A Cold Winter’s Night

by Angela Cheveau

It is a cold winters night, its starry face is pressed up against your window, the moon peeking in through the curtains, its silver breath feathering the frosted glass. You run your fingertips over the delicately embroidered frost flowers, they shiver beneath your touch, glinting brilliantly like beaded lace in the soft stream of moonlight spilling silver over the slated rooftops outside.  Outside, row upon row of terraced houses huddle together for warmth against the bone-cold snapping jaws of jagged winter. You sigh sleepily, curling up in your favourite rocking chair tucked away in the corner of the room, folding your legs beneath you and reaching for the steaming mug of hot chocolate which is sitting on the little table next to your chair. Steam rises, curling gently into the air and melting on your nose as you take a sip, relishing the warmth that oozes down your throat and into your stomach.

The book sits open on your lap and you run your fingers across the coldness of the first page, breathe in the scent of newness, the delicious prospect of a new story to enfold yourself in, to wrap around your shoulders to keep out the bitter bite of the winter night. A new tale to sink into, to soak your tired bones in. Taking a deep breath, you run your eyes over the words and begin.

Making your way across the freshly fallen snow of the page, you pick your way carefully between the words, mindful not to leave your own tracks in this sacred space. You breathe deep, the pungent scent of wet pine fills your nostrils as the forest closes around you, welcoming you deep within its dark depths, folding you within its feathery arms as you nestle within it. The silence here hangs heavy. It drips from the branches, pools on the snow beneath your feet.

The crisp cracking of twigs beneath the steady tread of your boots suddenly snaps the shocking silence as your feet crunch through the blanket of snow that carpets the forest floor. It drapes the trees in ghostly white, arthritic boughs bent low beneath their burden of snow. You can feel the thud of your own heartbeat as you make your way slowly along the path, wishing you had brought something to drop behind you, to find your way back again if you lose your way and yet now, it is too late, you are here, you are in. All you have to guide you onwards are the pieces he has dropped behind him as he made his way through this frozen world, scraps of thought and memory snagged on the jagged branches, tattered pieces of his mind fluttering gently in the wind. The vast sky above your head glitters fiercely with starlight and the trees are inked onto the skyline, silhouetted against the black sky like charcoal etchings. You close your eyes and inhale softly, you know that he is here somewhere, you can sense him, sense the movement of his hand, and his quick mind as you pick your way amongst the words, you can feel his presence shift somewhere deep within you. You know that he waits for you here, lingering long in the shadowed spaces wandering in and out of words, waiting for you in the gaps, he leans himself against the end of sentences, pauses on a full stop, and he waits. He waits for you to catch up - to find him here. Because he knows…He knows that when you do, you will take his hand and let him guide you deeper in. Deeper and deeper, down into the shadows and the shimmering light. You will not want to. You will struggle with all your might against the hold that he has over you, push back against the pull of him, try to drag yourself back out word by word and yet, he knows…He knows that you will submit - eventually. You always do.

There he is. There - do you see him? That dark figure slipping softly through the shadows over there? Between the trees? You see a small movement in the darkness, as if a piece of the night itself has broken away, and you know it is him. You feel it deep within your heart. Creeping closer now, carefully and quietly, you notice that he holds a lamplight in his gloved hands, it swings at his side, swaying rhythmically, tossing shadows and seeping soft light out into the darkness, illuminating the snowy depths of the forest before him. Your breath catches in your throat as he turns slowly to look at you, beckoning you closer, your heart hammers hard in your chest as you carefully cross the space between you both. It is impossible to see his face in the thick soup of darkness, even his lamplight does not provide enough light to see his features and he remains a dark shadowy figure moving before you, leading the way through the twists and turns of this unfathomable forest. You know you should turn back again, follow the path you have walked so far and follow it to find your way back home again and yet, you know that you cannot. He wont let you. He is leading you deeper and deeper into the story and you have no choice but to follow him onwards - to keep moving forwards, out and into the deep unknown.

You see he knows you.

He knows how you work, what makes you tick. He knows that you will follow him. You cant help it. That is what this game is all about. He knows that you need to know, you need to see. He knows your innermost fears and the many tiny movements of your mind, he knows what makes you laugh, what makes you sing, what makes you cry. He knows all of you - every last bit. All those little parts of you that you think you keep hidden, he knows them. He knows about the dark room in your mind that you keep forever locked, he knows how to creep carefully in through the cracks, a silent intruder breaking all the locks, he rummages through all of the memories you keep folded so carefully in neat little piles, the snapshots of a life lived strung on string from cobwebbed eave to eave, heavy dust bound tomes of memory hidden away in the polished oak chest of your mind, fastened down tightly with bright metal clasps, the grind of an ornate iron key in the rusted lock and the soft tread of footsteps resounding in the dusty corridors of your mind. He knows what will make your heart hurt, he knows what will bring you the greatest joy, he knows how to hold up a mirror to your reflection and to show you your true self. Even when sometimes you don’t want to see.

He thinks that he is clever, always remaining in the shadows, he hopes that he will not be seen and yet the movements of his mind, though wrapped in shadow, are as visible to you as you are to him. You take this journey together. Learning about each other as you both go forward into the dark night. The crack of a twig in the forest snapping sharply beneath your faltering feet is the sputter of logs spitting and the crackle of the fire in your room; the winter wind whistling through the broken branches of the trees in the forest is the whisper of your own breath in the still silence of the bedroom. The pallid face of the pale moon suspended in a sea of starlight, is the glow from the lamp on your desk; and the still, silent lake shimmering like glass before you, if only you were to bend over and look in, you would see your own face in the mirror on your wall.  The mist curling gently through the trees, is the swirling smoke from the hot chocolate clasped in your hand, the soft sway of the feathery trees is the rhythmic swing of your rocking chair.

  In the gaps between words, you feel him, sense the rhythmic beat of his heart, his pulse pumping in each word that spills on to the page, the shifting shape of his mind as it selects each word carefully, picking each one up between finger and thumb as if it were a freshly plucked pearl picked from the depths of a sparkling sunlit sea. Rolling each word between the cracked callouses of his overworked fingers he holds it up to the light, its iridescence shimmering as it moves. He rolls each sound behind the pursed lips of his mouth, trying to feel his way around it, to taste the essence of it, to suck the salty syllables, the sugary sweetness of the sentences it will fill. His footprints are deeply embedded in this snow that you wade through in your soaking wet boots, imprinted in the spaces between the words on the page. His spirit walks alongside you in this place, his lamplight guiding you through the darkness of this world that you have chosen to enter. You are a sleepwalker lulled by the lyrical lines of his language drawing you sluggishly and sleepily onwards, compelled always to venture further into the damp darkness of this cold winter’s night. You are a tightrope walker clinging tightly to the ropes he strings between thoughts and images; fingertips gripping, grasping, you dangle over the edge of every clifftop he leads you towards, suspended at the end of each chapter, breathless, with the world falling suddenly away beneath you, crumbling into tiny pieces, tumbling past you into the dark depths of the unknown. You are hypnotized by the haunting melodies he composes, captivated by the cunning charm he casts upon you, cursed to lose hours of your life succumbing to this endless enchantment. You are bewitched by the muffled mutterings whispered in your ear, the spells he incants with his wicked word witchery. You swallow willingly the potent potion of his words, swill sentences down the back of your throat and gargle on the healing heat, the marvellous medicine of this story. He watches as it seeps into the marrow of your bones, smiles as you surrender to both the mesmerizing magic and the pernicious poison of the swirling soup of his words.  He is the conjuror and the alchemist. Transforming base metals into gold, turning symbols on a page into potions of pure magic.

You are powerless.

You are caught in every corner of his meandering mind.

You my dear…are a reader.