Where the Staircase Ends by Stacy A. Stokes

Author:Stacy A. Stokes
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: YA, fantasy, death, dying
Publisher: Month9Books, LLC
Published: 2015-04-02T07:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TWELVE

SNOWDRIFTS

The snow had been falling straight and steady onto the staircase for a while. I still couldn’t figure out what it meant or why it was there, but it seemed to mute out whatever part of my brain made the ghosts appear because I hadn’t seen one since before the first flake fell. It was a beautiful and welcome reprieve.

It fell heavily enough to create small drifts up and down the steps, glittering and white in daylight. To pass the time I made a game out of it, hopping from snowdrift to snowdrift while trying not to lose my balance—kind of like a winter version of hopscotch. Which didn’t sound exciting, but I had limited forms of entertainment up there. I was just working with what I’d been given.

I also tried throwing snowballs to see if they’d stick against the invisible side of the stairs. They didn’t. I must have tried a dozen or so times, bunching up the snow so it was tight and compact before launching it toward the edge of the stairs. Sure enough, it went right over the side, like there was nothing there to hold it in. Yet when I tried to stick a hand or foot over the edge, I couldn’t. It was like I was trapped inside a giant snow globe, but everything else was free to go where it wanted.

The snowflakes seemed larger and more distinct than regular snowflakes. They were so large I could make out the designs on each one, like tiny holes had been punched into white paper in a million different combinations. I always thought snow looked like a bunch of fluffy white dots falling from the sky, not that I’d seen enough of it to really have an opinion. It rarely snowed back home.

I lifted my foot to take another step and nearly tumbled forward. The step in front of me was shallower than previous steps, and I lost my balance when my foot came down lower than I expected. The next step was slightly shorter, and then the next one even shorter than that, as if the staircase was flattening out. I squinted ahead to see if I was right, but my vision blurred from a flurry of white. Was the snow falling harder than it had been a moment before? I could barely make out what was in front of me.

I squinted again, but a gust of white flakes swallowed up the staircase, blowing around me in a thickening cloud until I could only see a foot or so ahead. Blustering—that was the word for it. The snow was suddenly blustering into a dense, white storm.

I folded my arms around my body. It wasn’t that the air was cold, but the snow sent shivers down my spine when it touched my bare skin, and there was so much of it falling from the sky that I was practically covered. Keeping my chin down, I stepped upward carefully, but my foot fell down against a level surface, and I realized the steps had completely flattened out.

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