Flying North for the Winter

There’s something oddly satisfying in smoking a cigarette on school grounds. Maybe it’s the sense of rebellion he still clings to in the dying years of his teens—some sort of glory in defying the ever unnamed Man.

The school grounds have been deserted for at least a week now, students set free for the Christmas holiday, and he finds he’s never liked the place more. The trees are broken and barren; the leaves that once sheltered their gnarled branches have been swept away by the Northern wind and the Sunday cleaning crew. He rests in his favorite tree, nestled in its branches as though it were his mother’s arms.

The branches seem to wrap closer around him with every movement the wind breathes into them, and they don’t mind his smoky breath or shaggy hair or far-away eyes. They don’t care if he’s a day or a decade closer to death as he pulls another cigarette from his pocket and lights it. He breathes the fresh, cold air and the dry, hot warmth, drinks it in, and the two senses melt together as they slip into his system and into his soul. The trees know when he slips into his own winter, he won’t return again in spring. He is mortal in every sense of ‘fatal’, and because they know, and he knows, there’s a sense of calm understanding that draws the boy and the trees together every winter.

The first time he came, it was to comfort them.

He was the tender age of seven, alone on the high school grounds as he waited for his sister. Winter’s reaching hands had already claimed the other trees, but fall clung desperately to one, the same one upon which he sat now. He’d watched in silent solemnity as harsh gust after gust stripped the tree, leaving it to join the others, deathly pale and strangely alone. Something in that sight had moved him to clamber up into its cold heart of woven branches—he wrapped his arms around them, not caring if the bark scratched his hands and cut his fingertips. You’ll return, he promised them, spring won’t forget you.

Spring is not always so kind to people.

Each year it gets a little colder, there’s a little more numbness in his fingers. The doctors would like to tell him it’s thanks to the death he holds in his hands, smoldering and wrinkling black smoke, but to him the white ashes are as warm as he’s ever felt. That sister now tells him his voice sounds dry, sounds like it should hurt. He can stop talking, he replies, if it hurts her ears so much.

The trees don’t mind his voice, even on the worst days, when you can tell he’s not living so much as dying slowly.

He’s not looking for pity or drugs or relief from whatever it is they say he’s suffering from; he’d like a little understanding, a little quiet, and maybe something to warm his hands. The tree cradles him above the school grounds, holds him on high like he’s worth it. The tree wouldn’t ever let him fall, but when he does, it’s his fault alone. There’s an odd, content feeling in knowing that, and it brings him back to this place, to this tree time after time.

The cigarette glows amber, hot and deadly, and he drops the ashes on his jeans. When he brushes it off, he takes care that not a speck falls on the tree. The honking of geese draws his attention overhead. Coughing, because he’s looked up too quickly, he laughs at the stragglers. Flying south for the winter a little too late; winter’s already here, he thinks. No use tricking yourselves now.

That’s what they’re doing, really. Fooling themselves into thinking that life’s a never-ending summer. People do the same thing: moving to San Diego, buying summer homes in exotic locales; anything and everything to push winter away. Maybe it’s because his life’s been out of the sunshine for so long that he’s come to associate himself with winter, but he thinks there’s no point in all the pretending. Nothing wrong with a little snow, a little bite to the wind; and the chill in your lungs at least let you know you are still alive (when would that disappear, he wondered?).

If he could, he thinks he’d fly North, the colder the better. He always liked the snow when it was unspoiled—not the sludgy mess of the city or the footprint scarred white of playgrounds and school grounds. It was nice to see something so pure that he could still touch.

His sister’s car pulls into the parking lot on the hill; he can recognize the ostentatious red from miles away, with its glossy paint and collage of bumper stickers. He slides off the tree with a last wistful pat to its branches, and crushes his cigarette between his thumb and index finger even though it burns (it comforts him that it still does). He shoves his hands, cigarette ash and all, into his pockets and meanders through the brittle grass and meets his sister halfway. He can hear her words in his head before she opens her mouth, and he smiles.

Where were you? What were you doing all alone? You know it’s not good for you to be out in the cold, do you want to die or something?

If his voice didn’t hurt her ears, maybe he’d reply. Maybe he’d tell her that’s why he was out so late, out in the cold, but not by himself. He’ll be alone when he sits next to her in the car, squashing himself into the ripped leather seats. He’ll be alone when he’s back at the hospital two days later, surrounded by white lights and masked faces. He’ll be alone until he’s out cold and dreaming: stretching his ashen wings and flying North as far as North goes. There, among the tree branches and the clouds, the cool air in his lungs won’t be too harsh, and as he catches the wind in his fingers, his hands are finally warm.

A/N: Something that wrote itself suddenly a couple weeks ago that I just recently put the finishing touches on. Lots of meaning in it for me, so I hope that gets across.

Reviews are very much appreciated.