The Melancholy Life of Malachi Perish

The Melancholy Life of Malachi Perish Chapter VIII

These snowflakes won't melt.

"Malachi, what is that in your hand?" 

Frozen solid I stand near the raucous river's edge, my tiny hand clasped tightly around several small snowflakes—the size of tiny water drops. 

Blistering cold wind brushes past my shoulders as if to sweep me away when I turn to face my mother—the one who taught me about winter and snowflakes and the clouds from which they come from. Her hair flows down past her shoulders in a waterfall of blonde as my mother's straight and narrow figure stands out like a daffodil in the snow. She slowly approaches me with cautious eyes as blue as clean ocean water. 

I've never seen the ocean myself. I've only seen paintings, but I would imagine any ocean would be as blue as her eyes are now. 

"Mom," I say, turning to her, eyebrow raised. The snowflakes in my hand grow colder. "They won't melt." 

Her soft-treaded stride comes to fall still beside me. Before I can utter another word, she is kneeling down to my level like a fragile leaf bowing in the wind.

"Let me see," she says with her soft, downy voice, tapping underneath my fist. My hand automatically opens like a clam obeying the law of Poseidon, and true to my convictions, the flakes of snow have still not melted at all. They are as complete and as intact as when I had first captured them. 

"I don't understand," I say with the same expression, looking down at the intricate designs of nature. "I've been trying to get them to melt for so long now, but no matter how many times I try to heat them up, they just won't. I think they're stuck to me."

With a cordial invitation of the hand, my mother takes the snowflakes from my grasp and sprinkles them into her own hand experimentally. While I expect the same result to occur, they melt as soon as she closes her fist to warm them up. 

"It must have been in your head, baby boy," she says with a fleeting smile, her eyes sparkling as she caresses my cheek with the moisture left behind by the now melted snowflakes. "Perhaps you've been out here for too long."

"No," I say, frowning and shaking my head. "I've only been out here for a minute. I really, really tried, Mom. But they just wouldn't melt." I feel my eyes quiver. "Is something wrong with me?"

At first, my mother doesn't seem to understand my question. Then she gazes directly into my eyes and shakes her head comfortingly, stroking my snow-white bangs back behind my hairline.

"Of course not," she assures me, smiling. But this subtle smile of hers is not the one I am accustomed to. It is a different smile, the same type of smile that I see her wear when she is trying to hide something from me—a memory or a present falsity.

"But I—"

"Let's go back inside," she suggests. "I'll have Ms. Winslow prepare some hot chocolate for us, and then it's up to bed for you, okay?" she says, cutting me off immediately and tapping my nose gently with one finger. I visibly widen my eyes. Mom never cuts me off when I speak. She always lets me finish my sentences. 

When I don't answer her out of mere surprise, she stands up and takes my hand, leading me back to the fiery furnace that is our castle. But just before she opens the door to our cinammon-scented home, I take one more cursory glance over my shoulder. And that is when I notice there is only one track of footprints in the snow.

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Constant noise surrounds me, quiet and echoing, distant and faint. It's annoying, like cheap shoes scraping against a concrete floor. Horribly irritating. And it's getting louder.