Climbing Higher

Night.

A dark mountain meadow.

The moon like a bright coin.

A thief moved across the ghostly meadow, melted into black pines.

Roy’s fingers searched the trunk of a tree and discovered a handhold. Blindly he lifted himself onto the lowest branch. Bending his legs, struggling to keep balance, he raised himself into space.

With one greedy hand he reached up again and groped. His fingers closed upon another branch. His muscles lifted.

Secretly he climbed.

A cold mountain wind whirled from the deepest corners of the night, lashing Roy’s upturned face. He fought unseen limbs as gusts swayed the tree. Black needles raked his arms like skeletons caressing.

A higher, more tenuous, more difficult branch.

An icy wind.

A few winking stars shivered through the ever thinning branches. Roy reached up greedily and grabbed hold of another branch, climbed higher, even higher. A careful thief, he climbed higher, higher, into multiplied stars, until the Earth spun a quarter million miles below.

One last branch.

He thrust his head above it.

A bright coin.

Roy collected the moon and put it in his pocket.