Thaddeus
They held hands. They formed
The priests walked down the
Thaddeus, Bianca, and Selah painted
Thaddeus
Bianca
Thaddeus was buying apples when
Professor
Thaddeus
Bianca
Thaddeus
Caldor Clemens
Six Reports from the Priests
When Thaddeus arrived home
Bianca whispers into the bath water.
Thaddeus tugs on his beard.
Thaddeus
Thaddeus to Bianca
Questions
Selah and Thaddeus don’t sleep
The Catalog of Missing Children
Caldor Clemens
The first attack on February
Selah
Scraps of Parchment Found Under Selah’s Pillow
Thaddeus
Caldor Clemens
Orange Bird Mask
Thaddeus
They find Bianca dead on
The Professor’s plan for light
When Thaddeus went back into
List Written by February and Carried in February’s Corduroy Coat Pocket
Thaddeus
Bianca
Thaddeus curled himself around the
Thaddeus
War Member Six (Green Bird Mask)
Thaddeus
Short List Found in February’s Back Pocket
Selah
Thaddeus
It continued snowing and the
Sculptor
Caldor Clemens gave a shirtless
Thaddeus and the Professor spent
List Found in February’s Cottage Detailing Possible Cures for February
Thaddeus tied a wool scarf
Back in town the blacksmiths
Beekeeper
That night Caldor Clemens had
List of Artists Who Created Fantasy Worlds to Try and Cure Bouts of Sadness
Like every other house in
Bianca
Thaddeus
Bianca
War Effort Member Number One (Blue Bird Mask)
Thaddeus
War Effort Member Number Two (Missing His Bird Mask)
War Effort Member Number Three (Purple Bird Mask)
The Professor’s Report on Thaddeus Lowe
Bianca
Thaddeus
The Girl Who Smells Of Honey And Smoke
Note Written by February
After Thaddeus called off all
Thaddeus dreamed and ignored everyone
The girl who smelled of honey and smoke
Thaddeus walked back through the
The Girl who smelled of honey and smoke
Thaddeus called a meeting with the War Effort.
That night everyone ate dinner
Later that same day the
Bianca began at the edge
Six Reports From The Priests
The Girl Who Smelled of Honey and Smoke
Thaddeus wore the light box
The top of the balloon
The Girl Who Smells Of Honey And Smoke Creates New Town
Scraps of Parchment Written by the Girl Who Smells of Honey and Smoke
February
Thaddeus
Downstairs, the girl who smells
Note Found in February’s Pocket by The Girl Who Smells of Honey and Smoke
Thaddeus moved from the body
The girl who smelled of honey and smoke
Thaddeus
The author would like to thank the following journals and editors where selections of this novel first appeared: Lamination Colony, Monkeybicycle, Thieves Jargon, My Name Is Mud, Robot Melon, Sir!, Snow Monkey, and Caketrain. A special thanks to Blake Butler, Jesse Ball, Matthew Simmons, and Kathryn Regina. Very special thanks to Adam Robinson.
For Melanie
We sat on the hill. We watched the flames inside the balloons heat the fabric to neon colors. The children played Prediction.
They pointed to empty holes in the sky and waited. Sometimes all the balloons lit up at once and produced the nightly umbrella effect over the town beneath whose buildings were filling with the sadness of February.
Nights like this will soon die, Selah whispered in my ear.
Days became cooler, clouds thickened. We sat on the hill. We watched the flames inside the balloons heat the fabric to neon colors.
Nights like this will soon die, said Bianca. She ran from the woods where she saw three children twisting the heads of owls.
Nights like this will soon die, said the butchers, marching down the hill.
We sat there for the last time to watch the balloons, the neon colors stitched in our minds.
Pigs shrieked and windows shattered across the town. A snout, massive and pink, traced the side of a balloon in its arc. The fabric stretched around the dark nostrils and stopped just before tearing, and it stayed there.
Still, the children stood in a line with their lanterns raised to watch the first snowfall of February cover the crop fields.
Selah lowered her head. Selah folded her hands in her lap. Selah looked at the backs of the children’s heads and saw ice form knots in their hair.
We can only pray, whispered Selah.
I looked at Selah and remembered the dandelions stuck in her teeth. I thought of a burning sun, an iceberg melting in her folded hands.
We look at the sky for hours. There are two suns in the sky. One sun has June written on it and the other sun says July.
The Professor makes a calendar with these two seasons. The vines and flowers from the sky cover the ground. The flowers are the size of our heads. The children kick them around. The crop fields stretch towards the sky. It’s so hot. My feet sink into the warm mud. The idea of February becomes erased from our thoughts. The Solution begins construction on new balloons. A baby is crying. More than one baby is crying. Dozens of naked babies with flowers wrapped around their throats are walking from the horizon towards us. They scream and huge white flowers unfold from their little mouths and float like balloons up into the sky.
“The most serious charge which can be brought against New England is not Puritanism but February.”
Joseph Wood Krutch, The Twelve Seasons
a novel by Shane Jones
HAMISH HAMILTON
an imprint of
PENGUIN BOOKS
HAMISH HAMILTON
Published by the Penguin Group
Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England
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Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England
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First published in the United States of America by Publishing Genius Press 2009
First published in Great Britain by Hamish Hamilton 2010
Copyright © Shane Jones, 2009
All rights reserved
The moral right of the author has been asserted
This book is a work of fiction and all details contained in it are drawn from the author’s imagination. Nothing should be construed as real.
Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser
ISBN: 978-0-141-95847-7
dozens of circles around their deflated smoldering balloons. Balloons silken globes the colors magenta grass green and sky blue were mud strewn wet with holy water and burned black through the stitching.
Bianca said, I don’t understand.
Thaddeus said, I don’t either.
Is this February’s doing, she said.
Maybe, said Thaddeus who looked up at the sky.
A scroll of parchment was nailed to an oak tree, calling for the end of all things that could fly. Everyone in town gathered around to read it. Trumpets moaned from the woods. Birds dropped from branches. The priests walked through town swinging axes. Bianca clutched Thaddeus’s leg and he picked her up under the arms and told her to hold him like a baby tree around the neck and Thaddeus ran.
Back outside their home, the balloons were spread out on the ground. Baskets hacked by axes. The priests dipped their lanterns into the fabric of the balloons.
Thaddeus, Selah, and Bianca and others from town formed a circle by holding hands.
February, they repeated until it became a chant. Until they all imagined a little tree sprouting through the center of their burning balloon.
hill and into town where they stopped at the town school and the town library. They confiscated textbooks, tore out pages about birds, flying machines, Zeppelins, witches on brooms, balloons, kites, winged mythical creatures. They crumpled up paper airplanes the children had folded, and they dumped the pages into a burning pit in the woods.
The priests sank their rusty spiked shovels into the mound of dirt and refilled the hole. Some of the priests felt tears roll down their cheeks but didn’t feel sadness. Others forced their minds to unravel the memory of wind.
They nailed a second scroll of parchment to a second oak tree. It stated that all things possessing the ability to fly had been destroyed. It said that no one living in the town should speak of flight ever again.
It was signed, February.
balloons everywhere they could. They pulled up floorboards and painted rows of balloons onto the dusty oak. Bianca drew tiny balloons on the bottoms of tea cups. Behind the bathroom mirror, under the kitchen table, and on the inside cabinet doors, balloons appeared. And then Selah painted an intricate intertwining of kites on Bianca’s hands and wrists, the tails extending up her forearms and around her shoulders.
How long will February last, Bianca asked, stretching her hands out to her mother who was blowing on her arms.
I really have no idea, said Thaddeus who watched the snow fall outside the kitchen window.
In the distance, the snow formed into mountains on top of mountains.
Finished, her mother said. You will have to wear long sleeves from now on. But you’ll never forget flight. You can wear beautiful dresses – that’s what you can wear.
Bianca studied her arms. The kites were yellow with black tails. The color melted into her skin. A breeze blew over the fresh ink and through her hair.
I kept a kite hidden in my workshop where the priests couldn’t find it. I unfolded the kite from its dusty box and told Bianca she could fly it for a few minutes. I tried to see if the priests were in the woods but only saw owls side-stepping through the snow.
I said to try again after the kite failed to take off. A hand pushed the kite to the ground. She tried a few more times and the kite slammed downward. I saw a cloud shaped like a hand. I thought of Bianca and her happiness like bricks in mud.
It’s February, said Bianca.
I said, I’m sorry this didn’t work out. We can try again.
What’s the point, she said. It’s the end of flight. It’s February.