Maple Jack's Arc

Chapter 12 of 14

The wind died before noon, and the cold came up from the ground. Maple Jack felt it climb his roots first, then his outer bark. A pale sheath began to form along his north side, a sleeve of frost wrapped in fine crystal that crept down toward his trunk. He had seen frost before. This one moved with purpose. It was inching toward his heartwood, where the small yellow spark lay curled against a folded scrap of blanket he kept tucked in the hollow, an old square of orange and yellow weave a child had once left at his roots. The blanket had held warmth around the spark all winter. Now the frost was past it, and only a thin band of living wood stood between the cold and his heart. He counted what he had left. Eleven red sparks in his south branches. One yellow spark, still not ripe. If the frost reached his heartwood, he would have to burn another red ember to drive it back, the way he had burned one against the cold imp. He did not want to lose another story. He thought of the children at the corner who had waited seven winters. Every red spark was one of them getting an answer. He pressed his bark tight and tried to push warmth outward into the frozen sleeve. The cold did not move. It thickened. A second crystal layer formed over the first, and the band of living wood narrowed to a finger's width. Maple Jack chose. He loosened one red spark from his south branches and pulled it inward, down through his trunk, to the place where the frost pressed hardest. The spark flared against the inner wall. The frozen sleeve cracked along its seam. Water ran down his bark in a thin line and froze again at his roots. The spark dimmed as it worked. It shrank to the size of a thumbnail, then to a coal, then to a small dim shape that looked almost like a creature holding a tiny book to its chest, reading by its own last light. The shape sat in the hollow beside the folded blanket scrap until its glow went out. Where it had burned, a black mark stayed on the inner wood. The frost pulled back from his heartwood. The yellow spark settled deeper into the blanket fold, warm again. Maple Jack counted his south branches. Ten red sparks now. He had spent one more story to keep the rest. He looked north across the field toward the yellow building two blocks south and felt the worn groove inside him where the Yellowknife mitten had lived, empty now, still shaped like the story it had held. Ten sparks left, and Canada Day was coming, and he did not know yet if ten would be enough.