. A girl about twelve years old was helping Isabel to her feet while a woman a little older than Angeline assisted her. Snow was everywhere, and with it, cool air. Mountains loomed in the distance. Between the snowfield and the mountains were a grass meadow and tall flowers. 

“You made it, partner. Welcome.” The man tipped his Stetson. 

Samuel grabbed a fistful of snow, opened his hand, and let the flakes fall between his fingers. “Where are we?”

He scratched his red beard. “Can’t exactly say for sure. Where are you from?” 

“Singapore.”

“Well, you’re not in Singapore anymore. You’re not anywhere on Earth.” He looked up toward a large orange-ringed moon that filled a quarter of the sky. Snow owls that glowed like fireflies played above them. 

Samuel gasped.

Samuel pointed to the man’s watch. “A Grand Seiko Snowflake? You have one, too?”

The man nodded. “That’s the ticket.”

“Daddy, is this snow?” Isabel plopped down onto the carpet of white. “Look at me! Look at me!” Isabel laid back, spread her legs and arms, and made a snow angel.

The Grand Seiko Snowflake watch is real, coveted by collectors and watch fans. As for the rest of the story, I’ll leave that up to you.

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If you enjoyed The Snowflake, I think you’ll like my story, Shadow Puppets.