Light Boxes

Bianca

When I was really little, my father came into my bedroom with a sheet of fabric he said would one day fly in the sky.

I’ll show you, he said, sitting down on the edge of the bed, then sliding toward the middle, where I sat with my legs crossed.

Through my bedroom window, I watched a tree lose a branch under the weight of snow that had been falling for months. Before the branch hit the ground, a sheet of yellow fabric floated down over my eyes. It felt like silk and smelled of oil and stream water.

I heard the clank of metal, and then a hot flame near the back of my neck, and then the fabric lifted from my face, and it bloomed into a giant flower that touched the ceiling and grew toward the corners of my bedroom.

What does this feel like, my father said.

It’s like being inside one of those globes the shopkeepers make in town, I said, now standing on the bed, fingertips reaching toward the flower. It feels wonderful. It feels like happiness.

It will be called, my father said, a balloon.

In the crop field, four people are found standing with their heads tilted back and arms frozen to their sides. Eyes closed, their mouths stretched open and filled with snow.

Thaddeus was buying apples when he overheard the group of former balloonists known as the Solution.

How much can we put up with. How many days will this dreadful season extend itself. Our town is a place of no flight and all snow because of February.

There were five of them, tall and thin, wearing long brown coats and black top hats. They had thin plastic masks over their faces. Each mask was painted as a different-colored bird.

You, said one of the members, who grabbed Thaddeus’s shoulder and turned him around.

Thaddeus faced the Solution, holding his basket of apples tight against his chest.

We’re starting a rebellion, a war, said a yellow bird mask, against February and what it stands for.

A war, repeated Thaddeus.

Yes, a war, a war, a war, the Solution repeated.

An orange bird mask continued, We’re sick of February, who we believe is responsible not only for a season of endless gray and snow but the end of flight.

A blue bird mask lurched forward and placed a square of parchment in Thaddeus’s coat pocket. He knocked one of Thaddeus’s apples out of the basket and into a pile of snow.

Remember us, said the Solution.

And they disbanded, walking, dreaming of flying, in separate directions.