(unedited)
The little gray plastic tab locking the screen in place didn’t want to cooperate. Connor stopped, glanced back over his shoulder. The loud voices seeped through the walls, beneath the small crack between the bottom of his door and the carpet, into his chest.
The cold wind rushing in from outside chilled his skin, a welcome respite from the heat of the house. A hint of fireplace smoke tickled his nose, the air otherwise crisp and clean.
The tab pulled loose. He started on the last one, bottom of the window’s left side.
The yelling from the front of the house stopped. Then stomping footsteps. The slam of the front door.
Then a louder voice, gruff, harsh, gravelly: “Merry Christmas.”
She’d gone, then.
He slid the window closed, moving slow and quiet, and sat back on his bed. He reached for The Swords of Lankhmar on his bedside table with his left hand as he pivoted, brought his legs up, settled them in place, and opened the book. He could almost read from the ambient light off the snow. But not quite.
He reached behind his head and flicked on his reading light, a flashlight with a long, flexible neck he’d duct taped to the back of his headboard. It created a small pool of wan yellow light you couldn’t see under his door from the hallway.
He tried to read, but the words fell away like water through fingers, thoughts a whirl of worry and anticipation. He wondered why they were fighting this time, on Christmas Eve of all nights. His favorite night. Usually.
He focused on the words.
Heavy footsteps down the hall, toward his door. They stopped, and he reached back to the flashlight switch, poised his fingers above it. The steps left, followed by the clicking of light switches and the flush of a toilet. A smoker’s cough, then the creaking of a bed.
He realized he was holding his breath. He waited 10 minutes. Then 20. He looked to his digital clock, which told him he couldn’t count, that it’d just been five minutes, so he started watching the red numbers climb up, minute-by-minute.
Time slowed, but Connor’s mind raced, a mix of where-was-she and what’s-under-the-trees, of guilt and excitement. He laid there, staring at the ceiling, imagining the floor he couldn’t see, where he’d left his rain boots, his coat. He planned his movements in order.
The house settled into its small-hours rhythm, creaking slightly in the wind, the heater kicking on and off, big, slow, warm breaths.
He waited and tried not to look at the clock’s glowing numbers. Then he gave up and climbed from his bed, going through the rehearsed motions. Jeans first, then socks, boots, coat, but not gloves. Back at the window then, he eased up the bottom half and applied pressure to the bottom middle of the window screen. It popped loose. He caught the bottom edge, pushed it the rest of the way out of its track, and lowered it to the ground.
Connor climbed through and down, to the snowy flowerbed beneath his window. He walked toward the middle of the yard with careful steps, the top layer of the icy-snow crunching beneath his boots. After 20 steps, he stopped and pulled in as big a breath as he could, then let it out in a flume, pretending himself an ice dragon. The stars twinkled overhead. The breeze whisked away some of the tightness in his chest.
North, across the big, winter-barren soy field, past the trailer park at the river’s edge, across the river and up the side of the rocky, steep hill, slow-moving lights of cars pulled across the distant highway. He imagined climbing the rocks, running through the trees topping the hills. He had a dark cloak, longbow, leather pack, and a sword on his hip. Running off to meet the elves.
There weren’t elves. He knew that. But elves in the woods probably didn’t worry about arguing parents. If there were elves in the woods, and they wanted him to go, he totally would.
Connor took another gulp of cold air and looked back to the stars. Sometimes, standing alone in his backyard as he often did, he’d see a comet. Once, he watched a big blue one travel across the sky, tail dragging behind it, fast, but slower than he thought a comet should move.
He thought about going to look for her. He’d done it before. Often. Sometimes, she’d just be laying across the back seat of the station wagon. Sometimes, the car would be gone. Others, just her. But tonight, for some reason, he didn’t go looking. He needed the night’s stillness, the silent, watching stars and the embrace of the cold. He often felt alone, but never at night, never under the starlit sky.
He felt the pull again, as he often did, toward the trees on that distant hill. To things that didn’t exist, that couldn’t, that only held to reality in the pages of his books. He had power there, amongst the ink and paper, where magic was real.
He sighed. Twelve years seemed too young to give up on magic, to give up on hope. But he wished it, for magic and wonder, for something other to be real.
Something high and to his right pulled his eyes. Straight down it fell, flame-flickering blues, greens, golds and reds, right into the trailer park. He expected an explosion as it crashed, but it vanished. Seconds ticked by, then it reappeared, hopped to the next trailer. One by one, it hopped between the flat roofs, left to right in his vision. At the end of the park, it turned and bounced to a house along the road, the first in the subdivision.
“What the …”
He wanted to move, but moving felt … wrong? He turned, still carefully, 90 degrees to his right, and watched as the fiery light hopped from one house to another down his street.
Then it was at his next-door neighbor’s house, its light so bright it was like looking right at one of those giant, blooming Independence Day fireworks from the town display. Multicolored shadows, it sizzled and popped as it vanished down the chimney.
Connor released the breath he’d been holding, again.
The lights popped up, then rushed toward his house. They flickered and crackled, popped like an kaleidoscopic campfire. The snow along the flue hissed as the light touched it, slithered between the vents and flowing down into the chimney.
It was in his house.
Again, his mind raced. Actions suggested and denied. Scenarios playing in trees of choices.
When the light began rising from the flue, Connor stopped thinking and said, “Wait.” By then, the light had coalesced back into a whole of sorts, and halfway in between its next bounce, at the edge of Connor’s roof, it stopped.
He did not see a figure. No person, no elf. A ball of prismatic fire that made him think of the lights on police cars. The light turned toward him, and then hopped off the roof, landing right where he’d stepped from his bedroom window. It bounced from snowy footprint to snowy footprint.
It reached Connor, circled him on the ground, pulling behind it a warmth Connor felt in his mind and to his bones more than along his skin. The light floated to eye level. Inside, he could see a small figure, clad in red armor over darker red fabric, a heavy red cloak hanging from its tiny shoulders, a tiny broadsword from its hip, its eyes points of red and green and gold and blue sparks inside a blazing white ball where its face would be.
It felt fierce and wild and powerful.
Connor could not speak, but fear did not grip him. And then he heard words inside his head.
Do not give up hope. It exists, and you will see it.
The figure backed away, jumped to his roof and stopped. He felt the weight of its attention on him again.
All will be well.
And then it hopped to the next house, and then the next, working its way down the street, through his neighborhood.
Connor stood still, but followed, watching until the light zipped back into the sky, trailing off to the west and vanishing. He closed his eyes, stretched out his arms and breathed. Lightness enveloped him and he found himself smiling. He could still hear and feel the words in his mind.
He stood in the yard until the feeling dissipated, though his chest felt loose and light, mind calm. Connor walked back to his window, clambered back inside. He reset the screen and closed the window. He pulled off his coat, his boots and his clothes, and slid into bed, pulling his heavy quilt to his chin.
Down the hall, across the house, the front door squeaked slightly as it opened and closed. Pressure in his chest lessened. He did reach up and shut off his light this time. She’d check. Smaller steps down the hall this time, again stopping at his door. The knob twisted, wood brushing across the carpet as she pushed it open. Just a crack. Enough to peek. His eyes squinched almost shut, he could see the darker-than-dark gap between the door’s edge and the frame, but couldn’t see her.
The door closed. More sounds, her getting into bed.
The house creaked and settled into stillness and warmth. In the moonlight from his window, Connor looked around his room, the whole experience replaying on a loop in his mind. After a time, his eyes felt heavy, so he closed them. But he could still see the flickering lights. And when he dreamed it was of hope, and mystery and magic.
skepticlysm 