One Warm Piece
Nils heard a hum, low and round, like breath blown over a bottle. It came up the cloud stairs and passed him, warm on one cheek. Fern walked close beside him, her spines tipped green, her nose down. She had not said much yet. The step under them was pale and cool, like a windowsill in the morning. Nils sat down on it, and Fern sat too, a small grey-brown shape beside his knee. The hum came again and went by. Nils watched the mist turn slowly, the way milk turns in tea, and felt the cold step through his trousers.
Fern tucked her feet under her. Nils felt her shiver, small as a leaf tapping a window. He looked along the stair at the sky. Far off, one low cloud still held the last of the afternoon, gold along its edge. Nils stood and went to it and laid both hands flat against its side. It was warm as bread. He pulled away a soft piece, no bigger than a cushion, and carried it back with his arms around it. He set it down beside Fern. "One warm piece at a time, Fern," he said.
Fern put one paw on the cushion and left it there. Then she followed him up three more steps, nearer than before. The wind here combed through a thin bank of cloud and left long threads behind, like wool caught on a fence. Nils gathered the threads in loops around his elbow. They were warm in the middle and cool at the ends, and they smelled of rain that had not fallen yet. He carried the loops back and tucked them under the first piece. The hum went by again, lower now, like something turning over in its sleep.
Higher up, a step curved like the inside of a bowl. Nils put his hand in it and found the heat the sun had left there, sitting still. He took off his jumper and swept it through the bowl the way you catch a moth, and the warmth went in and stayed. He folded the jumper around it and tucked it with the rest. The air on his bare arms was cool, but not unkind. Fern came and stood on his foot, which he decided to allow. "One warm piece at a time, Fern," he said.
Fern went off on her own then, into the mist, and Nils let her go. He heard small sounds: a scuffle, a push, a long slow roll. Then Fern came back, walking backwards, nudging a round puff of cloud with her nose. It was the warmest thing yet. It had been sitting under a star all evening, she said, and stars are warmer than they look. Her voice was quiet and a little surprised to be out. Nils made room for the puff in the middle of the pile. "That one is the best," he said, and meant it.
They pressed the pieces together into a nest with a hollow in the middle. The nest leaned and slumped and let the cold slide in at one side. Nils tried again. He laid the wind-wool round the outside like a rim, the mist cushion at the foot, and the star-puff where their heads would go. Still the hollow stayed too wide and too cool. Nils looked at it for a long time. Then he climbed in and lay down, and patted the space beside him, and Fern climbed in too, and the hollow was exactly full.
The cold went out of the nest the way it goes out of a room when the door is shut. Nils could feel Fern's side rising and falling against his arm, warm through her mossy spines. Below them the kingdom turned slowly, stair after stair of pale vapour, and the hum came up and settled near their feet like a cat. Nils counted the pieces without meaning to. Mist, wool, bowl-warmth, star-puff, Fern, himself. "One warm piece at a time, Fern," he said, and she gave a sleepy sound that could have been yes.
Fern's paw came out from under her and lay in his open hand, small and dry and surprisingly warm. Nils closed his fingers round it, gently, the way you hold a bird you are putting back. The threads of wind-wool stirred and went still. Far below, the night went on turning, and the stairs stood quiet in their pale light. Nils meant to watch one more star rise over the edge of the cloud. His eyes shut before it came. Somewhere under them both, the hum went on, soft and warm, like something breathing in its sleep.
