Yuki-Onna

Long ago, in a village in Japan, there were two woodcutters. Mosaku was an old man. Minokichi was his helper, a boy of eighteen. Every day they walked to the forest together, cut wood, and walked home.

One evening, they were walking home when a great snowstorm came. The wind was blowing hard and the snow was falling fast. They came to the river, but the boat was on the other side. So they went into the boatman's little hut. It was very small. There was no fire and no window. They closed the door and lay down under their coats.

The old man fell asleep at once. Minokichi lay awake. The wind was screaming and the snow was hitting the door. The hut was shaking. He was very cold. At last, he fell asleep too.

Snow on his face woke him. The door was open. A woman was standing in the hut — a woman all in white. She was bending over the old man and blowing her breath on him. Her breath was like white smoke. Then she turned to Minokichi. He tried to shout, but no sound came. She looked at his face for a long time. Then she smiled and whispered:

"I wanted to do to you what I did to the old man. But you are so young. You are a pretty boy, Minokichi, and I will not hurt you now. But if you ever tell anybody — even your mother — what you saw tonight, I will know it. And then I will kill you. Remember!"

She went out into the snow. Minokichi jumped up and closed the door. Was it a dream? He called to Mosaku. The old man did not answer. Minokichi touched his face. It was ice. Mosaku was dead.

In the morning the storm was over. The boatman found Minokichi lying in the snow next to the frozen body of Mosaku. Minokichi was ill for a long time. He said nothing about the woman in white. When he was well again, he went back to the forest, alone, every day.

One evening, in the winter of the next year, he was walking home when he met a girl on the road. She was tall and very beautiful, and her voice was like a bird singing. They walked together and talked. Her name was O-Yuki. Her parents were dead, and she was going to the city to find work.

Minokichi liked her more and more. He asked her: "Are you going to marry someone?" She laughed and said no. She asked him the same question. He said no, too.

When they came to the village, Minokichi asked her to rest at his house. His mother liked O-Yuki at once. She gave her a warm meal and asked her to stay. O-Yuki never went to the city. She stayed, and she became Minokichi's wife.

O-Yuki was a very good wife. When Minokichi's mother died, five years later, her last words were kind words about O-Yuki. O-Yuki had ten children, and all of them had very white skin. The people in the village thought she was strange. Most women get old early in a hard life — but O-Yuki, after ten children, looked as young as on the first day.

One night, the children were sleeping. O-Yuki was sewing by the light of a paper lamp. Minokichi was watching her. He said:

"When I see you sewing there, with the light on your face, I remember something strange. When I was eighteen, I saw somebody as beautiful and as white as you. She looked very like you."

O-Yuki did not look up from her sewing. "Tell me about her. Where did you see her?"

So Minokichi told her everything: the storm, the hut, the woman in white, the death of old Mosaku. "I was afraid of her," he said. "But she was so beautiful. I never knew if it was a dream, or the Woman of the Snow."

O-Yuki threw down her sewing and stood up. She bent over him and screamed into his face:

"It was I! It was I! And I told you I would kill you if you ever said one word about it! But the children are sleeping there. If they were not, I would kill you now. Take good care of them. If they are ever unhappy because of you, I will come back — and you know what I will do."

Her voice became thin, like the wind. Then she melted into a bright white mist. The mist went up to the roof and out through the hole for the smoke. Nobody ever saw her again.