The Snow Globe

Jessica stiffly bent over and gathered the snow together into a ball, just like they did in the cartoons. These old gloves had seen no wear for the last couple of decades. She compacted the snow and chucked it overarm at Emily. The snowball disintegrated mid-air.

Emily laughed. “Oh Granny, is that really how you do it?”

Tom rubbed his hands. “Why is it so cold?”

None of the three children were really dressed for the weather, but there was no helping that. Bright sun shone in an ice blue sky, but it offered little in the way of heat. Beyond the hedge surrounding the garden, hills appeared covered in snow.

“If we run around my garden we’ll get warm,” Jessica said. 

She threw some more snow at Tom. The boy sputtered as it hit his face. Laughing, he crouched and scraped together some snow and lobbed it back at her. Then Emily threw some snow at Dorothy. The children raced around the garden, throwing and dodging shakily made snowballs. They got better with practice, although Jessica thought this snow might be too dry for proper snow balls. She felt that granddaughter Emily and her friends needed to experience this.

“Come over here,” Jessica shouted over their laughter.

The children ran to her and she led them between her snow-covered bushes to her garden pond. The gravel path, hidden by the snowfall, crunched under their shoes. Jessica slid out onto the ice of her pond. She’d practised this; she had almost forgotten how. She glided around the water fountain, sensibly turned off for the cold spell.

“Ice skating!” Emily clapped her hands over her mouth to stifle the squeal of delight. “But in your Snow Globe the little people have things on their feet.”

“Thin metal blades,” Jessica said. “Yes, do you think you could walk on level ground with metal blades on your feet? Think, even thinner than in-line roller blades.”

Jessica slid towards them across the pond.

“Easy,” Tom said. He stepped onto the ice. The up-cycled plastic soles of his shoes skidded and he slammed backside first onto the ice.

“Yow!” he shouted.

Emily winced.

“Not so very easy,” Dorothy, Tom’s sister, said. She too wore up-cycled plastic shoes. Hanging onto Emily’s hand, she carefully stepped onto the ice. Her feet wobbled a little, but she triumphantly stayed upright. Jessica skated over to them. She held out her hands and towed Dorothy out into the middle of the pond. Cautiously, Dorothy moved her feet in skating motions.

She grinned in delight as she dropped Jessica’s hands, and for two strides she stayed on her feet. The third step enthusiastically slid sideways and dropped Dorothy. Her hands splayed out, but she giggled.

“This is so much fun,” Dorothy said. “Thank you, Mrs Oakwood.”

“My pleasure,” Jessica said. “Who’s next? Emily?”

They each managed a little slide on their own.

Half an hour later, clouds curled across the sky and it started to snow again. The children stared up at the falling white flakes. They caught them in their hands and on their tongues.

“This is snow?” Emily stared in wonder. “Granny, today has been fantastic!”

“Time to go in now,” Jessica said. “I think it’s time for a hot drink and a snack.”

Their lack of winter coats would be a problem now with the falling snow. Inadequate shoes already meant wet feet. She towed them to the side and they all trotted into her house, more than ready for the promised hot drinks.

Jessica had a real fire in fireplace. On the mantelpiece, a photo of her late husband Geoff stood next to a snow globe, showing tiny Victorian figures skating on a frozen Thames. She produced some toasting forks and handed each child a piece of bread.

“Wait until I get back, I don’t want them to burn.” She darted into her kitchen to heat the chocolate. She used the microwave, even though she wanted them to feel like this was real. The fire called to her bones, aching from the cold outside.

She carried the hot chocolate into the front room and handed them out to the children.

“Isn’t the fire dangerous?” Tom asked. “I mean it gives off carbon dioxide.”

“All the wood that is being burned comes from my garden,” Jessica said.

“Ah so you’re balancing the carbon,” he said. “Just like when my parents have to release CO₂ at home, or run the air scrubber.”

“Yes, but here I do it as naturally as possible. Even then I have to keep a watch on the CO₂ levels.” She stuck her fork through a slice of bread and held it close to the fire. “This is how it’s done. But you have to watch it or you’ll have burnt toast.”

“Is this real milk?” Dorothy asked, sipping her drink.

“No, I’m sorry,” Jessica said. “It’s too expensive to buy anything other than cow-free. Like the ‘butter’ you are going to put on your toast. But the jam I made from strawberries I grew in the garden.”

She watched them carefully; these were her only slices of bread and she didn’t want them ruined.

The toast with jam and hot chocolate-flavoured drink went down well.

“It’s real sugar in the jam,” Emily said. “Grandma managed to get some from that last shipment.”

“Which is why I couldn’t afford real-cow milk.”

A knock sounded on the front door.

Emily looked at the clock on the mantelpiece. “That will be Mummy. I’d like to stay here forever.”

Jessica shook her head. “It never used to stay like this forever.”

“I read about it in school,” Dorothy said. “They had ‘seasons’. Winter was one of them.”

Jessica took down the snow globe. “Here you are, Emily. Take this and you can have one piece of this forever.”

Emily accepted the globe and shook it as Jessica walked them all to the front door. Emily’s mother Mary stood there.

“Mother Jessica, it wasn’t necessary to do this for them,” Mary said. “I honestly only needed you to look after them all for the afternoon, you didn’t have to go to any trouble.”

Jessica kissed her daughter-in-law. “I enjoyed it.”

“But people get ill in the cold,” Mary said.

“I’ll be fine,” Jessica said.

“It was great,” Dorothy said. “Old Mrs Oakwood had frozen her pond!”

“And we had real toast and jam,” Emily said.

“And she does ecological not technological atmospherical balance to her habitat,” Tom said. “I’ve never seen that.”

Jessica accompanied them all as they trotted down the path to the garden gate. It was painted on a door which opened; the horizon was just a picture. Outside Jessica’s domed habitat, the grass at the side of the road was parched; through the open door the snow still fell – like in the snow globe she’d given Emily.

Mary grabbed the spray gun out of her handbag. “Roaches! I’ll hold them off while you kids run to the car.”

Soup plate sized creatures scuttled towards the open habitat. Mary loaded a canister of roach spray. “I swear these sprays get weaker every year. Do you think the corporations dilute them?”

She sprayed the front runners, who stopped to waggle their feelers as two children raced to the driverless vehicle pod. Emily hesitated.

“Was it always like this, Grandma? When you were a girl?” Emily asked.

“The last snowy winter happened when I was nine,” Jessica said. “The corporations got too big to fight, even though we tried, and they poisoned the planet.”

“Don’t you worry, Grandma, I’ll get it back for you.”

Jessica hugged her granddaughter. “Oh darling! I fought because I hoped you wouldn’t have to. But in the end too many people thought ‘I’m only one person. What difference can I make?’ And the corporations won. Go now.”

Emily swirled the snow globe again as she ran to the vehicle pod. Mary raced after her and Jessica slammed the door against the roach attack.

She stared for a while at her beautiful snowy garden. Winter had never lasted forever, just like she had told Emily. Jessica returned to her house and adjusted the thermostat to gradually bring the temperature in her habitat up to comfortable. She wouldn’t want to shock her plants too much.

 If you enjoyed Jessica's story, her earlier adventures of how she began fighting the corporations can be found in the book Pill Wars.