A Midnight Clear by Sam Hooker & Alcy Leyva & Laura Morrison & Cassondra Windwalker & Dalena Storm & Seven Jane

Author:Sam Hooker & Alcy Leyva & Laura Morrison & Cassondra Windwalker & Dalena Storm & Seven Jane
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Black Spot Books

Sleep, Sweet Khors

Dalena Storm

Sleep, sweet Khors, magnificent one

God who rules the Solstice sun

All these days your name we’ve praised

But now your work is done

* * *

It was the night before Solstice Eve and Uncle Aleister was getting sicker. He’d been sick for a while already, but now he wasn’t waking up. When Iris went to visit him in the hospital with her parents, she stood a few feet back from the hospital bed, watching Uncle Aleister’s big belly rise and fall under the lightweight covers. His face had nearly vanished into his big bushy beard, which was as black as midnight aside from a white streak down the middle. Iris could just make out the bridge of her uncle’s nose and the way his eyelids flickered while his eyes moved around in his sleep. Sometimes he would twitch or give a little grunt, but otherwise, he never did much of anything at all. He didn’t sit up and open his arms and say, “There’s my little Iris!” He didn’t pick her up and ruffle her hair or spin her around.

Iris tugged at her sleeves and shifted back and forth on her feet. After she and her parents had stood there for what felt like a very long time and nothing of mention had happened, Iris asked, “When is Uncle Aleister going to wake up?”

Her mom looked at her dad, and they did that thing where they tried to talk just using their eyes. Then her mom looked back down at Iris. She looked very sad.

“Iris, let’s go home now and we can have a little talk.”

“Why?” Iris asked.

“Because… it’s complicated.”

“Why?” Iris wanted to know.

Iris’s mom looked away and stared at the window that covered one wall of the room. It wasn’t very late in the day yet, but it was already dark out. Little flakes of snow stuck to the glass.

“You know how it’s winter right now?” Iris’s mom asked, looking at Iris again. Iris nodded. “And you know how, when it’s winter, all the plants stop growing? But then, in the springtime, they come back to life? Well… sometimes the winter can be very hard on people that are sick. It’s like they feel like the plants do. They get cold. And tired.”

“Is that how Uncle Aleister feels?”

“Yes… I think so.”

“And Uncle Aleister will wake back up again when it’s spring? Just like the plants?”

“Well…” Iris’s mom looked again at Iris’s father. Her eyes got even sadder. “Sometimes, honey, people go to sleep and… they don’t wake back up.”

Iris frowned. She looked at Uncle Aleister on the bed, at his big belly rising and falling. She imagined Uncle Aleister never getting back up, never opening his arms and picking her up again. This made her very sad. It was so horrible that she started to cry.

Iris’s mom picked her up and they left the hospital. Iris cried in the back seat the whole way home. When they got to their house, Iris looked at the Solstice tree in the

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