Autumn's Fall

VIII. Morning and What It Brought

The darkness was no longer a complete void but a dull gray through the walls of their tent when Cecilia awoke from her sleep with a groan. She rubbed her hands over her eyes with a yawn, "It's too early for this." She nudged her siblings from their sleep, the two of them woke with equally disheartening groans of displeasure. All of them ate their breakfast and dressed in silence then waited before the door. Nobody wanted to go outside and look at the dreaded coffin, but they couldn't delay the inevitable forever. Angus took a deep breath and opened the tent door flap.

Daylight streamed through the cracks around the edges of the undisturbed coffin. Nothing had made its way into the tunnel last night, for which they were grateful, but now they would need to get past the coffin once their things were packed. And despite the unpleasantness that was their doorstop, the most worrisome part for Angus was the fact that they were still stuck down in this ravine.

Angus squinted at his sister's bandaged hand in the dim light, "How's your hand, Sophia?"

She flexed her fingers, "Well...it doesn't sting as much as yesterday."

"Would you be able to climb with it if we found a way up?"

"I don't know. I might be able to get up if it's not too steep."

"Hmmm. Come on Cici, help me push."

Cicilia looked up from packing the tent, "Push the coffin? Shouldn't we put it back where we found it?"

"There's no way for us to grab onto it to pull it back, we'll have to push it out, then push it back in."

Cici huffed, narrowing her eyes at the large object, "That sounds like a lot of extra work."

"If you have any better ideas then please, share them."

Cici didn't have any better ideas. Begrudgingly, she set her shoulder to the end of the coffin. She glared at her brother, "You know I don't like zombies or dead anything." He only grimaced apologetically as they both began to push.

The coffin was noticeably less cold than it had been, and the ground beneath it had become muddy during the night so pushing it out turned out to be a lot harder than pushing it in. After a good amount of struggling, the two of them finally managed to push it out of the cave far enough for them to slide past.

Looking at it in the sunlight revealed that what they had suspected: the ice was melting. The pale face of the Minister of Winter could now be clearly seen through the no longer clouded glass.

They all stood around it, trying hard not to look too closely at the pale face behind the glass. Cici spoke up, "Well we can't just leave it here. We've got to get home and tell someone what we've found."

Angus knelt down to look around the sides, "Yes, but it's melting, and it is probably our fault. We must have done something to make it defrost when we moved it last night. Maybe there's a way to turn it back on."

A short search revealed only one small button which he pushed. A humming sound came from inside the coffin and a pale blue light appeared beneath it. All three children scampered away at the sound and watched in amazement as the light increased while the coffin slowly rose into the air until it was a good two feet off of the ground. There it hovered, not moving an inch.

Cecilia turned on her brother, her eyes wide in astonishment, "What have you done?!"

He backed up a few steps, holding up his hands before him defensively,"I don't know!"

Sophia poked out her head from behind her sister, "What do we do now?"

Angus shook his head and looked back at the floating coffin, "Maybe if I press the button again it will go back down. Hold on a second."