The Warm Blanket and the Cold Step

Lior was halfway up the cloud stairs before they noticed the cold. The blanket under their arm was still warm. They had spread it all afternoon on the low sunny step, and the afternoon had soaked right into the wool. Then they had folded it in four and pinched the edges shut, so none of the warmth could climb out. Plum flew beside them, one slow wingbeat for every three steps. "Higher than last time," Lior said. Plum blinked her heavy lids and kept pace. The stairs went up in soft curls, like steam off a cup. Every step was a little thinner and a little colder than the one below it. Lior climbed anyway.

Plum had been waiting for this climb for a long while. Lior could tell by the way she drifted ahead and looked back, ahead and looked back. Down in the low clouds the air was mild and damp, and Plum's feathers always hung a bit flat there. Up high, she said once, frost settled on her brows like tiny white seeds, and her wings felt crisp and quick. But Lior's fingers went pink and stiff up high, and they always turned back at the ninth landing. Tonight the blanket was tucked against Lior's ribs, holding one whole afternoon inside it. "Keep going," Lior said. Plum's wingbeats sped up, just slightly.

At the ninth landing they stopped, the way they always did. Lior sat on the vapour step, which held them like a cushion of cool bread dough. The wind up here was not rough. It only moved past, patient, carrying little strings of mist along with it. Lior loosened one corner of the blanket. A breath of afternoon slipped out and warmed their chin, then thinned away into the dark. Plum tucked in beside them and pressed her warm shoulder against Lior's arm. Warm in the blanket, cold on the step. Lior counted the stairs still above them. Eleven. Then they stood up and climbed the tenth.

The last flight was the quietest place Lior had ever been. No birds. No far-off thunder grumbling below. Just the hush that comes when the air is thin and clean and very cold. Lior's breath went out in pale clouds and joined the kingdom. On the top step, frost had drawn feathery shapes along the edge, fine as whiskers. Plum landed and spread her toes in it and gave a small, pleased shiver. Her brow tufts were already stitched with white. Lior's fingers ached. The blanket was the only warm thing left in the world, and Lior was holding it with both arms, like something borrowed that had to go back.

Then Lior thought about what warm air does when it meets cold air, which is rise, and gather, and turn into weather. They knelt on the top step and opened the blanket wide. The afternoon came out all at once. It rolled up past their face, smelling faintly of sun-baked wool, and met the high cold, and did not disappear. It thickened. It curled. Little grains began to form in it, too small to see one at a time, bright only when they drifted by Plum's glowing edges. Plum lifted her head. Something tiny and cold landed on Lior's wrist and melted there. Then another on their ear.

It was snowing on the top step of the cloud kingdom. Not hard. The flakes came down the way sleep comes down, a few at first and then a slow steady many. Plum spread her wings all the way out and let them fill with white. Lior laughed once, and the laugh went up and became more snow. But the blanket in their hands was only a blanket now, empty of its afternoon, and the cold climbed in through Lior's sleeves. Plum saw. She shuffled close and lifted one wing like a small brown roof, and Lior leaned under it, into feathers that were warm all the way down.

So they traded, the way they had without saying so. Plum had her high cold step and her frost and her wings full of snow. Lior had the warm hollow under Plum's wing, which smelled of dust and rain and sleep. Lior spread the empty blanket over both their laps and let the flakes gather on it, and after a while there was enough to scoop up in two hands. It was feather-light and squeaked when they squeezed it. Warm in the blanket, cold on the step. Plum's eyes closed to two soft lines. Below them the whole kingdom lay in slow pale hills, taking the snow without a sound.

Lior watched the last of the afternoon come down. The flakes settled on the handrail, on the frost whiskers, on Plum's folded back, on the backs of Lior's own hands, and they stayed. Nothing melted up here. Nothing hurried. The stairs below filled in gently, step after step after step, until the edges went soft and the whole climb looked like something smoothed by a palm. Warm in the blanket, cold on the step. Lior's eyes were already mostly shut. Plum hummed low in her chest, the way she did at the end of things, and the snow kept on settling, quiet as a hand pulling a cover up.