Towering

for I am sure it was a man who killed my mother.
    But I was up, and he was down. My tower would protect me . . . if I wished it to.
    I was not sure what I wished.
    He walked closer. In truth, walk was not the proper word for what he was doing. Rather, he struggled over the snow and the trees. Slogged, perhaps, or lumbered. I wondered, for the first time, what he was doing here, and why he continued when it was obviously so difficult. It was not merely uncommon, but unheard of, for anyone to come this close, particularly in winter. In summer, there were children who played and went boating on the lake. The part of the lake that I could see was covered in branches, likely hiding my tower from others’ sight. Sometimes, the children came closer, but never close enough to see me. It was almost as if he knew I was here, as if he were looking for me.
    To kidnap me?
    I stopped singing entirely. I crouched down on the floor, resting my glasses on the windowsill. I peered through them. Now, he was close enough that I could see his face but for his hat and scarf. He could see mine if he possessed glasses. And if he looked up, rather than examining every root or rock that might trip him. He paused in his trudging as if trying to decide where to go next, looking at the stand of trees to his left, the frozen lake to his right. As he did, I saw a bit of hair, peeking out from underneath his hat.
    It was brown, dark brown, much like the hair of my imagined lover. Yet, from my reading, I knew that many men had dark hair.
    He made his decision and stepped onto the lake. I sucked in my breath. In years past, the lake had frozen solid. I knew for I had seen deer walking upon it. But this year, the weather had been warmer than usual, and though the ice was covered with snow, the animals had avoided it. I wondered if he might fall through, like Amy did in Little Women . If he did, with no one to fish him out, he would surely die.
    He took another tentative step. Then, another. Then, a third. It was all right. He believed so too, for his steps became faster, more confident. In fact, he nearly skipped, so relieved (I imagine) was he to escape the tangle of trees, dead and living.
    And then, he disappeared from sight.

Wyatt
    I didn’t know whose stupid idea this was. Or rather, I did. But was I so starved for adventure, for closure . . . for redemption, maybe, that I’d go out in the cold and snow to look for a ruined tower when no one but a crazy old guy who apparently lived in Josh’s hardware store even knew it existed? When the voice I heard was probably a loon?
    Yes. The sad thing was, yes. I was the loon.
    I’d passed Josh’s family’s cabin half an hour earlier. Since then, I’d been slogging through the woods where there was no path, where the roots of trees seemed to come alive beneath my feet, and the branches reached down to grab me with their stabbing, scratching fingers. Yes, some of the snow had melted, but that made it no less icy, no less slippery. I slid on a patch of ice and grabbed at a tree branch. It grabbed back, scratching my face. I touched my glove to my cheek and saw a wet spot on the black background. Blood.
    Ahead, I saw nothing but trees and more trees. Where was the tower? Did it even exist? If it did, I couldn’t see it. It must be so far from the cabin, too far for me to have heard singing inside. And yet, when a hawk cried overhead, it seemed so deafeningly loud that I could have heard it ten miles away.
    No singing today. I stopped to listen. Nothing but the chill wind, invading my bones. I should go back. But when I looked behind me, I could see neither Josh’s cabin nor the car. I might as well go forward.
    No, that wasn’t true. If I couldn’t see the car, that was a reason to go back . Go back as fast as I could before the day became darker, colder.
    I realized, I had nothing to go back to.
    The old lady would be sad if I disappeared, I guessed. But she’d get over it. She’d dealt with bigger things.
    I had no friends, and even my mother didn’t seem desperately upset to be rid of me. At least, she’d let me go. She was a young woman. She could meet someone, have another child, a better one.
    I remembered the old man, his daughter murdered, or maybe dead from an overdose. Did it really matter? He never got over it.
    No, I had to stick this out, to solve this mystery once and for all. Also, I felt something pulling at me, as if it meant me to come here, to find out what was out