Shane Jones - Light Boxes

I opened the door to February’s house and saw a girl with long black hair sitting at a desk. She was smiling and said, Please come in and take a seat. I declined. I asked her where February was. She said he had gone out to collect firewood and berries. The inside of the home was furnished in a way I had never seen before. Lamps and tables and chairs designed from another world. I noticed a fire burning low against the wall and columns of worn books stacked to the ceiling.

Who are you, I said.

I’m his wife, she said.

February has taken my wife and daughter and is destroying the town, I said.

I’m sorry. We, too, feel an overwhelming sadness. We, too, cry more than we laugh.

The girl stood up and walked over to me at the front door. She smelled of honey and smoke and when she got close enough images of cornstalks and birds and muddy salamanders crawled from my eyes. I felt dizzy. I grabbed her shoulders so I wouldn’t fall. My body boiled to a blistering heat. Sweat poured out of me like lead.

There, there, Thaddeus, she said, embracing me with arms that reminded me of Selah. Don’t worry about February. You can’t control February.

My legs turned to mud. My knees hit the ground. My arms were around her waist now. Honey and smoke, honey and smoke, honey and smoke. .

It was blurry. Then everything went black.

When I woke, I was sweating. I was sitting on the floor near the front door and the girl who smelled of honey and smoke was sitting at the desk, writing something on parchment paper.

Oh, you shouldn’t see me writing this, she said. Just pretend you didn’t see me writing this.

As I started to leave, I heard a man’s voice and turned around to see, but it was only the girl who smelled of honey and smoke waving from the desk. When I stepped outside I took a deep breath and my lungs filled with warm air. The soil was soft and worms twitched in puddles. Birds flew from branch to branch. Flowers were sprouting up around the oak trees where squirrels fed. The sound of owls was so deafening you’d think something was wrong.

War Effort Member Two (Missing His Bird Mask)

Thaddeus was walking in our direction, waving his arms, whistling. A yellow bird mask next to me commented that Thaddeus was wearing a shirt without sleeves and pants torn at the knees.

A tactic against February, I reminded him.

We have lost the tips of our fingers and our toes are black inside our boots. Our beards are brittle with ice, our skin hard and red and cold.

He’s going to freeze to death, said the War Effort member.

When we came upon Thaddeus, he laughed and gave each of us a great big embrace, patting us on the backs and kissing our faces. His arms had black spots where February had attacked, and his legs had ice for skin. When he placed his arms around me he felt like a thousand pounds.

Victory is ours, he said.

You killed February, we asked.

No, said Thaddeus. But look around. I didn’t look around. I didn’t need to. I didn’t have to see the trees burdened with snow, the skies stuffed gray. Instead I stared at Thaddeus as the snow fell on his bare arms.

What, said Thaddeus. Why is everyone looking at me like that.

War Effort Member Number Three (Purple Bird Mask)

Thaddeus talked of spring like it was blossoming around him. Where we saw snow and felt cold air, he saw crop fields and shielded his eyes from the sun with his hand.

Here, I said, handing Thaddeus a stack of papers detailing the children’s war against February.

He read each page. He told us that if he had known that children were living underground with this kind of War Plan, February would have ended on the tenth day. Thaddeus then threw the papers into a pile of snow left yellow from a war member.

Call it off, he said.

The war members looked at each other until I retrieved the parchment papers and tried explaining to Thaddeus that February was still continuing, that the last week had been the worst yet.

Complete nonsense, said Thaddeus. We should get back to town and begin the spring harvest. Tell the underground children to come up and be children.

One War Effort member whispered into another’s ear until it circled to the end, where I stood and heard, Go to the Professor for help. I nodded back around the circle to each member. We nodded. Thaddeus laughed.

The Professor’s Report on Thaddeus Lowe

Thaddeus Lowe believes that the current season is spring. On more than one occasion, he left my home to pick vegetables, which he pretended to cook over the fire I normally use to boil potatoes. To see this behavior from Thaddeus breaks my heart and I can only conclude that this is the cruelest of tricks from February.

Thaddeus laughed uncontrollably when I put the light box on. He slapped it off my head, knocking me from my chair and onto the floor.

Thaddeus asked several times why I was wearing a sweater and scarf.

Thaddeus laughed and shook his head each time I explained to him that it was February, that it had been February for nearly nine hundred days.

Thaddeus doesn’t know who I am. He is oblivious to his surroundings.

I believe he has been poisoned, or spelled, or hypnotized by someone. It is difficult for me even to write this, for at this moment Thaddeus is standing outside without a shirt, commenting on the sun. In fact, it is a blizzard.

Thaddeus asked me twice if the children’s war has been called off. I told him that yes, I believe it has been.

I also told him about my rearranging of the paper that fell from the sky, but he cartwheeled away in the snow.

The only people I was able to convince that I wasn’t a ghost were the underground children. When I told them that the body found near the river was a fake, they said they already knew that. They said they knew the many tricks of February.

The children had developed an intricate maze of tunnels beneath the town, illuminated by hanging lanterns. At each junction there were little wooden signs with an arrow pointing up that said what part of town, what store, or what house was directly above you. I found my home and climbed up and shifted a floorboard to one side. My father was there talking about flying a balloon again. He was having an entire conversation with himself about how sweet the air tasted at a specific height. He described wind gusts by waving his arms through the air from side to side. He described the balloon ascending into the sky by stretching his arms to the ceiling and making a noise with his lips that sounded like the flame.

Before I went back down into the tunnel, the floorboard I had shifted to one side made a creaking noise. My father looked. He ran to me. He said I shouldn’t be living underground. He didn’t recognize me. I told him I was his daughter and I wasn’t a ghost. He told me to call off my war and instead spend the next day swimming in the river where the water was like warm silk on skin. I told him that didn’t make any sense.

It’s me, Bianca, I said. I’m your daughter. Look at my face.

I rubbed the dirt from my cheeks. Made sure my face wasn’t coated in snow or ash.

Bianca, I said. Don’t you recognize me.

I wrote each letter of my name on a scrap of parchment and slid it across the floor.

My father moved the letters around. He spelled A CABIN. Then he came back to BIANCA. He looked at the letters, the name, then at me. He kept doing this.

Eventually I think he smiled.

Something is wrong with me.