Snow muffles the world. 

The birds have fled. 

There are no leaves to rustle the air. 

No insects to flit unseen overhead.

No worms digging beneath your feet. 

No, not that last part. I scratched it out.

I didn’t want to think about worms digging their way through things as I sat on my mother’s grave. 

“Sorry about that, Ma.”

I set my pen on my notebook and blew into my closed fist. 

Winter poetry was something I'd read about online, and like most things online these days, it sounded good on the surface but sucked in practice.

I reread my poem. It sucked too. 

The snow beneath me had already saturated the towel I’d found in the back of my car. You’d think when I decided to come here, I would’ve brought something to sit on, but no. That would’ve been too forward thinking of me, and forward-thinking wasn’t really my thing. Not lately, anyway. 

I sighed, the cold air burning my lungs. Okay, one more then. 

I bent over my notebook and scribbled: How can cold burn? And then added, What if hell wasn’t hot, but rather so cold, it burns? 

There. Poem.

I slapped my notebook shut and got to my feet. My butt was wet and cold. 

“Someone will think I peed myself, huh, mom?” I gave her gravestone a side smile like the kind we used to share. 

Tucking my notebook under my arm, I grabbed the towel and gave it a shake. It was completely soaked. I folded it over until the driest part was on top—more or less—and stuffed it into my bag. The notebook went on top of that, my cellphone balanced carefully over both.

“Don’t get too wet, please,” I instructed it. 

“Okay, love you, ma. See you in a couple weeks.” 

I turned to leave and that's when I heard it. A melody like the tinkling of wind chimes. It carried across the cemetery as though on a breeze. 

On a hill overlooking the cemetery was a trailer park called Neconda Flats – or if you grew up here–Necro Flats. Perhaps it was coming from up there. Except there was no breeze, only the muffled silence of fresh fallen snow.

I looked at Ma's grave. “Did you hear that?” She didn’t answer. I shook my head, adjusted my bag, and stepped back to the path that led out of the cemetery. 

The tinkling came again,  only this time it sounded like it was right behind me. I stopped, prickles racing up my neck and across my skull.

Don't turn around, don't turn around.

I turned around.

A little girl with big brown eyes peered at me from beneath a pink winter hat. A sheen of snot clung to the edge of one nostril. 

I looked around for her adult, but as best I could tell, the cemetery was empty.

“Hi,” I said, awkwardly. 

She wore a puffy purple jacket with faded red polka dots all over it. 

“Uh. You good?”  I scanned the graveyard again. “You live around here?” 

She stayed silent. 

“Ayuda--ayudas? No, sorry. That’s–I’m sorry I don’t know how to conjugate that. Do you need help?” 

The girl stared at me. Her jeans were soaked to mid-calf, the denim clinging to her legs, dark and wet. 

“Where are your parents?” 

She didn’t answer.

A slow, creeping discomfort coiled in my stomach. I cleared my throat. “Do you live around here?” I asked again. 

Nothing.

Maybe she was scared to talk to me. Stranger danger and all that. 

One mittened fist was closed tight around something. 

“What do you have there?” 

She raised her hand and slowly opened it. 

Crushed inside was a dead butterfly, its orange and yellow scales smeared across the red mitten. 

Ok, that’s weird. It was winter. There weren’t any butterflies this time of year. 

“Where'd you get that?” 

For a beat, she didn’t move. Then, with her free hand, she pointed up the hill to the trailer park.

I let out a breath I hadn’t realized I was holding. Okay, yeah, that made sense. She’d just wandered down here, no big deal. All I had to do was get her back up the hill. 

“Do you live up there?”

Her little fist closed back around the crushed butterfly. 

“Do you want me to walk you home?” 

She didn’t respond. 

“Okay.” I looked up at Necr–the trailer park. “I can do that.” The sun was starting to set, casting the hill above us in deep shadow and sapping the colors from the grave markers. 

I started toward the entrance of the cemetery. 

And stopped. 

Every nerve in my body suddenly lit up-like the way your skin prickles before a hand grabs your shoulder in the dark.

Don’t let her in your car. 

The thought was sudden, unshakable, as if my bones themselves had decided before my brain could catch up.

What in the hell? 

Maybe it was the quickly-fading light, or that we were in a cemetery. 

Or maybe it was that she had a bug crushed in her hand – a bug that shouldn’t even be here this time of year. 

“Actually,” I said, “Let’s go this way.” I turned off the path and crunched through the snow between the gravestones. The little girl followed. 

There was a split-rail fence that marked the edge of the cemetery. Just beyond it, the hill that rose up to Necro Flats. 

I knocked the snow off the rungs nearest us. “Can you climb over this?” 

The faint sheen of snot ran across her upper lip. She ducked beneath its rungs. 

Well. That was one way to do it. 

I adjusted my bag and went for the over-the-top route—only for my back foot to catch on the rail. My balance wobbled, my bag slid off my shoulder, and for a brief, stupid second, I was sure I was about to faceplant into the snow. At the last moment, I lurched forward, landing hard but upright, a little less dignity intact than before.

“Nailed it,” I said, giving her a side smile. 

She didn’t smile back, but maybe—just maybe—her expression softened, if only for a second. 

“What’s your name?” I adjusted my bag back onto my shoulder. “I'm Samantha. But you can call me Sam.” 

Now the snot was running down her chin. But still she said nothing. 

The trailer homes nearest the edge of the hill loomed above us, already layered in shadow.

“Okay then,” I said, blowing out a sharp breath. “Let’s go.”

The hill was steeper than it looked, and the snow wasn’t doing us any favors. My boots slid out from under me every couple of steps, and before long, I was huffing and puffing like I’d just run a mile.

I glanced back.

The girl had stopped a few feet behind me, standing still in the deepening dusk. She wasn’t looking at the hill or at me—just at her mitten. The one not clutching the butterfly.

“You okay?” I called. 

She looked up and that’s when I saw the blood. 

It was trickling from her nostril where only a moment ago had been snot. 

She swiped at it with her mitten, and a thick string of clot smeared across her cheek. 

“Oh no.” I started back to her, but in my rush, my boot slipped. I hit the ground hard, air punching from my lungs in an undignified oof. My bag flew open on impact, spilling its contents into the snow.

“Shit.” I scrambled to gather them up, ignoring the way the damp snow smeared the ink of my notebook. I shoved everything back into my bag and pushed myself upright.

The girl stared at the blood on her mitten, her face caught between confusion and fear, like she couldn’t quite understand what was happening. 

“Oh, no, no,” I said, hurrying to her. “It’s okay. It’s just a nosebleed. We all get nosebleeds.” My voice came out too fast, too light—trying to convince us both. I dug through my pockets, fingers stiff from the cold. Finally, I found a crumpled tissue. Mascara stains smudged one corner. Not ideal.

I handed it to her anyway. “It’s clean.” Mostly.

She took it and pressed it against her nose but the blood quickly soaked through. Her chest was heaving now as she began to panic. 

“Shit,” I said, “I mean–I mean, it’s okay.” I looked around for someone-anyone–to help. But of course there was no one. “Let’s–let’s dash up this hill, ok? Do you think you can do that? We’ll get you home. Your mom will make you feel better. Okay?” 

She pulled the tissue away and stared at the blood soaking through, her tiny fingers pinching the edges like she wasn’t sure it belonged to her. A fresh drop slid from her nose, landing against the collar of her coat.

“It’ll be okay,” I said, forcing a smile that felt about as real as the warmth in my fingers. “Come on. Think you can keep going?” I extended my hand, palm open, willing her to take it.

But she didn’t.

Her gaze flicked from the tissue to her other mitten—the one still clenched tight around the butterfly, its wings flattened and crumbling. Then she lifted her head, eyes drifting past me, up the hill toward the trailers.

Something flickered across her face—something hollow and lost. It was the same feeling I’d felt that time I got turned around in New York City. Panic. Fear. That cold, creeping certainty that you’ll never get home again. 

Another drop of blood fell onto her jacket. 

And that’s when I realized the darker spots I had taken for polka dots were actually blood stains. 

Faded, blotchy, soaked deep into the fabric over time.

From years of nosebleeds. 

“Do you get–” I started, but before the words were out of my mouth, the girl took off running, back toward the cemetery. She ducked under the fence like a shadow slipping between cracks.

“Stop! Wait!” 

I raced after her, my boots slipping and skidding down the hill. I couldn’t stop myself in time and ran full force into the fence, the impact sending a shudder along its length. I scrambled over, one of my boots catching and sending me tumbling into the snow. 

When I dragged myself upright again, the girl was nowhere to be seen. 

“Wait!” I called again. 

The sun had disappeared behind the hill. The trailer park loomed in dark shadow like an eerie sentinel. 

“Hey!” I cried. “Little girl!” I strained to hear the sound of crunching snow but the cemetery was silent. 

I had to call the cops. 

I dug around in my bag but couldn’t find my cellphone. Fighting the rising panic, I dumped the contents into the snow. Notebook. Pens. The wet towel. A rock I’d found the other day. Several used tissues. 

But no cellphone. 

I looked back up the hill. My fall was stamped into the otherwise untouched snow, a sharp dent in all that white.

Shit. 

I could go back up to get it, call the police, let them deal with it.

But by the time I did that, there’s no telling where she’d be. 

Crap crap shit. 

I shoved my stuff back into my bag and scanned the snow, finally spying two little sets of footprints leading deeper into the cemetery. And there, next to them, two tiny drops of blood staining the snow. 

I took a deep breath and started following the tracks. 

The shadows thickened as the sky darkened. 

Snow muffles the world. 

But not the dead.

Their voices rise in footprints and silence.

The words curled through my mind, an unwritten poem—so much better than the one I’d scribbled before.

I followed the little girl’s tracks, passed tilted markers and through the tangled pathways toward the pond, where skeletal bushes hunched along the water’s edge. My eyes burned from the cold. My breath felt too loud, too jagged in the hush of the falling night.

I lost the footprints at the base of a large grave marker—an angel, its stone wings outstretched, its face weathered and unreadable.

I swallowed hard and looked around. “Hey,” I whisper-shouted, afraid to break the silence. “Hey, where’d you go?”

Nothing.

I turned in a slow circle, scanning the ground. The shadows were deep now, stretching long across the snow. But the footprints—they just stopped.

A shiver crawled up my spine. My hands had started to shake.

Because I knew.

Even before I looked up.

I already knew.

Just like I had known what the late night phone call had meant the night mom was killed. 

I forced my eyes up, breath catching in my throat.

Etched into the dais beneath the stone angel: 

Jasmine Bell.

Born October 1st, 1979.

Died July 19th, 1986.

Our little butterfly.

The wind sighed through the branches, bringing with it the echo of distant windchimes. 

And there, resting on the fresh, undisturbed snow atop her grave, lay a single crushed butterfly.