Bianca
I could be in an underground cell. I could be dead. I miss air. I miss my father and mother. Every once in a while, the darkness disappears and I can see a man for a few minutes. Like yesterday when yellow streaked the room. He’s tall with hips like mine. I believe this is February. He doesn’t wash himself or clean his clothes. His hair is thick and uncombed, his beard scraggly, his pants torn, his shirt a faded gray. He sits at a desk or walks around the small room where he lives and where I stay hidden behind furniture. He cries a lot, too. Sometimes he just sits at his desk staring at the blank sheets of paper in front of him. But eventually he’ll move and write something down and get up and walk around again. February drinks too much coffee. In the afternoon he eats food that’s two thick slices of bread with a gooey substance and animal parts on the top. February is happy when he eats this meal. Sometimes the animal parts fall off the bread and onto the floor, but February doesn’t mind. He just reaches down and picks them off the dusty wood floor and eats. One time I saw him staring out the window at the snow falling, and he started to cry really loud. There are two holes in the floor. Sometimes I sit on the edge of one. Sometimes I think of jumping down.
Thaddeus curled himself around the backside of sleeping Selah. In a hazy voice she asked if they would know June again. Thaddeus closed his eyes and saw the town burn to the ground as he nodded his nose down the bumps of her spine. He opened his eyes. He thought of Bianca. When he fell asleep, he dreamed the clouds falling apart, the town starting anew. And when he woke in the morning he tried to remember the dream but couldn’t, no matter how long he spent on the hill with his eyes shut.
Selah, he yelled down the hill toward their home. Do you remember the dream I had last night.
Selah was pouring buckets of hot water around their home. She yelled back that she didn’t remember, but it was probably about balloons.
Of course, said Thaddeus. I would dream about balloons and flight. Thank you.
Selah wished for a moat to protect their home from February. Selah wished for the end of February and endless sadness and the end to missing children. Selah wished for the rebirth of town and flight. Selah wished for a scrap of something beautiful.
Thaddeus
After three days of dumping hot water by single buckets, our arms are long bruises unable to handle the turning of the sparrow-head faucet. Caldor Clemens invents the water-trough-horse system. He works for two days hacking down oak trees and carving out the trunks with knives and axes. When he finishes, the wooden trough is three times longer than our home. It stretches to the middle of where the corn-fields used to grow. Clemens shows us how to stick bits of glass to the bottom of the trough with birch sap he has collected in buckets. The trough itself won’t catch fire this way, he says, and lights a small fire beneath it. The water simmers. Clemens brings six horses up the hill and harnesses them with leather straps to the trough he has readied with boiling water. He raises his hand and sticks the fingers of the other in his mouth and whistles louder than I have ever heard a man whistle. The horses bolt forward, sending a wave of water rushing toward the town, melting the snow into slush.
We continue the attack for the rest of the week, until the streets clear — we want unfrozen land — and the snowfall melts on the soil like a massive tongue. The children say the clouds look like rippling sails. The holes in the sky turn pink and a body falls from the sky and into the river. The War Effort, their fingers sticky with sap, point to the sky shouting for the death of February.
FEBRUARY SAT ON A COTTAGE FLOOR with a girl who smelled of smoke and honey. The girl was telling him that she was tired of being around someone who carried so much sadness in his body. February drew his kneecaps to his eye sockets.
February apologized. He rocked back and forth. When he stretched his legs back out the girl was smiling and running in place. February asked what she was doing. The girl who smelled of honey and smoke said it was to cheer him up.
I don’t think that’s going to work, said February. I’m sorry, but it just won’t.
Just try it, said the girl who smelled of honey and smoke. Please.
February stood up and ran in place. His joints popped. He bumped into a table, knocking over a jug of water.
Looks like a flood, said the girl who smelled of honey and smoke, who pumped her legs and arms faster.
It does, said February, who watched the water expand across the table and drip onto the floor with great delight.
War Member Six (Green Bird Mask)
The hot water worked better than we imagined. There was some flooding on account of the melted snow, but we used most of it to refill the buckets. February is breaking apart at the horizon seams. There are few clouds. The sky is a soft blue. The children’s cheeks are flushed red from the sun.
People in town laughed today. Someone even skipped. The first sprouts of green crops can be seen on the hillside. The town feels alive and productive again. We have won an early battle against February but know that anything can happen. For instance, there have been reports from the messengers that dark clouds are cascading from the mountain peaks. Grizzly bears were seen buttoning deer-skinned coats in case of freezing temperatures. The carpenters have boarded up their windows and refuse to leave their homes. They mumble sadness. Sadness sounds like bubbles blowing slowly in stream water.
THE GIRL WHO SMELLED OF HONEY and smoke enjoyed collecting old books on plants. One night while out on the cottage porch sitting on the swinging bench with February, she opened to a chapter about vines and moss. One page had twelve different pictures of skinny green vines climbing the side of a Victorian brick house.
When the girl stood up to go inside and check on the pot roast she kissed February on his forehead. February flipped through the plant book until he stopped at a picture that showed a deer skeleton in a forest, spores of moss covering the white bone.
In only a week, the caption read, this deer skeleton will be blanketed with a spongy green moss.
The girl came back outside. She asked if he found anything interesting. She said the pot roast was ready. February nodded. He said that he liked the idea of moss.
Thaddeus
Spores of moss appeared on the horses’ feet, and layers of green grew on their legs and backs. Selah spent her nights trying to defend against the attack of moss by pulling it out in patches and then soothing the horses’ bloody flesh with wet magnolia petals. We continued the water-trough attacks until the moss collapsed each horse. A dark green blanket grew over their eyes.
Selah couldn’t destroy the moss with her hands anymore, because it was so thick. It was now bigger than each horse. She slept next to the dying horses until the moss made its way down their throats. After the horses died, the moss moved its way from the woods and up the hill toward our home. Caldor Clemens swung the scythe like he was chopping wheat from an advancing crop field. He screamed and swore against February. Two priests came to sprinkle holy water around our home. They looked confused. The sky turned green, then black, then green again. A wolf stood on its hind legs and ripped opened its stomach. Ants carrying cubes of moss crawled out.