Clemens reached up and grabbed me around my ribs. He lifted me from his shoulders with a strange grace and elegance and placed me back on my own two feet.
Great speech, Thad. Really, really, really good.
Clemens punched me in the shoulder. It left a bruise the shape of a mallet’s head.
Caldor Clemens
Thad paused for a moment. The smell of mint leaves rose like smoke from his skin. Then he mumbled a few positive comments. LIFE IS GOOD. PEOPLE LAUGH WITH JULY. FEBRUARY IS NOTHING, BECAUSE FEBRUARY IS SHIT. He didn’t really say that last one. I said that. The smell stopped. He pointed at the sky. He told me to look for a girl’s feet through a hole. He said they could be Bianca’s. I didn’t see anything but clouds suffocating little stars. We watched for a few minutes until he said that a man and a woman were in a second hole. Still I didn’t see a damn thing. Thad said that the man and woman were fighting, throwing balls of paper at each other. I kept looking. Kind of crazy to think about holes in a sky. But maybe I did see two shadowy figures in that one hole. Who knows? I was drunk on cider, vodka and mud.
Orange Bird Mask
Today we go up the hill with our weather-changing poles. Some of them are fifty feet long, requiring a dozen men to raise them. The idea is to destroy the clouds that cover the sun. An old Peter tactic he never had the chance to try.
It fails, because when we raise the weather poles, an ice storm freezes them together. They blow down the hill and toward the town. One weather pole spikes a shopkeeper’s window.
By nightfall we feel the sadness inside us that is February. I can smell the mint evaporating from Selah and Thaddeus.
Not every tactic will be effective against February, Thaddeus says. Everyone stay positive.
The War Effort has doubled since the great Thaddeus speech. We now have blacksmiths and sculptors and farmers and a little person and beekeepers, and most of them have lost their children to February. Most of them can’t unclench the fingers-into-fists that are their hearts.
Go home and make a large fire, Thaddeus tells us. Warm yourself until your sweat soaks through your clothes.
Thaddeus
February has destroyed dozens of our limbs. Infected men stay in bed where they are sad and useless. The rest of us stay up at night sketching plans for a new war strategy. We take turns pacing, crumpling paper, disregarding each idea that springs from our cold mouths. Selah makes tea with two crossed mint leaves floating on the top of each cup. Without an idea, we question if we should even continue our daily assault of warm-weather tactics. A few of the men have dressed for the day in long pants and sweaters. They throw up their hands and walk out the door. Selah is standing in the doorway trying to make out the mountains behind the clouds. She drops her teacup. Then she says I should come look. I walk over, and she points to her feet and raises her finger up to the roofs of the town. The hot tea has burned a path through the snow from our front door and down into the town.
They find Bianca dead on the riverbank. Two members of the War Effort drag her from the water and place her arms at her sides, rest her head on a rock. The members stare. She’s covered in blue ink, random letters they can’t form into words. When they tell Thaddeus, the smell of mint leaves is so strong it turns the windows in town green and the clouds look like moss.
Thaddeus tries to decipher the words, hopes for a complete sentence. He sends a messenger for the Professor.
The only word the Professor can make out is OWLS.
You should know that I would like to join the war against February, says the Professor.
Fine, says Thaddeus, buttoning his coat.
In a few days you should call a meeting. There is something you need to see, the Professor says. It’s a tactic against February. I think it could help.
Very well, says Thaddeus. A meeting tomorrow at my home. Good-bye.
The Professor’s plan for light boxes was a mess of equations and diagrams nearly three hundred parchment sheets long. He didn’t sleep for days, using Thaddeus’s workshop to construct the first light box. When the pounding of metal, the sawing of wood, the breaking of glass, the tearing of paper stopped on the night of the fifth day, he emerged with his face covered in black grease and arms bloodied.
It’s finished, he told Thaddeus. He picked glass from his knuckles with his teeth and spit them out. Let’s begin the meeting so I can explain the effectiveness of light boxes.
The War Effort gathered. They watched the Professor lift the light box over his head and set it down until it was tight against his shoulders. In his right hand he held a dented metal box that had a cord attached. Lifting the metal box, he said in a muffled voice, Now, this is the power supply that when switched will simulate the light of the sun which we haven’t seen in a year. The light box itself was constructed of wood fastened at odd angles with metal clamps, except for the front, which was a panel of glass. The top of the glass was where the light was going to shine — bulbs, the Professor called them. As he toggled the switch, everyone could see the sadness and frustration in his face, his eyes looking up at the bulbs as his head jerked from side to side. The switch clicked uselessly. He violently shook the metal box. He clutched the sides of his head and lost his balance a little.
Then the stench of burning leaves, and the bulbs bloomed crystal white across his face. The War Effort cheered. Some ran out into the snow-filled plains to mock the sky. Others took turns fitting the box over their heads, letting the light soak into their winter beards, their tongues tasting the blood from their splitting lips.
When Thaddeus went back into the woods the three children weren’t there. Thaddeus looked up and saw the owls on a branch. He asked them if they had seen the three children. Owls can’t speak, and Thaddeus felt foolish. He walked around looking for footprints. A parchment was nailed to the tree. It stated that the three children had been kidnapped and should be added to the catalog of missing children. It was signed, February. Thaddeus saw footprints leading from the tree. They stretched several yards, then formed a circle. They continued straight, then another circle, then straight again. After each circle was a new type of footprint: bear, deer, squirrel, human, et cetera. The footprints continued this way as far into the woods as Thaddeus could see.
List Written by February and Carried in February’s Corduroy Coat Pocket
1. I am not a bad person. I have enjoyed June, July and August like everyone else.
2. I fed you dandelions and picked the stems from your teeth with my tongue.
3. You smell of honey and smoke. That’s what I call you. Girl who smells of honey and smoke. But you’re more than that. You’re a field of dandelions.
4. I have this nightmare where I’m standing in the field of dandelions holding a scythe. The horizon is children marching. Each child holds one of your teeth.
5. I’m so confused it almost feels calm.
6. I am guilty of kidnapping children. I am guilty of Bianca and causing great pain to Thaddeus and Selah and the town.
7. I want to be a good person, but I’m not.
Thaddeus
The first hot-water attack takes place from our home on the hill. We spend the first night filling large buckets with boiling water. We keep them hot by lighting small fires with piles of tree branches. We pour the buckets downhill toward the town. A cloud of steam rises into the sky as wide, empty trenches expand in the snow. The War Effort applauds like they are watching theater. The midget does somersaults down the hill. For a moment yellow streaks the sky. When I angle my face into the rays of sun, I notice the sky trembling around one of the holes. I see footprints running from the first to the second hole, where the dangling feet are no longer visible. I tell Selah to look up. She does but says she doesn’t see anything except the clouds separating a little. And then the sky flutters like a flag, and then it goes black like closed curtains of wool.