Spirits Never Freeze

Spirits Never Freeze

A Short Story by Charles E.J. Moulton

***

The old man lift the beige cup to his lips. The movement was slow and thoughtful, contemplative, as if his spirit listened to the silence, as if the silence contained an answer in itself. As if the magic of life was imbedded inside the truth of repose.

"The silence is not quiet," he thought to himself, "it is filled with magic and mystery, deep answers appearing out of nowhere within the eternal warmth of a placid summer's eve."

The last time he had heard those words spoken aloud Georgina had been alive, her voice as rich as Ella's, her mezzo as seductive as Liza's and her pronounciation as clear as a bell, her skin as smooth as silk and as soft as satin. Back when he had married her, her sweet voice and creamy skin had inspired him to write sonnets. The steady breeze of the magnolia scented night reminded him of their Mediterranean holidays. The mornings in their favorite old summer hotel in Antibbe had provided him with the same sort of steady buzz he got from just thinking about her. Love had been made and God had been there inside that love.
Her sweet smile had just underlined the mystery of that unspoken understanding.

The warm feeling of the cup against his old lips sent warm rushes up and down his spine because she had made him a tea drinker. That and the taste of peppermint sent him back years and years to the evenings he had spent with her. Just her and him, him and her,  tea cups with their names on them, her reading their daughter's letters, how the grandchildren were doing and when they would be coming back home to Yorkshire to the Welsh coast.

Bertrand lowered the cup down to his lap again, clearing his throat. He looked over at the clock on the mantlepiece. The steady tick-tock had a predictability to it. Something he could count on. That old clock had only been repaired once in the last fifty years. His father had given him the assignment to take care of it, giving him the heirloom on his 30th birthday. He had described the clock as magic, the beauty of the clanging of chimes.
His father had told him the clock was blessed with the gift of spiritual bonding, connecting lovers and worlds.
Only minutes now.
She always came on time.

When the clock struck ten, Bertrand smiled, for it had been their tradition to kiss each other good night at the resting hour. And so, now as then, Georgina's spirit found its way into the livingroom again that night. She filled his heart with light, his senses with pride and his breath with hope. The kiss was still there, her lips still tingling. It was her ethereal body, of course, but one still sparkling with energy.

Bertrand knew where the trip would take them: same as always - across the English Channel along the French coast to the place their souls had called their second home. How wondrous it was to share the night with her, illumative like starlight, sparkling like a chanson. The brisk and brillant air did not chill him, as spirits never freeze. Only the warmth of love could affect him.

He saw the beauty of the Spanish border where they had stopped to refill their car with gasoline and their bellies with Rioja at the Sangre de Torro, a picturesque inn at the foot of vineyard hill, before driving on to their favorite vacation resort. He held Georgina's ethereal hand as they flew over the hotel by the Antibbe bay where they had made honeymoon love, creating their daughter to the sounds of French accordeon music.

Their souls flew in and out of the restaurant where they had ordered fresh fish every June, the wine exquisite and their universe succulent. Every atom filled up with magic mountains of light, memories of closed eyes of bliss during the act of an erect gender sliding into a ocean of female joie de vivre. The evening ceremony of memory, one spirit with a body and one without, took its leap into ecstacy as they flew away into the bliss of the galaxy, becoming one with supernovas and moonlight.

The night was miraculous and the view was stupendous. As Georgina brought him home again, she sang him a song of love from somewhere beyond the rainbow.

And as Bertrand went to bed that night, having again returned into his body, he knew that Georgina would join him in his dreams for an excursion into the other world. And tomorrow at ten, their souls would again fly to Antibbe through the night air, warmed up by love and unaffected by temperature.

After all, spirits never freeze.