Day 1,193

Every year when the snow first falls, your family go down to the border between field and forest to camp for the night. It was a tradition from your mother's side that dated back to the early 900's, something pagan that had long since lost all meaning to you and your siblings other than an excuse to stay up late, roast dinner over a sheltered fire and build snowmen at midnight.

The older you grew the stranger the snowmen seemed. As a child it made sense to have them face away from the tent you can pretend to sneak up on them in the morning, made sense to put herbs around their necks so they'd smell nice in the morning, made sense to draw symbols on them so they'd look cool. You'd never seen those symbols other than when your mother helped you all make the midnight snowmen.

When you were ten, partly out of annoyance at having to go out in the cold and partly because you felt you were too old for it all, you covered the symbol on your little brother's snowman just before you all went to bed. That was the night you woke up to the sight of the snow-smothered field covered in tiny handprints and your brother nowhere to be found. Nobody knew it was you who'd covered his snowman, you were never even a suspect. 

When snow came the following year none of you went out. Your mother said you had to see what she'd been protecting you from and what you were protecting each other from. That night she used pink salt to make a circle on the floor with your sleeping bag inside while she stayed outside, facing the back door.

You only remember half waking up that night and hearing her crying faintly as the back door opened itself. In the morning she was gone too, nowhere to be found just like your brother and the entire house covered in handprints made of snow.