Ahh, the cold. So sharp, so profound in the way the frigid air digs at my arms, my shoulders, my bare legs. My legs! I have legs! I can move — I can stretch my limbs and dance. Oh, the feeling of earth beneath my feet! I reach out my arms for all the distant corners of this world. I twirl.
          Gasping! Oh, gasping. Isn’t it lovely? It’s raspy and puttering, light feet dancing trembling steps, gulp-gulp-sob, gulp-gulp-sob.
          “Oh,” a voice croons, and what a voice! It’s cracked and longing, warm but —
          Then a lantern flares light, extinguishing the sensations of the darkness.
          An old lady is kneeling on the ground. The lantern light carves soft shadows into her tattered dress, which is brimming with mismatched pockets, all surely filled with secrets. She is a witch, I’m certain of it; I’m surrounded by a ring of antlers and sparkly powder, like a spell. She clutches the grass in her fists, her glistening eyes reflecting the gold of the lantern.
          Gold, so beautiful, so precious, so close . . .
          “Cholera!” the witch chokes. “It tried to take you, but I brought you back, my firefly!”
          She becomes sobs all over, and now I can’t ask her anything. Slowly, I spin, exploring this new body of mine. It clinks and clanks, and as I raise my arms, my fingers brush the gracefully arcing antlers.
          So that is what I am, a skeleton of a girl with a deer’s sleek face for a head. How odd.
          “Oh, my firefly.” The witch’s darkness finally breaks into something like warmth. “We finally made it, after so many years. I know I must seem ancient to you now; I worked so long to bring you back, but it’s your mama. I’m here. We made it to California, firefly. And there’s gold in absolutely everything. There’s gold in the trees, the water, the very air. And I learned how to harness it.” Her voice is firm. “I learned how to use it to bring you back.”
          “Er,” I say politely. My voice is faint, as though it’s faded after many years of disuse. Air clatters through my rib cage and forces its way through my teeth, becoming words somewhere in the middle. “So I wasn’t always like this?”
          The witch stares at me, searching intensely for something inside me, and I suddenly wish I had flesh and blood to hide behind, anything more than this ragged dress.
          “Of course not,” she murmurs, shuffling toward me. “I couldn’t bring you back exactly as you were, my little girl, my firefly.”
          A little girl, she thinks I am, but I can’t seem to recall this little girl she speaks of.
          There, kneeling on scraggly grass, she pulls me into an embrace, and she feels warm and comfortable, like I’ve been here before.
          “I made us a home here,” she says quietly, “while I learned the secrets of worth and desire. And I’ll play my violin for you, like before, and you’ll dance, and we’ll be together.” Tears fill her eyes again, and she starts humming a tune.
          “What’s that song?” I ask, pulling away. The tune dwindles and drops off. “Have I . . . heard it before? I don’t actually . . . seem to . . .”
          A harsh wind screams through the night, clouds blotting out the moon, a storm passing over the witch’s face.
          “Cholera!” she screams. “It took my girl away from me! That doctor, that wretched not-enough-medicine-for-the-girl doctor!” She grabs fistfuls of her thinning hair, tearing it from her scalp. “Cholera! You’re not her, you’re not her. You’re — cholera!” she wails. The witch falls to her knees, like an animated puppet suddenly dropped. “She’s gone, she’s gone,” she whimpers.
          She’s gone, and I’m all that’s left.
          “I’m sorry about your daughter,” I say quietly, standing over the broken figure of the witch. Then I walk past her, a step that turns into a leap, until I’m dancing to the hooting of owls, the whispered chants of the wind, the peek-a-boo twinkle of the stars.
          And I sing. I sing to the music of the night, and I sing to the witch still sobbing over my grave.