The Danger of Warmth
Under my lids a splinter sharp as his
Has made me wish you lying dead
Whose image digs the needle deeper still.
Adrienne Rich, The Snow Queen
I am the Snow Queen and reign wherever winter holds sway. If I look in a mirror (a normal mirror) I see pale grey eyes surrounded by long lashes of curled icicles, set in a white face framed by sable hair. My mouth walks a strange line between being too full and too thin – it changes depending upon my mood. My age, an impolite thing to discuss, is indeterminate, although something suggests that I am very old, old as the permafrost not so far to the north of my castle. Perhaps it’s the languid ice‐floe movement of my limbs; perhaps it’s the ever‐so‐fine lines at the corners of my eyes, like hairline fractures starting in an iced‐over pond, just before a skater falls through.
I am far older than this warm‐blooded boy who has shared my bed for almost a year and I still do not understand the urge that compelled me to seek him out. Eight years ago (such a speck of time for me, but span enough for him to grow to manhood), I flew past his window and beckoned. He refused to come. He was a child then, so the annoyance I felt was out of proportion. Sometimes I tell myself it was a thwarted maternal urge, but the rage was too sharp for that, the urge to acquire bit too deeply.
I sent shards from the shattered mirror (the thing I ordered made, the thing that broke over the icy backs of the mountains, the thing that went into the world as I never imagined it could) to lodge in his heart and eye, so he would think only things of ice and snow beautiful. When he had grown, I went to collect him: he tied his too‐small sled to the back of my sleigh, as the neighbourhood boys did, and off we went, deep into the countryside, until darkness frosted the sky. When we stopped, he unfurled himself from the sled and stared at me, with hostility at first, then with growing wonder.
‘Come to me, Kai, you’re frozen.’ My voice rang out like crystal chimes. ‘Creep up under my bearskin.’
He climbed in beside me and I wrapped him in my white fur, my hands unerringly finding their way under his jacket, sweater, shirt and vest, to the hard planes of his flesh. I pressed my fingers over his heart, feeling the shard that lay there like a beacon. It vibrated, sensing the closeness of the flesh that had given it direction.
‘This I recognise. This calls to me. This is mine,’ I told him. ‘This is mine, too.’
My hand slid lower and I felt him twitch, like a bird surprised in a snowdrift, startled, then hardening. White breath escaped into the frozen air as he gasped.
‘I love you,’ he said.
‘I know.’
Now he lies still, exhausted from his labours, my pet, my toy, my frozen youth with snap‐dried freshness. I reach out, tousle his curls, run my hand down his sculptured chest, tracing the thin trail of black hair that leads to a nest and the cock that, for the moment, seems at peace. It reacts to the touch of my hand, instinctive, guiltless, with no loyalty whatsoever. Its owner stirs, settles as I draw my hand away, and begins to snore softly.
I hate the snoring. It makes me wonder what I see in humans. Still, it has not deterred me from taking refuge in his warmth these past months. But not now; I reach instead for my white bearskin robe, lying at the foot of the bed.
The ends of the fur are tipped with tiny diamonds; I rub my hands down the robe, feeling the gems against my palms. I wrap my arms around myself, wondering at the desire (for I recognise it as a want, not a need) for warmth. I could just as easily walk naked through a blizzard and suffer no harm, but still I seek warmth or its approximation. I shake the thought from my head and leave the bedchamber.
*
The door to this room has been shut tight for a week. I have avoided looking
into the mirror, avoided seeing what it has to offer. I could not bear to see
her, dogged and determined in her red boots, the little rose‐grower, the
tenacious mender of shirts, the faithful heart that will not cease. I could not
bear to see that still she comes, in spite of every obstacle I have thrown in her
path. And she comes for my warm‐bodied boy. Once upon a time, when I entered this room, I would mount the dais, carefully placing my narrow feet one in front of the other, sweeping onto the carved throne like a snowbird settling onto her nest. Now, though, that dignity is no longer mine. I push open the heavy door and pad to the edge of the lake, lying smooth as glass, waiting for me. I sink to my knees like a penitent, like a beggar, and feel fear creep up my spine as I force my eyes to seek out the shape that moves in the snowstorm. I have watched her progress for months, addicted to the tale that has unfolded in the surface of this lake.
She is small, blonde; once she was plump and wore her puppy fat like a blanket. Privation has melted it away. A child when she set out on this quest, now a young woman, ripe and fresh, her breasts, proudly jutting, are surely frozen (does she still feel the tongue of the Little Robber Girl on them? Does it warm their pink tips to think of that wet, cunning tongue? I watched that, too.) Her clothes are rags but the boots, the red boots that Kai made for her before I turned his heart, are sturdy. She comes, tramping frozen‐footed and heavy‐lidded through the sleet.
From the moment I knew she would come I used all my powers to stop her, distract her, even to simply slow her down so my time with Kai would be extended, stretched, pulled out of true, and somehow endure. From the moment a tremor shuddered through the ground at my feet (when she jumped in the river to drown herself in despair, when the current caught the hint of who she was and sent her hurtling toward my castle), I began to plan, to scheme to keep her away.
The crow, my fine servant, distracted her for a while with a tale of a prince with Kai’s face who had won a princess with clever kisses. That sent her off the track, journeying to the home of the princess, hiding in the bedroom to see the prince who shared the famous bed. But the moment she saw him, she knew he was not Kai, not her Kai, not my Kai. So she set off again.
The Little Robber Girl, surely, I thought, would keep her. And she wanted to stay. Oh, how Gerda wanted to stay – I could see it in the way she watched her dusky girlfriend, the way she moved in time with those dark fingers, the way she learned so quickly how pleasure can be given and taken at the tip of a long tongue. I relaxed for a while, was certain she would stay on in that warm, secluded cave, but no. After some weeks, she prevailed on her lover to let her go; her duty must be done, her loyalty could not be thrown aside so easily, not even for love. And, weeping, the Little Robber Girl gave Gerda her precious reindeer, and made her promise to come back if Kai no longer wanted her.
I raged. I brought down a mountain in my anger and (to my shame) placed a jagged fissure at the feet of the reindeer. He broke a leg and Gerda used the pearl‐handled knife the Little Robber Girl had given her and let him bleed out quietly into the snow. It was something I would not have thought her capable of, initially, but watching her for so long I now know it to be entirely in keeping with her character. She is stronger than I would have believed: harder, determined.
I gave Kai his task, then, his challenge: he was to form the word ‘eternity’ from shards of ice. He was to do it and make it his promise to me – to be with me forever, impermanent being though he might be, my stolen springtime.
Now, I give her one last look, curling my hands into claws, tearing at the icy ground until I feel a nail, diamond hard, snap. Such a thing should not have happened; but then, none of this should have happened. I should never have decided a human was of paramount importance to me. Keeping him like a pet should not have become a priority. I should never have fallen in love with warmth.
I rise, clench my fists and turn away. She will be here soon, perhaps within the hour, depending on the storm. I have no power to stop her. She is youth incarnate and he will leave me for her.
*
‘I was looking for you.’
The door shuts behind me with a hollow sound, a sound of loss, of abandonment. He smiles sleepily and reaches for me. I come to him hungry and fearful, my mouth demanding, my hands possessive. It takes him only a moment to match my need, and the bearskin robe falls to the floor. He lies on the warm fur as I straddle him, his heated flesh penetrates me. I run a hand across his chest, press my fingers to the spot over his heart and wish that I could remove the shard that lives there; and the one in his eye. Remove them so he could see for himself what I am and decide whether to stay or not. When she arrives it will all change; but I want this action to be mine, I want to be the one who gives him a choice. I don’t want him taken from me. Alas, I cannot remove the pieces of my spite for I cannot melt anything.
I feel liquid heat on my face. Tears are foreign to me so, for a moment, I do not know what is happening. I fear that my skin will melt under this flow, disappearing like snow under a handful of salt. The fluid, not clear but smoky and strange, falls onto Kai’s chest, then into his eyes. He gasps and I see his vision clear; sense that the shards have gone, melted by my tears, by a power I did not know I had. I stare into his eyes, with their veil torn away, steeling myself for what I might see there but refusing to look away.
His hand reaches up and brushes the sable hair back, then traces the lineaments of my face. ‘Gerda comes,’ I say. I want to shout, to rage, to tell him of her antics with another woman, I want to scream everything I know that may turn him against her. But I do not, though it hurts my heart, I do not. He pauses, his hand slides down to cup one breast then the other with tenderness.
‘Let her come. I am happy here and she must find her happiness elsewhere.’ He pulls me down, so our lips are close. ‘I will not leave you, my Queen of Snow and Ice.’
