Callen’s Patient Ornament — Under the glass-wind arches, Callen held still for the evening chime that always slipped away before it reached him. Read the full story →
Under the glass-wind arches, Callen held still for the evening chime that always slipped away before it reached him. He wanted to hear it once from beginning to end, so when the sound thinned into a silver thread beyond the drifts, he stepped out of his hollow and followed it through snow that creaked like sugar under his round feet.
The way was narrow between frozen reeds, and a low branch borrowed two threads from his scarf. Callen let them go. At the base of a dark holly hedge, the chime stopped inside a dull old ornament half-buried in frost, a place every passing wind had ignored. He waited while the moon warmed the glass by a finger’s width, and at last the ornament opened with a tiny click. Inside was not a bell, but a pale seed that rang whenever snow touched it.
Callen carried it home in both twig hands. By dawn, the seed had rooted in the quiet hollow, and every soft flake made one patient note, complete from beginning to end, under the glass-wind arches.
