The White Mountain

　

Andrew, with angel wings, hovered over an icy canyon. An avalanche made the canyon echo. Far away, there was a desperate high-pitched sound, as if someone were screaming. The white mountain rose on both sides of the deep blue canyon, faceted with glistening glaciers. The sun slid under a wet-looking cloud shaped like a ragged cotton swab. Icy snowflakes filled the air.

Andrew glided down into a little forest of evergreens swaddled in a hollow of the mountain. He came close to the trees and the flutter of his wings knocked snow off the branches. The snow clumped on the trees dropped heavily, and silently, into the drifts. Closer than the faint screaming, Andrew heard music – ZZ Top’s Sharp Dressed Man.

A little stream glided toward Andrew, leaping and splashing between tufts of snow. Andrew flapped his wings to fly next to the stream. Some playful otters with huge black eyes came out of the water and clambered onto the stream-bank. Andrew made a snowball and pitched it at the otters and they smiled at him and, then, tobogganed on their bellies down into the cold water. Their bodies were so sleek that they didn’t make a splash as they dove into silvery-grey stream.

A mammoth trumpeted above him, standing like a great monument on a pulpit-shaped hilltop apart from the white dome of the mountain. Andrew ascended to investigate. The mammoth also had dark, big eyes like a puppy and, when he approached, it wagged its tail at him. Andrew seized some of the falling snow, and kneaded it into a ball – then, he threw the snowball at the mammoth. The big wooly animal danced merrily in the snow and where it set its great feet, puffy avalanches plunged down the sides of the mountain.

Near the wooly mammoth, Andrew saw a little red door built into the side of an overhanging cliff. The door frightened him and, so, he climbed higher in the air, ascending to a point where he could look around and see the whole snowy world – the forests and the glaciers and the peak itself with its four-lobes like a lucky clover. Cradled in the mountain’s arms, Andrew saw a blue-green lake where an armada of small, wind-sculpted icebergs were floating. He descended, wings fluttering only a little, and, then, hovered over the chilly water. Playful otters were swimming in the water like small dolphins and they looked up at him. Andrew dropped down and, for a moment, slid through the water himself. To his surprise, it seemed very warm and was swirling and stank of medicine and bits of his skin sloughed-off so that he screamed. He rolled over on his back to look at the serene peak and the cold heights where the wind was blowing little gusts of snow about and this calmed him. Then, he was high in the sky again. A couple of wooly mammoth’s raised their black, leathery trunks to greet him. He dive-bombed the mammoths feeling the cold air rushing around his cheeks, then, dropped into a ravine where otters were sliding one after another down the mountain side. The little red door was in front of him. Although he tried to avoid the door, it loomed before him and, then, opened inward.

The nurse removed Andrew’s virtual reality headset. Another nurse shut off the music booming in the debridement suite. Andrew no longer had wings and, in fact, wasn’t Andrew any more. Now, he was just little Andy, a nine-year old boy who had been burned half to death in a house fire. He was crouching in a steel basin where water foamed around the places where his skin had been pecked away. A greasy pool of bloody eschar filled a stainless steel tray next to the bath. Little Andy trembled.

The nurse said: "Now that wasn’t so bad was it."

Andy’s neck was burned and his muscles exposed and it stung when he moved his head. But he nodded slightly: "Not so bad," he said.