Nipping at Your Nose

"Alec, put your hat on!" his mother shouts from the kitchen. "You don't want Jack Frost nipping at your nose. You'll get sick."

9-year-old Alec rolls his eyes, but stuffs his beanie on his head, red like Santa's hat.

His mother comes from the kitchen, wiping her hands with a towel, a small frown on her face and brows furrowed. "Sweetheart, hold still," she says, throwing the towel over her shoulder before reaching to fix his hat.

"Mom," he whines.

"I just don't want you getting sick," she tells him, giving him a sterner look. "Just- make sure you go directly to your friends' houses, to the park, and back home. Okay? People have been talking, and some odd folks have come through town."

Alec gives his mom a look. "They're tourists, Mama. Or just coming through. Like the people in the movies, remember? I'll be back before dark, like always." He looks over his shoulder out the door before looking up at her. "Can I go now? We're losing daylight."

She sighs deeply before kissing the top of his head. "Yes, yes, okay, just- be safe? And remember-"

"Always look before you leap," Alec finishes, knowing the advice well. She'd explained it to him a dozen times over.

He steps outside, fresh snow coating the streets and yards. Alec smiles, closing his eyes as he breathes in the crisp winter air. He opens them again and, with satisfaction, breathes out, a pleasant smile on the little boy's face.

Alec steps out, shutting the door behind him, new boots sinking into the snow as he comes down the steps.

The park was maybe 10 minutes away. He'd grab Sydney and Grace on the way. It'd be fun. It even looked like this was the packing kind of snow his mom told him about. Maybe they'd build snowmen or have a snowball fight. He'd never been able to before.

Alec fidgets with his coat as he passes by Holly and Sally, two of his neighbors, talking in the other yard beside his house.

"Yeah, even my boss said it would be a work-from-home day with all the surprise snow," Holly says, smiling as she looks around cheerfully at the pristine, white snow. "Maybe we'll be lucky this year; have a white Christmas, like the ones we used to have."

Sally rolls her eyes, boot on the head of a shovel and forearms lazing over the handle, shovelhead half-buried in snow. "Christmas is a week away, Hols; it'll probably melt by then. It's been happening all winter. It gets cold, snows a little, then it gets warmer, and it all melts again."

Holly pouts a little, hands on her hips. "That's not what the weather lady says. It's supposed to stay below freezing all week."

Sally sighs and shakes her head, straightening as she picks her shovel up again. "Right, and weather reports are never wrong," she says, tone dripping in sarcasm.

"Hi, Ms. Holly, Sally," he says with a bright smile and wave as he passes them.

"Hey, Alec, stay safe," Sally says, giving him a nod as Holly waves enthusiastically.

"Happy Holidays! Enjoy the snow!" Holly says after him.

"I will!" Alec shouts back with a wide grin as he reaches his gate. He waves to them, one hand on the gate, before turning.

He pauses as he turns around to face his gate when he sees a man, tall and broad, in a heavy jacket that goes past his knees. Alec frowns a little, tilting his head and making a little face. This guy was new. Maybe a tourist or something, one of the odd people his mom mentioned. Did he not know where he was standing? That was a road. The snow covered it some, but Alec could still see the lines.

The coat is gray, probably wool or something. Alec's mom liked wool. It looked nice, fancy even. His scarf was green and gray, wrapped around his neck like he knew what he was doing with it. Frayed jeans and black boots, worn around the soles. He looked clean, though, his clothes well cared for. The man's head was tilted up, and if Alec had to guess, he'd have said the man was frowning at the sky, as he stood in the middle of the road, hands shoved into his pockets.

If all that wasn't enough, the guy was as pale as snow, not even rosy cheeks like Snow White. Just… pale, like he didn't have any blood, or maybe he just didn't get cold. Alec had heard of some folks who were like that. His hair was odd too. It was fluffy, like the cumulus clouds Alec learned about in school, but it was sort of gray, but also white, like a storm cloud almost. The white was concentrated closer to the scalp and to the top of his head, while the grey was everywhere else.

It kind of looked like highlights, the type Ms. Holly had but grey instead of pastel yellow, or maybe the man just had weird hair like Jeremy from school, Alec thought. Jeremy's hair had white streaks; he said it was from getting struck by lightning. But Alec doesn't believe him; he'd looked it up, and lightning does it to all the hair, not just some parts. He'd asked his mom, and she'd said it might just be from something he got from his parents or a vitamin deficiency, joking he was too young for it to be stress. Alec didn't get the joke, but definitely didn't like it when his mom patted him on his head and said he'd "get it when he was older."

Alec frowns a little deeper at the sight of the man as he steps through the gate. He closes it behind him, letting the latch fall into place, before he speaks up. "Hey, mister!" he says.

The man turns his head, tilting it slightly, to look over at the kid, slow and steady, eyes blue like the glaciers Alec had seen in some old science books. The man raises an eyebrow—Alec almost didn't see it with how pale it was. His mouth didn't change, just stayed a flat little line, like he'd forgotten how to move it.

Alec points. "You're standing in the middle of the road. Cars could come," the little boy sounding almost worried about the stranger.

The man looks down, like he'd forgotten he was there. He nods a little at Alec in appreciation before stepping onto the sidewalk opposite Alec, and the young boy continues on his merry way to fetch his friends and go to the park. Alec didn't think of it again.

~~~~

The man stays there, staring at the sky for a moment longer, before walking in the opposite direction, head down and hands still in his pockets.

His boots sink into the snow as the man watches the sidewalk in front of him. Voices from across the street swirl in his ears, pulling him to look over despite the young man knowing no one is there—merely recent depressions where the two women from earlier had been standing. One had gone back inside while the other shoveled snow from the concrete path from the door to the gate.

The words snag on themselves as they come through, like the poorly tuned radio he and his mother listened to in the attic. The feeling of numbness curling his ears wasn't quite cold, but closer to a hiss of white between stations, snow filling the emptiness. "Christ-mas," came through, not fully there, but he knew well enough what it was trying to say. Then the garbled "weath~ ~dy". It was a bit harder to guess, but he assumed it was about a reporter on the television.

The man glances up despite himself, his frown deepening as he sees frost outlines of the women—Holly's hands still propped on her hips and Sally lounging on her shovel —every fold of their coats and stitch of movement traced in ice as Alec passed by. They were reminiscent of the ghost apples the man remembered from his grandparents' orchard as a kid: the fruit leaving behind a hollow shell of frost, frozen in its shape. Older echoes had frost-lace gathered over them, but these were fresh, clean. A smooth shell.

For a half second, beneath Holly's frost-shell, something older tries to surface; it's not her voice or her shape. Frost-lace begins to gather, curling up from the base into the start of a trunk. He doesn't let it finish forming.

The man shakes the images from his head, chin dropping, before glancing back at the disappearing figure of Alec as he walked down the street. He turns back toward the sidewalk in front of him and continues walking, brows furrowing in thought. His hands slide out of his pockets, warm and slightly pink. He raises them to his face, rubbing his cheeks a little to warm them before clasping them together and breathing into them, the warmth reflecting back on his face.

He needs to get back to the motel soon.

"A white Christmas," the man repeats under his breath, putting one foot in front of the other as he heads back toward his motel. He knew white all too well, and Christmas far more intimately than a man with a Star of David around his neck should.