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Another Winter’s Fantasy
Wednesday, December 30th, 2009
Here’s this year’s installment in the series that includes A Winter’s Fantasy and A Winter’s Fantasy II, once again a tip of the hat to the esteemed Mr. Ogdred Weary.
Uncle Cuthbert summoned us to his rooms in the North Wing. Edmund and I found him there, propped up on a heap of pillows with a lily-pad-pattern comforter pulled up to his chin and fires blazing on either side of the bedroom.
He was always sick, but we’d never seen him this bad.
“The countess assures me of your discretion,” he said, and we tried to act humble while he caught his breath. “I have… a task.”
He coughed several minutes before continuing. “The pond. Where I studied. Many years. Dangerous. In this cold. Creatures. Keep in. Walls up. Don’t…”
That was all he had strength for. His doctor wouldn’t let us wait for him to wake.
The woods were frigid — tree trunks coated with ice, path glazed slick. It was hard to walk, but not hard to find the pond. A little path led from the shack that had been Uncle Cuthbert’s research station.
We didn’t see any wall, although we tromped through the woods until our feet felt like stones. Pieces of glass lay everywhere on the ground, like windowpanes without windows. A few leaned up against trees.
“That could be a wall,” said Edmund.
We made quick work of it, setting up a wall of glass all around the pond, then hurrying home to thaw by the fire.
The glass was still there the next day; it must have worked.
Dark came quickly under the trees. We’d worn warmer coats and triple socks, and thought we’d wait to see what we were holding back.
They lifted themselves from the pond around moonrise. Long fingers, long noses like icicles — they were icicles. When they rickety-walked closer, I could see air bubbles, trapped insects, and bits of water plants inside their transparent bodies.
I backed up. They could just slip through between the panes. But the glass distracted their sharp fingertips. They drew patterns, lacy, intricate, mesmerizing to them and us. We wouldn’t survive sitting there like statues until morning — our coats weren’t that warm, and our socks were full of snow.
I couldn’t move my eyes, but could — barely — move my hand. I found a rock. I don’t remember throwing it, just the crash, the shrieking, their icy-sharp fingers on the backs of our necks as we ran all the way back to the house, and the shivers we couldn’t shake until summer.
UNANCHORED
Monday, December 28th, 2009
The first time I remember noticing her was one day when leaving the nail salon and there was all that hubbub about the old Victorian for sale across from the post office. She looked non-descript enough, kind of like an investigator in an old trench coat and old hat.
People in the neighborhood had hoped a buyer would be found who would preserve the old house but instead plans were made to tear it down and put up another small strip-mall type office complex. Merrick Road was full of such, so it wasn’t the presence of more that was such a tragedy. I liked going there. I found my way there everyday. After, I went to the nail salon, the post office, and walked up and down the main drag. Always I rushed past the telephone pole full of flowers and photos.
“I see you staring,” the woman in the coat said.
“It’s such a nice building. It’d be a shame to tear it down. Just there, that office, used to be a shoe repair shop with the quirkiest old guy from down south running the place.”
“I know,” she said. “You could barely understand him, but thought he told the darndest stories…”
“How do you know? Are you from around here?”
“No, I’m on business,” she said.
She fished an odd device from her pocket, it looked like a crystal rod, and waved it about. I felt very uncomfortable and wanted to go.
“Places have memories tied to them,” she said. “And when they’re gone, well the memories, and more, are just un-anchored, shall we say.”
Suddenly I could see what would become of the house. The wrecking crew and bulldozers. I saw myself in that house; saw the faces of all the people bringing flowers to that telephone pole.
“It’s alright,” the lady said. She kept waving the rod. “Its how I save the memories. The house will be torn down soon and then you’ll be unanchored.”
“Unanchored?”
“You’ll wander aimlessly, then eventually forget who you are until you dissipate.”
“How long does that take?”
“Hard to say.”
“What if that’s what I want?”
She didn’t answer and I didn’t have choice. The rod was pulling me, taking me somewhere and I could not resist.
“Don’t worry. You’re going to like it with us,” she said.
But I didn’t believe her.
– End of Part One –