My life was never the same after that. It became my greatest fear to fall asleep and wake up somewhere else. It was this fear and Jamie’s badgering that kept me from telling my parents what was happening. I continued waking up tired, and just dealt with it, hoping that if I let them do their thing I’d be able to continue my average existence during the day.

Every morning for the next week, though, I woke up in my own bed. I felt tired, but quite at home. And every night I prayed to God that Jamie and Kale wouldn’t find what they were looking for. The week after that, I kept on praying, and I kept on waking up at home.

"Now I lay me down to sleep.

I pray my Lord my soul to keep.

If I should move ‘fore I should wake,

I pray the Lord return me safe."

You already know what happened next. One night I didn’t pray. And one morning I didn’t wake up in my own home, my own bed. The first thing that struck me was the noise, and the repetitive movement of the hard surface beneath me. The awful stench came next, and then the whole room lurched around me, and sunlight streamed onto my face. My eyes opened immediately.

"What?" I cried in surprise and fear, not recognizing my surroundings at all.

"Where am I? Where have you taken me?"

I surveyed my surroundings, a smelly old train cart, I realized. There were a lot of boxes piled up on one side, and the ground was dirty. I walked over to the door and pushed it open to see rolling hills flying by, and the early morning sun brightly lighting the sky. But it didn’t answer my question at all.

"Where are we going?"

I did take deep breaths, and paced around the small floor area in a rage. My face was burning with anger and indignation over the simple fact that there was nothing I could do. I wanted to rant, and shout, and I wanted to hurt someone, one of the idiots responsible for my current predicament. Preferably Kale as this must be all his fault since Jamie had never done anything against my will. But yelling wouldn’t help, they didn’t listen. And I couldn’t hurt them, not unless I hurt myself, and even then I wasn’t sure they would feel anything.

At length my boiling blood cooled and I sat down, still a little bitter, but not raving mad anymore. I took a few more deep breaths before speaking again.

"I take it you found something."

"And whose fault is it that I look so tired?" But despite whose fault it was, I was tired. So I did go back to sleep. It might have been a mistake, but there wasn’t anything I would have been able to do if I had been awake. I was nine years old. I grew up in a small town. I didn’t know anything about the world. If it weren’t for Jamie and Kale I would be dead now. If it weren’t for Jamie and Kale, I would be in a small, back water town doing grunt work at some general store and going about my average, boring life. Part of me is grateful, and part of me hates them. It’s really an amusing contradiction. But at nine years old, alone, hungry, and cold, all of me hated them.

Because it did get cold. And I was getting to that. When I woke up I was colder than I had ever been before. Only then did I realize that I was wearing one of my sweaters that my grandmother had knit for my brother when I was four—he never did wear it. Still, I was freezing. I could see my breath as I shivered in that boxcar.

"Oh, good, you’re already awake."

I pushed the door open a little farther, and was met by the most amazing thing I had seen in all my life. If Sunday school hadn’t pounded it into my head already, then I would never question again whether God really existed or not. They had, and I did, but that’s not important to the story right now. I could scarcely breathe and for a moment I was convinced I was dead. I was dead and this was Heaven. Then I remembered it was cold, and it should not be this cold in Heaven.

"What is it?" I asked out loud, staring at the landscape around me.

"This is snow, precious."

Snow must be the most beautiful and perfect thing in the world. I’ve been around a lot more than I ever wanted to, and I’ve seen a lot of things. Some were beautiful and some were not. But nothing ever compared to the first time I saw snow. The ground was covered with it, and sparkled under the evening sun. The trees were covered with it, branches bowing under the weight. Birds skittered about near the trees, leaving thin prints in it. Gentle gusts of wind would pick up thin layers of the crystals and blow them across the land in a breath taking display of grace and agility.

And everything was shattered by the loud, coarse whistle of the train. I leaned out of my car a little to look down the tracks, and saw that we were almost at a town—a town just as snow covered as the rest of the land was, but a town nonetheless. The thought that I could find help there struck me and a small smile began to tug at my lips.

"Jump, shrimp."

I eyed the white stuff on the ground with wariness. As beautiful as it was, it was still a foreign substance. I’d only ever heard of it before, and not often at that. I didn’t have any experience with snow, or trains, for that matter. But one of my cousins once fell out of a car, and he was in the hospital for two weeks afterwards, so I knew this wasn’t something that I wanted to do.

"Jump."

And I jumped. I closed my eyes, griped the door and the frame tightly with my fingers on either side of me, and just pushed myself off the floor and away from the train. What possessed me to do such a crazy thing, I’m not quite sure. But when Jamie wants me to do something, I do it. I don’t ask questions, I just do. Woman will always be man’s downfall.

I rolled across the snow, which did soften my fall quite a bit, and when I came to a stop the train was already rolling away and I was mostly intact. My nose was bleeding, and my hands were a little scratched up, and my clothes were quickly soaking through with freezing water, but I was alive.

"Can you stand, precious?"

I stood, feeling a little sore, but nothing was broken. Maybe my mother was right when she called me lucky. Despite the protesting of my stiff limbs, I started walking to the town a few moments later.

There is something else I’ve learned about the world. Everything that is beautiful is in turn dangerous or harmful in some way. The stars in the sky are some of the most beautiful and wondrous things you could ever see, but without the protection of the atmosphere, the heat from the nearest one—our sun—would boil us down to nothing more than our base elements, and probably do a good job destroying those. A wasp has a beautiful, slick yellow and black jacket, but when annoyed it attacks and through a small needle injects enough poison into a person to, in the best case, produce a small, irritated welt and, in the worst case, instigate a highly allergic reaction leading to death. Snow was no exception to this rule, as I now found.

As has already been said, I was sore, I was cold, I was soaked with freezing water that had come from snow. While Jamie and Kale were considerate enough to dress me in long pants and a sweatshirt they had forgotten what in my opinion is a very important part of the wardrobe. My shoes. My feet were absolutely freezing, and turning red from the cold. The snow I was tramping through was, in turn, making them colder. And further, the tiny crystals of ice which I soon learned the snow was made of (after Kale called me a moron again) dug into the bottom of my frozen feet in the most uncomfortable of ways.

So I was miserable the entire trudge into town. This did, however, make me very pleased when I finally reached town, and I quickly found the first place that looked hospitable that I could go in.

It was a lounge, the windows fogged up from the warmth inside. I stumbled into the warm, cheery room half dead with exhaustion, sore everywhere and specifically on my feet, freezing and shivering, hungry, tired, and with a killer headache caused by two pleased spirits living in my head who just wouldn’t shut up. I half expected to be shot on sight, I couldn’t have looked better than that rabid dog in my home town. I wasn’t, though, obviously.

It felt like a dream, to suddenly be warm after stumbling through the cold and snow for at least an hour, though it might have been closer to two. It was dark out now, but that isn’t a terribly important point. A large man stood behind the counter, and he saw me come in. His face immediately filled with some emotion I couldn’t identify—most likely some collaboration of pity and disgust—and bustled over after snapping a few words at a fourteen year old boy who was lounging on the steps nearby.

He led me across the room to where a fire was burning invitingly in the fireplace, and had me sit down once he’d wrapped me in the blanket the boy brought. I’m sure he spoke to me, but I was practically asleep on my feet and didn’t retain a word of it. I don’t remember anything between some point where I was staring mindlessly into the living flames, and when I woke up in a small bed some time later.

So where were we? That was exactly the thought on my mind when I woke up that morning, in a bed that was definitely not my own. Well, that and will you two please shut up, some of us are trying to sleep? But they didn’t shut up so that thought is rather inconsequential and I got up to find out where I was.

"Where are ya?" Obviously, I had found my way to the lounge area again, and the big man behind the counter seemed to find it quite amusing that I didn’t know where I was. "Pretty hard to get to Weyburn, Saskatchewan accidentally!"

I blinked, "Weyborn what?" I asked, scratching my head with bemusement, "What state is that in?"

The man laughed, he must have thought I was joking. I wasn’t. "You’ve got to be kidding me, kid! Saskatchewan ain’t a state! Where do ya think you are, the United States?"

"Er…" That happened to be exactly where I thought I was.

"This here is the town of Weyborn, only a few miles north of the border!"

"The border?" I asked timidly, my gut tying itself in knots.

"The U.S. border, kid! Didn’t ya know you were in Canada?" The man only laughed again at my blank look, "That’s rich! How’d ya get here without even knowing it?"

"I… I fell asleep on my train," I muttered, "Must have missed my stop or something…"

"Ah, that’s really too bad, kid," the man said. He wasn’t laughing now, though his large blue eyes were still shining, "Look, if you don’t have anywhere to stay you can sleep here for a few nights, least until ya figure something out, eh?"

"Thank you," I said, smiling with relief.

"No problem! Say, what’s your name, kid?"

"Oh, Vi—"

"Don’t give him your real name, moron!"

"Vincent—"

"That’s du—"

"Marlin." I finished, my face flushing red as I blocked out Kale and Jamie’s argument.

I should now make something perfectly clear, if I haven’t already. I came from a small, dust ball of a town in the middle of Arizona. There was one school, and there was one church, and all the kids in town attended them both. If you missed a day of church you’d get at least twelve people poking around your house, asking where you’d been on Sunday and why weren’t you in church. I was born and raised to denounce the Devil, and to hate evil. I was taught not to steal, lie, or cheat least the Devil steal my soul and bury it beneath hot tar. Of course, I had told my share of tales, but not when it was something serious. It just felt wrong to tell this man that Victor Trump was Vincent Marlin, and I could imagine the Devil standing in front of me grinning his evil grin and hoisting a shovel over his shoulder. He’d holler down to all his demonic servants, "Oi! We’ve got another one! Start boiling the tar!"

"Vincent Marlin, eh?" His blue eyes looked so trusting and I felt my insides twist again with guilt. He stuck out a hand, "Well, it’s a pleasure to meet you, Vincent! My name’s Jack Barley, and I run this here lodge."

"It’s a pleasure to meet you, too," I managed to force out as he exuberantly shook my hand. This story isn’t about Jack, but he was good to me so I felt he needed a mention. The world is a frightening place for a nine year old, especially one that grew up as sheltered as me. I felt like I was completely dependent on the two psychotic voices residing in my brain, but Jack provided a refreshing change.

I didn’t stick around Weyborn long, and when I left I had a pair of boots on my feet that I didn’t remember getting. We walked west until we ran upon a frozen river, and that’s where we stopped. I don’t recall how it happened. I just remember waking up, freezing and soaking wet. My skin was pale and stiff and I had a perpetual cough. I swore I was going to die, then, but I didn’t.

I happened to be picked up by someone. I happened to be picked up by Jack Barley, who was concerned when I vanished like I did, without telling anyone where I was going. He gave me a good lecture, most of which I didn’t hear, and brought me back to his lodge. You can guess what happened next.

I dreamt. Of burning houses, and burning people. Whole forests burning under a sea of molten rock. Babies screamed, and no one was fast enough to get away. Fire crawling along the ground, and ashes falling from the sky like rain. Like snow. I woke up sweating from more than just the fever, and I saw the snow falling outside my window. It was the middle of the day when I woke, and small white pieces of snow were falling down the window.

I thought I was hallucinating, that my nightmare was warping with reality in the hours before my death. I was growing far too accustomed to the idea of death. But I wasn’t dead yet, and I wasn’t hallucinating, either.

I laughed in my delirium, hardly believing that I was hearing Jamie at all. Of course, then again, who was Jamie but a figment of my imagination?

"How can that be snow? It isn’t on the ground! It’s flying through the air!"

Kale promptly shut up and I had a feeling I had missed out on a conversation or two.

I fell back on my pillow, the dream already forgotten amongst my fever and the strangeness of seeing snow fall from the sky. I watched it through half lidded eyes, it looked as beautiful as ever.

I went to sleep. And I slept a very long time. I didn’t wake for another two days, not until after the fever finally broke and my body recovered enough. Jack said it was amazing that I hadn’t died of pneumonia. I don’t rightly know if the first time I heard him was only after I recovered or if I had heard him in the deliriums of my fever, but it seemed like the first time I heard him that day. They were arguing again, trying to decide what we all should do now.

"What’s the use in hangin’ around here? We know there isn’t anyone else we’re going to find here!"

"Well I say we leave tomorrow!"

"Nobody cares what you say, Kale."

I groaned, feeling my headache coming back, and with friends.

"Guys…"

It was the strangest thing. It seemed as if everything went silent. The bickering of Kale and Jamie came to an abrupt halt and even the sounds of the ‘real world’ faded out around me. Time could have stopped for all I knew. And then reality came rushing back and I found myself banging my head against the nearest wall repeatedly.

"Precious, sweetie, what are you doing?"

"Dumb… must… kill… shut up!" I muttered incoherently with each bang of my head against the wood.

"Hey, moron! Show a little respect to this fine establishment!"

I grudgingly sat on the sofa, my head really throbbing again now. No doubt there was a nice red mark in the middle of my forehead, and I vaguely noted the wet presence of blood, but really none of it mattered at the moment. All that mattered is what I heard, and the ever-calm and sugar-sweet voice of Jamie trying to cajole me into telling her what was wrong even though she already knew.

That was the thing about Jamie, though. If you knew her as long as I had you would realize this. She doesn’t need to be told how you feel or what’s going on. You get the kind of feeling that she must know everything, and not just about you. I was convinced after knowing her for only a month that she knew all about everything in the entire universe. And yet she still asked me. This is one of the main things I’ve always liked about Jamie—she made me feel important, somehow. I sighed resignedly.

"So. Who’s the newest member of my internal circus?"

"Well he doesn’t have a—"

I would have started hitting my head again but as I was sitting on the sofa I didn’t have any hard surfaces readily available. I coped by putting my face in my hands and groaning again as if in pain. Life really wasn’t fair at all. This one seemed crazier than the others, and so I set to the tedious task of picking a name for him—which, of course, he’d hate but grudgingly accept anyway.

I raised an eyebrow. He was whining. The voice in my head whined. Great.

"Okay so you don’t like Greg. How about Edward."

"You’re breaking my heart, baby…"

And thus Ed was christened… Ed. As I learned over the next week (since we didn’t move on much to Kale’s chagrin) Ed was a very… interesting bloke. You know all that stuff nobody ever says? Well, he says that. You can always count on Ed to have some cheesy comment ready to spout, especially if it in anyway pertains to love, peace, or turtles. Either that or he’ll say something completely random. He definitely redefines the word ‘crazy.’

I liked him, though. With him around I found myself smiling a lot more. He’d crack dumb jokes at a moment’s notice and could always get an amusing response from Jamie and Kale. He knew exactly what buttons to press. His voice was smooth and loud and I imagined that if he were a person he would be the coolest man alive. Well, until he opened his mouth at least. He was an idiot (as Kale pointed out several times a day) but a nice idiot (as Jamie would frequently add).

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