Micro Short Story, "Out of the Cold"

            They moved thru the snow slower than they had hours prior.  The piled up white flakes were deeper than they had been, not just on the path, but on the traveler’s shoulders.  The air was as cold and strangely dry as the slick solid ice that was hidden in the unseen ditches to either side.  Another reason the traveler was moving slower was an earlier spill when stepping just a little too left.

            But toward the song they shuffled forward, pushing thru the white.

            The music had rolled over them in the night as the sun became a fading red line on the horizon.  Echoing and distant was the thrum of the voice… or maybe voices?   But even so far thru so much snow it carried with it a warmth.  The traveler’s mind filled with visions of hard wood floors covered in pelts and skins, a whole tree burning in a vast hearth, a long table steaming with tea and cake and a thousand other indistinct sweet and savory things.

            The little flame they had managed to cultivate before twilight and the little tent that had sheltered the traveler, those things had no song to them.  Still and thin, quite and cold, with fuel running low… The traveler decided to become a listener, a follower of this song.

            Maybe the warmth of the tune would carry them on a night’s journey.

            The song was clearer now, less echo and a low bass of some stringed instrument joined in.  And with the depth of the song becoming clearer, detail filled the room with the tree burning hearth.  The furs were of deer, otters, foxes, great oxen, and bears.  The tea had cinnamon in it, bits floating on the surface of the clear brown gold liquid, ghostly hot vapor twisting above it.

The steam of the drink twisted like a flame thought the traveler.  Seeing the cubes of sugar plopping into the cup and shattering as a tiny silver spoon turned the liquid and the shimmering of now dissolved sugar disappeared into the warm whirlpool in the cup.

There is sugar?  How luxurious, thought the traveler.  Reaching for a little cookie the traveler’s hand brushed against something and sugar spilled on the table.  There was a great pile of white.  But I thought the sugar was in cubes.  No, this is the snow.

            Then they stopped and looking thru the vast darkness of night and the falling flecks of ice, they saw a glow from a window.  Perhaps this is an abbey?  A castle?  In the traveler’s mind maps unrolled over the table with all of the spilled sugar, the light of that promised hearth illuminating so many paths, wells, shrines, and any other tiny detail that might be along the road.  Out came a straight edge to guide their eye and sliding it along the map to find this place, nothing leapt to might.  This was something new. 

            It was hard to see the real shape of it in the night’s snow fall.  A light and a pair of doors to a foyer.  No footsteps in the snow leading up.  Well, what fool would be out in this weather?  All around the song’s depth reached its height as small bells and a flute carried in behind the voice and bass.  As the traveler moved closer and closer, the door seemed stranger.

            The traveler had thought it far away, but now they could see that they were right up to it, and it was so small.  It was sized for a child.  Putting out their gloved hand and feeling little etchings in the pair of wooden doors a flowing pattern, like vines on a trellis was made clear to their fingers, as was the coming from within.

            The song had stopped.

            “Well,” came a voice from behind, from dark of the snowfall.  “Aren’t you going to knock?”

            “Hello?” said the traveler.

            “Hello,” answered the voice.  It was so deep.

            “I heard…” started the traveler.

            “I thought so,” said the voice.  “I suppose you have come to beg alms?  Just working up the courage to?”

            “I was hoping for a cup of tea.”

            “Well then,” said the voice.  The sound of a latch unlatching.  “I have some of that.  If you have the nerve to go inside a stranger’s home.”

            The traveler looked into the falling snow.  Looked hard.

            “Thank you,” said the traveler as he knelt and pushed into the warm little house.

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