Ivo Dominguez JR - Spirit Speaks

Faerie Gifts: A Winter Solstice Story By Ivo Domínguez Jr. © A story I wrote years ago that I share every few years. Enjoy! He'd hurried home from school and left a note on the refrigerator, "Gone Skating". Among the many changes in David's life since his parents' divorce was the relocation to what seemed just shy of the middle of nowhere, and the more than annoying loss of access to the university's skating rink. As he ran onwards through the overgrown path, he began to wonder if he'd taken the wrong fork. He hadn't remembered a barrier of brambles and thorns on the way to the pond. His experience with the outdoors until the month before had been limited to the little bits of green and manicured groves that pass for the wilds in the suburbs. Night was approaching fast upon his heels, threatening to close in before he reached the pond. He decided to leave the twists and winds of the path and cut straight through. Several steps off the path, he knew he'd made a mistake. He pushed and was pushed as he ran the gauntlet through the undergrowth and low hanging branches. When he did reach the pond it was a sudden release, a relief from struggle. He ducked past a bough, and was upon its banks. The shadows of the holly trees ringing the pond were now at their full length in the waning light. The holly leaves' spiny, scrawling, calligraphic, shadows on the ice were punctuated by the elegant slashes and ovals of cattails in silhouette. The ice was like black glass glinting darkly red in the sunset of the shortest day of the year. It wasn't a part of the pond he'd seen before. It was a place more beautiful than where the path had led before. The clearing was washed in the rich colors of a winter sunset unmatched in clarity and hue by anything in nature except the flowers of spring. David sat down on a log, crumbly with the work of carpenter ants, and put on his skates. He gazed at the sapphire glint of Venus, bright in the sky before the stars could be seen. He stood and paused , oddly reluctant to take to the ice. Marking its surface would remove some of its pristine beauty. He was aware of a quality in the air as if the moment of time that he occupied hovered content in the now, and uncertain of the flight of the future. The ice had formed in silence, unruffled by breezes, or the wings of south bound geese, or even by the ripple of slumberous fish. Now, that silence was broken by the crisp sound of metal blades on ice. At first he moved just for the sake and for the sensation of speed. Then as he relaxed his moves became a dance upon the pond with a grace he dared not show in the company of his peers. He became aware of his reflection in the ice below. The pond reminded him of a mirror, framed in art nouveau vegetative flourishes like one of his mother's antiques, with the mirror's silvering gone cracked and crazed with spots of dimness and iridescence. The rhythm of his skating, and the singular joy of solitude in such a hidden place was intoxicating. Stars began to peer through the deepening blue. He marveled at the spectacle of ice filled with reflected stars and the meteoric streaks of his passage across the pond's surface. His starry reflection seemed to soar through the heavens, upside down in a dizzying gyre. His multicolor knit cap spun wildly as he spiraled, making him smile at the absurd beauty of this image.