Blizzard

B L I Z Z A R D

Jay Tilden

1

The cold reveals much to unready men.

One such man is Robert Blackstone, a thirty-three year-old billionaire reduced to rags by his own riches. Following the economic crisis of the mid-twenty-second century and the tangential rise of climate sensitivity, Robert Blackstone has, of late, found himself a pauper. “Merely a few fingers in a few bad pies,” is what his father would have said—did say—used to say all the time before he croaked and left Robert—his handsome, useless, blurséd son—a hefty inheritance.

Imagine a man stumbling through a low-ceilinged space without light and with only the scantiest trace of warmth. Imagine that man is wearing a scraggly beard, sweat pants, a torn winter parka, and a singular earmuff over one of his ears.

Now imagine another man who does not wear a beard or sweat pants, but is instead clean-shaven, who wears a fine pinstripe suit (merely because he finds pinstripes delightfully archaic), who lives in a brightly-lit and very warm mansion arrayed with dazzling chandeliers, ornate paintings, and who greets and chats with a milling crowd of happy half-drunk house guests.

These men are two and the same. This, for most people, is not a difficult equation to work out. Some men have power; after a while, they lose it. Simple enough. For those of us who have never had any power at all, and are not likely to gain any in the foreseeable future, these things are neat, clean, unavoidable truths. But for men like Robert Blackstone, who have lived in prosperity and power for their entire lives, the shock may be traumatic indeed when all of that is abruptly snatched away.

The fortieth day of his containment began exactly the same as had the previous thirty-nine. He awoke, cold, with his breath pluming above him like a goading spirit. Shivering, he built a fire in the alcove of the primary chamber. Shivering, he made himself breakfast over that fire (rice cake with butter and oatmeal, plain). And, shivering, he dressed himself afterwards in his winter gear—snow pants over sweatpants, parka over shirt, boots over socks—while he drank his morning coffee.

He went about all of these tasks silently, with practiced diligence arising from a single essential need: to survive. There were many things he had not been warned about before he was brought here. But there were just as many things he could have been told, but would not have listened to. Those were the things he must learn for himself—how to drown out the sound of the wind at night; how to curl up beneath the covers to retain maximum heat; how to cook eggs; how to gaze out at the blank horizon, devoid of ideas or life, and not feel desperation creeping inward like a groaning sickness. He had mastered all of these save the last. And this he thought he could never do.

Standing in knee-deep drifts outside the tri-part containment unit, listening to the howling wind. Snow blasted him from the east and wind blasted him from everywhere, it seemed. Cold, mean wind. Ruthless wind. He pulled down the wool wrap protecting the bottom half of his face, swallowed the last of the coffee, then drew the wrap up again. Eyes never left the horizon, although sometimes it left the eyes, in those moments when the drifts were so thick and the fall so heavy that naught could be seen but white emptiness.

After standing there for a while longer, his knees slightly bent to brace his weight against the wind, he turned and went back inside. He slammed the door shut, barely repressing the omnipresent roar of the wind. Gales lashed the outer walls of the cell—as he had come to regard it—with relentless strokes. Through the little circular window in the primary chamber he saw only white. Pouring another cup of coffee, he procured from a shelf above the fire a silver rectangular device not unlike a cell phone, but with a large screen and a large keyboard accompanying. The device could be folded open and shut. There was a recorder built in, as well as text-to-speech software.

In the beginning he only ever spoke into the recorder, being as he was woefully unlearned and unpracticed in manual composition. By now he had learned some, but he had much farther to go. The instructional manuals included in the subterranean library—the only comprehensively good thing about this place—would keep him occupied for many years to come.

For now, he contented himself with his usual spurt of forced externalization. When the blue ring rotated on the screen, indicating an ongoing recording, he began to speak, balancing the device on his knees as he sat with his back to the fire and his coffee cradled in two shivering, frost-stained hands:

“Journal of John Blackstone, day forty…

“I keep thinking about the news stories I used to see about these places. I forget the numbers but they were talking about just how much goddamn space there is waiting to be used like this.” He paused, remembering, as if from another lifetime, what it felt like to sit on a sofa and watch the holo at night—to see commercials, news, models, and drama; to sit in one’s own warm home, careless, content, ignorant… It felt, he thought, like a dream.

He sighed. “Dead space. Cold space. Dark space. Space where the wind rules like a fat old king.” His nose wrinkled bitterly as his eyes darted to the window and back again. “I used to think it made me sick, terrified to even think about. The prospect of it.” He paused once more, glaring at the rotating ring, hating its steady, unbroken pace. “Now I think I had no idea what true loneliness could really feel like. No idea at all.”

2

The days rolled by without form, consent, or notice. Robert Blackstone lived within them like a fish in a tank, tracing the circles of his own tortuous routine. He found, to his surprise, that there were actual chores which needed to be addressed around the tri-part. There was a hole in the ceiling of the tertiary chamber that leaked a line of snow drift downward where it melted on the concrete floor. For this he found tools in the cellar, where the additional rations and supplies were kept. He had never considered repairing anything with his own hands before. But now he set about the task with determination, and while it took him nearly four hours to plug the leak with insulating foam and fresh paint, when the task was done he felt a momentary swell of pride. As if, within the torrent of failure and defeat, he could yet cherish that tiny, singular victory.

There were other chores. He began running out of firewood around the fiftieth day. His routine had been to feed the fire constantly, so long as he was awake, but now he began rationing wood until he could figure out where to get more. There was less than half a pallet remaining below. As well, his meat stores were nearly empty. He would soon be reduced to eating oats, bread, and dehydrated fruit. When the meat ran out on the fifty-third day, he savored those last two pieces of bacon as if they were his final meal. Then he resolved himself to shed the trappings of carnivorism. This worked for a few days. But by the fifty-seventh day, his stomach felt tight and his mood was constantly irritable. It was a good thing there was no one else around, for he would have provided them sour company indeed.

Other chores cropped up. A boot needed mending. A shirt needed a patch. The front doorway needed to be re-insulated (at night he felt the slightest trickle of cold wind, a needlepoint draft, poking the exposed flesh of his ankles). He needed a shave (he’d always hated looking shaggy, unkempt, or, as his father had said: “Like some beatnik hippie”). Each task presented its own specific series of sub-tasks that needed to be accomplished first: he had to find needle and thread for the boot, and then he had to learn how to mend (likewise for the shirt, which also required him to scour for some spare cloth); he needed to remove the front door, replace the frame, re-insert the door in the newly caulked frame (but he had no caulking, and the insulating foam was too weak); he had never, ever, in his life been compelled to shave his own face, either.

So when he found a straight-razor under the lavatory sink, as well as shaving foam, he merely gazed at them for a while with the blank, forlorn look of a stranded man watching his last hope sail over the horizon…and then he put them away.

His hair grew out. His beard was a frazzled mess, but he began to enjoy the growth. All his life he had been trim, well-shaven, thoroughly cleaned. But now, despite his unsatiated appetite for meat, despite his struggles to learn the dos and don’ts of basic home improvement and self care, he took pleasure in the simulation of being a wild man. It became easier and easier to forget that, in reality, he was a prisoner.

There was one aspect of his life, one change wrought by his incarceration, which he could not objectively judge: himself—or, rather, the manner in which he had begun talking to himself. Often he kept the recorder with him, gears turning within his breast pocket while he went about his day. Many nights he’d only remember as he was going to sleep that he had been recording all day. Then, in his woolen pajamas, he would take out the recorder and playback twelve or thirteen hours’ worth of audio, watching the transcriber upload discernible words to the screen in real-time.

Usually all he heard were mumbles, curses, half-muttered questions with answers only from the wind in the background. And while he knew he may be wasting precious power to recharge a recorder that was constantly operational, there was something about it that nevertheless brought him comfort. He knew that, at his core, such comfort arose from the illusion of having somebody to talk to. Yet many days that was just what Robert Blackstone craved most: a little company.

Still, the Robert Blackstone of a year ago would’ve been appalled, outraged, and disgusted to learn of his future counterpart’s condition. That man, in his fine suits, with his spray-tans and whitened teeth and false irises, was so distant now that when the prisoner thought back to him—these days—he felt a pang of resentment. Or perhaps it was jealousy. Or perhaps it did not matter very much either way…

You see, the essential change in Robert Blackstone’s life had little to do with his appearance, or with his altered condition of living, or even the mountainous pile of responsibilities that had been abruptly heaped upon him, perquisites for a survivalist cause that seemed, ultimately, performative.

Hollow.

Pointless.

No, the essential change in Blackstone’s life—despite all evidence to the contrary—was that he was not alone.

3

On his three-hundred and sixty-third day of incarceration, Robert Blackstone was despondent.

Just past eight o’ clock in the morning, he stood in the middle of the primary chamber gazing downward in grim solemnity. The scattered pieces of the shattered recorder lay in a glittering array on the floor. His mouth hung open, caught mid-sentence by surprise and terror at what had occurred.

He crouched before the pieces, his eyes hot with tears. By now his beard was full and long. His face had a tight, thoughtful, dimly pained expression—a new look to be sure!—as if hunger had become a thing with eyes.

With a calloused hand he picked up a piece of glass and finished the sentence he’d been recording—softly, in a whisper: “…to death.” Then he sighed and looked down, thinking, How did I drop it? How on earth could I possibly have dropped it? One moment I was sitting with it firmly planted on the table before me, watching the words I spoke light up on the screen; the next moment, the entire machine was hurtling off the table and into the nearby wall.

But how?

There was no breeze. He himself had not moved, either. So…

His eyes darted upwards, wildly, and scanned the surrounding chamber as they had done a million times before, looking—as they always were—for any evidence at all that he was being observed.

“Well?” demanded the billionaire of the empty room. “Well, have you anything to say for yourself? Do you see what’s happened here? You know it was not my fault! You know it. And I have the sneakiest suspicion that you know, too, whose fault it really is… Whose fault…” Trailing off, his gleaming eyes kept flitting to and fro, as if watching rats scurry back and forth from one corner to another.

“No matter,” sighed Blackstone. He hoisted himself up into the chair with a groan. His body ached frequently these days. “No matter. I needn’t use it anymore, anyway… That is fine. I am better off not depending upon it anyway…anyway…” He tapped the floor with the heel of his boot. Beating out a soft rhythm of distress. He’d felt more and more anxious for weeks. Reading did nothing to calm his nerves. Nor, he could now admit, had using the recorder helped at all. Although he’d convinced himself, nearly, that it did…

With a sudden spasm of decisiveness the prisoner reared upwards from the chair and retrieved his outdoor gear, muttering to himself all the while. When he was fully dressed, he stepped out into the blinding white light of another colorless day.

The sunshine came down clear and bright, igniting the snowy plains like diamonds near a hearth. There was only the slightest breeze, a cool stroke that might have been pleasant were he not afflicted already with frostbite. His cheekbones, nose, and lips maintained a shifting but constant state of decay and revival. For the cold wrought anew each day the work undone in the night by the warmth of the fire. In that way it was a relentless pursuer, an unrequited lover constantly vying for possession of its chief object of desire: the body and blood of Robert Blackstone.

Such thoughts destroyed the momentary pleasure he found in the light. A pall overcast his mind yet again. Even the sun could not sway his brooding thoughts from the dark. Drawing his wrap around his chin and lips, Blackstone shut the cell door and stepped off the stoop.

The snow was knee-deep. Beside the stoop lay a small toboggan. He took up the rope in a mittened hand and began towing the sled, tracing mouse ears around the bulbous housing segments of the tripartite prison till he came to a lighter of fresh fire wood that had been deposited overnight. The footprints of the delivery bots were still fresh in the coarse new-fallen snow. Their pronged, triangular markings traced a circle around the lighter, then trailed back to the drop-point where they were silently recollected by a remote-operated flyer—and all while Robert Blackstone tossed and turned in his lonely sleep.

For a few moments Blackstone simply stood there, gazing at these footprints, echoes of the only visitors he’d ever had. The ware-bots, as they were called, had come five or six times since he’d arrived, although he’d never seen them with his own eyes.

One morning three months into his imprisonment he’d heard their footsteps crunching from where he lay in bed. He leaped up in a frenzy, grabbed his coat, and flew out barefoot into the angry dark and the white-violet drifts.

“Hey!” he’d screamed, coming round the unit as their skeletal forms retreated toward the dangling ladder and the blistering roar of helicopter wings. “Hey, take me with you! Please, for the love of God, please!” But they hadn’t even looked back. And why would they? Their programming had nothing to do with empathy and everything to do with silent, practical duty. Their job was to replenish essential supplies—wood, water tanks, and food crates—but that was all.

Still, he chased them, but to no avail. Dropping to his knees in the snow, screaming after the helicopter as its sound and blinding white spotlight receded into the badlands’ morning obscura and the tears froze on his cheeks, Blackstone pleaded: “COME BACK! Please, for the love of God come back!”

Now those words echoed in his ears as he gazed at the footprints in the snow. He knew better than to plead or chase or reason with the world, now—or so he believed.

Or perhaps he was just resigned to the obvious fact that he would never see another soul again; like a polar bear made hungry by the isolating drift of broken ice and land, he was condemned to a life of missed encounters, ghosts in the snow, and the cold wind’s companionship. Together they would guide him forever (or until forever ended) towards the bleak coda of his long and shameful solitude…

“But,” he grumbled bitterly, “I still hate the wind. You may be my elder and you will surely outlive me, but… I hate you, wind. Cold, proud, cutting wind. I hate it. I hate you.”

Mist plumed and froze on his face mask. He bent and tore off the plastic wrapping protecting the lighter from the snow. Then he opened the back door of the tripart, pushed the lighter inside, and dragged the sled up to the doorframe.

Must keep the wood dry. Mustn’t let the snow get to it. After the first lighter he ruined, he’d learned his lesson. A week and a half without fire, without warmth, had shown him that nothing, not one shred of supplies, could be wasted.

He was halfway through filling the sled when he heard it: a distant cry. At first, Blackstone panicked—had he finally lost his mind? There was no life out here. Not within survivable, traversable distances.

That was the point. This was a prison. A prison of vast emptiness. The fear, the solitude, the decay, and the silence… Those were all part of the sentence.

But the wind was low…so low that in the near-silence of that arctic basin to which he’d been condemned, he heard, against all odds and all logic, a voice.

It came from the north: a faint holler, a beckoning shout which filled Blackstone’s mind, eradicating every other thought—every chore, musing, and task—at once. With uncharacteristic speed the former billionaire shot out of the cellar and up into the bright and glistening snow. He stumbled a couple times as he made his way up the slight ascent, for he was not wearing his snowshoes, only boots. He searched his person for his binoculars as he went.

By the time he reached the peak his face was beet-red; his breath came out in rapid plumes. Having found the binoculars he clutched them in one of his hands (he’d lost a mitten somewhere in his mad scramble, too, but he didn’t notice).

Blackstone lifted the binoculars to his eyes and peered across the rippling dunes of snow. In the far distance—two or three miles at least—precisely to the north, a human being waved at him.

Grinning, tears freezing around his eyes, Robert Blackstone waved madly back.

4

The prison had a library in the dank cold cellar. He doubted its usefulness, which, compared to food and warmth and light seemed minuscule, yet his curiosity drove him sooner or later to peruse its shelves—or perhaps he was simply bored: he did not read because he liked to read, but because there was nothing else to do.

For a long time the words were meaningless. Poets and authors conducted one-sided conversations within yellowed dusty pages that had not seen the light of day since they were printed and shipped here—eons ago, by the looks of them. Each and every one of these writers were ghosts to Robert Blackstone, so their opinions, arguments, and contentions were little more than idle fantasy and hollow hope and meaningless moralities.

It was not until he discovered one particular book—without title, editor, or even page numbers—that he was moved to pay some measure of attention to the words, for he was captivated and dumbfounded, for the first time in his life, by the printed word, and by that deep and troublesome magic unique to books: to imprison the lonely reader.

It was a poem. Just two pages, with tiny blotched letters packed together like sardines. They squiggled before his eyes as he read (as letters always did, giving him subtle trouble he could neither overcome nor ignore), but they pounded and resounded in his heart and mind alike with brutal, unavoidable honesty.

That was two weeks ago, or three months after he’d finally come around to reading, by which point he’d nearly finished the contents of the cellar library (just four and a half boxes of paperbacks and hardcovers). He was despondent to run out of books, so he resorted to memorizing the poems and stories that struck him most, as if they might run away while he slept one night.

Solzhenitsyn’s poem was foremost among these (even though he had never heard of the man and would never read anything else composed by his hand).

Now, as he dragged the bobsled through the snow, as the wind whistled violently in his ears, he recited a few lines:

“‘Love and warmth and their executed cries

Have combined in my breast to carve

The receptive…’”

He paused, trying to remember, then resumed: “‘The receptive…The receptive meter of this sorrowful tale…’”

He groaned and muttered and pushed the sled against the front wall of the tripart. Then he straightened and gazed out at the northern distance in search of the apparition that had caught his eye before.

To his surprise, it was still there. Blinking in the white light, Blackstone wiped some sweat from his nose before it could freeze and drew his face wrap up again.

Do I go to them? he wondered. Do I see who they are, where they come from? Again he wondered if this person was another prisoner, condemned to these wasted badlands on a life sentence like himself. But then, to his knowledge, no prisoners were ever placed within survivable proximity of each other, for the Government prohibited interpersonal relations of any kind. Especially for high-profile cases like Robert Blackstone, who was allowed neither visit nor phone call nor even letters. Life must be as lonely and as terrible as possible for men like him.

So far, that program was successful. Men of Blackstone’s type endured their sentences in total solitude until they perished in frigid silence. So…

Who waved from the hills? Who was this improbable specter? A unique escapee? Or perhaps, conversely, a member of the Government, come to check on him? He didn’t think so. That’d be a waste of resources. So…

Horror dawned. This beacon of hope, this doorway to companionship and relief from Blackstone’s endless solitude, was it nothing more than an illusion, a desperate dream borne from his proscribed isolation?

The wind whistled high and fast. A storm was coming.

Smothered by the elements for so long, Blackstone had by now accessed an innate instinct, a long-dormant radar in his core that could sense an impending storm. Perhaps it was an old, unused skill that was finally igniting for the first time in the hearth of his lonely soul.

Or perhaps he’d simply learned to analyze the wind—for, hating it as he did, fearing it and preparing evermore for its designs against him, like a mob boss readying himself for a rival kingpin’s attack, he craved to understand and monitor its every move—because hate was a stimulant and an inspiration, but also, it was a companion, a comrade in arms defying the gales. Hate was all he had.

His mind raced with fury and traced circles. But another part of his brain went on reciting Solzhenitsyn as if the repetition might sooner or later summon a soft spectre from the snow.

The figure remained. Waiting? Watching? Weighing some scale of unknown options?

Blackstone smiled grimly. In the land of blizzards, most decisions came with a side of probable doom. He was no expert, hardly a survivalist even by the most liberal definition of the word, but he was not an idiot. He knew that no human could survive these wastelands without extreme knowledge, vast endurance, and healthy resources. Not for long, anyway.

The wind whistled. Blackstone shivered.

Slowly, improbably, he had begun to trust his instincts, like a child taking his first upright steps, alone and lost in the wilderness. He’d learned, for the first time in his life, how to support himself. How to feed himself, how to comfort himself, how to challenge himself, how to strengthen himself…and, above all, how to live with himself.

But there was still an ache. There was still the silence. The cold. The wind. The blizzard, intermittent but never ending.

Blackstone knew he must go. The cold ache yawned. His heart rattled in his chest. He might never see another soul again.

He must go to that figure in the distance. He must see who they are, and moreover, if they are real—if, by some magic, they have truly breached his prison.

After all, Blackstone thought, doors work both ways.

With a huff he started forward, plowing through the snow and down the hill from the tripart. He raised his goggles over his eyes and, grinning, he murmured: “‘These few poor thousand incapacitating—’ No, wait… ‘These few poor thousand incapacious lines…’”

5

He walked until his legs were numb, until he lost track of time altogether. But the figure in the distance remained tiny. For every step Blackstone took forward, the figure took one backwards, conducting a humorless game of cat-and-mouse in that icy wasteland.

The light in the sky drained away. Blackstone’s stomach rumbled, hollow and tight. His breath came out hitched. He’d never walked so long or so far in his life. But he would not stop and he would not rest. He felt himself compelled by something, something powerful yet nameless that had convinced him to endure this strain in order to... Well, he wasn’t sure yet. He didn’t know why he must pursue this stranger. All he knew was that he had never struggled despite his own suffering to pursue something—anything—like this before. Despite the frostbite gathering on his cheeks, he grinned as he plowed ahead.

The sky was inky purple now. The last traces of color bled into the horizon, as if in a rush to escape the rising cold and dark. Here the night arrived with force. It was a harsh, freezing night—and its partner in relentless crime was the sharp and bitter wind.

And then the sky was black. The stars gleamed and twisted in the polar dark.

The air was thin. Blackstone had shed his coat earlier but now his sweat froze so he donned it again, plus his hat and his gloves. He realized now he’d brought no supplies, and now the reality of his folly began to set in. Driven by a fantasy, a craving for company, he had forgotten that he was moving farther and farther away from the only shelter, the only safety, the only lifeline that he knew.

A voice said from below, “Careful, now”—and he halted in surprise before an old man sitting cross-legged in the snow.

“Is it you?” Blackstone stammered, his teeth chattering.

The wind whistled.

Solar light flashed alive, illuminating a wizened face half-obscured by a woolen wrap, a raggedy parka, hands garbed in thick woolen gloves, and layers of furry skirts. The snow had melted around his old, gnarled feet, laying bare the stony skin of the earth. Trails of warm vapor wreathed his scanty form.

“Are you real?” croaked Blackstone.

The old man looked up. He was rosy and warm, unbothered.

“I am as real as you, friend. Did you see me waving today? I feared, you know, that—well, you know…”

“No,” said Blackstone, baffled. “I don’t.”

“I hoped you’d see,” the old man ventured. “But the question was if you would ever come. And, more…if I was foolish.”

Blackstone had no words for this arctic apparition. Feeling colder than ever and unusually paranoid, he scanned the surrounding violet darkness, hoping to see something more than darkness and delusion. Finding nothing, he forced his gaze forward again—slowly, moment by moment, like in a tortuous dream—and beheld again the old and odd little man.

“Where is your dwelling?” Blackstone asked. “Where did you come from?”

“Same place as you!” the man declared with glee. “But…maybe from the opposite direction.”

Blackstone tensed with…well, rage, yes, but he’d felt rage before. This was different. This was something else, something deeper. It was irresistibly compelling, despite his physical exhaustion and his hunger.

He squatted and leered close at the old man like a hungry hyena. “The problem,” he said, “Is your eyes. I wear goggles to protect my eyes from the cold. But you lay yours bare to the elements.”

“And yet,” said the old man, “are they not as colorful as the cutting wind?”

Blackstone grimaced. “I’ve come a very long way,” he declared. “It was hard. I traveled—”

“Why?”

“Because—because I thought you needed help...”

“That is why you came?” The old ghoul grinned beneath his wrap. “Really?”

“Well…Yes.”

The ghoul trembled with giggles, but Blackstone mistook it for weeping. When he reached out to console him, the rumbling breaths exploded into raucous laughter.

Blackstone recoiled, angry and offended. “What’s so funny, huh?”

“‘Oh, hopeless labor!’” declaimed the ghoul. “‘Can you really pay the price? / Do you think to redeem the pledge with a single life?’”

Chills wracked Blackstone’s body. “You have been watching me.”

“No.”

Blackstone nodded to the man’s bare feet, bereft of frostbite. “How do you do that? How do you generate such warmth?”

Clear eyes flashed. “By being warm.”

Blackstone bristled with frustration. Perhaps, he thought, people are better in memory than in life. His mind flashed to one of the balls held in his father’s mansion when he was still so young as to be dazzled by them.

The fabulous dresses worn by beautiful women, the dignified suits and ties worn by powerful men, the sweet music played by a world-class orchestra, the sundry finger foods and glasses of champagne… His thoughts stuttered like a failing engine.

The old man observed him, clear eyes shining through the dark like searchlights, or laser pointers, or, Blackstone thought, like stars…

He had to break the silence. “When did you come here?”

“I am a recent addition. Like you, I am an alien.”

Blackstone thought about this and decided that, despite the bizarre nature of their meeting, he had nevertheless finally found a companion in this bleak wasteland. He held out a mittened hand and said, “Robert Blackstone.”

The old man shook it. “Pleased.”

“Come back with me. There is space in the domicile. And this is no place to stay outside overnight. You’ll catch your death.”

Allowing himself to be hoisted to his bare feet, the old man chuckled. “Your offer is most gracious. I accept. However…”

Sending the unease in his tone, Blackstone frowned.

“I recognize your name,” said the old man, “and I heard of your sentence. I thought you’d die out here.”

“So?” said Blackstone, terrified for some reason that the old man would turn and walk away.

“So, please tell me you know how to build a fire.”

“Says the man sitting in the snow,” Robert Blackstone said, rolling his eyes. “Come on. I’m hungry and cold. Not all of us are magicians.”

6

The return trip was arduous and unpleasant. The wind was gathering strength, slashing its blades with impunity. The snow came in thick drifts that clouded their vision. Blackstone and the old man spoke little and kept their faces buried in their masks. The wind howled in Blackstone’s ears. Sometimes he heard the old man humming a tune to himself, and he wondered what the tune might be. Then he pushed it from his mind and focused on moving his fingers and following his old footsteps through the rising drifts.

By the time Blackstone’s domicile was in sight the blizzard raged at unprecedented volume. The wind shifted direction erratically and with force, as if it could not decide which piece of wasteland to assault next, and the fresh drifts followed in its wake, frigid and relentless.

Hands numb, Blackstone pushed the door open, saying, “Come, come, quickly.” When the old man was inside he forced the door shut, bolted it, and pressed a trembling hand against the wood. He leaned there, rigid yet trembling like a puppy, and felt his heart pounding through his rib-cage.

What is this? he thought. Fear? I’ve never felt this way. It must be the blizzard—it is a very bad blizzard. A very very bad blizzard.

The wind whistled beyond the walls, but it felt closer somehow.

“You are well, Mr. Blackstone?”

He turned, remembering the peculiar creature he’d brought home, that inexplicable spark of hope that he wasn’t alone in this hell.

“Quite fine. Just catching my breath.”

“When you are ready, I should like to see about that fire…”

“Yes, sorry, of course.” It was dark in the domicile. He began groping about, sweat beading on his face. He felt feverish. “There should be a flash light around here some—some…where— Just a moment…”

By the time the fire roared, he knew he was getting sick.

His stomach kept performing somersaults. His body was cold and slick with sweat. He fumbled thrice with the light. He kept forgetting what he was…what he was…

The old man observed him labor a while then finally said, “Mr. Blackstone, you are in no condition to do anything. Please sit back, if you will. I can finish from here. If you don’t mind—” He handed Blackstone the flashlight. The former billionaire took it willingly and collapsed on his rear on the cold stone floor. He clutched the beam aloft in a trembling death-grip.

Shortly a fire burst to life. Funny, thought Blackstone. I never heard him strike a match. But orange light spread about all the same, casting a persistent radius of warmth and security around them.

Crouching, the old man turned from the light of the fire to look upon Blackstone, his wrinkled face a map of shadows. Splinters of ice sparkled in his eyes.

“‘And the Lord said “Let there be light.”’” His beard stretched in either a grin or a snarl. “‘And there was light.’”

Blackstone nodded deliriously. “A well-wrought vessel indeed. My father will be very happy, Lord Avalon.”

The old man frowned. “You are unwell, Lord Blackstone.” He stood, peered about the chamber, and saw the door leading into Blackstone’s quarters. Without apparent strain, the wizard lifted Blackstone in his arms like an infant and carried him to his bed, saying, “Poor luck to fall ill on the night of a blizzard. Such sicknesses have a way of returning over and over again, my silly friend. The cold cuts deep into one’s bones and never leaves. Still…”

He drew the blankets up to Blackstone’s chin. “Nothing a long sleep can’t cure.”

He leaned close, breath stale with primal chill and with…well, in Blackstone’s delirium, he thought he smelled tobacco. But, here? In the middle of no where?

“Please tell me you are privileged with foodstuffs,” cooed the old man.

Blackstone nodded feebly. “Cellar below. Must use the back way. No interior door.” His eyes fluttered shut.

Then they snapped open. With one last surge of will, Blackstone shot upright in bed, crying, “But I must—I must get the food! I must brave the cold, for what is a man to do on his own? I have learned to understand yet the wind does not stop, yet the wind will not leave me be, yet I am lonely as a pauper’s ghost haunting an unmarked grave…and I am damned, damned, damned…”

“Sssshhh,” went the old man, and “Hush yourself,” and then “Ssssshh” again as he pushed the ailing billionaire back down to a lying position and stroked Blackstone’s sweaty hair. He leaned close. “I will handle the food, Mr. Blackstone. You may rest for now.”

Blackstone nodded, so weakly it was barely a movement. “I am sick, Lord Avalon, I am sick, but my father demands larger vessels, Lord Avalon… We must have them…”

The old man’s adam’s apple bobbed in his throat. His hand tightened, clutching Blackstone’s hair with force. When he spoke his voice was grim and without fault—as if he’d just been freshly awakened: “‘For what an age has my country been so poor / In women’s happy laughter, so very rich / In poets’ lamentations! Ver—’”

“‘Verse, verse,’” croaked the sick man.

A cold smile twitched beneath the old man’s beard. “‘For all that we have lost, a drop of scented resin in the razed forest…’” He stood from the bed and, casting one more glance at Blackstone with eyes like cinders, the old man left, closing the door in his wake.