FEBRUARY HELD A BEARD TRIMMER. He reread the list of characteristics the girl who smelled of honey and smoke sought in a man until the anger turned to sadness. He stretched his arms out in front of him. He inspected their thinness. He ran his hands through his hair, the thickest part at the back near his neck, a puffy mess that now embarrassed even himself. Then, flipping the plastic switch, that row of rusty little teeth sawing back and forth, February raised it to the front of his head and in one long stroke began shaving off his hair.
When the townsfolk looked up, they believed that it was snowing but as the locks of hair fell down upon their shoulders, lashing them across their cheeks, curling around their ankles and holding them to the streets, sticking to their lips and suffocating their breath, they realized that it was another attack by February.
Look, said Thaddeus to himself. Some summer vines are falling from the clouds. How unusual.
It’s February, said a war member.
Thaddeus, please, it’s February from above causing this. Can’t you see that.
I’m going off to see February at the edge of town again, said Thaddeus.
Thaddeus, it’s a trick. February doesn’t live at the edge of town. Look up!
Thaddeus was off.
Thaddeus walked back through the woods and to the home of February and the girl who smelled of honey and smoke. When he opened the door, he saw a man in a rocking chair cutting his hair with a pair of large sewing shears. The girl who smelled of honey and smoke was sitting on the floor writing on parchment paper, which she folded into tiny squares and bound with blue ribbon.
The man, thought Thaddeus, was February. He wore faded brown pants and a dark blue sweater with holes at the elbows. He cut his hair in odd angles and took a few snips from the chin of his beard.
Thaddeus closed the door.
February dropped the sewing shears. The girl pushed the parchment papers under a bearskin rug. They glanced at each other and looked back at Thaddeus, who was still standing in the doorway.
Well, come in, said February. Don’t let the cold air in.
Thaddeus was puzzled. His ankles, beneath his socks, were sticky with sweat.
The girl who smelled of honey and smoke approached Thaddeus and placed her arms around his shoulders. I’m glad you’re back, she said. Come in and sit on the floor with me.
February stayed in his rocking chair. He folded his hands in his lap and rocked back and forth. He looks scared, thought Thaddeus.
I thought you were dead, said Thaddeus, looking at February.
February shook his head no.
I’m not dead, he said. As a matter of fact, I don’t know who or what I am anymore. Everyone in town is terrified of me. They blame me for an endless season where all it does is snow and the skies are gray and everyone is filled with endless sadness. They blame me for the end of flight. Did you know that I had visions that you were coming to cut my throat, Thaddeus. Just awful. I had to sleep in an empty cottage at the edge of another town. The weather was warm.
Thaddeus didn’t know of any other town within walking distance.
February continued. I ran away from the possibility of you killing me to another town that appeared to be abandoned. The weather was warm, the homes newly built, but there were holes in the ground that appeared to go to the center of the earth. It looked like tunnels underground, and inside them were lamps strung like holiday lights.
The girl who smelled of honey and smoke got up to make tea. Thaddeus said yes, that he would drink tea only if the bottom of the cup were stuffed with mint leaves.
I don’t understand, said Thaddeus to February.
Neither do we, said the girl who smelled of honey and smoke.
The two holes in the sky, February said, they hold the answer. We believe in a Creator. We believe that the Creator is up inside those two holes in the sky. We believe that the cause of this endless sad season is directly connected to the Creator.
Thaddeus took the teacup from the girl who smelled of honey and smoke. But you’re February, he said. You’re the cause of it.
I’m not February, February said. You and everyone else including the Creator call me February. I don’t even know my name. I’m a builder of houses, I know that. I built this house by myself. I should be called House Builder. Most of the homes in your town, I built with my bare hands. That is, before I was driven away. I hate February.
But you kidnapped the children and buried them, said Thaddeus.
I wouldn’t do that, said House Builder, kind of laughing.
The girl who smelled of honey and smoke sat so close to Thaddeus on the floor that their knees were touching.
He loves children, she said. He wouldn’t do that.
February the Creator kidnapped the children, said House Builder. February the Creator is responsible for this endless season of sadness.
But you, said Thaddeus, looking at the girl who smelled of honey and smoke. You poisoned me. You made me see spring. When my daughter was taken from her bed, it smelled of honey and smoke and the window was open.
Like I can control what I do and how you are affected. I believe I was only doing it for the safety of my husband. Someone told me to do it, and I did it. I, too, have been mislabeled as a girl who smells of honey and smoke. I’m a Housewife. And as for the smell of the room, Housewife whispered, February is a cruel being, capable of such tricks.
So it is still February, said Thaddeus. All this time February is still occurring.
I’m afraid so, she said.
None of this makes sense, thought Thaddeus.
We feel the same way, said House Builder.
How did you hear that.
You said it out loud, said House Builder. The girl who smelled of honey and smoke nodded.
There was a war planned by underground children, said Thaddeus. It’s against February. Or is it against you. I shouldn’t have called it off. Should I have called it off. I need to get back to town. And Thaddeus headed to the door.
Please, said House Builder. I know you won’t understand this, because I believe it’s impossible to understand, but I’m not the cause of the town’s troubles. I’ve been pushed to the edge of town. Look back to the two holes in the sky. That’s where the problem is. Or the problem is willpower and what you think you can control. I, for example, got labeled February and my wife here as a girl who smells of honey and smoke. Such nonsense. How awful.
When Thaddeus opened the door, it was snowing again and the trees were coated in ice. He ran back to the town as fast as he could, tripping and falling several times. He screamed in torment, his face pressed into the hard snow.
The girl who smelled of honey and smoke woke up before February each morning. She’d crawl out of bed and walk through the darkness of the unfinished home and sit down at a wooden desk where she’d click on a small green lamp. She would read through the stacks of papers, the fragmented paragraphs, the half sentences and abandoned dialogue, and finish these lost riddles to her liking. A long time ago, she showed Bianca the sun. Yesterday she told Thaddeus to walk back to the house of a man wrongly accused of being February to ask more questions. She supplied the blacksmiths with the tools to build a ship. One by one she revived the children buried underground after February kidnapped them, and she was the one who dropped the scraps of parchment from the sky that Thaddeus and the War Effort collected. The girl who smelled of honey and smoke told the children nursery rhymes and supplied them with lanterns as her hands carved out the maze of tunnels. There, there, she said, hushing them to sleep under thick winter blankets, their bodies huddled against a curve in the tunnel. And deep inside their dreams, she fed them the images of a final War Plan against February. There, there, she whispered, tucking the squares of parchment under their pillowed heads.