Chapter 2

With trembling hands, he picks up the coal to unwind the red thread wrapped around it, a note kept in place beneath. The string is nice. Thick, good quality. He loops it around his thumb to make a spool and sets it aside. He would love to use it for embroidery.
Maybe a poppy upon a kerchief.
     He unfolds the note, the paper feeling like skin beneath his fingers. Looking at the words scattered upon it, he thinks of insects. A multitude of tiny limbs that have found their place to shape meaning. His meaning.

You’ve been singled out.
Throw the coal into your fires.
When it glows brightest, set it to your grounds.
Take it out and let it settle
once you hear them whisper.
With three palmfuls of creek water and your spit,
make a paste.
Cover yourself with the ghosts of your past.
Wind the thread around your left ankle.
It is so you shall sleep, coal in your hand.
Sleep as much as you can.
Sleep the whole day, if you must.
Don’t bathe. Don’t eat.
You’ll be picked up by next nightfall.
Bring the coal.

The wind outside is howling, stretching into long vowels that mingle with the high-pitched ringing in his ears. Elation grabs him. Face splitting into a toothy grin, he clasps the note tight and rereads it. It feels like a fever-crazed dream. Like climbing a tree, slipping and regaining footing. Or like the mortifying ordeal of opening up in front of a beloved person, waiting for a reply in a silence that stretches before receiving a smile in return. It feels like how his father used to lift him high over his head as a child to put him on his shoulders. The world looked different then … His chair topples over when he stands, arms stretched wide, head tipped back, laughing. He laughs until there is not enough air in his lungs, and his head is spinning.
     Picking up the bucket next to his washing table, he rushes outside, barely able to slip into his boots. He makes his way to the brook close by. It has started to snow, and the wind whips flakes mercilessly against his cheeks. They melt and flow down his chin. Soon, his hands feel numb, and he curls into himself more tightly to brace against the squall.
     Winter had been harsh and was still pulling everything from the land surrounding his property. It had been pulling everything from him as well. Waiting and hoping, always cold, always expectant. But now he feels his chest expand, blossoming into something wild and untamed. Reaching the creek, he kneels. The ground under him is solid and unyielding. He breaks the thin ice with his bucket and lets the clear and clean water stream into it. It fills up like his heart in tentative and wondrous swirls.
      Darkness settles for good on his way back. He rounds his house and bolts the shutters over his windows, the wind furiously rattling them in their hooks. It had happened. He would be picked up, and nothing would be the same again. No acid words, no unease, no heaviness in his heart, no harshness either, no discomfort, no discord, no pain! No pain. He slams the door shut behind him and heels out of his shoes.