Imagine a Winter Sun

Imagine a Winter Sun

“What crap,” barks the harried literary agent (not quite under her breath) as she hits the delete key. “If I have to read another manuscript that begins with a description of the weather, I think I’ll croak.” Steeling herself against potential assault, she tries another, clicking open the file attached to what is only the second of the morning’s unnumbered (unsolicited) email queries filling her inbox.

“Imagine a winter sun so bright that it burns off the recent snow in a fog,” the manuscript begins.

At this point in the unfolding narrative, the agent’s jaw, heretofore clenched, drops open. The yawning maw deposits into the suddenly inadequate air a single strangled note. The sound recalls the truncated utterance of the storied prince that Malice (once upon a time) transfigured into a frog. Louder (though muffled) is the collective clank of multiple bracelets hitting the carpet like so many links in a chain. Loudest of all is the ripping of fabric: on impact the agent’s rapidly flattening haunches split her skirt at the seam.

As if in response to an express summons, the fresh-faced intern rushes in from Power’s anteroom. Now at the side of her slumping boss, she pounds on the still-warm chest, pushes a breath into the open mouth, and another, and another. But already it is, the girl fears, too late in the game for anything to matter—short of intervention by whatever Intelligence is pulling all their strings, and that is way beyond her pay grade, which, in keeping with industry-wide practice, is next-to-zilch.

“Now imagine how many times brighter am I than that sun,” the manuscript continues with the force of a runaway firehose, unfazed, unaffected by the chaos of the office as it fills beyond capacity with fellow agents, their interns and, at length, the emergency medical team, “a beam of incalculably concentrated light, slicing (inadequate metaphor) through every obstacle that stands in my career path, on my way to…”