Paper Snowflakes

Faelyn dug the blade of her chisel into the wood, one chip at a time. Her brother, Sammy, sat on a crate beside her, snipping at a folded paper. In the bunker around them, the shelves were so laden with supplies they curved under the weight. Canned foods, hardware goods, and metal replacement parts jostled for space with tins of biscuits and sacks of beans. The contents of an average-sized house had been shaken out and crammed into a space one-tenth the size. Uggggh, she was sick of that room.

Bits of wood and paper drifted onto the scuffed concrete floor. Sammy snipped once more this way and that. “Whee!” he said, unfolding his snowflake and flapping it for her to see. Faelyn looked up from her carving. Ouch. The chisel left the wood and landed in the fleshy part of her thumb.

Dad looked up from his screens and frowned at Sammy. “Not that nice white paper! Why’d you use that?”

“I said he could,” Faelyn said, sucking briefly at the dash of red on her thumb. “I told him to use the good paper for decoration.” She motioned around the 9-by-12-foot air-locked room, where above the shelves was a strip of hooks for common tools: axe, drill, broom, shovel, mallet, crowbar, and implements she couldn’t name.

“Decoration? Here?”

“Tomorrow’s winter solstice,” she said. “I thought we could put up a few snowflakes. You know, a surprise for Mom?” From picture books the children knew this used to be a season of snow and pine trees.

“Tell me about snowflakes, Daddy,” Sammy said.

Dad’s face softened. “In olden days the snowflakes used to pile up… this high.” He raised his hand well off the floor. “We’d get so many, we had to shovel them away.”

“Shovel? Like dirt?”

“Like dirt, yeah.” Dad gave a small un-funny laugh, shook his head, and turned back to his screens. There was a clink of glass on glass.

Faelyn looked in the First Aid kit, sighed, then improvised a band-aid from masking tape and toilet paper. She resumed her carving, a comb she was making for her mother’s birthday. She worried that Mom was lost but did not want to upset her brother. Or annoy her father.

Sammy pinched his paper snowflakes and flew them around like superheroes. After a while, he and his sister decided to put them up.

They strung them from the empty tool-hooks. The hooks were easier to reach than last year, thanks to her recent growth spurt.

She peeked at the four screens on Dad’s desk, pretending to be adjusting the décor. Camera feeds came in from 32 places nearby: mainly drab buildings and vacant streets where tumbleweeds bounced. In the open areas, jagged trunks of dead trees protruded like finger bones.

“Where’s the chicken?” Sammy said, approaching the desk.

“Nothing there yet,” Dad said, tapping the view from Camera 3, which showed the empty chicken trap in their backyard.

They watched Camera 21, where three persons appeared from behind a shed. All wore masks – a necessity most days against the dust and ash – but only one person wore an expensive air supply tank. Despite the added weight, this person was walking more energetically, more purposefully.

“What’s happening?” Sammy said.

“Someone’s doing a rescue,” Dad said. “Looks like the Torrentos got caught in bad air—without their tanks. Hah, that’ll teach ‘em!” The oxygen-starved atmosphere was a constant threat. Sometimes the weather gave nearly normal air, tempting people to go outdoors to work or collect supplies. Or simply to walk about for exercise. But the weather changed hourly. People could get quickly trapped in a suffocating environment and become disoriented, especially when smoke or dust obscured visibility. Then the patrol volunteers had to go out to find people and bring them back indoors.

“A rescue! Doo-di-doo! Super Snowflake,” Sammy sang triumphantly, grinning at his paper cut-outs. “Tell us about safety, Daddy.”

“No, you tell me.”

The boy grew solemn and recited, “Mommy said to stay cool, stay inside on bad-air days. Mommy said to keep eating healthy and doing school and exercise.”

“And bring your own shade on hot days… like Mommy does,” Dad said. He told Sammy the story about a cuckoo bird that laid an egg in the nightingale’s nest. When the egg hatched, the cuckoo nestling pushed all the baby nightingale birdlings out of the nest. “So be careful,” he whispered, “and guard your nest.”

Sammy shivered and turned back to the screen. “Hey, look!”

The three figures became larger when they were picked up by Camera 22. The person with the air supply was leading two middle-aged people to a house. “Hey, that’s the Torrentos and–” Faelyn started to say but broke off. She couldn’t bring herself to speak the name of her secret crush aloud. She reddened.

“Who, Ludek? That freak?” Dad tossed back the last of the gin in his glass.

“He’s helping them,” Faelyn said. Ludek, Ludek, her blood sang. She got a broom from a tool-hook; time to sweep the paper and wood scraps.

“Hah, maybe those Torrentos will learn a lesson,” Dad said. “Those sightseers – out traipsing around.”

 “They had to go out,” Faelyn said, as she pulled the broom across the floor. “Essential workers.” Mom sometimes chatted with the couple, who lived a block away and worked in the greenhouses, collecting food and oxygen from indoor forests of high-efficiency plants.

Sammy said, “Can I make another snowflake?”

“Not on good paper, you can’t,” Dad said. “I need to save that.”

Her brother looked crestfallen, so Faelyn said, “Actually, this newsprint is better.” She plucked a rough gray sheet from the stack. “We’ll have realistic snow – how it would look – if the dirty air ever cools down again enough to make snow.”

Sammy looked doubtful but took the sheet and began folding and cutting. When he unfolded his creation, it tore. He wailed and she made comforting noises. “Do real snowflakes get torn?” he said, sniffling.

She hesitated. “I don’t know – I’ve never seen one.”

Sammy wilted, his head in his hands. “Why bother?” He exhaled softly.

She looked at his small, hunched shoulders. “Actually… now I remember… I saw real snowflakes once, Sammy. They do get torn.”

He sat staring at the blank paper.

She emptied her sweepings into the red-worm composter. “Hey, how about a nice dinner,” she said. “Our Solstice Eve feast. We can surprise Mom when she gets back.”

“Yeaaaah!” Sammy’s head shot up. “Please please please can we have fried chicken?” he said, moving his face close to hers like a moon orbiting a planet.

Fried chicken from scratch was quite a production, although Mom had been coaching her through the parts that made her squeamish. Faelynn saw this as a secret test: if she could gut and cook a chicken, Mom would return home safely.

Faelyn hugged Sammy. “If we can get a chicken…sure. But you’ll have to read to me while I prepare it.”

“Okay!” He ran to check Camera 3 and squealed, “Hey! There’s a chicken in the trap!”

Faelyn observed the scabrous beast. It seemed a pity to kill any creature that had managed to survive this long on the outside.

Groaning, Dad got down the well-thumbed Shel Silverstein book. Sammy knew the poems by heart; he looked at the illustrations and mimicked “reading” them in his high fluty sing-song.

“I can get the chicken,” Dad said quietly to Faelyn. “But you’ll have to – you know, do the rest.” He patted his shoulder and winced. “I’m so useless with this torn rotator cuff.” She had no idea what a rotator cuff was, but she remembered Dad screaming in pain the day it happened.

Eviscerating a chicken was not so different from cleaning fish, like Faelyn used to do with Dad, back when fishing was still allowed. She had a nagging worry about the chopping—could she do it with one strong swift blow?—and plucking—could she pull all the feathers off? Feathers or animal hair or fish scales in food—those were so gross.

But if a propitious deed meant Mom’s return… .

Faelyn spread the oilcloth on the table and washed her hands in the tub of standing water, taking care not to dampen her bandaged left thumb. She listened to Sammy reciting the poem: “I Have a Hot Dog for a Pet” from the Silverstein book. She remembered he always used to beg for a pet—until Dad blew up at him. Sammy never mentioned it since.

Brrrring! Brrrrrrrrrrrring!

The doorbell shattered the calm.

“Mom!” squealed Sammy.

Faelyn’s heart leapt.

The family leaned toward Camera 7, which was connected to the camera right above the door to their dwelling.

 “Those idjits,” Dad sneered, “wrong house.”

Faelyn was glad the two-way intercom was turned off. “They need to take a break,” she said, interpreting the distressed faces she saw. “Can’t we let them get some air in here before they head back out?” She would ask them if they’d seen Mom.

“We don’t have buckets of air, sweetheart.”

“But the utility company will deliver a new tank tomorrow,” she said.

“Sometimes they’re late,” Dad retorted. He squinted at the two men on the screen mutely pleading for entry. “I don’t like the look of those guys.”

How could he tell, she wondered, since the masks covered nose and mouth. “Can’t we just listen for a minute?” she said.

“Bleeding heart,” Dad said.

Sammy said, “Maybe they have a message from Mommy.” His eyes grew large.

“Oh, all right.” With exasperation, Dad turned on the sound.

“…we beg of you, please,” the voice crackled. “Can you tell us the way to Markham?”

Markham? Faelyn frowned. That was miles away.

“See? That’s a trick,” Dad said. “If I answer him, he’ll ask me to draw a map – but I’m not letting these guys in. They look dangerous.” He turned the sound off again. “I bet those two assholes were out stealing things.”

“Really?” Sammy blinked.

Faelyn gaped at Dad, aghast.

He caught her look. “Never mind,” he said defensively. “They’ll ask at the next house.” He waved toward the pots on a shelf. “Weren’t you going to cook us a proper meal?”

“Look!” Sammy said, pointing to Camera 7. The two men had left the family’s doorstep and were staggering toward the next house.

“See? I tolja.” Dad poured himself another small glass.

“But what if it was Mom out there,” Faelyn persisted, “and she couldn’t find her way back home?”

“Nah… I’m sure she had to stay late at work,” Dad said. “You know those spinners break down all the time.” Besides sunlight on solar panels, and wind energy from windmills, people rode stationary bikes for long hours to generate power. Mom loved to joke about her “thunder thighs” propelling the climate recovery effort.

Faelyn continued to stare her father down. “You know what Mom says: ‘what goes around comes around.’”

“Alright, alright!” Dad said. “As soon as a fresh tank is dropped off tomorrow, we’ll share the air with the next wussy-pussy who asks. How’s that?” He wiped the back of his hand across his mouth and stubbled cheek. “Don’t give me that ‘Saint Faelyn’ look. We can’t save every lost soul in the world.”

But Faelyn kept imagining her mother wandering around dazed and confused. What goes around, comes around, but Dad always jeered at the superstition. Faulty logic, he called it.

“We have to help others,” Faelyn said. “Remember when our wall collapsed?” A couple months ago Ludek and four friends had come over and helped rebuild the wall in a day. She remembered how they and her family had formed a line to transfer cinder blocks, puffing and panting in the thin oxygen. The sun shone so mercilessly – no trees for shade – even the clouds had fled from the sky.

“I sure do,” Dad mumbled. “That’s the day I buggered up my shoulder.”

“My point is, they helped us,” she said, softly, so as not to rile him overmuch. Afterwards, they had all been bent over double with air-sickness and heat-sickness. Ludek had pulled off his sweaty T-shirt and tossed it aside. Faelyn had picked it up on the sly and later hidden it in her pillowcase in her bunkbed.

“Maybe those guys helped.” Dad moved his shoulder and grimaced said. “But that Ludek– the spider fingers. Yeesh. Something weird about his hands.”

“They’re not weird,” she said and felt her face growing hot, so she busied herself with lifting up the floorboards over the root cellar.

“Don’t go getting sweet on him. Who knows what defects he inherited?” Dad took a long sip.

“He’s kind and helpful.”

Father and daughter wordlessly eyed each other.

“Fried chicken!” Sammy yelled and broke the stand-off.

“Oh, right – you wanted a chicken. I better get to the backyard…” Dad sounded glad to be leaving the tense atmosphere. Going to the backyard involved going into the tunnel and leaving the air-lock, so it took a few minutes.

Faelyn immediately went to his screens, scanning for Ludek and Mom. Sammy joined her.

Dad returned, bumping into things. Was it the gin or the bad air, Faelyn wondered. His good arm held an old wire cage, caked with bird poop, with a fluttering creature in it. “Look what I caught,” he chuckled. “A nice white Leghorn.” The creature was dirty and scruffy, with purple lesions on its cockscomb.

She stared at the flapping, angry beast with the wickedly sharp beak and the piercing black eyes.

“You’ll have to do the honours, Faelyn.” Dad put the cage down.

“Hey, look, Ludek!” Sammy pointed. Camera 7 showed the rescue volunteer standing right outside their house. “He must’ve heard fried chicken’s on the menu!” Sammy rocked about, giggling at his own joke.

“Get away from there! Don’t invite him!” Dad reached over and yanked out the cables attached to the screens. The pictures shrank to tight white dots and vanished.

“I wasn’t going to!” she said. “And anyway, he has his own air supply.” She collected soft potatoes and turnips from their small cellar.

Dad leaned forward in his chair, head turned so he could press his cheek on the desk. After a few minutes, he raised his head. “He’s already wounded. Put him outta his misery.” For one blood-curdling moment, Faelyn thought he meant Ludek. But Dad was looking at the chicken in the cage on the floor. One wing was askew. Dad pressed his other cheek on the desk.

“Winter sola-stiss,” Sammy said, pushing part of a paper snowflake into the chicken’s cage. He squealed when the bird tore the snowflake from him.

Faelyn unhooked the axe from the tool rack. She tested the blade with her finger and sharpened it with a whetstone until the second test showed one perfect ruby of blood on her left pinkie. She dragged the chopping block from its corner and looked at the chicken, which was noisily dragging its beak against the cage as if sharpening it. She looked at her father lying face down on the desk. A guttural snore emanated from him.

She waited for his breathing to become slow and steady, then she put down the axe and reconnected the cables. The screen showed Ludek standing on her street. The two masked men had been rejected by the other house. She watched as Ludek approached them, his hand extended as if offering to guide them. The two men drew back. Suddenly one of the men punched Ludek, knocking him to the ground. They tore off his air supply.

Sammy grew quiet, watching the fighting unfold. Even the chicken had grown quiet. Faelyn’s eyes moved from the screen to her father to the airlocked door to the axe and back to the screen where Ludek lay motionless. She reckoned he had only minutes left to live.

“Tell me again what Mommy said.” Sammy put his hand near hers.

She recited, “Mommy said to stay cool, stay inside on bad-air days. Mommy said to keep eating healthy and doing school and exercise.”

And she also said, Faelyn thought, “what goes around comes around.”

She inched closer to her where her father slept.

THE END