‘Winter’s Flower’ by KT Wagner

The late September sun warms Gerda’s arthritic knees while sparrows chirp from the roof. Her knitting needles slide and click, keeping rhythm with the squeak of her rocking chair against the porch floor. Across each row, she knits in the present, then purls back in her memories. 

She learned to purl after Nan died, and every day since, Gerda remembers Kay.

Today, her daydream is about their childhood garden in the garrets and gutters of a faraway town. 

Her hands turn the row, and the sweet scent of fall roses wafts by.

She brings the yarn to the front and remembers the roses of her childhood. They flourished in wooden rooftop boxes. 

“We’re happier here, planted in the ground,” the present-day roses sing when she knits a row.

Gerda lives on the other side of the world from where she lost Kay so long ago. Now she knits her memories of the boy she loved into every garment she makes. The elaborate lace patterns were impossible in garter stitch. They require the memory purls.

Initially, the memory of grief drowned her, but she now knows Kay’s still alive. The flowers told her.

Gerda loops yarn around the needle, drops a stitch, then purls three together.

More than sixty years have passed since the old woman, Nan, moved Gerda and the entire house to southern British Columbia. Gerda still marvels over that magical feat. She held Nan in awe for so long and still misses her despite everything.

In Denmark, gawkers, and others who’d read the story, disturbed them constantly. Some accused Nan of terrible things and tried to lure Greta away. The endless need to protect their privacy had taxed Nan’s magic.

This location is home now, reasonably far north but outside of the Snow Queen’s range.

Gerda’s been around magic most of her life and always longed for some of her own. 

“There’s nothing you can do, child.” Nan had sympathized. “Perhaps that’s why the river brought you to me.”

Nan has since passed to the realm of the moon and stars, but some of the old woman’s earthly magic persists.

For so long, Gerda believed Kay and the Snow Queen only existed within the story. She’d wondered aloud at the intensity of her love for the boy, a character in a fiction.

Nan had explained while she taught Gerda to knit, “Your deep attachment to the little boy proves the story is powerful and timeless.” Heat from Nan’s gnarled, guiding hands radiated into Gerda’s small fingers as she struggled to manipulate the wooden needles.

The warmth of the memory is tinged by the ice-coated realization of betrayal Gerda works hard to ignore. The cold has seeped across the back of her neck, and she shivers and reaches for a shawl. The ache inside her festers. Grief, betrayal and loss dig a pit, and soon, Greta fears, she’ll unravel into it.