“Maybe I won’t get in so much trouble now that it’s smaller,” she mused.
“Maybe they’ll grow,” he answered, and they stood.
Hand in hand, neither yelling nor sulking, they answered the bell signalling the end of recess.
When the fog turned to frost, David’s life, for an eternal second, froze. And then, like an icicle slapped from a gutter to smash onto the whitened asphalt below, David’s life fractured. And reformed in a forever altered pattern.
“Look, Dad,” David tugged at his father’s shirtsleeve. “There are snowflakes on the plane window!”
Merle Currier nodded with disinterest at his son’s discovery of the physical effects of altitude.
“It’s just the humidity on the window that’s turning to ice,” he mumbled, eyes barely leaving his paper. “When we left Dallas, it was hot and muggy. It’s freezing in Minneapolis, so we must be getting close.”
David looked up at his father with a less-than-appreciative eye. “Looks like snowflakes,” he grumbled.
Merle didn’t answer, but instead turned to the next page of the
Wall Street Journal.
David began to hum. Tunelessly. In just the way that he knew would get a reaction. It didn’t take long.
A large paw released the edge of the newspaper for a moment and cuffed the boy firmly on the head.
“Cool it, David,” his father growled.
The boy huffed to himself. The whole trip had been like this. For brief moments, his father would condescend to stoop to David’s eight-year-old level and play. But then just as quickly, the older man would disappear into the reams of newsprint that seemed to carpet his bachelor’s apartment, or pick up the phone and speak in clipped, hushed terms to whoever was on the other end. And David was expected to sit still on the couch and watch TV. And not make any noise. Or he’d be going to bed early.
David went to bed early
a lot.
Last night was a good case in point. After a quiet (boring) dinner of warm-it-up-in-the-oven-from-a-box chicken and canned beans, father and son had moved into the living room. David toyed with his TW-4 truck, revving and crashing the silver and blue metal cab into the base of the television stand. It made a satisfying thud.
“Cool it, David,” came the gruff rebuke from the couch. So he had. His dad was watching some tedious TV show with a group of old men sitting around a table. They talked about things like “stock growth” and “strategic ventures” and “capital,” though they didn’t say of what state. David grabbed for the channel changer.
“Don’t touch that, David,” his father had warned.
But he had touched it.
He picked it up and methodically punched every button that he could.
Twice.
His dad didn’t even yell that loud. One big, hairy hand grabbed David’s own and relieved him of the remote control. The other heaved him up by his pants and levitated him straight to bed.
David didn’t like visiting his father much.
Then again, he couldn’t say that living with Mom was any picnic either. She was always yelling at him, and sending him to his room.
Just before coming on this trip, she’d been sitting at their kitchen table, smoking a cigarette and talking and laughing on the phone with her friend Rachel. She had been promising all day to play Nintendo with him, and instead she was on the phone for an hour! He had given up on the video game, and started idly punching around a beach ball he’d dug out of the hall toy closet. When it bounced over the kitchen chair and knocked Mom’s can of Coke into her lap, she’d stopped laughing. She hissed something into the phone, set it to the side and said the two words he had come to know so well: “You’re grounded!”
When she’d brought him to the airport and left him with the stewardess to chaperone on the plane flight to his Dad’s, he thought she looked relieved to see him go.
If he could, he’d divorce the both of them himself. He’d heard of a kid doing that somewhere, but he had no idea how. Lawyers’d cost a lot of money, he figured. Way more than the $3.82 he had in his pocket. He pushed his hand in there and felt the change, warm and slippery against his hip. He stole a glimpse at his dad, who seemed to have hair in all the wrong places. It stole out and over the elastic collar of his Vikings sweatshirt, snuck through the pleats in his gold watchband, and even peeked out of the sides of his ears. Dad had tiny hairs poking through the holes in his wide-pored and pudgy nose, and a couple of stray silver hairs strained above his thickened eyebrows. But above those eyebrows rose the creeping lines of bare flesh. If you looked at the top of Dad’s head, you could see right through the hair to the scalp beneath. David felt a rush of disgust overcome him, and turned back to the window. Dad was gross!
The frost on the window had lengthened since just moments before. An intricate webwork of crystal and lace traced patterns of winter across the inner glass of the double-paned – but somehow still flimsy-looking – airplane window. David stared at the filigree, following its paths and crosscuts, marvelling at its delicate beauty. He raised a finger to the window, tracing the currents in the pane of snow. But as his finger touched the window, the frost on the other side of the glass jumped.
“Hey, watch it!” a tiny voice bellowed.
The frost beneath the pad of his index finger suddenly swirled, twined and coalesced. And just above his finger, a small figure grew. It was white, but with glints of red and blue and green. It looked like a man, but a tiny one.
Really
tiny. Not more than an inch tall.
David yanked his finger away from the glass.
“Hey, who are you?” the boy asked. His voice trembled a little as he spoke.
From behind the rustle of the newspaper his father shushed him. “Who’re you talking to, Davy? Keep it down. People are sleeping.”
David repeated his question in a whisper. “Who are you?”
“They call me Kyla Kulmavoetud.”
“What kinda name is that?” David asked.
The tiny creature grinned. His teeth were crystal sharp, his eyes flashed the blue of frozen air. David could almost see right through him.
“It’s a name that says what I am – icy, numb, cold as snow. I’m a frost sprite.”
The sharp-looking creature waited a beat for the import to sink in.
“Having a nice flight?” the sprite asked. Its tone didn’t sound as friendly as its words.
David wasn’t sure if he wanted to answer. Did the “don’t talk to strangers” rule apply to inch-tall frost sprites? So he shrugged.
“Not getting on with the old man, eh?”
David shrugged again, but this time a pair of tears instantly brimmed in his eyes.
“You don’t talk much, do ya, kid?”
David rubbed his eyes quickly, then leaned forward towards the window. In a low whisper, he asked, “Can you do magic? Will you give me three wishes, like Aladdin?”
“Do I look like a genie, kid?” The sprite gestured at his miniscule, nearly transparent waist. “Ice and snow. The size of a quarter and not half as hard.”
The boy’s expectant expression fell.
“A frost sprite can’t change the world,” Kyla said. Then winked. “But we can change how it looks. Shall I show you the treachery of clouds? Maybe make you the dance partner of a dragon?”
David drew back a bit. Shook his head. “I’d fall!”
“Qui-ettttttt,” his father growled again.
“I’ll fall,” David whispered to the sprite.
“So what if you do? Anyway, you won’t if you’re with me.”
“Like Superman when he took Lois Lane…?”
The sprite arched an eyebrow of ice, then reached through the glass. “Take my hand.”
David looked at the ghostly palm extended towards him.
“I’ll crush it!”
“Take it.”
David glanced at his father, and then at the passengers around them. Nobody seemed to be paying him and his conversation any attention. Shrugging to himself – what did he have to lose? – he touched a finger to the sprite’s magical palm…
…and was suddenly standing outside the airplane! And he was tiny! The sprite’s crystalline hand fit snugly in his own, and the window where he’d just been looking out seemed as tall now as the Sears Tower. He squinted, trying to see back in through the window, but the interior of the plane was a shadowy world of black and grey compared to the sparkle and glint of the white ice and smoky air that floated all around them.
“Come on,” exclaimed the sprite and with a quick crouch-turned-leap, yanked David off the wing of the plane and out into a haze of chilling snow.
“Yeeeeoooooaaaaaaahhh!!!” screamed the boy as they fell through a whirlwind of clouds. The air was cool, but not too cold on David’s neck. He finally stopped his screaming and realized that, while they were in the middle of the sky without a parachute, they weren’t actually
falling
. He took a deep breath; it tasted full and sharp and sweet, not claustrophobic and sour, like the air he’d tasted for the past week. He giggled suddenly and extended his arms to fly. He was free! David howled again, this time with delight. The sprite only nodded, his icy teeth glinting in the sun.
What would Dad say if he could see me now?
David thought, and then looked back to see the plane. Already it was disappearing in the rolling heavy cushion of cloud. His elation vanished as quickly as it had come. His heart trembled with panic. How would they get back? The plane was moving
fast
!
“Wait,” he cried out. Flipping away from Kyla, he began to dogpaddle his way toward the plane. He struck out with his hands and feet, kicking the way they’d taught him at the community pool. The cotton yielded easily at his clawing arms and pounding feet, but it didn’t feel as if he was moving forward. The cloud wasn’t thick enough for his hands to really
push
against anything to move himself forward.
Behind him he heard the frost sprite laugh.
He kicked hard and struck out with his hands cupped, but they only came back damp with moisture. It was as if he was waving his arms in the backyard, pretending he was a bird. He could wave them all he wanted, but he never left the ground.
A tear of frustration rolled down his cheek, and then something cold whooshed past his face. He couldn’t see anymore! The world was a white blur of watery fluff. Not only was he not getting closer to the plane, he was not keeping his head above the clouds.
He was falling!
The white tendrils wound around his arms, covered his face. It was almost too thick to breathe. He gagged on its chewy, sno-cone wetness, choked on fear and fog. He opened his mouth to scream again, but found that he didn’t have enough air in his lungs to make a sound.
Closing his eyes and balling his fists, David quit sky-swimming, and really began to cry. It was a weak, defeated yowl. His tears were almost indistinguishable from the icy water that was streaking across his face, but cry he did. He curled into a ball and hugged his legs. He hated everyone. Everything. The world was too mean to him. So just let him drop like a rock to the ground. What did he care? At least he wouldn’t have to sit in Dad’s stuffy apartment anymore, or hear Mom yell and complain like Erkle, the Carrington’s yappy schnauzer next door.
“It appears I have made a sorry mistake. The child is quite obviously a
chtschlept
. A wimpering chimp. A quitter.”
The voice was close, almost in his ear. David opened his eyes to see Kyla floating along beside him, head on his hand, elbow pointed at the clouds beneath them. He looked as if he was lying on a living room floor watching TV.
David’s eyes grew wide and his mouth began to open in a grin. But then he stopped himself, and stubbornly looked away. He’d had enough of frost sprites, too. He began to hum, louder and louder. As off-key and jarring as possible. He closed his eyes and hummed the sprite and the rest of the world away.
“Hmmm. Well, it’s a long way down. Hours maybe. You don’t fall very fast when you’re this size. I think you’ll come down somewhere near Chicago. If that’s where you really want to go. I’ll go part of the way with you, in case you change your mind.”
David refused to meet the sprite’s gaze. He was enjoying the black anger that had taken hold of him. “
Don’t give him the satisfaction
,” is what his mom would say. And he didn’t.
Except…
The sprite didn’t say another word, and after a few minutes of quiet, David wondered if he was still there. He couldn’t see anything – this was worse than being in the bathroom after taking a long, hot shower. He couldn’t see a foot in front of him. Everything was white. And that was scarier than being in dark. But pulling his arms resolutely across his chest, David vowed not to turn his head. He would be scared “
like a man
,” as Dad was keen on telling him.
Then again, why would he want to do something that Dad told him to do?
Suddenly he broke through the ceiling of clouds, and David could see a lot farther than a foot in front of him. He could see for miles and miles and miles. And that was worse than everything being white or dark, because now he could see how high he was. How completely helpless. And he could hear the wind whistling in his ears as he plummeted through the open air. He was picking up speed.