Death Collections

Even at the height of summer, the trees are dead in Winterland. It's a ghost continent, lost somewhere at the North Pole, erased from maps and memory, where the cold preserves almost everything, where people rarely die.

Death likes to vacation there, get away from the rest of the world where his services are constantly needed. The people of Winterland treat him differently: they invite him in for coffee and black jack, include him in their home movies. The children carry around his little effigies and play with them in the snow.

The people of Winterland give alms to Death, tithes paid in blades and black silk, polar bear hides if it's been a prosperous season. All their exports go to him, and before his return to the daily grind of taking souls, he makes his way through the towns of Winterland, stopping at gates and doors to receive his appreciation. "We'll see you next year, Mister," she said, bowing her head in quiet respect.

Death gently took her gift and turned away, the fog curling around the edges of his cloak, and shadows settling where he once laid his feet.

Early Winter

The ghosts come out in winter, or more truly, they come inside. Other spirits as well: I see the little bright shapes darting around the rooms; they come inside in the morning. A friend told me that this town was a tuberculosis town, it's even still illegal to spit on the sidewalks. She said so many died during the winters and now the winter time is their time. I wonder if my animals watch them. They don't appear to be bothered often by anything in this house. I've never been very bothered either.

I like the way winter feels in this house. There is a slight change in here, kind of indescribable, like how the light outside changes at this time of year as well, even though it is the same sun. Things are a little bit more yellow, and a little bit more dull. I'm comforted by that, and winter always comforts me, and I wish it were more severe in the south. I love to drive with my windows down; when I exhale, my breath is rushed out of the car into the world. My own hands feel like bones and they feel clean. Winter has always felt clean to me and I'm addicted to the snow and the smell of the harsh air that freezes when I breathe it in. I love how silently one can move in truly deep, powdery snow, a frozen layer underneath always keeping you a few inches above Earth, and the powder that claims and then swallows every footstep. 

I keep waiting for the snow, praying into the air that hardly carries a chill now. Everyone keeps saying the snow will come, there are always two snows each year, but each one is small enough that the memory of it melts faster than it probably did when it was here. I wish I could make it: "Huge, dizzying, clumps and clusters of snow falling through the air, patches of white against an iron-gray sky, snow that touches your tongue with cold and winter, that kisses your face with its hesitant touch before freezing you to death. Twelve cotton-candy inches of snow, creating a fairy-tale world, making everything unrecognizably beautiful..."

Waiting for the snow, holding vigil for the cold, with the spirits and the animals and the red birds outside. Winter time is my time, too.