Silver In The Snow (ROUGH DRAFT)

No matter how many times he placed the last stone, it never felt right. Picking up the stone again, he wiped the smooth dark green surface of snowflakes and replaced them with tears. He had collected all the rocks from the river below and his bones still shivered from the glacier water.

He let his shoulder fall as he looked up towards the gloomy sky. Dark grey clouds huddled together and shed large fluffy snowflakes that danced and twirled to the ground before being lost in a sea of white rolling snow banks.

Burning hot tears stung his eyes and scalded his cheeks, and each drop that fell on the river stone in his hands polished its surface enough that he could see his reflection. He was disheveled and dirty - a piss-poor sight.

The stubble on his chin was becoming patchy and in need of shaving, and his cheeks were smeared with caked mud and clay from the river bank. His eyes were red from an afternoon of crying, and his lips fought a constant tremble.

He was cold. Colder than he had ever felt before. Not a cold that could be tampered with a winter jacket or an animal hide. The cavern of his heart suffered the bitter sting of frost, chilling him to his very core.

Placing the last stone again, still unhappy with it’s position, he sat back and stared at the grave he kneeled before. It had taken him all morning to collect the rocks, dig the hole, and bury the woman he loved. He had no way of making a headstone, so he placed a tall stick at the head of the grave.

The logs in the fire behind him shifted and sent a plume of burning ash into the winter air. He grunted as he forced his old and chilled body to it’s feet. Both his metal armor and joints creaked as he stood. Knee-deep snow clung to the fur on his boots, but his soul’s tether to the tombstone behind him created more resistance than any winter obstacle. A small hand wagon acted as a windshield to protect his campfire from the gusts that smoothed the mountainside. The warmth from the fire had melted the snow surrounding it and the grass of the valley peeked through the snow at his feet.

He bent down and took his glove off, numb to the sting of the mid-winter air. With the back of his hand, he began to feel various stones that he had placed near the fire.

Once he found a few suitable, warm stones he carried them to a wooden crate positioned at the base of the wagon, just close enough to the fire so that it might receive some warmth. The soft coo of a baby curved the edges of his lip, and as he peeked into the crate he saw his daughter kicking her legs softly.

The man reached into the crate, removed the old rocks that had lost their warm aura, and replaced them with warmer rocks. He wiggled his finger near the baby’s face and his daughter began to laugh and reach for him.

She was beautiful, even in her infancy. He looked at his daughter in amazement, remembering the blessings that this child had brought with her. Vivid and rich blue eyes, brighter than the sky at noon, searched her father’s face. He could only imagine the sorry sight that she saw. Her hair was thin and sparse, but the start of a full head of chestnut hair. Her cheeks were red from the cold, but her smile was warm and pleasant.

All of her features mirrored her beautiful mother in every way.

His wife’s voice whispered to him through the frozen breeze and the snowflakes pointed him back to her grave. He could feel the tears again. She was gone. The woman who had held him together was gone. Now it took every fiber of his strength not to fall apart at the seams.

He lifted the baby from the crate and wrapped her in his clothes, smiling as he felt their body heat mingling. The baby was warm, which meant he was doing something right. After a morning full of gathering frozen stones and bringing them up the hill to his crude burial plot he took a moment to match his daughter’s breath.

She had told him to do that. When his daughter was born, his wife told him to breathe with her. Matching her breath will comfort her, he could hear her say.

It may have comforted her, but he was still left troubled. He looked at his camp and shook his head. The small hand wagon was full of belongings and rations. He had carried it with ease only three days prior, but that was when his wife took the baby and walked beside him. Now he had to hold a child and pull the cart.

He reminded himself that tomorrow morning the burden wouldn’t feel so heavy. Perhaps he could pack the baby into the hand wagon and he would avoid especially bumpy routes. There was a town not too far up the road and he could stop there for a proper meal and reasonable lodging.

She had been so excited to see that town. It would have started a new chapter of their life together. They talked about what life would look like when the baby was born and they settled down. But she wouldn’t be there to experience it.

Tears welled in his eyes, and he repressed the memories of her. His brain told him there was no point in thinking about her anymore, but his heart didn’t want to listen. He craved the feeling of her skin pressed against his. Her warm skin, not the frozen lifeless body he had put in the ground. He missed her smile, her radiant laughter, and her wild fantasies. That was the whole reason they were out there, was it not?

The man walked to the fire and sat down, the child still wrapped in his clothing. His daughter happily leaned into him and he felt her hands hold him tight. There was a completeness in the infant’s embrace. Something that made him feel whole again.

Orange and yellow flames cast shadows across the ground, and the tears in his eyes blurred his vision so much that the shadows began to take life. His daughter pressed her body into his aching chest and her eyes began to droop.

His eyes filled with tears and this time he let them fall. He had tried his best to stay busy so that he would not have to deal with the emotional strain of losing the love of his life. But now, the work was done and there was nothing to distract him. He let the tears roll shamelessly.

The fire illuminated the cold and barren mountainside. Clicking and cracking from the firewood logs echoed and created a symphony with the wisping wind. The man rubbed his hands together to soak more warmth from the burning embers.

He looked back at his daughter asleep in her makeshift crib again. It was a miracle that infants slept often, but if he was honest with himself, he didn’t know how much sleep they should be getting. Her mother knew how to raise a child, not him.

All his belongings and tools had been put back into the wagon, ready for tomorrow’s expedition. He still felt unsure about how he would be able to transport his daughter safely, but it would be a problem for tomorrow morning.

“She’s beautiful when she sleeps,” his wife’s voice came from the wind.

He nodded, too exhausted to shed another tear. We approached the crib and watched his daughter sleep soundly under the pelts of animal fur he had packed.

A gentle hand wrapped his fingers around hers, and the man looked up to see his wife. Her radiant smile warmed him more than any campfire could. She was just as he remembered her as if she hadn’t missed a moment.

“Her beauty is a blessing from her mother,” the man whispered so his child wouldn’t wake.

“I needed to leave you with something that reminded you of me,” his wife replied.

Silence filled the space between the broken family, and the man held his wife’s hand tight. He studied the lines and creases of her hand, desperately committing each detail to memory.

He turned to his wife suddenly and embraced her. Her thin frame filled the empty space in his chest and he buried his face in the crook of her neck. She gasped in surprise but quickly wrapped her arms around her husband.

“She needs you,” he could feel the tears coming. Gods how he hated crying, “I need you. I don’t know how to take care of her.”

“You will know what to do,” she reassured.

Hearing her voice soothed him. It had been a noise that his ears ached for. He held the tears in his eyes, desperately trying to keep them in. “I need you. I can’t do this alone. She needs her mother. I can not raise her.”

The woman pulled away from him and put her hands on his jaw. Gently ,she tipped his face towards her and kissed him. The flurry of thoughts inside his head quieted and his mind orbited around her touch. Her soft lips wrapped around his lips. She tasted sweeter than the finest mead and left him drunk just the same.

She grabbed his hands and moved them to her hips. Her blue eyes searched his face gently. He did the same to her, focusing on the space between every freckle on her face and studying the few stray strands of hair that graced her cheeks.

“You can raise her,” she reassured again.

“I’m not her mother,” the man said in a more persistent tone, “Why did you have to leave?”

“I left when it was my time,” her face melted into a serious look.

“Bullshit,” his voice raised, “I could have done something.”

“My sweet,” she interrupted sternly, “you are no witch doctor or healer. I’m just blessed to have seen her before I died.”

“I could have tried!” the man threw her hands off of him and he stepped back a few paces, snow crunching beneath his boots, “I could have prayed! I could have found an herb!”

His wife sighed, “What do you know of herbs, Woulf.”

“I should have done something!” Woulf shouted, the familiar warmth of tears trickling down his cheeks again.

His wife approached and placed a single finger on his quivering lips, “You’ll wake her.”

Woulf’s shoulders fell and he looked towards the snow, “I should have done something. I didn’t know what to do. My arms weren’t big enough to hold my newborn child and my dying wife.”

“You did what you could,” his wife smiled, “and look at her.” She looked back at the crib and watched her bundled child sleep soundly.

Woulf looked at the single set of footprints in the snow: his. He looked up at his wife, who was still lost in the sight of her child.

“You aren’t here to stay,” he said softly.

It wasn’t a question but a statement he knew to be true. She was not here. Not in the sense that he needed her to be.

“I know you had hope that I would wake,” she looked back at him with tears in her eyes.

He nodded silently, feeling the tears earn their second wave from his eyes. He had carried her in the wagon for days now. He knew it was wrong to keep her from a proper burial, but there was something deep inside of him that refused to let her go. He had stopped in the morning because he was growing weak and could no longer carry her.

“I’ve been returned to the ground,” she saw Woulf’s face become distraught as she spoke and began nodding to convince him she was right.

“No, no,” Woulf looked at her with wide eyes.

“Which means here is where I stay,” she said, approaching him and putting her hands on his quaking jaw.

He blubbered as he desperately tried to keep talking. As long as they were talking, she wouldn’t leave, “Obviously, the child has been tended to because your spirit remained with us. If you leave now, she will die under my watch.”

“I know you,” she said, pressing her forehead against his lips. “You would sacrifice your very being to keep her alive. You know what to do.”

“I don’t know what to do,” Woulf cried, “I don’t know how to be her mother.”

She gave him one last kiss on the lips before a flurry separated the two of them. Woulf reached into the snowflakes but found no one. His eyes searched the smooth white snow for any sign of her. The only thing he could find was the mount of snow with a stick barely visible.

He trudged through the deep snow and began to uncover the pile of rocks he had arranged earlier that day, the snow and ice digging into his frozen hands. He called out her name into the wind, and no one heard.

He was cold. He was alone. He was scared.

And then he was awake.