jamieproctor.ca

Alright, first thing we do is check your kits.
EDWARDS! Quit picking your nose and pull off that backpack! Dump it out! ON THE GROUND, NOW!
That’s better. Alright, let’s see. Yeah. Yeah, both your kits are good, although Edwards clearly didn’t pack this himself. Tell your mother to quit holding your hand, kid.
So, now that we’ve sorted your packs, let’s introduce you two to the glorious and manly pastime of Santa-hunting. Your dads learned it from me, and my dad taught theirs. Someday I’ll have to create one of you little miscreants and hope he takes after me or your kids’ll be in right shit. For now, do as I say and we’ll have bagged your families a saint for Christmas day’s dinner, which you will be taught to cook using my very own great-great-great-great-grandmother’s personal recipe, passed down in the family. So clear out your earholes and listen to me.
First lesson: aim high. You pukes aren’t done growing yet, but our target’s a big boy. Anything you don’t want him to step over? Shoulder-height minimum.
Seriously? “What if he bends over?” Edwards, never ask questions, they show everyone what a dumbass you are. Target has a gut like a bowlful of jelly; he hasn’t seen his toes in fifty years and he couldn’t bend down to count ‘em if his life depended on it. Which it will, if you’d stop ASKING QUESTIONS and start LISTENING.
Now put up this razor wire.

Good, that’s good. It’s shit work, but that’s better than anything you’ve done before. Make sure to tinsel it up properly, we want this to look legitimate. Camouflage is the name of our game.
“Won’t he notice it?” Edwards, what did I say about questions? And of course he’ll notice it, that’s the point. If he’s busy noticing it, he’s not paying attention to the floorboards. Now take out a jigsaw and get cutting. If we don’t have a pit trap leading to the basement in thirty minutes I’m cancelling your snack break.
Pratt, excellent work on your tinselling. Take a load off and survey the perimeter. Both of you meet me downstairs when you’re done.

See, this is where we have to get intricate. As you can tell, Edwards’s incompetent sawmanship has created a pitfall that drops NEXT to the furnace. If he could aim properly we could just open up the top of it and we’d be done – come back and skewer the fat bastard like fish in a barrel at sunup – but now we’ve got to get tricky.
No, Edwards, we couldn’t just incinerate him. You’re trying to be clever and it isn’t a good look on you; how the hell do you think the sonuvabitch gets through all those chimneys unsinged if he isn’t fireproof? Blades yes explosives maybe fire no way Jose. And you should’ve known this already if you’d read the goddamned handouts. Go upstairs, raid your mother’s cutlery, and come down with enough sharp objects to make a punji trap blush. We’re making a deadfall here, let’s put the accent on those first coupla syllables.
Pratt, you can start preparing these boards with duct tape and gorilla glue. There’s a lot of sharp shit to be set here. And have one of my smokes while you’re at it. You’ll need steady hands.

Now, can either of you tell me what we’re missing right now?
No, Edwards, advance warning for the household is NOT it. This is a booby trap, and if you go around telling folks it’s here YOU’RE the booby. Loose lips sink ships, and your family couldn’t keep a secret if I paid them to.
Hah, good guess Pratt – but no. Although some grenade bouquets aren’t a bad idea…pity, but we don’t have the budget for it. Maybe next year, eh?
Right, the real thing we’re missing is a backup plan. If he manages to dodge the pitfall the worst he’s going to get is maybe a cut or two from some razor wire – and although we COULD rub human feces on it to make sure he bites it sooner or later, we want a fresh kill, something we can find lying on the floor right here and cook on the day of. That’s why we’re going back upstairs to set up those spring-loaded scythe blades.

Right here will do. Right on the milk and cookies. Yes, that’ll do it. He’ll be confident by now. He’ll have dodged the tinsel, skirted the floorboards, and he’ll be pretty full of himself. Ready to refuel. Let that be your lesson, kids: you’re always at your most vulnerable when you’re eating.
So we rig this wire attached to his glass of milk. Pratt, you can attach the wire because I trust you with duct tape; Edwards, you can nail these scythe blades to this rake and then hold these giant springs coiled tight as I put the rest together. Hop to it.
I said hop, damnit. And quit straining and grunting like that Edwards; these only push a hundred pounds or so when fully coiled. Sit on it if your arms are that puny.
Well I don’t care if it hurts your butt, just do it! Whiner.

Now, we’re almost set. Just one last backup. Always have a second backup.
Third backups? Shut up Edwards, that’s nonsense.
No, no, this one’s simpler. Say he notices the giant blades or the wires and disarms them, gets his milk…that’s when he makes his mistake and drinks it.
Poison? No, no.
Saint Nick’s got a peanut allergy. Which is what I’ve been carrying around this Planters package for.
Now I’ll just grind this up real fine and pick up the glass of milAAAAAAAAAAAAGH

***

ADDENDUM: Grandmater Montgomery’s Famouse Saint Nicholass Recipiee
First ye will neede 1 sainte nichelis, striyke hime grate aboute ye braine-pain witt force an furie.
Tayke outte bellye-fattes an stuffe his gyutte with crane-barry preserves.
Roaste until saynt noe longyer bleedes, then cutte mightyily.
Sayve the testicules, fore they are greate aides in priapisms.
Serves 1 feaste.

Ah, now this was a beautiful icicle.
Thick at the base, a steady taper. Perfect symmetry. Just barely opaque. Twinned grooves to lighten the weight without compromising the balance or the strength. A tip that a needle would think of as sharp.
And all of it turned to uselessness on par with slush by a hint of a smear of a smudge of a tiny little crack two-thirds of the way down.
Nobody ever checks there. If they know a little they check the tip; if they know a lot they check the base, but nobody ever checks two-thirds of the way down. That’s where I check, because I’m the best ice-farmer around. And there’s two things that make me that: first, I check two-thirds of the way down; second, I know that the tiniest crack ruins the whole thing.
This icicle had been growing for months. I’d lavished as much care and attention on it as my own son. And now it was useless.
Well, I was used to that. I’d chop it out tomorrow and start over again.
“Father?”
Ah, yes.
“We’re here.”
I turn to my guests – my surprise guests, oh how could I have known they were there, what with all the coughing and shuffling and clumping of big booted feet – and put a smile on my face. Or at least removed as much of my expression as possible. “So you are. Welcome back. Who’s this?”
He looks down his arm and up the man’s arm and the look on his face tells me it before he even gets out the words. “We’re engaged.”

His name is Biln. He met my son when he was delivering lances to the knights up on the skylines and the knight receiving them was Biln, they talked, they met again, they fell in love. It’s so tepidly romantic I can barely hold the laughter off my face. Probably for the best; they mistake the quirks of my lips for smiles.
“When’s the wedding?” I ask over the soup. Biln has brewed it, turning a mess of half-eaten leftover root-scrap and salted fish into something with almost a flavour.
“We… were thinking in the spring.”
After the auroras fade away for a few quiet months, leaving the skylines empty and unmanned while they rearm and retrain. “Good. You’ll be back in time for the fading nights production run.”
Biln’s hand rests on his shoulder at the same moment his eyes leave mine, and once again I know what’s said before it begins. “Father…”
“What, you’re quitting? Don’t make me laugh. This is a family business.”
“Mothe-”
“Your mother’s sister’s children are idiots and don’t have an eye for this. You’re inheriting. What else could you possibly do?”
“The skylines need local icework too,” he says. “Not just lances.”
That question wasn’t meant to be answered. He knows that question wasn’t meant to be answered. He’d been letting it go unanswered since he was born.
“Well,” I say. “Well now. Look at you.”
After a minute or two of quiet eating, Biln takes his hand away.
It’s good soup.
A real pity, that. Would make this all so much easier if it were shit.

***

I walked them around the place after the meal, showed them how the season’s crop was coming on in the barns, took them up to the sleet-troughs to help check the gutters, even sent Biln down into the tanks with an icepick to clear out a bat colony. He did it without so much as a complaint; no knight too proud for civilian work here, though his training paid off: every one of the little bastards he brought up in his net had been speared precisely through the eye.
“A good shot,” I said. He nodded. Not curt, either.
I could almost like this man.

On the second day we begin the harvest. Me and him, side by side, and Biln carrying the fresh lances. The weight surprises him, but he doesn’t complain. The diligence from my boy surprises me, but then it doesn’t. For once, he isn’t doing it because I told him to. He’s doing it because this is the last time. Because he wants to.
Well.
“Long one,” I say, and I clear the beautiful icicle from the wall and pass it down. His eyes widen – he’s never seen anything so perfect. Because he isn’t the best.
He’ll be that someday. I’ll make sure of it.
Biln takes it and sixteen more besides before he makes the trip to the sledge. Thirty-eight lances in his arms, purest ice, destined to pierce the hearts of a thousand auroras each at the skyline, and he carried them without complaint.
Ah, I could almost like this man.

***

On the third day we fit the shipment. Final adjustments, handles attached, crates packed, markings applied. Grunt work that once I’d given to my son, now gone to Biln.
Biln doesn’t complain, and my boy keeps up. He would’ve done well as an iceworker on the skyline. Even without lances – if you can do lances, you can do anything.
Good handwriting on Biln. Strong, firm, certain, clear.
I could almost like that man.
The boy goes to get us mugs and as he leaves, I put down my chisel. “Not that one.”
Biln looked up. “Why?”
“That’s yours.”
He looks at the lance in his hand. Oh it was a beauty now. Barely a touch of steel required to leave it hungry for an aurora’s heart, it shines without light. “I can’t-”
“You can and will. I wouldn’t have a son-in-law go to war with anything else.”
Biln checks the tip. He even checks the base. And he nods thanks, and he bows once, very respectfully.
Ah, I liked him. Damnit.

On the fourth day they leave in the early morning.
If I was any judge it’d give way not on the first or the second or the third or even the thirtieth blow, not with his deft hand. Maybe the sixth major battle. Right where it was thickest, and when he’d be operating on instinct, surrounded by the auroras and unable to pause or hesitate. After he’d come to trust it. Yes, that would be it. I know these things.
Yes, I could have liked that man.
But you can’t let even the tiniest crack past your sight, or everything falls apart.

I wave goodbye once, shortly, then stamp inside and make myself a hot mug. I deserved it.

***

Months and days and however later, I wake up to midnight sun.
Nothing new there. How soft have I gotten in my elder years? Back when I was on the skylines we sat through this for half the year, and we never peeped about it.
Back when I was on the skylines. A long time ago.
A very long time ago. And farther north.
The muzziness cuts out of my head, my feet hit the floor running, and the floor shakes twice fast, sending me spinning against the wall. Something wet is on my shoulder and it might have come from my head.
Oh no.
This midnight isn’t sunny after all, it’s on brilliant fire, rippling and tearing. Bright spiralling sheets in the heavens, come to earth. Auroras, the sky come to earth to steal it away.
Steal me away. Oh no no no.
I scramble and scrape and claw my way across the boards; the world tipping around me, my nails are bleeding, the doorway is a thousand miles away.
This was insane. This was absurd. This was what the skylines were for. How had they gotten past?
How had they done that?
Surely it would take a grand breach. One little crack in the wall wouldn’t do this. One little crack wouldn’t let this pass. It would have to be more. One little crack couldn’t cause this.
The door slams into my face, my hand claws it open, and I drop through it and into thinnest air, like a stone. Above me the house and the barn and the tanks and everything all shimmer, clutched in the hungry sky, and they get smaller so very quickly that I don’t even have time to be frightened.

It was just one little crack.

It was a fine day to dive. The sun sparkled on the water so hard it almost hurt Riksi’s eyes before he hit it.

SPLASH

Underneath was a rush of bubbles and his fins and his spears darting darting stabbing stabbing into the bag fast into the bag fast come up for air come up for air

SPLASH

And up Riksi came, bag full, chest exploding outwards, lungs filling and mouth cackling along with all his brothers and sisters surrounding him and their sharp sharp teeth.
Oh that was a good haul. The shoal underneath them was fat and broad and sturdy and this could keep them going for days.
Quick, quick! Up onto the ledge, toss your bag in the pit and grab a fresh one and take the steps up to the nearest high perch.
In you go! LOOK AT THE SUN SHINE!

SPLASH

Deeper deeper now they flee deeper they know you’re coming after the first wave and you’ve got to push to thrust to drop farther down with your flippers to grab and tear and bag and spear and bag and pull back the bag’s full the bag’s a weight back up again to the air

SPLASH

Out again, and a new bag again, and off the cliff again

SPLASH

And again and again and

SPLASH

Again. His muscles were burning through his skin and the air was freezing up his lungs and ah the sun wouldn’t stop SHINING!
What a good day to be bored, to do something so very well that his body required no guidance at all! What a great time, to let every moment slip by in careless perfection!
Watch me, he thought as he leapt. Watch me, because I don’t need to.

SPLASH

Deepest yet looking for the stragglers the slowpokes the weaklings thrust and take and lunge and take and ahh in the eyes the sun the sun the sun is still bright down here how is the sun so bright down here there it is it’s beneath how is it beneath it’s
swimming away with bright little fins

slow within range could take it but that sparkle that shine
that shine
air

SPLASH

Riksi was out of breath and out of sorts and then he got onto the ledge and realized he was also out of bag.
It must be down there somewhere, dropping into the dark and out of sight of all sunshine forever.
What a strange fish. It had shone so very brightly. He’d never seen fins with quite that sparkle before, and he’d speared fish for years, and eaten them for twice as long, and even when he was very little and still fed milk and his eyes were gummy portholes he’d seen the scales littered across the floor of his home.
What a very strange little fish, to pretend to be the sun down there.
Everyone was coming in, the morning dives completed, the hunt fulfilled, the food gathered. Time to empty the bags and clean the catch and eat the best bits.
He should be very pleased right now.
Instead he went swimming again after eating, with all the bold tingles of a child that had been told by a trusted adult ‘no, you will sink.’
Of course like every child he’d done that anyways and learned it was all lies to keep the tiny and nervous and overly-inept from venturing out alone, but the feelings were familiar.
A quick walk to the empty diving ledges, a jerk of his head to check for the lazy eyes that might ask awkward questions, and in he slid.

SPLASH

No rush now, take it smooth and steady, moving with the currents and heading deeper, big pulls, one, two, one two, no spears, no bags, just one, two, one two, there it is, that’s the shine, one, two, flittering near, one two, close enough to grasp, to catch, but should it be caught, it’s so pretty, what if the air dries it, look at its eyes, look at it watch, it’s watching, fish don’t watch, they’re food, maybe it’s not food, maybe it’s not a fish, maybe
Air

SPLASH

Out on his back, flat, flattered, trying to remember how lungs worked. Riksi’s blood felt like acid in his veins, but now he didn’t need to move it at all. Just his mind.
There was a lot on it. He sat out the afternoon forage up the cliffs to the bird-nests, in hopes of shifting some of the weight. Mocks, taunts, accusations of age, all the good part and parcel of them, of his brothers and sisters. They left him in good cheer with a good dinner.
Fish, of course.
Riksi held his meal in his hands, comparing it to the ideal.
Yes, it was supposed to be the same as that shining fish he’d seen. Broad, strong sides. Deceptively thin fins. A grasping, barbed mouth. Bulbous little eyes. A large, rounded skull tight with muscle and mind.
What was missing was that it didn’t shine. It shimmered, maybe, just a little. But the lustre wasn’t there. Even polished, its scales were not bright.
And so it wasn’t the same, it wasn’t the same at all.
Maybe it was his imagination. Maybe it was his mind playing tricks on him. You could see odd things if you pushed the edge of a dive, send splashes into parts of your head that had no business being disturbed.
But he’d seen it twice.
But he hadn’t seen it three times.
Yes, that would do it. Nobody ever saw anything crazy three times. It was never consistent enough for that.
Yes, that would make all of this make sense. He would go and look for the fish that was so special it might not be a fish at all, and he would find it, and that would prove he wasn’t crazy.
The bird-foragers were home now, bags fat with eggs and some of the more fat and inept hatchlings. There was enough good-natured hullabaloo to hide ten of Riksi slipping down to the diving ledges, which was where he slipped.

SPLASH

Calm strokes, even strokes, there’s no rush and it’s right there
Right there
The sun is lower in the sky, but it’s right there and just as bright as before, and the glory wasn’t all the sun’s, it still shines, oh it still shines, so beautiful, it permits this closeness, so beautiful and generous, yes not at all like the other fish, the ones that flee and turn into flesh for the belly, this one is not like them, what must it feel like, no no don’t shy don’t run come back ah no
Air

SPLASH

Riksi bellyflopped onto the ledge like he hadn’t since he was a pup and pounded his nose with his flippers. Damnit! Damnit! Damnit! He’d learned something, yes yes, a very important something, but he’d been denied something too. Unacceptable. Unacceptable.
It could tell he knew it was different. Why couldn’t it show him the same grace he was displaying towards it? He hadn’t eaten it at all, even a little. Ungrateful scaly thing.
The evening fire was up and burning. He would miss the first stories if he didn’t hurry.
So he hurried, and he went, and he thought all through the evening and in the end he made a bit of an idea tied together with a few others and didn’t hear one story.
But it was a fair trade. Now he knew what to do.
He would catch the fish. That would keep it safe. It would keep it from the white teeth of the sharks and the eels and his careless brothers and sisters; it would keep it safe from the accident and happenstance of the currents and the waves; it would keep it safe from the whims and foolishness of the fish itself, because it was a bit silly and didn’t know its way.
So. It was to be done.
A bag was all he needed; he could catch them without a spear, and had done so before.
Yes, that was a plan.
A good plan.
In fact, it was a plan so good Riksi couldn’t possibly imagine sleeping on it. It would only fizz inside his brain and keep him awake until he was too tired to execute it the next day.
So, in the spirit of total and absolute logic and sensibleness, he walked away from the embers of the fire and the crowding of his brothers and sisters and dove from the ledges again, into the darkening red of the evening sea.

SPLASH

It’s right there, right under the ledge, it was waiting, it knows what needs to be done, such a good thing, such a fine thing, it knows it will be better off, come closer, no not farther, closer, closer, closer closer closer come back here chasing it now chasing it faster than anything ever moved want it want it the one that matters it’s not like all the other dull things the food things thousands used as meat but this one is special yes this one is special it will be treasured yes it will never going to eat it never ever promise a dear promise oh it sparkles so close now oh there are other sparkles white glow in the dark it’s leading me there towards them white rising glow in the dark of-
An unstoppable impact so great that it’s unfeelable. Billowing inky fluid in the water. Limbs failing.
-teeth
Kick for
The
Air
It shines

splash

The flipper waved once feebly and sank back under the surface. The shark swam away.
And the little fish that shone so brightly hurried away back home to its anxious dull-scaled brothers and sisters, so many of whom it had lost.

On the first day, the snow falls. Thick and white and slow and lazy in the dark. I make the first hot chocolate of the season to celebrate and toast it as it comes down. The marshmallows are lukewarm and fuzzy by the time I eat them.
It’s lightly packed, good food for the shovel. Over and done inside half an hour.

On the second day, the snow falls again – a fine opening for the season. This time it’s thicker – there’s almost no air left between the flakes and every breath tastes like clouds. The second cup of hot chocolate contains twice the marshmallows to commemorate and affirm this circumstance.
Deeply fluffy with almost no packing. Hard to wrangle, but easy to move. An hour passes by.
Carl complains of it. I chuckle at his nonsense. It’ll take the edge off his beer gut.

On the third day, the snow has fallen overnight. Clots and humps and hills fill the driveway; the legacy of the plow’s passing.
There is real chunk and heft and grain to it now; stratification has set in. It doesn’t want to move, and it slides sullenly from the shovel’s blade.
I do my driveway, then help Carl shovel half of his. Exercise has its limits, and I’d hate to have to perform CPR on him.

On the fourth day, the snow creeps in slow, soft and early in the morning, hard and furious by mid-afternoon, gentle as a cat’s footfall by the evening. I must shovel my way back into my home, and my arms are sweaty weights already.
It is the same snow I shoveled yesterday. I feel familiarity in each sweep, and begin to worry that I will recognize some of the snowflakes.
Carl takes a break. Maybe he’s going to buy a snow blower. He mentioned that yesterday.

On the fifth day, the snow does not stop.
I shovel it in the morning, I shovel it in the afternoon, I shovel it in the evening. It does not stop it will not stop.
Where is Carl?

On the dawn of the sixth day I see footprints. So light, so fleeting, so beautiful above the driveway’s ever-growing walls they float effortlessly.
I trudge below unending. But my eyes are set above the banks now.
Carl’s snow blower is running. It spits and rumbles.

On the seventh day I do not wake because I have not slept. I have not eaten. I have not touched water.
I have put many icicles in my mouth and in the thaw and the melt I have seen many things, some of them even with my eyes.
Hooves and claws and teeth and eyes and breath and wind and the cold going on and on.
The shovel moves, but the greatest weight is not in my arms but in my mind. And it shifts.
Carl’s snow blower must have broken, he went back inside early.

On the eighth day I sanctify my car to Jack Frost. I back it up out of the garage and the winter tires – defiant of his will – are dismantled and thrown into the ditch, where his displeasure may cover them until spring. The windshield frosts, the snow mounds, and by day’s end it will have changed from a beast of angles and surfaces into a single white blob. Perfect and pure.
My shovel has seen the light now, and I am its best friend. I use it not to destroy, but to sculpt. The driveway is my canvas and my arm is my brush and I sing as I work, holy songs that flow from the cold air through my ears and into my brain stem.
Carl’s driveway is full.

On the ninth day, the power goes out. I am warm as I am shoveling.
The wind does exotic things to my drifts and dunes, sending the sleet sideways – what fun! What joy! I would laugh if opening my mouth wouldn’t choke me to death on snowflakes. Wrapped tight as I am I cultivate my temperature carefully: shovel too hard and I will burn myself from the inside out; shovel too slow and I will become an icicle. A shameful thing when I have so many other icicles to garden and tend.
Carl comes out in the evening when it abates. He carries his shovel poorly. He works fitfully. He swears childishly.

On the tenth day I sacrifice my garage in the name of Lady December.
The car’s gas tank is siphoned, the flame is lit, and the harsh hot burn takes away the defiler, the defier, the opponent of all that is cold and good in this world. The warmth is great but passing, as all heat must be. My shovel is my flag and my joy is great. I can feel the hands of many great things reaching down in the gales and patting me on the back and that makes me grow larger and bolder inside.
Carl attempts to phone some kind of authority, but I have been blessed with foresight and have placed his phone in the caring embrace of my Lady by placing it inside the high ramparts of the winter plow-walls, where once sidewalks were.

On the eleventh day I invite the masters inside by opening every door of my home, inside and out. The furnace, foul beast that it is, I slay with a sledgehammer. It dies grunting.
I am boiling hot now, too hot to wear clothes let alone a jacket. I must scrub myself with snow to quench this horrible heat. My teeth chatter with it and my hands shake and sizzle.

On the twelfth day I killed Carl. He set his house aflame and at first I thought he had seen the truth but all he would tell me was ‘NO SHOVELING NO MORE SHOVELING’ and I became enraged and smote him. It was very clumsy of me.

On the thirteenth day I wake and find that several of my toes have been blessed with icicles. I rejoice and leave them be to their new lives and also one of my fingers.
My nose came off at some point too I guess.

I’m finally not warm anymore!
I am done shovelling!
I am here! I am cold! I am happy!