Frostwalker

He had read, at some point in his childhood, about how Tibetan Monks could raise their body temperature high enough to dry a wet towel through nothing but the power of meditation. An incredible feat, to be sure. A truly stupendous demonstration of control over one's own physiology. Dilating capillaries, fibers of muscles rubbing past each other, a myriad of small adjustments to the singular end of increasing one’s own body temperature. That is to say, a purely scientific, if mysterious ability. But between the innocence and lack of understanding inherent in childhood, and the vagaries of decades, and perhaps even the cold seeping through his body, slowing the running of his mind like syrup, that was forgotten.

He couldn’t now remember how he’d ended up in this predicament. His whole life seemed a blur of whites and grays, snow covered, dead dirt and the leafless corpses of trees, sap so cold as to be cracking around him. Every step a cacophony of cracking, crunching sound, breaking through a thin layer of ice into squeaking snow and frozen soil. Leaden clouds overhead continued to dump their burden onto him, his breath pluming out in great clouds in front of him, only to be snatched away by the merciless, whistling wind. His toes and fingers had gone numb hours or days before, as had his mind. He didn’t know where he was trudging to, only that he Must. Press. On. And beneath it all, there was fear. He couldn’t remember ever being warm, now, but knew this must not be the natural state of things. That this would kill him, if he did not reach his destination, and soon.

It was into this jumble of thought that distant memories of monks surfaced. No recollection of it taking hours to dry a towel. No thought of more recent detractors to the practice. A full belief that if only he had their secret methods, he could be instantly warm. That he would survive. And so, as the sun set, and the dim glow of day through the omnipresent clouds faded to ever more frigid night, he collapsed. The last of his strength seeming to go with the sun. He lay, face down in the snow, the grit of it stinging against his cheeks, unable to even cry with the frustration of it, the moisture in his eyes sticking and freezing. So, without much understanding, grasping at the one thread of hope he had dredged from the depths of memory, he attempted to meditate. And maybe it was the incredible cold, dropping his mind into depths of unthinking unfamiliar to the human experience. Perhaps it was that he was right there on the edge of death, tapping into something beyond. But as his breathing slowed, and his mind cleared, he felt something. Through the numbness which had now suffused his entire body, distantly he sensed it. Disconnected, deep inside, as though the feeling came from beyond him, as though his body no longer belonged to him, he felt something break. It popped, like a champagne cork from a shaken bottle, and he was abruptly full of fizzing, dancing energy.

He shot to his feet, breathing in great, explosive gasps like a drowning man pulled to shore, or a man drawn from a sleep full of awesome and terrible nightmares. Perhaps he was, in a sense, both. But now he stood, awake, as his eyes slowly d r i f t e d open, glacial in their movements. Slow, but with the inexorable assuredness of a natural force. And when they were open, he saw a world wholly unlike the one he had left. He had died and been reborn. Sure, the landscape and the position of things was the same, but that dead, monochromatic world was gone. Replaced by a world of riotous color and frantic movement. Beneath the snow he could see individual blades of grass, pulsing with a thin cloud of impossible light, hues no human had ever before perceived. A bird flit-flitted through the sky, leaving behind a trail of pure viriditas, like a rocket contrail. The trees waved, stately and sure, their energy concentrated deep, deep down in their roots, waiting out the winter. All of this and more he saw. He looked down at himself, and saw the colors there too, pulling into him with every steady breath. Snowflakes drifted down around him, puffing into tiny dots of steam as they got close. The snow around his feet was already melting away, a lush carpet of grass and wildflowers rising up into this unexpected summer. His mind, though, still seemed caught, like a bug in amber. Unable to leave that meditative, dreamlike state which had enabled this metamorphosis. Perhaps that was for the best, for, creeping in around the edges of his thoughts, he knew that he would surely die if he left this state. There would be no second chance, he must reach his destination.

So, like a sleepwalker, he pressed on, leaving a trail of green behind him until it was slowly covered by drifts of snow in his wake. If he had poorly kept track of time and distance before, it wholly eluded him now. Moments stretched into hours, inches into miles. He came upon a frozen pond, sleeping fish hanging like lanterns beneath the ice to his all seeing gaze. Some far away, rational part of his mind begged him to double back, to go around the obstacle. But he pushed it down, maintained his mind clear of such things. He stepped out onto the ice, and, as his foot came down, it melted until he stepped into warm water, as though it had stood all day beneath the hot summer sun, not lain frozen beneath an unforgiving, starless winter night. The fish awoke, and swam around him in an immense, unnatural school. Predators swam by prey as though it were the most natural thing in the world, and he walked along the bottom of the pond with footing as sure as though it were a paved, dry path. For minutes he walked leisurely beneath the surface, reaching out to occasionally stroke a fish, and not once did he feel any need to take a breath. Then he came upon the opposite bank, and, as though climbing a small hill, he rose from the waters, steam rising from his wet clothes, dry before he’d taken a second step.

He walked, like this, through those woods for a time longer, until, suddenly, he started. The ground underneath was not rich, warm loam, but man made concrete. The trees had vanished, replaced by buildings with warm, inviting glows coming through their windows. Just ahead, he could make out voices, cheery and joyful, some kind of Christmas festival taking place on the next street. The scents of warm food and drink reached his nose, and that was all it took. His trance ended, shattering like a dropped glass. He stumbled the last few dozen yards, the cold returning tenfold. As he collapsed on the edges of the crowd, he could hear shouting, surprised recognition and concern. Somehow, he had made it home.