Light Boxes

Beekeeper

One possibility is to attack with bees, I said. I could send thousands. The stings would force February to peel the clouds away. It’s an idea. It could work.

I told this to Caldor Clemens while we sat in a balloon basket staring up at the sky, under where the two holes were rumored to be. The balloon itself rippled, was deflated around us on the snowy plains like a gown.

Go ahead and send them, Clemens said. Thaddeus would try it.

I tapped my head. A swarm of bees moved up my neck and formed a funnel extending skyward. The bees disappeared through the clouds, and there was a terrible buzzing sound. Then, seconds later, the funnel collapsed and thousands of my dead bees rained from the sky and filled the basket. Their little bodies were hard and cold. Clemens stood there staring at me while I shielded myself from the falling, dying bees.

The sadness was overwhelming.

What the shit, said Clemens, shifting his legs out of the dead-bee basket.

I watched him walk back into town, swatting dead bees from the nape of his neck.

That night Caldor Clemens had a dream in which Thaddeus stood in a field with three owls. February was on his knees. The owls nodded the way owls nod. Thaddeus had his knife drawn.

I’m sorry for your daughter and your wife, but — you have the wrong guy, said February.

I don’t care what you have to say. I only care about what you’ve done, said Thaddeus.

I can’t help it. Really, I can’t, February said.

I’m going to open your throat and fill you with tulips, Thaddeus said, grabbing February by the shoulder.

Wait, said February, there is someone I want you to meet first.

Running from the horizon and down the plains was a girl who smelled of honey and smoke.

Let me introduce you to my wife, said February.

List of Artists Who Created Fantasy Worlds to Try and Cure Bouts of Sadness

1. Italo Calvino

2. Gabriel García Márquez

3. Jim Henson and Jorge Luis Borges — Labyrinths

4. The creator of MySpace

5. Richard Brautigan

6. J. K. Rowling

7. The inventor of the children’s toy Lite-Brite

8. Ann Sexton

9. David Foster Wallace

10. Gauguin and the Caribbean

11. Charles Schulz

12. Liam Rector

Like every other house in town, Caldor Clemens’s received a folded square of parchment from a group of children who came up from underneath his floor. There were dozens of them down there leaning against the sides of the tunnel. They raised their lanterns for the smallest to climb up over them and hand Clemens the parchment paper.

Is Bianca Lowe down there, said Clemens.

Who is Bianca Lowe, the smallest child said.

Bianca Lowe, said Clemens. Are you stupid. Sorry. I didn’t mean that. She is a little girl with kites painted on her hands and arms. Her body was found on the riverbank. Sometimes her ghost walks around. I believe she may still be alive, since all of you seem to be. Clemens rocked from side to side. He tried to recognize a face.

The smallest child carefully turned around and asked the other children if they had seen a Bianca Lowe. A child at the bottom of the tunnel checked a scroll of parchment and called back that no such child was listed.

Here, said the smallest child, take this.

The square of parchment fit in the center of Clemens’s palm like a pebble. It was tied with blue ribbon. On the blue ribbon in tiny gold letters it read, FINAL WAR PLAN AGAINST FEBRUARY.

Thank you, said Clemens. When he looked back down the tunnel, all the children were sliding into the flickering darkness swallowed up by lantern light.

FEBRUARY WAS SO WORRIED ABOUT Thaddeus he didn’t see the people in town open their squares of parchment and read the final War Plan against him. Some people danced. Others cried. The War Plan spread through the town and into the trees, where the birds flapped their wings and thought they could fly again. The priests huddled, shook their heads and waited for an order from their Creator.

Caldor Clemens was one of the people who cried. Caldor told the members of the War Effort that he would leave early the next morning to find Thaddeus. After they began the first steps of the children’s War Plan, they would follow Caldor’s path of dead bees through the woods. Then they would all meet and head back into town, together.

But when do we ready the balloon, said one of the members of the War Effort, this particular man an original member of the Solution, who wore a purple bird mask.

I wasn’t aware of a balloon, said Clemens.

So you don’t have a drawing of a balloon flying in the sky on your parchment paper.

No, said Clemens. I don’t.

Clemens studied all the parchment the War Effort had collected. Each was the same except for one that showed a balloon flying in the air. The parchment smelled of honey and smoke.

I don’t know, said Clemens. Maybe that’s the future or some shit.