Where Summer Never Ends

Sarah woke to cold that shouldn't exist. Not in March, not with sunlight streaming through Emma's window. The frost on the glass formed patterns too deliberate to be accidental.

She crossed the room on bare feet. Her breath clouded despite the woodstove's warmth downstairs. The frost wasn't random ice crystals—it was a path, drawn in white, leading into the woods.

Her fingers trembled as she touched the glass. The cold burned through her skin, wrong and sharp, like fingers tracing from the other side. She jerked her hand back.

The door creaked. Thomas stood in the doorway, still wearing yesterday's work clothes. Sleep hadn't found him either.

"It's just ice, Sarah."

She turned to Emma's desk. The primer book lay open to a new page. Not the one about seasons where it had rested for three years. This was the lesson on directions. On finding your way home.

"Emma's book moved."

Thomas crossed to the desk. His hand hovered over the page but didn't touch. When he finally spoke, his voice carried the rhythm of fields and seasons, steady as stone. "We should fetch Jacob."

Sarah wrapped her arms around her torso. The gesture recreated the memory—Emma's small body, trusting weight, three years gone. Her voice came out barely a whisper, as if volume made horror real.

"The frost is changing. Look."

The pattern shifted while they watched. Reformed. Always pointing deeper into the forest, toward the stand of pines where no one went anymore.

Jacob arrived with his journals under one arm, spectacles catching the strange light. He'd been documenting everything since the children left. Treating their absence like a theological text to be analyzed.

He removed his spectacles. Cleaned them with meticulous care. Put them back on. The frost path remained, impossible and deliberate.

"Fascinating." His voice held the same unnerving calm he'd used when reading scripture over empty graves. "The question is not whether this constitutes communication, but what theological framework allows the dead to petition the living."

"She's not dead." Sarah's words fragmented under stress, the teacher's precision cracking. "She's—somewhere. Calling. We have to—"

"We follow it." Thomas placed his hand over his heart. The gesture of sincerity. "This is what we've prayed for. Guidance."

Jacob tapped his fingers in patterns of three. Unconscious echo of devotions he claimed to have abandoned. "Or it's a trap. An entity that feeds on parental grief would naturally weaponize hope."

Sarah touched her left ring finger. The chain that had held Emma's baby ring was long gone, lost or taken. The absence remained. She'd worn that ring on her finger, close to her pulse, until the day she'd handed Emma to the pale woman.

"I don't care."

The words surprised her. Three years of paralysis, and now clarity. Emma was calling. That was enough.

They left through the kitchen door. The fields stretched ahead, forever frozen despite three springs passing. The volcanic winter had ended everywhere except here, where grief had crystallized into permafrost.

Snow absorbed all sound. Their breathing became the only noise—harsh, visible, marking their presence in the silence. Sarah's boots broke through the crust with each step, loud as gunshots in the quiet.

The frost path led them forward. Always reforming just ahead. Always pointing toward the pines.

Jacob walked beside her, journal open despite the cold, pen scratching observations in margins already dense with text. "If one accepts the premise of consciousness surviving death in a transmuted state, the question becomes whether what summons us retains sufficient humanity to qualify as our children, or merely wears their shapes as—"

"Stop talking like they're a problem to solve." Sarah's voice dropped to near-whisper. "They're ours."

"That's precisely what concerns me." Jacob stared past her, reading invisible text. "What if they're calling because they need to be released?"

Thomas bowed his head briefly. Eyes closed. The micro-prayer habit. When he looked up, his face held certainty that felt like cruelty. "The Lord wouldn't bring us this far without purpose. We walk in faith."

The trees rose ahead. Dark pines against white snow, marking the boundary everyone avoided. The frost path led straight between them, into shadow.

Sarah stopped at the tree line. Her arms wrapped tighter around her torso, recreating phantom weight. In her memory, Emma's trusting eyes. Her own trembling hands, letting go.

"If this is wrong—" Her words fractured, incomplete.

"Then we face it together." Thomas's voice carried the gentleness of stone described as soil. Immovable, patient. "As we should have faced everything. All of us."

Jacob closed his journal. Removed his spectacles. Cleaned them one more time. "I submit that we are past the point of theological certainty. We enter unknown territory with the question unanswered: are we being called home, or called to witness?"

The frost path shifted. Reformed. Pointed between the pines.

Sarah stepped forward. The others followed. Snow crunched beneath their feet, breaking the absolute silence with the sound of their breathing and the whisper of their passage into the dark.