Snow Disguises.

A winter freeze was unusual at that time of year. By the end of March the world around Xavier normally felt like springtime. Not so that day. For the last two weeks his world had been frozen. The snow wouldn't stop!

Icicles hung from the branches that used to hold birds. He missed the feathers, the chirping, and the movement. The tall pines were weighed down by snow, and the sky that met their forever stretching branches was heavy with impending snow. The world was an enormous ball of waiting. And here he was, waiting for the world to explode. Waiting. Waiting.

Everything was still. Even him. The calm before the storm.

"Let's go, Xavi!" "C'mon! Come with us!" "Get up!" The cacophony of voices shattered his thoughts, but he ignored his sisters as they rushed out of the house. He preferred to watch from the window.

The drifts of snow floated in front of the glass, tempting him with thoughts of traveling through a wasteland. He wanted to go there. As long as it was somewhere dry, like the Sahara Desert. No water! The water here was frozen in the air, drifting down in taunting blasts, laughing at his fear. It was like water was hiding, disguised as an angel in white. Water frozen in the sky.

Frozen in time. He stepped out on the front porch, sitting down for a minute, though he knew soon the cold would seep through his long johns and his winter pants. He rolled up snowballs and piled them next to him. He wasn't going to lose another family snowball championship game. Last time it wasn't fair. His sister Liz hit him in the face with one of her snowballs. Even his gloved hands were starting to feel the bite as his pile of ammunition grew. He walked around back and watched his sisters glide out onto the frozen lake that rested between their property and the neighbors', who sometimes let them have hot chocolate after racing around in the cold. He took a step back, even though he was more than twenty feet away from the edge of the bank. There might be sinkholes or something, and he doesn't want to risk getting closer. It wasn't a boat this time, but his own feet would be even worse. Sinking down under the icy water. It was frozen, they told him, but that doesn't mean that there couldn't be some thin spots.

His three sisters are always bugging him about it. "You can swim if you really try!" "You're such a baby!" "You just have to hold your breath, just like you would on land." And he had tried, really. He had learned to hold his breath until he was blue in the face, but nothing was successful. He threw his head back, mesmerized by the frantic trees above him. Their leaves rustled and jumped from their home in the branches, floating until they twirled to the ground. Then they chased each other in little tornadoes. Xavier sighed.

The nagging continued in his head, echoing what his sisters had said a million times. "It's frozen, Xavi!" "It's just the same as land." It was NOT. His breath got faster as he imagined the giant gaping flood of water that would hover below his feet if he stepped on that ice, just waiting to burst over his body. He was going to die by drowning. Somehow. Some way. He just knew it. He sat down on a pile of dead grass and snow, curling his arms around his knees. His sisters played for what seems like an eternity, then they scurried back into the house. In the quiet, Xavier wondered. His gaze fell to a figure on the ice, farther out than his sisters had been playing. At first it looked like a shadow or a tree branch, but then it moved. He saw a head and two ears. He stood up and took another step closer. Squinting didn't help, so he put his gloved hands around his eyes, like binoculars to block out the light. It was not standing, but he was pretty sure it was a deer. A little fawn, probably just recently born.

"Hello," he whispered, almost to himself. "I've got you. You won't get lost." He inched his feet toward the lake, leaving long, dragging tracks in the snow behind him. Nobody else was coming. He closed his eyes against the fear that pounded in his heart as he came right up to the edge. He took a deep breath, but it seemed like his heart beat faster. "I can do this. It's just like walking on land," he muttered. The fathoms of water splashed into his mind and he opened his eyes. "No!" This yell was loud enough that the deer perked up its head and tried to stand, unsuccessfully. It slipped and Xavier was certain that he heard a crack. The ice was breaking!

He had to get out there. But he couldn't. "It's just like land. Just like land. Just like land." With each sentence he took one step. He got close enough to the deer to see it breathing, its eyes wide. The crack extended behind the fawn, so Xavier got on his hands and knees. "It's alright. It's alright." He was talking to himself as much as the deer now. He knew enough to move slowly, and the deer was too tired to fight. The boy reached out, but couldn't quite make it to the fawn. He had to slide forward just a little bit more. He lay on his stomach, closing his eyes for a minute, willing himself not to scream in terror. Something touched his hand. It was the deer's nose! He reached just far enough to grab one of the front legs of the fawn, then slid back. It wouldn't work that way, so he grabbed with both hands and pulled while he sat back up to a crawling position. Then he lay flat on his stomach again and did the same thing. He expected at any moment for the ice to break and swallow him whole, but soon, the cheering voices of his sisters floated from the bank behind him. "You got this, Xavi!" "Keep going!"

A few minutes later, he collapsed on the snow, face down. The fawn shook itself off and bounded farther into the woods, where its mom was waiting. "It's almost springtime," he mumbled to himself. Yet he was never so happy to have a face full of snow.