asakiyume | curtains open or drawn?

In a northern town, it's snowing again. The sun has set and the wind is up, raising dancers from the loose snow. It's very cold outside.

The children are at their father's parents' house. "Don't forget the curtain over the window on the kitchen door," Grampa Joe says.

At Grammy and Grampa's, on stormy winter nights, you make sure all the curtains are drawn and the shades are pulled down, eyelids closing against what's out there.

At Mémé and Pépé's house, it's the opposite. "Look at this snow. Better leave the shades up," Mémé would say. A beacon, a sign of safe haven.

When the wind howls and the snow flies, do you pull the shutters closed or leave them open, light streaming out? The town is divided on this point.

There are tales of travelers, disoriented in the white-out winds, saved by a friendly light. Some of those who gratefully drink down soup and collapse exhausted into an offered bed, will, for the gift of hospitality, leave gold coins and other rare treasures on the pillow for their hosts to find, come sunrise, when they themselves have vanished.

But there are other tales, of wild and merciless things, drawn by a naive light, who come to the door . . . don't let them in. Whatever you do! Did you let them in? Suddenly the blizzard is within the house--the wind and snow devils, whirling, and theiron cold. In the morning such a house will be found, the doors open, the snow drifting in and through it, rime on every wall, the inhabitants perished.

The children are at their father's parents house. They draw the curtains, including the curtain over the window on the kitchen door, and listen behind the house's closed eyes to the invisible wind and wild snow.