Jenni Fagan - The Sunlight Pilgrims

As of today, the Prime Minister has released a statement saying people must stop panicking, but it seems the public do not agree. A man walked into Tate Modern on Tuesday and shot dead thirty people. There are widespread reports of violent crime having reached epidemic proportions. In the US you can see in this footage that families are traipsing from their main residencies to garden-bunkers that are sometimes equipped with up to twelve months of food and water. For the next few days the temperature is anticipated to keep dropping rapidly and, as of now, there is no definite conclusion as to how this will end. We will keep you updated, with ITV proving a main point of contact while Internet connections are down. We will be back with you at eleven p.m. tonight, at ITV with leading scientists, politicians and religious leaders meeting to try and offer some guidance at this time. Until then, from us here in the studio, stay warm and stay safe!

The news reporter is wearing a scarf and the window behind him is completely black, with snow in mounds halfway up it.

Stella glances at her mum and they both look back at the television again. Constance squeezes her shoulder. The sun has been up for hours and the sky outside is a whitened grey and it feels ominous. From their windows there are icicles hanging all the way down to the ground and she is thirsty. Stella finds her army boots and puts them on and keeps her pyjamas underneath, but slides her waterproofs on top of them, then she drags on a big jumper and her Eskimo coat with the furry hood and her mohawk hat and she opens the metal door.

It is so still outside.

Dylan’s caravan is quiet and his windows all bare because he still hasn’t got curtains, but at least now he has a tiny crooked metal chimney sticking out of the roof and smoke wisps up and curls into the cold air. There is a skitter-patter sound as a dog walks down the pathway; he cocks his ears at her; he has a clever face and a black-and-white coat and his tongue hangs out, and then there is a dog-whistle sharp and short from somewhere in the park and he turns and runs over the field, so his back legs almost seem to move forward as one motion and his front paws plunge down into snow too deep, until he is a furrow moving forward through a white field.

She traipses around the back of their caravan — the tarpaulin over the wood-stack is heavy with snow. She lets one corner down so the snow all slides off onto the ground, then she puts it back into its peg to keep the logs dry. The only bit of furniture they have left to sell is the 1950s metal larder, and the snow-chains on the ambulance are holding out but the engine doesn’t start any more.

Inside her mother’s garden food store there are half the amount of tins that were there before and only one crate of wine. The bags of rice are triple-wrapped in cling-film but they have still frozen. She closes the door again. Stella takes the axe out of the tree. Icicles hang from the windows and they are clear and almost as thick as her wrist at the top, then they taper right down to the ground. She doesn’t want to get any of the bits that are frozen onto the caravan or they will taste like metal. Stella taps at the icicle a few inches below the windowsill, and small chips fly away into the air. She keeps tapping gently, with her left hand ready to catch it as it falls, and it does, in one piece.

Stella holds the clear tusk out in front of her — puts it up to her head as if she is the unicorn — she spins around, holding the icicle out in front of her as a spear — jabbing it into air to show the spirit-plane that she is her mother’s daughter — that the child of a wolf may not feel like she has fangs until she finds herself facing the moon, but they are still there the whole time regardless. Stella crunches down on the tip of the icicle and clean, pure water chills her tongue. The sky is so dense this morning that it is hard to imagine any stars were even there last night. She looks in the window and her mum has lain down on the sofa and closed her eyes. Stella goes back into the kitchen and the wood-stove has almost gone out and she cannot be bothered to clean the grate right now, so she just adds some paper and kindling and two logs; it catches and it will keep the fire going for a while at least. She grabs a pair of old binoculars and a plastic bag she prepared a few days ago. There are no carrots in the fridge, so she takes an empty can of deodorant with a bright-blue round lid.

Stella heads out along the paths, down past a caravan with cartoons blaring out of the window, and a woman shouts at her children with the kind of harsh tone that is as bad as a punch.

Stella turns to look toward the open window. A little girl is staring out at her and she looks so miserable and lonely and hungry. She pushes down in between the scratchy gorse bush on the lane and then right across the car park, where the snow is up to her knees and then nearly to her thighs, then she is in the field and she can stand with the snow just touching the top of her boots. These are perfect conditions. The motorway still has movement. Over at the industrial park the lights on the big stores are all yellow and fake and somehow welcoming all the same. The car showrooms are closed, but they have bright lights shining down on four-wheel drives with shiny interiors of leather and just one of those cars would cost four times more than their caravan. There used to always be young flash-looking couples from the city coming out to buy a car or go to Ikea or to pick up paint, but there is nobody visiting the industrial parks now.

She feels angry. This stupid snow. Her voice is lower all the time and her mum is not sleeping again. Stella makes a snowball, pressing it down as hard as she can in one hand, and pats it with the other hand until it is really solid. It all comes from this one snowball — that’s how it all starts — and it has to be a good one and super-hard so the rest will stick to it and keep the shape. She rolls the snowball across the white expanse and the snow is so high she doesn’t even have to bend down properly until it gets bigger and heavier. This is good for her fury: the exertion and moving forward and shoving this big ball of snow forward with a vengeance in her. She rolls the big ball and it leaves an indented path behind it. She rolls and rolls; her legs hurt. She has to pat it down and make it solid again before she turns it and rolls back the way she just came.

By the time she is no longer able to push the torso, she is near the entrance to the city dump. This is the best thing — creating something out of nothing. A landscape creates a snowman and later he uses these big long feet to walk across to Ikea, and he leaves a watery trail behind him as he takes over the tannoy to tell stories of all the creatures who came out of nothing — all the beings like him who came out of the snow, who have no idea where it is they return to. By the time she has rolled it all the way back to the torso, the head is ready to go on. Stella carefully places the head down on the body. She opens her bag. The nose goes on first: it is the miniature can of deodorant with waves on it and she sets it firmly there, so she can rest the binoculars on top of it. He is a snowman scanning a landscape. She can hear cars in the distance. His deodorant-can nose is perfect, with its round blue cap sticking out, and the binoculars sit well. She wraps the black scarf around his neck. Her snowman scans the landscape. There are vast layers of snow in every direction. Behind him are the mountains and the caravan parks. She pulls out an old suit jacket from the bag and she has to work to get it to fit around his wide neck; she has to recurve the shoulders so that he wears the thing like it was tailor-made.

She steps back and looks at him.

Three stones.