The snowflakes were so beautiful. Round and round they swirled, in and out of his head. He took a deep breath and thousands of crystalline daggers stabbed at his lungs. He shook himself and the world steadied. His exhaled breath hung in front of his face like ejected ectoplasm.
He laughed and swatted the ghostly cloud away. My better self, he thought. No, Mary is my better self. He fumbled inside the fur-lined jacket and withdrew the diary. With shaking hands he gripped the stub of a pencil and began to write.
It’s no good, Mary. We made it out of Point Bristol okay, but it was too late. Jack was singing at the top of his lungs and the rest of us thought it was funny. All I could think was getting back to camp. Then halfway back, Mike threw up all over the plane and it quit being funny.
I kept hoping it was just bad booze, but when I heard the death rattle in Jack’s throat I knew it was all over. I’d heard that sound too many times before. Somehow I managed to get the plane back, though not in one piece, and I buried them. I did the Christian thing and gave them a permanent testament, but there’s nobody to do the same for me. I hope you get this Mary, because my last thoughts were of you.
Almost as an afterthought he added, tell Ned Duffy he was right.
The pencil fell from his hand and sank into the snow. All this snow is burning me, he thought. It’s burning me alive. He forced himself to move forward, staggering to the wreckage of the plane. Not a bad landing, he thought, considering the undercarriage was ripped away. He rummaged inside the cockpit and retrieved a tin box. Thrusting the diary inside took all his strength and he fell heavily against the side of the plane. That’s when he saw her.
She was standing at the edge of the clearing they used as a makeshift runway. At first she was hard to see in the shadows. Then she stepped forward and smiled. He couldn’t take his eyes off her. Her dress was long and flowing like a ball gown. The matte black fabric set off the sparkling jet of her luxuriant hair that cascaded almost to her knees.
You’re so beautiful, he thought, and found himself irresistibly drawn forward. He felt on fire with a heat indistinguishable from lust. He floated toward her and just as he reached her outstretched arms he hesitantly looked down. How had he managed to cross the clearing without making a single mark in the snow?