It’s a white day for Peter, his favourite kind. The only thing that comes close are the grey days, the days when the sun and the sky and the world all fade into one long wheeze of a smudge that smears away all difference between noon and night. They don’t come outside on days like that; they stay indoors and complain to themselves in strange deep voices, muttering words he doesn’t know, snarling insults at who knows who. They leave the outdoors to him.
White days are like that, but there’s more snow falling down from up high. More to work with, to build with. White days are even better.
On white days, Peter starts shoveling early, and stops late. Real late.
Peter’s shovel is a composite, another word he didn’t use to know. A wooden handle, a plastic scoop, and a metal blade at the tip. It’s angled just so, and it will scoop the snow just like that – there, close to the cold hard ice that’s hiding the dirt away ‘till spring – and that’s just fine. It doesn’t bend, not even when he lifts up a real heavy shovelful that makes his knees wobble and his eyes pucker in their sockets. It stays straight and true and it does what it has to do, and Peter does what he has to do. And that’s why they stay safe.
The ramparts are a real walk now. He’s made a ramp – he tried stairs once and they just turned into a ramp anyways – and it’s a nice shallow one but even so, even so. He stops and takes a breath too often, too much, and it costs valuable time. These days are short right now, and they won’t let him keep going after dark. They’re afraid of what might happen, and they’ll stop him cold.
Peter finishes his last breath (for this trip, anyways), and he takes himself and his shovel up to the top battlement. It’s as high as the world can get out here, and he looks down, down, down the hill over the dead quiet and muffled air. He’s wearing a thick hat and it’s sort of like earmuffs, but he knows even without them he’d be hard pressed to hear a shout two feet away, or dynamite at twenty. An atom bomb at fifty paces would be a whisper. Snowfall has a voice all its own. Subtle. Soft. And completely enveloping.
He dumps the shoveful, and barely hears the soft whud as it lumps itself. Skilful shaping takes over – mittenwork. He’s had practice.
There. A battlement. His thirty-fifth.
Peter’s mittens are modern mittens. They are somewhere between plastic and cloth, filled with strange white fluff that looks like teddy-bear guts. They insulate and protect and wear really thin at one side where they start to leak and make it look like you’ve got a little polar bear shedding in there. Peter knows that polar bears don’t shed, but it looks like it all the same. The snow creeps in through that crack as the fluff leaks out and it gets his leftmost littlemost finger cold, but he’s used to it. If it gets real bad he’ll just curl his hands into fists. He knows how to stay warm. You need to know that.
The trip down’s easier for Peter. He half-scrambles, half-slides down the ramp. A little red clot slipping through a blue-white body, fleshless and nerveless and bloodless, but nearly alive. It keeps growing, building, and dividing. Walls go up, barricades slip in, divisions are made.
Here is a smooth round bowl of a chamber. It is filled with iceballs, diamond-hard and deadly; every fifth has a specially pointy stone at its core, for insurance. The armoury. For weapons, not armour. His snowsuit is all the armour he needs and he’d need to take it off to store it. That would be a terrible idea.
Here is a little cave, dug into the base of the thick rear wall. The bedroom. He can curl himself up in here, under snow with snow at his back, and turn himself into a little ball of warm. That’ll keep him okay. He’s never slept through the night yet, but if he has to, it’ll happen here.
Here is a bulge in the thick rear wall; from the other side, it’s a recess. The emergency exit. This snowball is held in place with only the barest touch of surface packing, and he hasn’t trickled any water on it. It’s a weak link in his defence, but whatever’s breaking in will be bigger than him. It won’t be able to push through easily or quickly, and by the time it’s inside the walls he’ll be outside them and heading for the hills. That hill – there, that one – it’s going to be his emergency hideout. There’s a big pine tree with low-hanging branches, and he can dive through the drifts and hide in a space as warm and dry as any tent. He just has to figure out how to hide his footprints…
Here is the pantry. It’s got icicles. You learn to eat icicles out here. It’s not food but it fills you up and you can’t go wandering. They’ll find you fast. Better to stay hungry out here than to go in there.
And THERE is the wall, as he passes through the front gate,
(it’s too low for them to come through quickly, and a stomp up above in the right spot will crumble it on their heads)
thick and iced. He made it by packing an empty garbage can with snow and upending it more than sixty times. It was a struggle, but it was worth it. Nothing can get through here. Nothing will get through here.
The front of the fortress is barren. The ground here has been trampled and scraped and shovelled until the dirt is visible here and there, and it’s all as slippery as only almost-ice can be. A clump of bushy grass is exposed, startlingly naked and probably unhappy about it. Peter walked past it, bent his knees, straightened his back, and added another square foot to the barren stretch.
He wonders if he should spread a little snow on the bare grass but by the time it occurs to him he’s halfway back and too tired to change course.
Besides, he has to watch his footing on this ground. He made it that way on purpose; it’ll slow them down. They’ll slip and fall and that’s when the iceballs come into play.
Peter hasn’t had to throw an iceball yet. He doesn’t think it’ll stop them. Not if they’re determined. That’s what the walls are for. The iceballs (and maybe the stoneballs, if things come down to it) are for discouragement. Go away. Go away and leave me alone. I’m too much trouble. I won’t come out and you can’t make me. Go away and fight with each other. I’m too much trouble.
Peter raises his head above the walls, holds his shovel to the fresh battlement, and freezes like a stone caught glacier-riding without a permit.
Light. Light in the darkness, guttering from the black hulk of a house down the hill.
Oh, this is bad. How had the long night snuck in so close so quick? And here he is, head above the ramparts, still holding his shovel like an idiot, exposed and highlighted with his stupid red snowcoat and his stupid black snowpants and his stupid red hat sticking out against the white-blue snow
(turned purple with evening – really, how HAD he missed that? Not the same colour at all)
like a bullseye.
Slowly, carefully, he moves by trembles and starts sliding downward. Out of sight. Down low. Maybe it’s just chance. Maybe they’ve mistaken him for a coyote or a deer or something else lost that shouldn’t be here. Maybe they
Something moves, shoulders past strained springs and through a door made out of creaks and groans.
And then it calls.
Peter feels the hair on the back of his neck rise up. Now, that didn’t mean anything. It’s a full moon, but their eyes are bad. Maybe they can’t see him up here. Maybe they were just trying to spook him. Maybe maybe maybe can’t build a fortress with maybes you build it with snow and you stay safe and
The voice calls again.
Twice. That’s worse. And they haven’t moved. They’re sure he’s here. He can play mum, he knows they hated the cold. Just a few more minutes.
“PETER.”
Oh damnit. It’s got the edge in its voice. Must have been a bad day.
“NOW.”
Three times. He’ll have a worse one if it has to say it a fourth.
He holds his shovel, looks at the ramparts. Half-finished at best. Days of work to get them done yet. Hours and hours. He has three seconds.
So again, as it every evening, the fortress falls without so much as a shot fired.
Peter looks back as he approaches the light on the porch. The long night’s flowing in, giving the snow hello and how-do-you-dos. The world’s wrapping itself up to be fresh for tomorrow, white and black planning the morning grey. If he squints his eyes to snow-slits, there’s a rim. Is that his battlements? Unless it’s his flag tower. Maybe it’s his walls. His walls are big now. He spent all day on them, all last day, all the day before that.
From here it’s like they’re not even there at all.