Light Boxes

Bianca

Years ago when we experienced the season known as spring, my father woke me late in the night to show me the sun. He carried me to the top of the hill and told me to look toward the horizon where the pine trees stood. My father wiped the snow from my lashes, and there it was, a little marble of light behind the treetops.

That’s the sun, my father said, and with any luck it will melt this snow so we can have summer.

I imagined that the birds flew and carried a lantern and placed it there in the treetops, because that’s exactly what it looked like to me.

It looks like a lantern, I said.

My father smiled, then kissed me on the forehead. He promised it wouldn’t be far away like that forever but would grow massive in the sky and warm my face.

Will it really do that.

Yes, Bianca, really, he said.

After seeing the sun, he carried me home and tucked me back in my bed and told me to sleep. But I couldn’t. I spent the rest of the night and morning staring out the window, trying to see the lantern in the treetops carried there by birds. What everyone else called the sun.

War Effort Member Number One (Blue Bird Mask)

Caldor Clemens was hanged by his neck inside a hollow oak tree. His flesh had been torn open, and birds had made nests inside his stomach, chest, and neck. Other animals — bears, deer, a fox — had also been hanged, draped from tree branches by neon-blue string coiled around their necks. The mouth of Clemens had been ripped open. His bottom lip was at his chin and his top lip where his hair started. His mouth was filled with snow. A few teeth poked through.

We found the body of Caldor Clemens shortly after following him into the woods. We had completed the first steps of the children’s War Plan, which was to put piles of dry brush throughout the town, and then we followed the trail of dead bees, just as Caldor had instructed. The War Effort has survived floods and moss and endless snowfall culminating in endless sadness. But the death of Clemens twisted our hearts in a different direction.

We found the spot where his body was, the tall, skinny trees bent in the middle and the ground rippled — the way I remembered waves looked breaking on the shore. War Effort Member Number Seventeen gripped my hand. The other members scanned the sky for two holes. When we came upon the death scene, two War Effort members sped off in opposite directions. Those who remained started to jog, smiling and complimenting each other.