Ordinary Time: A Short Story for Winter

Cuerpo was required to stay in the Valley, pending a doctor’s examination.

Sukay was required to leave the Valley on the next available transport.

And my report said something I’d never seen before.

My report said that I was allowed to choose.

I could choose whether to stay in the Valley, or leave on the next available transport.

I could stay with Cuerpo, someone I loved, in the Valley that was all I knew, and forage, and search for firewood, and bear witness to death. Or I could get on the train with Sukay, whom I loved, and go somewhere else, somewhere I didn’t know, to live a way of life I’d forgotten if I ever knew it. Maybe all my hope would be in vain. Maybe there’d be nothing but death once we left the Valley, and maybe that would be mercy.

The next available transport left the next day. That was all the time I had to choose—everything I knew, or something that might be mercy.

Cuerpo said he’d take me to see the train, before I made up my mind.

We climbed the hill and the old stairs, halfway down the cliff face before the flood plain of the river we couldn’t see. Just above the train tracks, we found a tree to sit under—a living tree. It hadn’t quite been stripped by the foragers, yet. There were reddish buds on the upper branches.

Cuerpo reached for my hand.

I saw that he had the first markings of contamination sickness—the white rash forming on his wrists. I assumed he was going to ask me to stay with him, to bear witness when the time came, but he didn’t say anything. We waited in silence, under the branches, under the fog, holding hands in the warm rain.

Just as the train entered the Valley through the gate, I felt something I had forgotten—wind. Wind was blowing on me from somewhere across the river. And then, just for a second, a miracle.

The fog lifted.

It might have been just my imagination, except that this was more vivid than I’d ever imagined. This was more brilliant than any of the faded memories of life before the Winter. I could see beyond the orange fence. Sukay was right and Cuerpo was wrong. The fog did not cover the whole earth. I saw green—bright leaves of healthy plants, on the top of the cliffs at the other side of the river. I saw grass. I saw trees that no foragers had stripped. Above them, I saw a few pure white clouds in a blue sky.

I wondered why anyone had ever said that blue and green did not match– that they didn’t look beautiful side by side. Blue and green were perfect together. Blue and green were the most wondrous colors God had ever created, the most wondrous things that could ever be. Blue was the color of a sky unmarred by contaminated fog. Green was the color of spring and summer and life, of everything that came after the Winter. Green was the color of Ordinary Time, and there could never be anything in this world more beautiful than Ordinary Time.

Then the fog was back again.

Cuerpo wasn’t holding my hand– he was nowhere to be found.

I didn’t realize what he’d done for me, until after the train thundered past.

He had made up my mind.

There was no reason to stay.

Sukay and I left the Valley the next day.

And I send back this letter, for anyone who cares to read it. Help is coming, to take you to safety, as quick as it can. The Valley is all shadow and death, but the Valley is not all there is left. The Winter does not cover the whole earth. You will see the sun again. There is such a thing as blue and green, as spring and summer, fasts and feasts and Ordinary Time.

Soon and very soon, you will see Spring.