by Sam Starbuck
"She does love her blowtorch," he agreed.
"What kind of batteries do you need?"
"For the thing," he said, and I paused.
"The thing," I repeated.
"You know, the little thing that tells you where to go."
"A street sign?" I hazarded.
"No, the little hand thing," he said, and took a GPS locator out of his pocket.
"Ah, of course, the little hand thing," I said, accepting it and prying the back off. "Double-As, got it. What are you doing out in this mess, anyway?"
"I was out northwest, checking on folk. Making sure everyone had firewood, food, that kind of thing. Wife gave me that for an early Christmas. Pretty handy, in all this."
"I can imagine it would be," I said, prying out the dead batteries and replacing them from a package in my desk drawer. "Anyone in trouble yet? You need anything?"
He glanced around at the bookshelves.
"Okay, well, I take your point, but don't sass the man who gave you batteries," I said.
"Nobody's in trouble as far as I know – what do you hear?" he asked.
"Not trouble, just delay." I hesitated. "I don't suppose you've seen Lucas around."
"Lucas? No – he'd never go out in this weather, would he? I'd have seen him if he were trapped in town."
"Well, I'm fairly sure he's out at The Pines. I just wondered, living alone..."
"He's probably all right – besides, if he isn't, nobody's going to be able to help him in this weather. I'm surprised you stayed here. What if you have another attack?"
"I won't," I answered. "Anyway, Kirchner looked after me last time."
He gave me a skeptical look.
"Listen, I managed three years here without one," I said, beginning to be a little annoyed by the village's unending fascination with my cardiac health. "Let's have another three before everyone becomes my doctor, all right?"
"All right, Christopher," he said soothingly, fiddling with the device to re-set it. "Things are settling down now, anyway. I don't think there'll be any injury to anyone unless someone gets stupid and panics. And," he added, rubbing his reddening cheeks, "I should be going. Are you really concerned about Lucas?"
"Not enough that you should go check on him, that's a trip I wouldn't wish on an enemy," I said. "I just think he's alone more often than he should be."
"I'll go up to see him when the weather clears, if you want." He straightened his clothing and wrapped his scarf around his face, preparing for the struggle outside.
"Do – ask him down to the village for a few days. Offer him a job. Something at the church, maybe. He needs it," I said.
"You think so too, eh?" he asked. "He seems to enjoy his solitude, though."
"He needs to be around people more."
"Well, we'll see. I'll keep you abreast of things and tell him you'd like to see him."
"Thanks, Charles."
He was the only visitor I had for the rest of the day, and around seven I finally gave up expecting anyone else. I spent the evening in a wing-chair with a book, eventually nodding off and allowing the book to drop to the floor.
When I woke again the fire was in embers, and someone was standing next to it: Lucas, barefoot on the hearth, holding Dottore in his hands. He looked as if he were waiting for something, and also very tired.
"Did you come all the way in this storm?" I asked. He shrugged.
"I wanted to talk to you," he said.
"About what?"
"What we discussed."
"Through the storm? How did you even get here?"
"Christopher, that's not important," he said, exasperated. "The point is I wanted to say – "
He stopped and swallowed, looking as if he were about to apologize. I thought it somewhat gracious of him, until he spoke again.
"I want you to understand what I'm doing. Not just dismiss it. I want you to be curious about it. I want you to know."
"The only thing I'm curious about is how this happened in the first place," I said. "I don't think you're sick, I don't really think you're insane – "
"Oh! That's good!" he said.
" – but I do think there's a problem," I finished. His face fell. "Lucas, it's nothing you've done. You're just not thinking clearly about things. You're spending too much time alone with books."
He looked at me, and then he started to laugh.
"It's serious, Lucas – "
"No – it's funny because it's you saying it – you live in a bookstore!" he said.
"In the middle of a town!" I replied.
"Where you talk to everyone about everyone, but not ever about anything," he drawled.
I was about to retort angrily but he raised his hand to his face, pressing his palm to his forehead. I watched in horror as he slid his hand down over his face. The skin above his hand changed color, subtly, and then the shape of his brow, the width of his nose and cheeks, his lips and chin –
The thing about masks and mirrors, so I learned from Lucas at some point or other, is that when we look in a mirror we do not, in fact, see ourselves. We see a reverse image which we imprint as ourselves because we see it so often. Photographs are sometimes unsettling for this reason: that is the true us, not the mirror-image, and no face is perfectly symmetrical. Symmetrical faces are strange and terrifying if carried too far.
Masks can reflect that perfect symmetry, or they can reflect the minute irregularities of our own faces. A model of one's face, made by another person, looks peculiar and amateurish because we are looking on our face as a real object instead of the usual flat, backwards reflection in the mirror.
I looked on my own face, worn like a mask over Lucas's, and my stomach turned.
This was, of course, the point at which I woke up.
The fire had all but gone out. I was freezing, and so the dream was forced to take second place to rekindling. When the flame was crackling again, or at least doing its best, I sat back on the bedroll in front of it and pressed the heels of my hands to my forehead. The slight, sharp ache of palm-on-skin told me that this, at least, was no dream.
It took a good ten minutes for me to notice that it was silent in the room and silent outside it, and that light was filtering slowly through my windows. The storm had stopped, and morning was dawning. When I peered out through the gaps in the shutters, I was met with a world of white.
The snow was piled high enough that my shop no longer looked like it stood at all above the street. A flat blanket of snow spread like a highway up to my door and even a little above the threshold, just barely covering the floor of the porch. Other less-elevated shops were buried up to their doorknobs or higher, but at least the blizzard was over – the sky outside looked clear and sunny.
I ran upstairs to dress, washing in a basin of cold water, and made myself a cup of tea, boiling a pan of water over the fire. The cook at the cafe was already shoveling the doorway free, cursing with each deep sharp crack as the shovel sliced through the snow, exhaling as the contents of it spattered like gravel to one side. It was past time I should be doing the same, but I stood on the porch with my tea and watched, the snow crackling occasionally under my boots.
It wasn't long before the plow came through, cutting a single narrow lane down the two-lane street and pushing the snow up high on either side, so that the remaining parked cars stood behind huge walls of white. Richard, sitting next to the driver, leaned out the window and waved at me, and I raised my mug in salutation.
Once it was gone, I ducked back inside for my hat and gloves, then stepped out onto the porch and began kicking away the snow that buried the shovel, which I'd left leaning against the porch railing.
I considered clearing off my entire porch, but only briefly. The weight of the snow was bad for the elderly wood but frankly it would be harder on my shoulders to shovel it all. The walkway to the street would take long enough and I wouldn't have many customers anyway, I suspected. People would want to get out and about, but they'd rather go to the cafe or
stock up on groceries.
I had shoveled my way across the porch, down the steps, and halfway to the street before I was interrupted. As I turned to toss the snow to one side, a snowball hit me square in the ear. I scooped up a handful of snow without thinking, turned, and saw Lucas standing there with a look of horror on his face.
"The boy..." he said, pointing at a black blur disappearing in the distance. "It wasn't me!"
"No doubt," I said drily, as ice began to slide down my neck and underneath my collar. I dropped the snowball. "Good to see you in town," I added, turning back to keep shoveling.
"Some storm," he agreed, hesitantly. "Did your power go out?"
"Still is."
"Oh. Mine's back on. I thought maybe in town it wouldn't go out so easily."
The sensation I had was familiar, and I finally put my finger on why. It felt as though it was the end of summer again, when Lucas had only just arrived. He stood outside the low garden wall, a pair of snowshoes strapped on his back and his hands shoved deep in his pockets, shoulders slumped, eyes cast downwards. He was fumbling for words, too, trying to make small talk without any clue how. I stopped and stuck the shovel upright in the snow next to the walkway, sitting down on the porch step. We regarded each other across the yard.
"How do the cars get out?" he asked, pointing to where the snowbound cars sat behind the plow's wall.
"They dig 'em out," I said. "Or drive them out, one at a time, starting at the south end of the street."
"They plowed out early this morning, as far as the asphalt goes. I thought that was good of them. Charles came to see me."
"Oh yes?" I asked. "Bring you all the news?"
"He offered me a job at the church, shoveling out the yard and trimming the trees. I said no."
"Lucas – "
"Please, Christopher," he stammered, interrupting. "I know you're ashamed of shouting at me – "
This stung. "I am not!"
He winced. "Sorry," he muttered. When I didn't reply, he spoke again. "I just – I want to say stop and forget it all, all what I said, but I'm not taking the church job and – and it's not a lie."
"I never said it was a lie, Lucas..."
"You think it isn't true, which is the same thing. But I know I can do it – I can prove it to you," he said, taking a step forward. There was a short expanse of snow between the sidewalk and where I'd stopped shoveling, which blocked him from coming any closer unless he wanted to wade through thigh-high snow.
"Prove it to me?" I asked. "How? Are you going to turn into a cat right here, right now?"
"No!" he shouted, frustrated. "Will you please just listen to me!"
I had only once before experienced anger from Lucas, and rarely ever heard him raise his voice. I had not seen, or maybe had not wanted to see, that he was furious with me – that his face was dark and his whole body tense.
"All right, Lucas," I said quietly. "You might as well come through, if you can."
It was something of a challenge, and I half-hoped he'd leave, seeing the snow he'd have to push through to get to me. Instead, he pressed his gloved hands into the snow until he found the wide stone garden-wall, then stepped up onto it and stood, ankle-deep, studying it. I thought that he would probably simply leap as far as he could and slog the rest of the way to the shoveled path, but instead he took a step forward and eased his foot down into the snow. It packed down firm before he sank more than half an inch, and he put his weight on it hesitantly.
"I've learned things," he said, standing on the snow and putting his other foot forward, again easing it down carefully. The snow didn't even come up over the toes of his shoes.
He was half a man's height off the ground on a snowbank that was soft loose powder, but he wasn't sinking in. Eight slow steps brought him to the shoveled walkway, and he let himself gracefully down into it using the handle of the shovel, still stuck in the snow, for balance. I watched, confused and a little unwilling to believe what I was seeing.
"It's all right if you think it's impossible, I wouldn't blame you," he said. "I don't mind. But I don't want you calling me a liar and I don't want you thinking that I'm unbalanced."
"What else do you want me to think, Lucas?" I asked.
"Think that I'm playing pretend, like children do, or maybe think that I'm open-minded enough to try an experiment. Just...I don't want you to ignore me, I wouldn't know what to do. I don't want you to treat me like a stranger, Christopher. I don't ask much of people, I don't even ask this much of most others. Please."
No one likes to admit they're wrong, particularly after shouting about it, and no one likes their irrational anger to be met with such quiet steadfastness. But by the same token, I was pleased that Lucas did want me to think well of him, me specifically. That he was fond of me.
"Why?" I asked.
"Why what? Why try it?"
"Why do you care so much that I believe you?"
"Dunno about believing," he said, kicking at the snow. "It's important that someone know. So if something goes wrong, you at least have an idea of why."
"Goes wrong?" I asked, suddenly alarmed. "Lucas, what do you mean, goes wrong?"
"Well..." he laughed, a sharp and not entirely cheerful crack of noise between us. "If you don't believe it works, there's nothing to worry about. It's not like I'm going to try and shed my mortal shell or something. It's not that dramatic."
"Lucas, really, please stay here for a few days," I said. "It's a long hike out, and you can't think you'll be able to carry many groceries back with you."
"I don't need many groceries," he said softly. "But if it would make you happier, Christopher, I can stay for a few days. There's probably rooms down at the hotel now that the storm's over, right?"
"Probably," I said carefully.
"That's fine, then." He gnawed his lip and looked around. "When will the shop be open?"
"Did you want something?" I asked.
"I was just wondering."
"Well, it's open now if you need it, you know that," I said.
"I don't," he insisted, rather more forcefully than really necessary. "I just wanted to know. I thought I'd come by and have a look around later."
"All right," I said. "Well, I'll have the rest shoveled in a little while, then I'll open up. Where are you going in the meantime?"
"Down to the department store for some clothes. I'll be back later, I guess."
I nodded and watched as he climbed carefully back onto the snow, using the same slightly-sunken impressions as before. I stayed where I was until he had disappeared behind the snow-plow's wall.
After he was gone I walked carefully down to the edge of the unshoveled snow. One of the footsteps he'd made was near enough to touch and shone oddly in the overcast light. I leaned over and examined it, brushing a few flakes of snow away.
Disbelieving, I slid my fingers around a smooth, solid, rounded edge. With a slight tug, the whole thing came free and I held a clear chunk of ice in my hands. It was wide enough to disperse a man's weight and an inch thick, flawless as glass. The pattern of a boot-print was delicately etched in the top. Even as I stared, it slipped out of my hands and fell to the pavement, shattering into fragments.