City Song by Oliver Blakemore

Author:Oliver Blakemore [Blakemore, Oliver]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Oliver Blakemore
Published: 2021-05-05T06:00:00+00:00

Bridge

Shall we talk among the graves?

Cold snow cradled Reg’s shoulders. He stared at the big grey sky, and he barely noticed the chilly wind plucking at his cheeks and inviting him to shiver. He didn’t know it, but that left the frost sprite chuntering and disappointed. The sprite got bored and left after a while, which was the real reason that people often feel more comfy in the cold after being in it for a few minutes. Biology has something to do with it, certainly, but a big part of that experience comes from the fact that frost sprites have short attention spans.

Reg very nearly heard the chuntering. He very nearly heard language in the crisp skittering sound of the sprite’s voice. He glanced toward the retreating frost sprite. The frost sprite—used to being invisible to people except as a crook of colder wind hardly shapelier than the thin mist of ice crystals falling out of it—froze in its tracks, forgetting for a moment that it would have been more stealthy if it had kept on in its dance.

The sprite stared back at Reg.

Reg didn’t see it. And the sprite could tell. At the same time, it felt unsettled, because it could tell that Reg could sense something.

For a moment neither of them moved. Or Reg didn’t, except the pumping of his blood, and the frost sprite didn’t except for the perpetual skittering of ice crystals that gave it its vague cohesion.

When it became clear to the frost sprite that Reg’s roving eyes could not see it for what it was, the frost sprite raised its middle finger to Reg. Idly, though, as a formality, seeing as its swift spite from being startled already faded into the sky. Frost sprites notoriously dislike being startled, and their ire rises swiftly, but just as swiftly melts.

Then the frost sprite spun on the spot and danced away between the gravestones.

What Reg saw was a sudden seizure in the scratchingly cold wind, leaving the twigs of the two or three sleeping trees to waver before resting. Then nothing moved, except a twitch or two. Then the wind sucked in all of a sudden, and the spot where he stared whorled into a little snow devil, drawing loose snow into a spinning cone that darted away.

For a moment, with a sense that wasn’t sight and wasn’t hearing and wasn’t touching but was all of them and stood just behind all of them, Reg believed he perceived something in the little whirling snow devil—a shape that had a facsimile of a pair of hands and legs to show off several super fly dance moves.

Reg didn’t see it. But he did believe it.

Before dismissing it as a fancy—the universally learned instinct of everyone—Reg focused on it. He held onto it.

Doubt plucked at the back of his brain and said to him, ah, yes, but do you really believe?

Reg took a long breath. He looked back up at the big grey sky.

Gentle snowflakes started falling through the now motionless air, at first just a few.

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