A Florida Winter Wonderland - Nicanor Vergara

Esme

MADISON BROBOFF

Esme had said her goodbyes, already. But only she knew. She heard the words as they escaped her lips. “Good night.” But it was more than that, and it was less, and it hurt for her to say. Telling someone goodnight implies that a good morning will follow. And she would have no such pleasure.

After she said it, shutting the bedroom door behind her, her vision began to blur. It wasn’t until she blinked, and the room became clear again, that she realized it was because of the tears in her eyes. They rolled down her flushed cheeks, and she swiped them away feverishly.

She didn’t have much time.

But still, it all felt nearly impossible, walking over to the window beside her bed, yanking it open enough to fit through, sliding both feet over and onto the grass below. Not that she hadn’t done it a thousand times before. No, that wasn’t the problem. The latch on the rail of the window moved with ease under her touch, the grass felt soft beneath her feet. But her hand hesitated as she went to close the window, and she couldn’t explain it, really, but she couldn’t close it, not all the way. So, she left it, because she had to go, and because maybe, just maybe, a trace of her would come back, find its way back home through the crack in the window.

Esme’s walk was long, and however much she wished to be alone, her thoughts were unwanted company. How could she know if this would even work? She passed by her old schoolhouse, and the church. She thought of the people crowding the benches inside, hiding from their own mistakes. When the church bells rang out to mark the hour, she didn’t bother to count. The growing darkness, the sun disappearing from the sky—it told her all she needed to know. She kept moving. She knew her way to the forest well enough, despite always being told to stay away. Everyone was.

“There is evil in the wind, and in the soil, and we cannot say what will happen to you once you venture inside of those woods,”they would all tell their children. It only made her want to go there more. How naive it was! How naive to tell a child something, and not expect them to do the opposite.Soon, the buildings turned to oak trees, and the grass grew taller, and wilder, around her. The stone path beneath her feet crumbled, leaving nothing but a trail of dirt to guide her feet. She knew she was close, now. And when she stumbled on a pile of acorns, left hastily behind by some forest critter, she could hear her mother, telling her,

with laughter still in her voice, “Little Esme, you move too fast for your own two feet.” And then, when the dirt path disappeared altogether, Esme looked up. She stared into the abyss, all of the leaves on the trees glowing gold against the light of the moon, the tangled branches fading into the black of night. Although the sky was dark, Esme saw subtle strokes of blue and purple, and scattered specks of white way up above, and she imagined the colors at the tip of a paintbrush in her mother’s gentle hand, her slender frame leaning against a canvas, her face furrowed in concentration. She would have loved to paint this, Esme thought, and she couldn’t stop herself from thinking, I’ll have to tell her about it, too.

For a moment, things felt calm. Looking up at the sky, leaves falling at her feet and a breeze whistling in her hair, she almost forgot why she came here in the first place. But then she took a step forward, and the brittle foliage cracked beneath her weight, and with it, the night shifted.

The wind howled in her ears, the leaves that still held tight onto their branches shook with rage, and the cold, unforgiving air pushed against her as she struggled to keep moving, into the forest. But she had to keep going, and so she did.

It saw her, as she came. A girl with youth in her eyes and a determination that it seldom had the pleasure to witness. Usually it saw them old and frail, perhaps fighting but still, always so dull, so boring. She was different, this girl. And it did not expect to see her, or anyone, for that matter, here. Who was she?

Curious as it was, it watched her as she moved closer, carefully, slowly. Watched her grasp at the trunks of trees to guide her way and trip on the branches and twigs that lay at her feet. Her kind, they couldn’t see very well in the night. This it knew.

The girl was close, now. But she stopped, and it saw in her eyes that she was looking for something. That feverish gaze, unmistakable. And then she turned, and looked straight at it, and that’s when it realized.

She was looking for it.

And so, it reached out to her. A mess of fog and static and emptiness against her cheek. Against flesh and blood. Who are you? it purred, and it watched, with something almost akin to pleasure, as she recoiled, just slightly, against its touch. She did not answer. But it didn’t need her to.

It saw.

It saw the girl, smaller, younger. Leaned up against the trunk of a large tree,

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reading a book, as a woman sat down beside her. She took the girl’s head in her hands, gently, and kissed her on the forehead. And there was the girl, again, laughing as this woman searched for her, in cabinets and in closets, seemingly oblivious to her giggles from underneath a bed. A game, it had learned at some time or another, called hide and seek.

But, wait. The woman. The two had the same eyes, and shared a smile, but she was much older, with eyes not quite as bright, the lines in her face much more pronounced. The girl’s mother, it decided.

It saw this woman, now laying atop this bed from before, her face pale and her breath shallow. The girl knocked on the door, and came in, carrying a bowl filled with something hot, steaming. She was older, much more like the girl that stood in front of it now, in the forest. And she smiled, but it did not quite reach her eyes, and she averted her gaze quickly. Her hands shook as she handed over the bowl, and she kissed her mother gently on the cheek.

It turned away, now. It had seen enough.

Esme felt colder than she had ever felt before. And this wasn’t a cold that could be fixed with a coat and a scarf. It was inside. Eating away at her. She felt numb.

But then, just as sudden, feeling and warmth returned to her body, and the darkness, no, the emptiness, that had stood in front of her moments before, returned. She hadn’t even realized it was gone. But, where? Was it insideof her?

She shuddered at the thought, but somehow, just barely, she managed to keep her face still, her gaze steady. She hoped it would listen to her, if it could hear her at all.

I know why you are here.

Death. It was just a rumor, whispered around the classroom at school, years ago. Back then, she listened with bated breath and wide eyes, eager to pass the story along as soon as it was finished. They told her that death itself lived in that forest, and that’s why no one was allowed inside. Especially at night. Because at night, that’s when it sought out the old, and the sick, and it came into town to take them away. But, they added, their voices barely a whisper, if death found you in the forest, it would take you instead.

“Then, please. Help me.”Her voice wavered, as hard as she tried to stop it from

doing so.

The darkness stirred, shifting and moving around her. Thinking, maybe. If it was even capable of such a thing. You must know that it is not so easy.

Esme had watched, as painful as it was, as her mother grew more and more sick. She remembered the old story, and as impossible as it seemed, she knew she had to try. If something, anything, could work, she had to try.

So, she waited, until her mother could barely move, and her eyes glazed over, and she no longer took the broth that Esme tried so hard to make her eat. She waited until she was sure that death would be coming. And now, here she was.

“You misunderstand me. I am not asking for favors. I’m asking for a trade.”

At that, the darkness stood still, and she knew she had its attention.

“Her life, for mine.”

Her life for yours.

Your life. Her life.

A trade.

No favors. A trade.

It was excited. It never had visitors. And, suddenly, here was this girl, asking for a deal, begging for its help. Tempting. She was young, eyes still full of life. So much life. Bright and rich and vivid.

You mean to give your life away?

“For my mother, I would give anything.” Her mother. Sick and wilting, dreary, faded. Not enough life left in her to satisfy it. There rarely ever was. It could spare her. It could.

It is not a fair trade.

“Please, I will do anything!”

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It did not understand. It could never understand, the way her kind thought. Why? So much life, for so little. It had heard of love, and perhaps that played a part. But it would never know for certain.

It would always wonder, and perhaps that’s why it gave her another chance. To reconsider.

It is not a fair trade, for you.

Esme felt tears sting at her eyes. Her hands trembled, as the darkness ebbed and flowed around her. Its words echoed in her head, thrummed against her skull, and the words made her think, and thinking made her fear rise up in her throat. The fear of no longer being here, or anywhere, of not existing at all.

The fear of death, even as she stood and faced it.

Would it be painful? Would it hurt?

Her thoughts kept coming, and the questions grew louder and louder, and she had no answers to them, and it frightened her. But then she thought of her mother, never quite there, always struggling to catch her breath. Always sick.

That’s what wasn’t fair.

Esme lived her life, while her mother clung to hers with shaking hands, trembling fingers. She stood on top of the cliff, watching the person she loved most trying to keep hold of the edge.

“Will you spare her life? Will she know the peace of dying of old age, and not of disease?”Her words spilled out of her, before she could think to stop them. It was all she had thought about, for every waking moment, for so long. She wanted to make it true. Esme felt the cold again, on her fingertips and her cheeks and then suddenly all around her, and she knew that the darkness was there. Waiting, like a cat stalking its prey. Ready to pounce.

Just say the word.

She wasn’t ready. She wasn’t ready.But was anyone ever ready?Was her mother? Her mother, planting poppies, Esme’s favorite, in the garden, until her hands could no longer grasp the shovel. Hugging Esme at the door, every day, when

she returned home from school, even when she needed the doorframe to support her, until she couldn’t stand at all. Always smiling, so as not to cause a fuss, although Esme saw the way her breath caught, the way she froze, when she caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror.

Esme watched as the light faded from her mother’s eyes, dreading the day she would wake up and find it gone.

But she never did.

There was always something holding on, something inside her fighting, and though some days it was harder to see, barely there, some days it shined brighter, even lit up the blue in her eyes, so that they almost looked the way they used to. Her mother always told her stories of the ocean, and Esme imagined that the waves were the exact color of her eyes, glistening as they crashed down onto the shore.

On those days, especially, Esme saw all of the life that her mother still had in her. All of the places she hadn’t gone, all of the people she hadn’t met. Her mother still wanted to live. She needed more time. And Esme wasn’t ready, but she knew that nobody ever was. So, she lied, same as her mother had lied to her, to protect her. To save her.

“I’m ready.”

The darkness came toward her, then, and she felt it in her nostrils and in her veins and underneath her fingertips, and she was so cold, and then she was empty, and she couldn’t feel anything, and the idea of that would have frightened her if she had any thoughts left to have, and then she wasn’t even there at all.

Esme was gone, as if she was never there in the first place, but for a moment, if you had been there in the forest that night, the darkness might have seemed a little more substantial, a bit more there, than it had been before.

And you could shake your head and say that’s nothing, but then again—the next morning, her mother felt better than she had in years, and Esme was nowhere to be found.

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