Fredrick stepped over
sticks and stones as he made his way up the steep path through the
woods. He was staying with his grandparents in the mountains. His
grandparents on his mom's side lived in the desert, but his dad's
parents lived in a small two bedroom cabin towards the summit of a
small mountain. The mountain was just big enough to have a white cap
of snow on the peak most of the year. On this particular day, it was
hard to see the snow because the peak was concealed by thick fluffy
clouds.
Fredrick liked to hike up
the mountain path. He liked the way the air was somehow damp and
crisp at the same time regardless of the season. The coolness of the
mountain mist caressed his face as he pushed himself through the
thinning woods. The further he climbed, the more rare the trees
became. The higher he went, the rockier the soil became. Tree roots
protruded from the rocks and twisted around the boulders like the
long crooked fingers of a grumpy old man. Fredrick smiled at the
image his mind conjured in response to that characterization.
He paused for a moment and
sat on a particularly horizontal section of one of the larger
protruding roots. He breathed deeply against the burning in his lungs
as the aching in his calves slowly subsided. He looked back over the
path he had traveled. Due to his improved vantage point, the view was
quite spectacular. A bare dirt path weaved its way around dark green
fir trees and gray rocks and boulders. The mountain mist hung in the
air like thick pockets of cotton in some areas and a barely
discernible screen in others. A pair of cardinals chased each other
through a patch of fog leaving swirls of mist in their wakes.
A brisk breeze blew through
the trees and teased the young man's bushy brown hair. The burst of
cold air that rode the breeze caused a chill to run down Fredrick's
spine. He shivered against the chilly air and pushed himself up onto
his feet. He bounced on the balls of his feet testing for exhaustion
in his calves. He found that it had dissipated. He zipped up the
zipper on his hooded sweatshirt and pulled the hood over his head. He
was about to return to his grandparents' cabin when he looked up the
mountain and saw a trail he didn't recognize leading off the the
left.
“Where did that thing
come from?” he wondered aloud. “I don't think I have ever seen
that trail before.”
His curiosity got the best
of him and compelled him to investigate the new found pathway. He
walked up to the small trail head and pushed past the mountain shrubs
that stood on either side. He had only walked for a few feet when the
path before him was completely concealed by fog, allowing him to only
see the path a few feet in front of him at a time. He peered intently
into the fog searching for any clues as to his whereabouts or the
nature of the area around him. Suddenly, in a manner that seemed
almost like that of a swimmer breaking the surface of a lake from
underneath, Fredrick walked out of the fog into a clearing.
The young man stopped in
his tracks at what he saw before him. Somehow, he knew that he wasn't
on the mountain anymore. The clearing was bright and white. There
were no trees or boulders, no moss covered stone slabs or gnarly
finger like roots. There was only a large open-air white space that
seemed at once fluffy and smooth. It was as if the fog of the
mountain path had all settled in this one place and was thick enough
to conceal the very mountain on which it existed. Even weirder, was
the fact that Fredrick seemed to be on the fog, not in it. The sun
shone brightly above him instead of being blocked by the thick mist.
Fredrick saw movement out
of the corner of his eye. He turned towards the peripheral activity
that had gotten his attention and was shocked to see a person there
in front of him. This person was about six inches shorter than
Fredrick but was obviously older. He was fair skinned and had silver
hair that was combed carefully to the side. He wore a close-cut
silver goatee that was connected to his sideburns with a thin silver
chinstrap. His cheeks were rosy except rosy baby blue instead of rosy
pink. His eyes were the brightest most vibrant blue that Fredrick had
ever seen. Or maybe they were silver, or maybe violet. It was hard
for him to tell because every time the sun shone on the person's
face, the color shifted. One thing of which Fredrick could be certain
was this: the man's eyes were smiling every bit as much as his mouth.
The man who stood before
Fredrick wore a pair of blue pants and a white t-shirt with blue
rings at the collar and and the ends of both sleeves. His biceps
bulged against the sleeves of his shirt as he leaned on a long
handled tool that ended in a wide blade that ran perpendicular to the
handle. He stood with his left leg straight and the right leg crossed
on front left and resting on the toe of his light brown work boot.
“Hey,” the little man
greeted the teenager in a creamy tenor voice. “How's it going?”
“Um,” Fredrick replied
to some reservation. “Good I think. Can I ask you a question?”
“Sure,” the man
responded. “Is the question Where am I?
Or Who are you? Or
What are you doing here?”
“Yes,”
Fredrick responded with an embarrassed smile. “All three, actually.
If you don't mind.”
“Not
at all,” the man replied, cordially. “My name is Jack. I'm a
Snome, and you, my friend, are on my cloud.”
“I'm
on a cloud?” Fredrick asked with some concern.
“Yes,
you are,” Jack responded. “When the cloud gets low enough,
sometimes critters wander onto the cloud from the mountain. We've had
a mountain goat, a couple a rabbits, and any number of squirrels but
you're the first boy to find his way here.”
“So
this is your cloud?” the teenager asked.
“Well,
not exactly,” Jack clarified. “I'm the cloud foreman here so I'm
in charge of this cloud, but clouds don't really belong to anyone.”
Fredrick
nodded his head in understanding as more snomes appeared from behind
the fluffy pillars of cloud. They all wore similar clothes as Jack
except that some wore long sleeves while others wore short. Some of
them wore their hair in ponytails and were obviously women. The women
wore t-shirts with lighter blue rings at the collars and the cuffs.
They all carried tools of various sizes and types. Some carried the
same tool as Jack while others carried shovels. Another snome
appeared from behind a particularly large cloud formation driving
what appeared to be a small street sweeper of sorts. Her sandy blond
ponytail bounced in the cool air as she steered through the six
snomes before her.
“Wow,”
Fredrick gasped. “I didn't know there were so many of you guys.”
“Oh
yeah,” Jack replied matter-of-factly. “It takes a whole crew to
do what we do.”
With
that statement, the entire crew of snomes got right to work. It
didn't take Fredrick long to realized what Jack had been leaning on.
It was a long handled scraper. Jack and four other snomes started
scraping the surface of the cloud with their tools. As they scraped,
a little furrow of white powder built up on the blade. They scrapped
for a few minutes until there was a large windrow of powder.
Fredrick
walked forward and grabbed a pinch of the white powder between his
forefinger and thumb watching Jack all the while to make sure he
wasn't pushing any boundaries. The powder was cold and melted on his
finger tip in a matter of second.
“Why,
it's frost!” he exclaimed with surprise.
“Yes
it is,” Jack responded approvingly. He motioned for the other
snomes to carry on as he explained the situation to Fredrick. “See,
here's the deal. Moisture builds up in these clouds until they reach
their saturation point. Then it rains in the spring, summer and
autumn, and snows in the winter. Here over the mountain, we get
something a little different. Since it's colder up here all year
round, we get frost. If we let the frost get too thick the cloud will
sink out of the sky and become fog. Our job is to keep that from
happening.”
“Why
is that so important?” Fredrick asked. “I've seen fog before. It
doesn't seem that bad.”
“You
have seen fog before,” Jack confirmed. “The thing is that this
fog would be really thick. It's really important not to let it sink
too far down the mountain because it would be very dark cold and
dangerous. We don't want to allow an environment to exist that would
cause uncertainty for people. We lighten the load because the best
decisions are made with clarity and understanding.”
As Jack
and Fredrick talked, the equipment operator fired up the street
sweeper. Two large circular brushes on the front of the sweeper
turned in opposite directions towards the inside of the machine. She
guided the machine so one brush was on either side of the frosty
windrow. After a few passes, she backed the machine over to a hopper
towards the center of the cloud and opened the back door. A white
cube, about two feet on all sides, slide out of the body of the
sweeper and disappeared slowly into the hopper.
“What
is that thing?” Fredrick inquired of his short companion.
“That
is the diffuser,” he responded, kindly. “That cube of frost gets
ground up in the diffuser and blown out of the bottom of the cloud
through a series of fans. It will fall on the mountain as snow.
That's why so many mountains have snow on their peaks at all times.”
“Ahh,
I see,” Fredrick responded with more than a little satisfaction.
Suddenly,
there was a shout of alarm from the other side of the cloud. Every
snome in sight dropped their respective tools and circled around the
teenager in a defensive stance. Some had their fists up in front of
their faces while others opened and closed their hands at their
sides. Fredrick stood there in the middle of the circle staring at
Jack's back, anxiously awaiting an answer to the question he was too
afraid to verbalize. What is happening?
Suddenly,
three other creatures unlike any of the snomes stood between the
circle and the diffuser. They were a few inches taller than the
snomes but with slightly narrower shoulder. Their skin was gray and
their eyes were light gray with unusually small pupils. Their long
stringy hair framed their faces in a way that made their heads seem
disproportionately large. They grinned disturbingly creepy and
over-sized smiles, showing their brownish yellow teeth as they
snarled at the snomes.
“Didn't
realize it was 'bring your human to work day' today,” the one in the
middle grunted with a low gravely voice. “Who's your friend, Jack?”
“His
name is of no concern to you,” Jack responded with supreme
confidence. “Just know that he is our responsibility and we will do
what we must to return him safely to his home.” Jack reached into
his pocket and pulled out a large white marble. “Now I suggest you
leave before it's to late to do so with some dignity.”
“But
we haven't even gotten a chance to introduce ourselves to your
friend,” the creepy creature responded with apprehension at the
appearance of the marble. “It wouldn't be polite to allow us to
part as strangers.”
The
three creepers continued to move slowly towards the snome circle
despite Jacks warning. Jack held the marble in front of him and
nodded his head. The creepy intruders lunged towards the snomes with
a vengeance that left Fredrick so surprised he couldn't even cry out
in fear. The marble flashed a bright, white light that caused the
attackers to scream out in pain. The rest of the snomes sprang into
action, punching and kicking the intruders with skill that would
rival any professional fighter that the teenager had ever seen. The
creepy intruders did not defend themselves well at all. They each
took at least two simultaneous hits from the snomes and fell to the
ground, sliding away from Fredrick's defenders on the slick cloud
floor. They scrambled to their feet rubbing their bodies and their
eyes.
“Fine,”
their leader snarled through his nasty teeth. “We'll do this some
other time.”
With
that, the intruders turned and scurried away. They disappeared over
the edge of the cloud, with grunts of embarrassment and
disappointment. The snomes maintained their defensive formation for a
full minute. That minute that felt like an eternity to Fredrick as he
stood behind Jack, listening to the silence. The snomes broke
formation and returned to their work, apparently satisfied that the
threat was gone. Jack turned around and looked Fredrick over.
“What
were those?” Fredrick whispered in spite of himself.
“Those,
Fredrick, are foglins,” Jack responded with a sigh. “Foglins
exist only to try to keep us from doing our jobs. They show up to
fight us. They try to sabotage our equipment. Sometimes they come in
small numbers like today, sometimes there are more.”
“Why
do they want to keep you from doing your job?” Fredrick asked
apprehensively.
“Well,” Jack responded with some hesitation. “We work for the
Bringer of Truth and Light. They work for the lovers of darkness. Our
job is to remove one of the things that obstructs light. The people
they work for don't like that.”
“Why
would anyone love darkness?” the baffled teenager pressed. “That
just doesn't make any sense!”
“Well,
some people prefer darkness to light because the things they love to
do cannot be done where clarity and light are present,” Jack
explained. “Some people want to do evil things but light
illuminates that evil so it can be dealt with. That's why they prefer
darkness. Not only is darkness a good cover for their evil, the
fogginess of the situation makes it hard to find the light.
Sometimes, people want to stop doing evil but they can't find their
way out of the darkness because they can't see the way.”
“Those
foglins looked really strange,”Fredrick commented. “How did they
get that way?”
“That's
what happens when someone lives in darkness,” Jack answered. “Their
skin is pale and gray from the lack of sunshine. Their eyes are pale
because they don't use them very much. They spend so much time in
darkness that they are very sensitive to light. That's why the marble
hurt them so badly.”
“Yeah,”
Fredrick nodded, having forgotten the marble. “What is that thing,
anyway?”
“You
should know,” Jack responded. “The Star Keeper gave you one as
well. Yours just has a different purpose.”
“I
thought I recognized his handiwork,” Fredrick smiled. “So, once
someone spends so much time in darkness, can they ever get used to
the light again?”
“Oh,
sure,” Jack responded, reassuringly. “It's hard though, so a lot
of people don't. It takes a long time for their eyes to get used to
the light again and to clean up all the grime and dirt that only the
light shows. If they are willing to deal with the grime and can stand
the pain, they can live long happy lives in the light. It all depends
on what's important to them.”
Fredrick
nodded as he looked around. The floor of the cloud was mostly clear
since the frost had all been removed. Fredrick looked through the
floor and saw the mountain below him. The image was a little
distorted by the variances in the cloud but it was bright and clear.
The snomes were picking up their tools and putting them away
somewhere out of Fredrick's line of sight. Two snomes returned with a
large spool on a wheeled cart. They wheeled it over to the end of the
cloud from which Fredrick had entered and set up a seven foot tall
tripod with a pulley suspended from the top.
“What's
that for?” Fredrick asked with a confused look on his face.
“That's
for you,” Jack replied. “You can't exactly walk off the cloud
anymore. We lightened it enough to raise it quite a bit. We're going
to lower you back to the mountain using that rope. Don't worry.
You'll be safe.”
Fredrick nodded confidently as he made his way over to the tripod.
The snomes ran the rope through the pulley and tied the end into a
loop. The sweeper driver directed Fredrick to put his foot into the
loop.
“Now
just hold on here and we'll lower you down nice an easy,” she
instructed.
Fredrick
followed her instructions and was off the cloud before he even
realized he was. They swung him out over the edge of the cloud and
smoothly lowered him down. The breeze teased his hair as he made the
trip down. The air was warmer than it was earlier and the sun was
shining bright. Fredrick inhaled the deeply as he passed through the
thin mountain air. He thoroughly enjoyed his descent, but was
relieved to finally feel the firm mountain terrain under his feet.
He
stepped out of the rope and stood back as it began to retract slowly
back into the sky. Fredrick watched as it seemed to disappear into
nowhere. Fredrick smiled as he turned to the mountain path and began
the long walk back to his grandparent's cabin.
