Chapter Twelve

The music was different, still there, but the themes had changed. No that wasn’t really true. Timmy struggled to think straight. It wasn’t that the themes had changed, but what he had been hearing was now in the background, swallowed up by the chorus of ice.

What other way could he say it? The song tinkled icy fingers on his skin, making him shiver. The wind whistled and blew a descant that chilled him. It was a cold song. It was full and menacing, even while the individual notes were sharp, even shrill. Slowly the arctic strain became an aria which sang of the cold north, ancient glaciers, the distant layers of the atmosphere where snow was prepared and kept in readiness.

It made his bones ache, his skin tried to shrink, and as the depths of winter sank into his lungs, his body tried to fight back. He could feel and hear the fevers begin, trying to dispel the frost from his being, but the song of the storm simply moved to its second act.

Through the layers of notes, melody, descant, and chorus, he struggled to hear and understand what his mother and father were saying. He knew his mother cried, but his heart and mind were so trapped by frigid anthems that he soon quit listening to anything but the wintry song and gave in to the numbness which slowly took more and more of him.

He did not know it, but he was close to death. He wouldn’t have cared had he known, so iced had his mind and body become. The wind cried “it’s hopeless”. The snow murmured a soothing psalm of rest. He had no sense of time or space, winter had him fully in her grasp and it was her siren song he heard.