Ascending

The attic air hung thick and crisp with winter's influence, so that each breath had to be carved out of the stillness, and each was beat away again by deep, excited huffs. We should not have come. But then, what is adventure if the admonition of authority is excised from the idea? Surely, some of the greatest chances and highest pleasures are the result of an unwillingness to accept a 'should', and a vivified will to pursue a 'must', nonetheless.

A narrow glint of early morning light hung thirty feet away, on the other side of ceiling beams and a pair of lonely wine glasses, which must have been abandoned by an earlier party. One of the glasses, thin and delicate through the stem, was tilted up against a slight metal ladder anchored at the top by the frame of the skylight. How graceful it looked in the blueness--! And how brittle and lonely, a quiet casualty to the intrigue of romance.

Cautiously now, we tip-toed over the beams and lurched at the ladder, tripping in our haste and our ignorance; and in due honesty, we had taken in enough wine to make us warm for the journey. Ah, but no excuse is necessary for wine. Up the ladder we crept, trying to stifle bursts of laugher, and slipping on the rusted bars, guessing where to find the next rung. The roof was ridged and freezing. The slats dug into our calves like tangs on a giant cheese grater, and the flat partitions were spotted with tiny patches of ice: to the chimney, then. Out across the glass-top lake, reflections of the moon and the walkway lights peppered the area between the island and the foremost castle grounds. A few stars ripped through the still fog that otherwise masked the giant mountain peaks in the distance. A fleet of geese interrupted the serenity of the lake, arrowing towards the townhouses to create rolling-pin mounds on the surface. The wind, whipping over the alps and past us, accounted for the only noise in the crisp night. And eventually, as the frost broke and the dark lost its fight, we began to whisper.