December 23rd

The moon is not Henry’s friend. It is hanging high in the sky, a pale waxing gibbous watching from the heavens. Yet it holds no warmth this evening. No grin, he thinks. Its coldness shines down on him, a mocking deity.

He runs across the slicked-wet planks of the boardwalk, the ferry bell clanging to the beat of his frantic heart. His lungs hurt from running, but he has to get to the ferry.

Tonight.

He can’t wait any longer. He is losing time, just as the sky loses daylight.

The coins almost slip from his hand as he exchanges them for a ticket. He mumbles his thanks at the attendant and boards the boat, the same sleek dark teal as the ocean it sits upon. He taps his foot as he looks out at the view, the silhouettes of the twin islands, Ilton and Astra, looming closer.

As the trip stretches beyond the present into a murky nothingness of endless seconds, he is comforted only by his growing proximity to his destination: Ilton, his childhood home. The familiar shape breaking apart the horizon, like a pile of trinkets carelessly dumped at the bottom of a closet, beckons him.

The island feels like a forgotten sweater or a lost book. He’s sure the landscape began as wild trees and feral flowers towering over its inhabitants, but it has since become a mass of hodgepodge manufactured structures. The shapes are currently made even more abstract by the blanket of snow that is settling over the island with surprising speed.

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Is it really Christmas already?

Because he grew up on the island, he knows about its eccentricities, such as the wayward weather spell that was cast more than a few decades ago. The spell, like clockwork, brings three days of snow to the island. He’s sure there is someone who could dismantle it, but so far no one has bothered.

Besides, it was always quite a treat. Snowball fights with his cousins. Ice skating in the town square. Lining up along with the other children to sled down the hill in Mr. Prather’s backyard.

His mother would bundle him in layers of wool, and somehow, in the miraculous carelessness of youth, he would lose the layers, one by one, until all he was wearing was a sweater and jeans.

“You’ll catch your death,” his mother would say. It made him think of Death as a blackbird caught in a net, which was oddly comforting. Death was something to overcome, to hold onto until ready for its release upon which, presumably, it would turn on its captor and sink its claws into his shoulders to carry him away.

He thought he felt those claws once. He was seventeen. He had nightmares for weeks—still does from time to time—waking up in a cold sweat. Leo probably has worse nightmares, he thinks. Fitting that that harrowing experience should come to him now after the stoic Bureau agent told him…well, he doesn’t want to think about it yet.

After he sees Rowena.

He must ask Rowena.

Maybe after this is all done, he will stay for Christmas day. His parents have passed away, but his sister still lives on Ilton, in the split-level townhome on the south coast. He could pop around and say hello, see how the street has changed since his youth.

If Dante’s Market is open, he should pick up a small gift for his niece. A box of chocolates or a snow globe, perhaps.

He fingers the edge of his ferry ticket in his jacket pocket, a bejeweled Ilton inching forward.

Yes, when this is over, perhaps he will stay a while.