SHANE JONES

 

THE GIRL WHO SMELLED OF HONEY AND SMOKE

 

began waking up before February each morning.  She'd crawl out of bed and walk through the darkness of the unfinished home and sit down at a wooden desk where she'd click on a small green lamp.  She'd read through the stacks of papers, the fragmented paragraphs, the half sentences and abandoned dialog, and finish these lost riddles to her liking.  A long time ago she showed Bianca the sun and yesterday she told Thaddeus to walk back to the house of a house a man wrongly accused of being February to ask more questions.  She supplied the blacksmiths with the tools to build a ship.  One by one, she revived the children buried underground after February had kidnapped them and she was the one who dropped the pieces of parchment from the sky that Thaddeus and the war effort collected.  It was February who messed everything up, dropping his own written parchments that only read: FEBRUARY AT THE EDGE OF TOWN to distract Thaddeus and the professor.  The girl who smelled of honey and smoke told the children nursery rhymes and supplied them with lanterns as her hands carved out the maze of tunnels. There, there, she said, hushing them to sleep under thick winter blankets, their bodies huddled against a curve in the tunnel. And deep inside their dreams she feed them all the images of a final war plan against February. There, there, she whispered, tucking the squares of parchments under their pillowed heads.

 

 

FEBRUARY RETURNS BACK HOME

 

February had been waiting in the woods before heading back home to the girl who smelled of honey and smoke.  He opened the door and handed her a sculpture of an owl he made from ice.  The girl who smelled of honey and smoke cried and gave February a hug.  She whispered in his ear that Thaddeus Lowe now believes in spring and given time it will infect the entire town.

 

-We can finally live in peace, she said.

 

It was the perfect response to the war against him.  February had suffered through their fake smiling faces, water troth attacks, sticks thrown at the sky, prayers and war hymns.  He had seen them covered with moss and endless layers of gray.  He had seen them saddened with over nine hundred days of February and he had been blamed for it all.

 

-Very well then, said February.  We can now live in peace.  And he sat down in a wooded rocking chair and folded his hands on his lap.