Frozen in Neverland
Peter keeps the ice. He’s young, his back doesn’t yet crack when he wakes in fading starlight. His feet are light, they barely mark the thin shroud of snow. He glides across the milky surface, shovel in hand scraping the hard pebbles of frost away. He counts the stars as they wink away one by one. The ice is perfect—cold and empty.
He sucks in the stillness, lungs stretching wide. The air tastes of iron and brittle earth. He’d like to keep it this way, unmarred; half silver shadows, half sparkling light. But he’s only one boy, shoulders narrow beneath a long coat.
When the sun cracks gold across the horizon, he goes to fetch the others, spying them through the trees. His wanderers. His lost ones. Red cheeks and white breath. They’ve assembled in a disorderly regiment, boots munching the frost-crusted grass. Yawns open deep caves in their throats. Their voices are sleep scratched and hushed. Their scarves dangle in poorly knotted nooses.
Peter packs a globe of snow in his bare hand, letting it fly with a whistle. It catches a freckled boy in the shoulder. He jumps and shouts, boney finger finding Peter amongst the bare winter branches. The children swell together like a cresting wave and break.
The game has begun.
*
Peter leads them to the ice. They clamber up drifts and tumble down, leaving empty graves in the snow before they move on in one solid flock. On first sight, the sun off the frozen glass blinds them. They stumble to a halt, rubbing white spots from their eyes. For a moment, they seem to teeter, glancing behind at the trail already dissolving beneath the clear and distant sky.
Another whistle breaks the spell. Peter plucks his fingers from his teeth and strides forward. The children start slowly after, gathering speed as they go until a great avalanche of elbows, knees and flapping coats skims down the last slope, hopping to tug off stubborn boots and lash on freshly sharpened skates.
The rules of the game are unspoken and few. Time is not kept. A goal is met with a wild chorus from all players. They rollick back and forth, flying on thin blades that never seem to falter. The great clatter and clamor echoes unchallenged over the empty snows, as if they are the only creatures living in the frozen shafts of winter sun.
Peter does not play. He stands at the center line, boots sinking into crystal snow. At every teeth-crunching turn, every unleashed stride, every taken chance and near calamity, he cheers until his voice is hoarse and old. And if his toes creep a little closer to the ice, he’s not to blame. He keeps the ice, scraping away the scars left by the others, but the ice is not his.
The game hurtles forward. It grows wilder. Thunder drums in their ears. Hungry lungs press against their ribs. Peter reminds them that the days are short, but they pretend not to hear. They believe the sun will hang suspended for them. That their will is enough to keep the game from ending. Peter sighs, but he doesn’t argue. He knows what it is to believe. So, the children play, while the wind works cracks into their lips and leaves needles tingling in their fingers. They play, and bright blood stains the ice.
Winter’s long night comes down. Neither Peter nor the children can stop such things. Darkness laces the sky and with a last whistle, Peter draws them from the ice. Their legs jelly as they hunt out abandoned boots, the gravity of frozen earth tugs them wrong after the loose fingers of frozen water. Peter waits for them to assemble, not so rosy and tender as they came, but there’s something new in their eyes—a sharpness that the game always leaves.
They look to Peter with new, hungry eyes and he shakes his head. He’s led them as far as he may. He waits for protests, watches one or two cock their heads toward the purpling horizon, wondering what night will bring to the ice. But their curiosity flickers and does not hold.
Peter grows impatient. The ice is rough and scored; his fingers flex, wanting his shovel and the time to put it right. To make it gleam again. He wheels his arms as if the children are crows to be scattered away. He says nothing about where to go from here. And he does not weep, though his throat feels sore as it hasn’t before in the clean, dry air.
The children march on alone. Not the way they came. That trail has melted and vanished.
Only Peter remains, silhouetted in a final burst of winter sun, the furrowed ice at his back waiting for his care and the ones who will come tomorrow.
*
Peter is an old man now. He wakes earlier, while the stars are still diamond sharp. He needs the extra time to work the shovel and broom, to make the trek through the trees to fetch the waiting children. They come as they always have, whooping and stomping, blade-bright creatures.
Peter envies them now with the dull ache of a weathered tree. He hopes soon one will refuse to cross the ice as he once did. Then Peter will pass his shovel to young, unbent hands. He’ll cut grooves of his own, savor the sting on his cheeks and feel thunder in his chest again. He’ll be young for just a moment, and he’ll wonder why he ever stayed to see the stars.
Then he’ll remember, someone must keep the ice. Peter will turn and raise a hand to the willowy figure waiting at the center line. The boy will not answer, just as Peter never answered. But Peter knows he’ll remember.
With a final sweep of his eyes over the fragile surface, Peter will go. And someone new will scour his blood away with the melting ice.
B. B. Garin is a writer living in Buffalo, NY. Her work has appeared in Hawai’i Pacific Review, Westchester Review, Luna Station Quarterly, and more. She is currently a guest editor for The Masters Review and CRAFT Literary. She earned a B.F.A. in Writing, Literature, and Publishing from Emerson College, and continues to improve her craft at GrubStreet Writing Center, where she has developed several short fiction pieces, as well as two novels.