Allison watched the fluffy white flakes falling steadily. There was little else to see out the window from this angle, but she guessed that if she got up and looked out, the snowfall would be so thick she wouldn't see much further.
She wasn't in much of a position to get up anyway. She was slouched down in a reclining posture, cradled between a mound of blankets and the layer of pillows lining the space between the edge of Woody's bed and the wall. Her left arm was squashed under Sally's weight. Sam and Woody were both squished in on her other side, and they were all sitting the same way she was, their legs luxuriously resting propped up in front of them, their heads supported by the pillows and cushions that made up Sam's bed at night, as they stared out the window high up on the opposite wall.
Allison wasn't paying much attention to whatever they were talking about. Sam and Woody were engaged in some kind of discussion as to which book they should choose for reading aloud, she knew that much. She was enjoying the moment of total repose. Her muscles were nearly all still, her limbs buried in an oversized sweater and her feet protected in wooly socks. She couldn't remember when she'd last been able to zone out. For a few moments, she didn't realize Sally was asking her something. “What?” she asked.
“What's your favourite?” chirped Sally, unperturbed at having to repeat herself.
“My favourite what?” asked Allison.
“Your totally all time favourite Christmas memory,” said Sally.
“Hmm,” Allison crossed one leg over her other, staring over at her mismatched socks. Sally straightened her legs too, which were covered in slightly discoloured wool tights, and giggled as she wiggled her toes, her bright frog toe socks peaking out from where her tights cut off. Allison continued to watch the snow outside. “Ice skating at the sculpture garden.”
She glanced sideways. Sam was looking over at her, and when he caught her eye, he gave her a small secretive smile. She smiled back at him. It was new, for him. What occasion had they ever had for it before this year? Finally, through everything that had happened and despite or because of his ten years of experience now, every now and then he could be in on a secret. He could keep quiet in public about something he shouldn't know, and they didn't need to lock him in a death stare to make sure he wouldn't give the game away. He knew when to look neutral and what small little moments like this one could afford a bit of a smile.
Sally snuggled closer to her. It was a strange, somewhat comforting thing, how she found she could sometimes talk about her former life around Sally and Woody. She didn't give them a lot of geographically specific details, but a few memories could be shared and preserved in her own mind. They wouldn't repeat something like an ice skating memory at the sculpture garden, and if they did, they could easily be assumed to have misheard or misunderstood. The things they wanted to know were different than any of the dangerous things the adult world was listening for. And this strange in-between space they shared in the Taylor home, one in which their friends knew some things and accepted other unknowns, had been frightening at first but she now found it a little bit exhilarating. She glanced at Sally, who was still looking up at her, her eyebrows raised.
“My dad used to take me, every Christmas vacation,” said Allison. “Mom came too sometimes, but Dad made sure he did every year at least once. No matter what else happened around then, if he had to work or got called away for Christmas, we'd have that afternoon skating. We'd get cocoa after, and look at the lights and the sculptures.”
“That sounds nice,” murmured Sally.
“What about you?” asked Allison. “What's your favourite memory?”
“Getting the tree.”
Allison raised her eyebrows. “Getting the tree we got together? Last year?”
“Yeah,” said Sally with a grin. “And decorating it later. And running from the tickle monster.”
Allison chuckled.
“Why couldn't we get one this year?” asked Sally.
“We should be happy we're inside and out of the storm,” said Woody quickly.
Allison glanced sideways at him. She recognized sometimes in him something she thought she knew. Though she supposed she had always been a lot bossier with Sam. She could already bake cookies and do karate when he was born, after all. She sighed. “We can't. We're not supposed to be going out on that side of the river right now.”
“I know,” Sally said. “We'll probably have fun anyway. Do you know if we're going to see Santa?”
“Probably not,” said Woody.
“Not real Santa,” said Sally. “The one at the party.” She looked up at Allison now.
“Only if the storm dies down,” said Allison. Really, the storm was convenient. It would cover for the other things they would be missing. The feasting and presents they would partake in, the music and decorating that would have to be conserved another year, the phone calls and messages that would be lost. The snow was washing it all out, painting over the damages they were still trying to understand, and grounding them with soft edges. If it weren't for the storm, she might start to get that increasingly familiar feeling of being trapped, needing to get out and walk, go and do something away from Sam's and the Taylors', and especially, her mother's watch.
She felt slightly better about missing meeting up with Scott. He was assigned the Christmas Eve patrol, and she'd earlier bemoaned their mismatched schedules, and then felt guilty about the flicker of hurt on her mother's face. It wasn't that she wasn't happy to spend Christmas with her mother, brother, and their strangely exuberant adopted extended kin. It was just that all this time, all squished together in this house, she'd felt something heavy hanging over them. A worry she couldn't right their wrongs. A dangling question they hadn't quite resolved. And she'd come to realize the tension wasn't that she and her mother couldn't speak in front of the Taylors. It was the Taylors' presence that kept their unspoken questions at bay. She could sense another cataclysmic shift brewing under the plates of their carefully held together family unit. Things had shifted like this of course before, in a night of eruption. But each time she'd worried about where they would be when the dust settled, and what if this time they couldn't hold on?
“I don't mind if the storm stays,” said Sally, threading her arm through Allison's. “We're all in here, and we've got a fire, and we'll have fun.”
Woody aimed a kick across Sam and Allison, connecting with Sally's outstretched foot. Sally let out a yelp and pulled her foot back, but no one said anything about what she had said wrong. “Will you read this one?” asked Woody quickly, passing her the novel he and Sam had chosen. “Please?” he added.
“Charlie and the Chocolate Factory?” she asked. “Do you guys want to torture us with visions of chocolate? Couldn't we read about people who eat rice and potatoes all the time?”
“We're having a yummy dinner!” exclaimed Sally. “Mommy got out pickled beets!” She giggled as the boys made disgusted faces.
“Alright, we'll take turns,” said Allison, opening the book to the first page. As she began reading about the exploits of an extended family living in one room and subsisting on cabbage soup, she glanced outside again. The snow was battering the window, the wind whistling. A storm outside, a storm threatening within. Is this what she would remember? She read, and lost herself in the chocolatey dreamland of the story.
She heard the noise before she opened the door. Something going on in the main room. She was only mildly surprised to see the beautiful tree, filling up the tiny corners of the cabin with its lanky bows. She stepped further into the warm room to admire it, breathing in the scent.
“And you were worried the boys wouldn't get to have a normal Christmas, out here in the woods.” She turned and felt a shiver run up her spine as he stepped towards her. He was grinning and she smiled too, leaning her head lightly on his shoulder. A fire crackled and popped in the fireplace. Her skin felt warm. “It's beautiful,” she breathed. “They're going to love it.”
He chuckled softly and kissed her temple. “Wanna go call them in so we can start decorating? That is, if they can tear themselves away from their sleds.”
It was a little bit colder now. She shivered, pulling his arm across her shoulders. “Do we have to, just yet? We could enjoy the quiet for a little longer, couldn't we?”
She looked at him out of the corner of her eye, trying to turn a mischievous grin on him, but he looked serious, his jaw set. “It's later than you think,” he said quietly.
She glanced to look out the frosted window. Darkness had been circling for a while, but it didn't seem much later than she'd thought. There was a flash outside the window, a moment of gold red, and she wondered if those were handprints, temporarily marking the window amidst the swirling snow. She shivered again, and hugged her arms around herself. “Can't I wait to see if they come in on their own?” she asked. She turned. He had vanished. She looked around. The room was darker and colder, and her shivering arms seemed to have forgotten he was ever there, but she was certain he hadn't gone far. Into one of the other rooms, perhaps, or behind the enormous arms of that tree, but he wasn't out of earshot, no.
She would call the boys in. They should be together. She went to the door, and bracing herself, opened it. A gust of wind greeted her, blowing icy snowflakes into her face and hair. She tried to call for the boys, but her voice was lost in the wind. She pushed the door shut and stepped back into the room, catching her breath.
The fire had gone out. The room seemed to be getting colder by the second. And smaller. She hugged her arms around herself once more and looked for the door to the bedroom. It was gone. All that was left in the cabin was the tree, its branches touching all of the walls and brushing against the windows. It seemed to have grown past the ceiling, though she couldn't see where the trunk was leading when she looked up. One of the windows smashed, and the howling wind invaded the room even as the branches crowded outwards, through the windows to the cold air outside, entwining the tree further with the frame of the cabin.
The space between her and the branches was getting smaller and smaller. As they came close to her face, they seemed colder rather than warm as they had first seemed when she had planned to decorate it. She had a feeling soon she would be forced out of the room, and began searching for something warm to put on so she could brave the cold. As the branches began to encircle her, pushing her towards the wall, she pulled on her mother's old patched wool coat and taking one last breath, went out into the storm.
The dark skies and swirling snow were creating a frenzied coil of grey. She pulled her hood around her face and walked forward, hunched over in the cold, calling again for the kids. If she could find them, maybe they could figure out how to get home. “Jake!” she shouted, feeling the cold in her eyes and throat. “Eric!”
“Mom!” The voice surprised her, it was so close by. She went around the side of the snow bank. There he was, crouched and packing down the snow, his beard icy and his father's old jacket pulled up to his ears. He gave her a matter-of-fact look and continued his task, digging, mounding, and packing the snow.
“There you are, sweetie,” she said. “We should find the others and go home.”
“We are home,” he said, smoothing the snow wall. “This is where we're going to live.”
She surveyed the fort. It looked as though a small deer could knock it down. “You can't live here. This isn't home.”
“I'm building strong walls,” he said. “My family is safe. My children can grow up here.”
She reached for his arm, but he couldn't stop working. The tunnel was going deeper into the snow. “Please, come with me,” she said.
“I'll find you when it's ready,” he said, glancing up to smile fleetingly before turning back to the snow. “We'll make s'mores.”
She sighed silently in the blazing wind. “I'll find your brother.”
“Good luck,” he said.
She trudged forward. Glancing down, she noticed a pair of footprints in the snow. They were almost the same size as her own feet. She walked in them, trying not to fall. After a little while, she found herself following two sets, the first tracks she'd seen and a much smaller pair. Her heart racing, she stepped forward, searching for them. Now and then, she brushed away the branches that whipped at her eyes.
She heard the branches creaking overhead before she saw the figure climbing the tall tree. She shielded her eyes and looked up. “Mary!” she shouted. The girl climbing the tree was small and childlike but she knew it was her. “Get down from there! You'll fall!”
“It's alright,” came her voice, barely audible over the winds. “I've done this before.”
“No, it's too tall,” she countered. “The storm is too strong. Just come down here where it's safe!”
“I can't,” shouted the voice, fainter still. On the ground, she could only make out her bright scarf, dangling high in the branches. “Not yet. I'll find you when I do.”
A loud crack sounded and she whipped her head around, but it seemed to have come from another tree. The winds were pulling down branches all around them. “Please, don't go further!” she shouted. The strange child didn't answer. Perhaps she had gotten out of range.
She continued walking, trying to call out in the strangling wind. Now and then she thought she could hear children's voices, children's laughs, darting in and out among the trees, but she could only see flashes of red and gold. She tried to call their names, but they would get lost before they even hit the icy wind.
“Mom.” His voice. It must have been. She looked all around her, for the source of the whisper, but couldn't see anything but snow, branches, and whirling grey. The branches scratched at her on both sides and she closed her eyes as she pushed her way further, calling his name, listening and listening for the whisper again. Her voice seemed to be the wind now, hollering a wordless whistle, and the wind screamed her son's name, echoing off the trees. “Jake!” the sky called. She stumbled, no longer sure what direction she was walking. Her mother's coat was torn. Her feet sank further with each step. “Jake!”
“Gail?”
It took her a moment to realize that the sobs she heard were her own. Gail stared through a blur at the ceiling in silence for a moment before turning towards the doorway. Mary stood there, dimly silhouetted by the lantern she held in one hand. Her other hand clutched a blanket she'd draped over her shoulders. “Are you okay?” asked Mary in a quiet voice.
She couldn't answer her. Her voice was still lost in the vicious winds that stole all of their names. She took a shuddering breath, and then another.
“Do you want me to get Eric?” asked Mary.
“No,” was the only word she could choke out. She shuddered again under the mountain of blankets on her bed. She wasn't sure she was quite crying, but something had taken a hold of her and she couldn't stop. She was vaguely aware, in that detached sort of way we have when observing something that can't possibly be happening to us, of Mary crossing the room, balancing her lantern on the floor, and perching carefully on the edge of the bed. Mary's hand hesitantly came to rest on the part of the blankets that jutted out slightly, where Gail's arm was buried. Her hand seemed icy and hot at the same time, though of course she couldn't feel it through the blankets, really. The Princess and the Pea. She'd once loved that story.
Mary was silent, still, except for adjusting the blanket she'd wrapped around her shoulders, adjusting her seat on the bed. The heartbeat Gail could hear pounding must have been her own, she realized. She tried to breathe slowly, to pull herself together, to remind herself that collapse wasn't an option. But she was already buried, in so many quilts, and Mary, sinking into the blankets herself, looking at her with dark eyes in the small light, was like the dreamworld herself, caught in this brief waking moment.
Like the other strange waking moments this year – the night the soldiers came, the night the warehouse burned – the other rules were suspended. She found herself speaking a whisper in the impossible darkness. “Am I crazy?”
She could feel Mary listening, though she could barely see her. “Am I crazy to think he's alive? To hope it?” Her voice fractured over the fearsome syllables.
“No,” Mary whispered in the darkness. She paused long enough that she'd considered rather than answered automatically like everyone usually did.
“Do you think he's dead?” she whispered, clearer, confident that this was the time she could throw it out there, in this dreamy haze.
Mary hesitated for longer. Her voice faltered somewhat but became harder as she spoke. “No. No, I don't think so.” She paused again, adjusting her posture and blankets. “If the past gives us anything to go on, I'd think we shouldn't underestimate him.”
Gail pictured his face clearly for a moment, and like a tiny flicker, felt the warmth. But it was too hard to cling to for too long. After all, so many others who haunted her memories had been strong, unshakeable, and constant, burning bright, but now they whispered in the smoke. After the cabin, the fierce woods, the blinding snow, all she felt certain of right now was her own heartbeat and the figure sitting beside her. Perhaps Eric downstairs. Maybe others a few hundred yards out, but they were murkier. “Do you think the others are alive?”
Mary laughed shakily. “I hope so,” she said. She swiped at her face for a moment. “I try to imagine them, sometimes. But I can't imagine them out there. I can only seem to imagine them here. You know, I'll pretend I'm telling Heather about the scarf I tried to knit, or make a mental note to show Dale and Skylar the chart I made for the supply route stops.” She paused, making a slight face and putting a hand on her stomach, dropping her blanket shawl for a moment. “I don't want to see anything else around them, just them.”
Gail nodded. She wiped the back of her hand across her own face. “Storm's still pretty bad, huh?”
“Yeah. I looked out the hall window on my way up.” Mary glanced towards the bedroom window, though the storm raging outside was hidden by the blind. “It's awful. I keep thinking about how we probably won't see Stanley and Mimi tomorrow. Or Bill. He's on south river patrol. Stupid, huh? I see them all the time.”
“It's not stupid,” said Gail. “We'll make it – whatever it is.”
Mary nodded.
Gail pulled herself slightly upright under her mountain of blankets. Mary folded her arms across her stomach. The room was getting more solid. Gail could feel that they were contained inside, away from the winds, separate from the ghosts. Still, the dream world persisted just enough that she felt she should say what she was thinking.
“I've spent a lot of nights not knowing where he was, before,” said Gail quietly. “You'd think I'd get used to it. But you never really do, do you?” She glanced at Mary. “You know, you first get them and the worrying starts, and you think it won't always be like this. But no matter what, it always is.”
“I think I can imagine,” said Mary.
Gail shifted under her blankets, recalling a summer's night they'd passed in a similar but unspoken conversation. The nights and days after with so much chatter, but they returned to this unspoken scene now and then. “Mary, remember when Bonnie was killed, and the boys went into hiding?”
“Yeah. Can't ever forget.”
“You called me in Cedar Run.”
Mary nodded.
“I knew then, I should stop fighting it.”
“Stop fighting what?” Her tone of voice seemed torn between bemusement and bewilderment.
“That we were in this together.” For the first time since she'd woken, she smiled, though it was shaky, reminiscent of the waves of panic she remembered from her dream. “It's the hardest thing, getting attached. Knowing what the other person does is going to affect you. Letting it.”
“I think I know what you mean,” said Mary. She shifted slightly, adjusting her blanket shawl again, glancing downwards and then back at Gail, her gaze steady.
“Sometimes it's too much,” whispered Gail. “I think, who do I have to worry about today? It's not just Jake, you know. I worry, with all of you.”
“Hey, we haven't been arrested that many times,” said Mary, her voice light but cautious. She cleared her throat. “It'll be okay.”
Silence overtook them. They listened to the howling winds. This was where the silence always took them back. They knew these words that would bring it. It was a calmer silence though. Her heartbeat was steady now, but not pounding and crashing with the storm. Gail pulled one hand out from under the blankets to touch Mary's arm. It was cold but somehow comforting. “Are you alright downstairs? I think the bed in Jake's room probably has a better mattress.”
“No, we're good,” answered Mary. “Really. But thanks. Are you warm enough in here? We could set up a bed down by the fire.”
“I'm alright,” she said. It was silly, she knew, her in this big house, even before they had begun staying with her. She'd put her house on the list a few months ago but she'd been glad none of the would-be boarders had been placed here. The kids had understood, somehow, as they hadn't argued but had packed their bags and taken up residence in the living room. The three of them didn't waste much though. All three were out of the house a lot and when they were there, they mostly kept to the living room and kitchen, but at night she liked being in her own bed.
Mary glanced up at the ceiling. “Do you think it'll stop tomorrow?”
Gail considered the darkened window. “We've got food and lots of firewood. We'll be alright, for tomorrow and probably a few days after.”
Mary nodded, exhaling slowly. “Are you sure you're alright in here?”
Gail nodded. “I'm alright. You should probably try to sleep.” She smiled. “I'll let you know, if I need anything. You too, though.”
“Thanks,” said Mary. “Same.” Their dialogue, the one that always got them through sooner or later. Bracing herself, she got to her feet, hoisting the lantern with her. “See you in the morning.”
“Good night,” said Gail. She found herself chuckling all of a sudden. She heard Mary pause at the door.
“I just realized. It's past midnight,” said Gail. “Merry Christmas.”
Mary smiled, a flicker in the darkness below serious eyes. “Merry Christmas.”