Where the downtrodden view winter as a legitimate threat to survival, I instead view it as an opportunity to reinforce not only my own faith in humanity, but hopefully theirs as well.


 

     I met the first one by a fire barrel, crept up on him I guess you could say, though I hadn’t really thought at the time to do so. It was sort of just natural, that brand of caution, smell a man out before you let him see your face, get a sense of whether he’s deserving. I’d always had a knack for getting a read on people. One look, one smell, perhaps a few words exchanged for good measure, then I’d know. Still, I sometimes worried just the same.

     Anyway, he kinda jumped a little as I stepped out from the shadow of a boxcar, but I did my best to put him at ease right off, holding up my hands to let him know I wasn’t carrying a weapon, moving all slow-like to show that he was the boss and that I just wanted to maybe warm my hands a little, and would that be okay?

     He nodded me over. “Where you come from, boy?” he said. His voice had a strange sort of edge to it, not raspy exactly, not been-smoking-since-I-was-ten, but rough still, like he’d been forced to swallow too many unjust words.

     “Here and there,” I said, and held my hands out above the tongues of flame, even though my fingers weren’t cold at all. Then again, cold wasn’t something I had to worry about. It was a gift of a sort, this resilience of mine, and the only reason I was able to prowl about on nights like this, when the air left one’s mouth in visible clouds, when one could hear the reluctant whine of engines too cold to turn over even if said engines were six blocks away.

     But there were no engines here around the fire barrel, save for those belonging to the rusting locomotives.

     The man regarded me with one eye squinted. “Wanderin’ on a night like this? Ain’t you got no sense, boy?”

     I liked the rail yard the best of all the places I went to; it brought folks from all around, and served as a sort of converging point for drifters on the move, which they had to be, I suppose, if one was to call them drifters. Can’t rightly have drifters just sitting around, talking about Wall Street and smoking never-ending pipes.

     Lots of drifters thanks to the recession; deserving folks everywhere you turned, all of them with too loose clothes on their bodies and too loose teeth in their heads.  

     I shrugged. “Brought something for you,” I said, and reached into my inside pocket for a wee little piece of the sun. It glowed like a vision of Mary herself, but only weighed about eight ounces or so. I had several such gifts at present, but could make more if circumstance demanded I do so, and on nights like this, I imagined circumstance would do exactly that.

     The man backed up a step, uncertain, suspicious--which was understandable considering how most folks with magic tended towards greed or glory or both, often at the expense of those without. My father, corporate mage and media magnate, was just such a man, and it was in his shadow I found my motivation.

     The stranger sniffed, spat. “I ain’t need none of yer damn conjurin’,” he told me, but there was hardly an ounce of anger to be heard, and no sooner had the words left his mouth than they drifted away on frigid clouds, forgotten. He stepped forward again. “I suppose you’ll be wantin’ my soul or some such thing, eh?”

     “No soul,” I assured him. “Just a promise.”

     “Yeah?” he said. “What kind of promise?”

     And so I told him, and so he agreed. When I left him he was cradling the piece of shine as though it were a newborn, scared its little baby head might flop around if the neck wasn’t supported just right. But he was warm, I knew, and that’s what mattered.

     I didn’t see him again for another six months, in the summer. We met back at the rail yard, and I was pleased to see that his clothes weren’t quite as dirty as before, and that his eyes held a smile to match the one on his lips.

     As always, the miniature sun had gone out, extinguished by the breath of June. In its place was a slippery ball of ice, cold as the Arctic Circle, blue as sixteen-but-ain’t-never-been-kissed.

     I’d been waiting only a few minutes, but already my body had begun to absorb the summer heat. Sweaty of skin, blurry of eye; upon seeing the condition I was in, the man immediately understood why he’d made the promise he’d made.

     He handed me the frozen orb, which I quickly swallowed down, felt it roll like a snowball inside me. All at once I felt a little bit better, but it wasn’t enough and it wouldn’t last. The others would have to come as well.

     I glanced from side to side, all around, my toes hot against the insides of my boots. Winter’s gift had become summer’s curse. If my magic weren't recycled, I’d soon burn from the inside out.    

     The man followed my gaze and shook his head in bewilderment. “Why you go givin’ it away if you just need it back again?” he asked me. “Ain’t you got no sense, boy?”

     I shrugged. “I only need it half the time,” I said. “And besides, they always come back.”

     And indeed they did, one by one, man for man.