hillside. The town feels alive and productive again. We have won an early battle against February but know that anything can happen. For instance, there have been reports from the messengers that dark clouds are cascading from the mountain peaks. Grizzly bears were seen buttoning deer-skinned coats in case of freezing temperatures. The carpenters have boarded up their windows and refuse to leave their homes. They mumble sadness. Sadness sounds like bubbles blowing slowly in stream water.
THE GIRL WHO SMELLED OF HONEY and smoke enjoyed collecting old books on plants. One night while out on the cottage porch sitting on the swinging bench with February, she opened to a chapter about vines and moss. One page had twelve different pictures of skinny green vines climbing the side of a Victorian brick house.
When the girl stood up to go inside and check on the pot roast she kissed February on his forehead. February flipped through the plant book until he stopped at a picture that showed a deer skeleton in a forest, spores of moss covering the white bone.
In only a week, the caption read, this deer skeleton will be blanketed with a spongy green moss.
The girl came back outside. She asked if he found anything interesting. She said the pot roast was ready. February nodded. He said that he liked the idea of moss.
Thaddeus
Spores of moss appeared on the horses’ feet, and layers of green grew on their legs and backs. Selah spent her nights trying to defend against the attack of moss by pulling it out in patches and then soothing the horses’ bloody flesh with wet magnolia petals. We continued the water-trough attacks until the moss collapsed each horse. A dark green blanket grew over their eyes.
Selah couldn’t destroy the moss with her hands anymore, because it was so thick. It was now bigger than each horse. She slept next to the dying horses until the moss made its way down their throats. After the horses died, the moss moved its way from the woods and up the hill toward our home. Caldor Clemens swung the scythe like he was chopping wheat from an advancing crop field. He screamed and swore against February. Two priests came to sprinkle holy water around our home. They looked confused. The sky turned green, then black, then green again. A wolf stood on its hind legs and ripped opened its stomach. Ants carrying cubes of moss crawled out.
Eventually we tired. Clemens and I and the War Effort moved inside my home and barricaded the door with our backs. Then the moss moved its way under the door and over our boots.
Short List Found in February’s Back Pocket
1. I’ve done everything I can.
2. I need to know you won’t leave.
3. I wrote a story to show love, and it turned to war. How awful.
4. I twisted myself around stars and poked the moon where the moon couldn’t reach.
5. I’m the kind of person who kidnaps children and takes flight.
Selah
To watch the way those horses died. To have felt the waves of their muscles contracting and shaking under that skin of mushy green. It was too much for me. The floor and walls and ceiling of our home were covered in moss. The dog was covered in moss but was still alive, and he ran around the home barking green-colored clouds. Thaddeus was tearing it out in fistfuls from the walls. Caldor was swinging a scythe in wide, low arcs.
Selah, said Thaddeus, start on the floor. Tear out what you can and burn it in the stove.
Caldor yelled at me as I stood there with my arms frozen to my sides. I thought about the way the horses died. I thought of death and war and the sadness of this once-colorful town.
Selah, please, the floor, said Thaddeus, who kicked his feet, flicked at the moss that grew over the toes of his boots.
I went back to where the horses were.
I knelt down in the cold, snow-freckled green. I peeled the moss away from their bodies. Their eyes had burst and their tongues were hanging out. Their necks were ropes of muscle and wet moss from the snow that now looked like green foam.
I placed my head inside a horse’s neck. Deep inside that web of flesh, among the organs and bone, I saw a miniature town that was identical to ours. I saw Thaddeus and Caldor and Bianca and everyone else asleep in hammocks tied to the ribcage. I saw a little balloon carrying horses in a basket. I saw kites pushing clouds into a burning sun. And where the stomach was, I saw myself standing on a frozen river. Wind tunnels around my legs lifted my dress and pulled my hair toward the clouds. I could feel the cracking of ice against the bottom of my feet. Fish ate water and screamed for me to come down and have some tea, have some mint.
Thaddeus
The shopkeepers in town said they saw Selah out on the river. One of them went after her. He reached his hand out, but she shook and stamped her feet. She broke the ice beneath her and fell.
I tried to save her, Thaddeus, said the shopkeeper, who was a little old man with a crooked back. He walked with a cane that had a curved end in the shape of an eagle, which he clutched.
I lay out on the ice as best I could and tried to find her through the hole. I’m sorry, sir, but what I saw, I don’t know if it’s February getting to me or not. But here, this is what I saw. He quivered, then straightened his back.
He handed me parchment paper. He shouted for the death of February, and a few other shopkeepers rallied around him, and they disappeared inside the inn. Outside the inn were great big heaps of wilting moss, dying ants, a butcher skinning a wolf.
I unfolded the parchment. I thought of Bianca and Selah and this ongoing war. I sat on the ground in the street as the wagons passed me by, the wheels slipping in the snow. There was a drawing on the parchment. It was drawn in lead and showed a woman, Selah, underwater. Brown fish with horse heads encircled her. Her hands were angry clouds. Kite strings were wrapped around her body, and she was screaming with a mouth full of snow.
It continued snowing and the War Effort gathered around Thaddeus, who wouldn’t move from the street. The shopkeepers cleared the snow around him with shovels. Thaddeus held a crumpled ball of parchment in his fist and refused to speak. At one point a wagon wheel crushed his hand, but he didn’t flinch.
There’s still a war to fight, one War Effort member said.
The town needs you, said another.
Caldor Clemens grabbed Thaddeus by the shoulders and shook him.
You can place your frustration on February, he said, looking into the dark eyes of Thaddeus.
Thaddeus mumbled and tightened his fists but didn’t move. Three war members — blue bird mask, a carpenter and Caldor Clemens — tried to push him over. Caldor said that it was like trying to move a chimney. They had no choice but to leave him in the street night after night after night.
The left side of my body is Bianca, and my right side is Selah. With no body I have no reason to move from this spot.
I dreamed you a field of running horses, Selah. For you, Bianca, a balloon the size of the sky, my body a kite you can throw into the air.
Pull me by string and horse.
Tell me everything won’t end in death. That everything doesn’t end with February. Dead wildflowers wrapped
