George Angus, Tumblemoose Writer

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Francois grabbed one of his heavy flannel shirts and knelt down next to the boy.

He placed a tentative hand on the boy’s back.  It was cold and Aurora’s shivering resonated through Francois’ gentle touch.

“Aurora, my God.  You’re freezing.  Let’s get some clothes on you.”

With that, he scooped up the boy and placed him on the ramshackle bedding and fed Aurora’s arms through the woolen shirt.  Grey socks with red toes and heels were slid on and went up past the boy’s knees.  The shivering started to subside and Aurora looked up and with a half smile whispered.  “Thank you”.

Francois jerked back and blinked.  He could speak?  How was that possible?  It had been barely an hour since he had pulled the baby – now a boy – from the glowing orb.  Still reeling from the transformation from baby to boy in a matter of minutes, his head was spinning with questions.

“Aurora, can you understand everything I say?”

The boy responded with a slight nod, a lock of his long black hair falling over his eyes.

Francois let out a deep breath through his mouth and sat on the edge of the bed.  Head down, he was looking at his hands that hung lightly clasped between his knees.

He had always been simple, pragmatic.  This didn’t fit.  It just plain did not fit into what his life had told him thus far.  Life existed for him through the winters in this cabin tucked deep into the Alaskan wilderness.  Setting traps, walking the line, tanning skins that he would haul into Coldfoot in the spring.  Life as he knew it, as he remembered it, as he lived it.

***

“Francois!  Boy, come here!”

Gerrard Penkin could see the stick figure that was his son down at the creekside scooping up a bucket or two of the clear water that even in July would turn your hands pink and numb if you kept them in for too long.

The lanky teen turned and raised a hand, grabbed the old steel buckets and headed up the short trail to the cabin.  A flurry of dive bombing mosquitoes were happy to escort him up the path.

Gerrard settled on a large round of birch and pulled his well used pipe with the chewed mouthpiece out of his shirt pocket.

The young Francois huffed the buckets and sloshed them just outside the cabin door.  A sheen of sweat on his forehead threatened to gather and drip into his eye and he pulled his trusty kerchief from his back pocket, swiped it across his forehead and tucked it back home.

“I gotta get me a rest for a bit, boy.  Finish up splitting that pile of spruce.”

“Sure thing, Pop.”

Francois grabbed the splitting maul and swung his first arc.  The spruce was fairly seasoned and the round split evenly in two.  He continued working the wood pile, stopping now and then to swat one of the thirsty bloodsuckers that were a permanent buzzing shroud.  The sun beat down and was calmed by a cool breeze that trundled down from the glacier some twenty miles up the valley.

Francois split another round.  “Hey, Pop.  Later this afternoon you want to head up to the lake and try for some grayling?”  Silence returned his query.

“Pop?”

He dropped the ax and ran to where Gerrard sat, chin to chest, slumped over, pipe on the ground still leaking fragrant cherry/whiskey tobacco smoke.

Francois had never felt so helpless in his life.  He held his father’s lifeless body as the tears filled his eyes and blurred his vision, mindless of the incessant whining of the summer insects.

***

Gerrard Penkin had been a good man.  Wanting nothing less than the best that a simple life could offer for his only boy was his main mission in life.  Francois could sense this from the time he was knee high.  And now, at what Francois sensed was a juncture in his relatively uneventful life, his thoughts turned to his father.  He wondered what his Pop would have to say about all this.  What would he say, what would he do?

He looked up at Aurora.  If Aurora had noticed his slip into the past, he didn’t let on.

“I have so many questions.”

“Yes, you would.”  Aurora’s voice, while that of a six year old boy, had a timbre and a cadence that suggested something far exceeding his (at this moment) years.

“Who are you?  Why are you here?”

“All of your questions – and more – will be answered.  In time, Francois, in time.  Ordo ab chao – order from chaos.  This is important and explains many things.”  As he spoke, the spots on his upper chest luminesced  a soft but vibrant blue.

In spite of himself, Francois let out a little chuckle.  “I guess I kinda figured the answer would be something like that.  No matter right now.  What matters is that you’re here and you’re safe.  We’ll take this one step at a time I guess.”  He reached over and tassled the boy’s hair, at which Aurora sprung a grin from ear to ear.

“It’s late, Aurora.  Think you could sleep?”

Francois got his answer in the form of a big ol’ yawn.

He tucked Aurora under the beaver skin covers and grabbed a scratchy, thick wool blanket and took up residence in the overstuffed chair by the woodstove.  Tired as he was, he didn’t think sleep was in his immediate future.  He looked over and Aurora was already lightly snoring and deep in sleep.

That was the last thing Francois remembered before tumbling into an agitated sleep.  A sleep full of destruction, chaos and…

Hope.