The Path off the Mountain: A Fredrick Adventure

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.