I stared up at the swaying ocean of ice, that night. That was the night the winter stole the voice from my throat and turned it into the howling wind and the creaking trees and the crystalline clatter of frozen snow. As my life poured out onto the white ground beneath the trees, the low of field clouds that churned above descended to blanket my vision with whiteness and fill the world with racing, stinging snow.
I never imagined there was much blood inside me. I have always cleaned and bandaged my scratches and bruises fearfully, because the sight of blood so terrified me. Something so precious should never be spilt on the ground and lost. I have always cringed from the cuts my clumsy knife inflicted on my fingers when I scaled fish, or the scrapes on my knees when I tripped and fell. I was such a silly girl. I was new to this rugged life. Lying in the snow beneath the trees, my blood, more than I imagined existed in all the world, gushed out of me like milk from an upturned bucket.
I had tried to mend a hole in Misha's great fur coat, once. I struggled determinedly against the impenetrable material, gritting my teeth as I forced the thick needle in to make my stitches. But, my determination quickly outstripped my skill. The needle buried itself in my palm, nailing the fabric to my hand. Misha was so patient and calm, letting me shriek and wail like an infant while he mended my hand. It did not hurt as badly as I imagined, but the sight of my red blood running down my arm and dripping onto the floor left me huffing and panting, my lungs empty, my eyes wide until I tore them away and shut them tight.
Misha was used to blood. There was always so much of it when he caught fish, or slaughtered animals. I could never stand it. When I watched him chop the head from Vili, the fat, brown hen who had laid so many eggs when she was younger, I nearly fainted. Blood erupted from her neck like syrup from a fountain, spattering onto the ground and staining her feathers. Her headless body jerked and leapt from his hands and thrashed across the yard, spewing blood everywhere until it stumbled and fell into a convulsing heap. Her blood stuck to my fingers like soot when I plucked her that afternoon.
For nights after that day, nightmares chased me in my sleep. All the water in the house curdled in my hands and turned heavy and red. Dark liquid seeped under the doors and vomited from the pitchers where we melted snow to drink. The smell was beyond imagination. I screamed and tried to hide from the slowly creeping tide, but it hunted me. I clung to Misha, trembling with terror, when I woke. My blood pooled in a slowly creeping tide in the snow, that night beneath the trees, leaping out with each clench of my weakening heart. If only I were a crudely-made animal, like Vili! I would thrash and flail madly! I would leap and jerk with all my strength to flee the death that closed its icy fingers around me! But, my limbs had lost their strength to carry me. My voice had lost its power to scream. I could only stare up at the sky as the heavens buried me. The swirling flakes pressed me down, filling my mouth and clouding my eyes, forcing out my life through the wound in my side.
The terror, all the panic and desperation, I had felt when she appeared bled from my heart with my draining blood. I felt nothing so vigorous as panic or desperation, anymore. Her black, lifeless eyes locked with mine and her beautiful, dead face filled my vision again.
I might have admired her face, if not for her eyes. I might have been jealous of her high cheekbones, and her gently sloped nose. My cheek's bones were still buried under baby fat, and not even a year and a half of frontier living could excavate them. I would have squeezed Misha's hand protectively if we ever passed her on a road, or met in the General Store. I would have despaired for my plain, childish inelegance. I would have hastily called his attention to some bird flying overhead, or some amusing spectacle to distract his gaze from her cheeks, her nose, her haughtily arched lips, If not for her horrible eyes. Her eyes destroyed any hope of humanity or warmth that might lie behind her beauty.
The pools of her eyes were dark grey pits of fetid water, wet and laced with black, writhing veins. They captured me and swallowed me whole as they loomed. My stomach lurched and I had to shut out the sight in horror.
Cracks laced her bluish skin beneath a glaze of ice, the tiny, white dolls my grandfather had bought from traders from the Far East. The moon and wind had long since bleached the glow from her bone white flesh, but she sparkled in the twilight, dusted with ice and snow. A stream of blood, still red, had frozen at her temple beneath black hair that leapt and danced the howling wind. Her eyes gleamed like the frozen surface of a swamp as they turned, sliding from one feature of my body to another. Her face drifted close to mine. She looked sad, almost, but I knew she could not possibly feel remorse for the evil she had done to me. She had murdered me. She made me cower inside my heart.
The ice glistening on her blue lips flexed and flowed like water with the movements of the still soft flesh beneath. She spoke to me, glittering like a dream, but no sound came. The howling wind snatched up her voice and hurled it away from my ears. Only the rushing of wind through trees and the clatter of ice on ice reached me through the storm raging around us. The sounds trembled in my ears in cascading patterns.
"We are puppets," they whispered. " We are lost."
I could still feel her cold breath drain the warmth from my face, however, and I shut my eyes even tighter. Her breath slid across my cheeks and down my chin to the tiny bit of exposed throat above my scarf and parka hood. If only my arms did not feel like lead weights! If only my legs would heed the primitive compulsions in my brain screaming at them to carry me far from here! What did this awful creature want with me? What had I done to deserve this?
Something wet and cold brushed my lip. My breath caught sharply. The branches and leaves tangled in her black hair brushed my cheeks, scratching and tickling me strangely. I did not feel the hard snowflakes strike my face, but I could not bear to open my eyes. I whimpered pathetically. The cold thing touched my mouth again, prickling me roughly. I heard her exhale deeply, as if she were panting. Her breath drifted against my face. Her hands slid along my legs, catching the laces of my boots and ruffling my furred leggings. The wetness touched my lips, again.
She licked me! Her disgusting tongue slid out and brushed my mouth. I could feel it! I pursed my lips in defiance, but the thought that she might actually try to put her cold, dead tongue inside my mouth horrified me to tears. She licked me again, like a dog begging for attention, and then nothing. Then, I felt her lips brush against my throat like feathers.
She stroked my pale skin beneath my heavy winter clothes with formless fingers that drifted through the fur and fabric like mist through trees. She tickled my skinny ribs, laid bare by the long winter. In a few months the ships would come to the village bringing fruits and vegetables and dried meats and nuts and other goods to keep our small frontier town alive. Misha and I would gather the seal pelts we had hunted and stored and sell them to buy more food and tools and supplies. There would be a new pillow, to replace the old one my father sent with me when I came to live here. There would be dried apple slices and raisins and sweet honey like melted gold. There would be flour for hearty bread, and ground meal for porridge. I would tremble like a child at Christmas, and chatter to Misha much too loudly about whether we should buy this or buy that. Misha is like a great, warm rock. I would skip up and down the rows of goods in utter ecstasy! I would babble on like such a fool, but he would only smile and kiss me.
On that night, we would have a merry feast and my skinny ribs and hips would fill out again. We would make love on the floor before the fireplace, just like before, and fall asleep in each other's arms. I only truly feel like a woman when we make love. I wanted so much to be grown up for Misha; a real wife. I wanted so much to split this child's body open, like a moth leaving a cocoon, and emerge full and voluptuous for him. I wanted so much... But, the dead thing in the forest breathed into my ear, frosting my hair with snow crystals and frightened my memories away.
She caressed the curves of my body with a lover's grace, squeezing my breasts and sending little chills through my heart. She brushed her fingers along my features, punctuating their trails with gentle little kisses, but I was passionless. How could this frozen corpse make me feel anything but terror? She smiled at my feeble gasping and leaned closer. I stared into the decaying swamps of her grey eyes, and shut mine again, for fear of being lost in them. In the darkness, she pressed her lips to mine, so soft and so cold that they made my heart ache to stop. She sucked my mouth and licked me and I sobbed weakly as she drew away. I looked up at her. Her long silvery lashes lowered and half closed, shielding me from her eyes and she curved her lips into words again.
"So small," the snow whispered. "So pretty. Like a bird."
My belly felt the sting of cold as my clothes left my body. The whirling snow struck my exposed flesh, piercing me like hard little needles. She leaned down and kissed my skin softly. Her lips chilled my flesh as they grazed the shallow curve that Misha's hands would trace in bed at night. Her icy fingers slid against my skin as she pulled down my leggings, my pants under them, and my private garments under them. Her hair brushed my thighs and her fingers softly touched my knee. The snow struck me and froze in pinpricks along my body, but it did not fall between my legs.
I could feel her gaze burning me. I shut my eyes as hard as I could to darken the world and cower in the shadows, but I could not close myself. I lay open, beneath her. I could not hide the place where the snow did not fall, the place where her head bowed.
She touched her face to my body and prayed to it. Her lips and tongue, delicate and cool beneath her slick ice, whispered things to my flesh that I had never imagined before. I tensed, recoiling from her, but her tender touches lured me. The fluttering of gentle creatures and warm intimacies I could scarcely conceive of swarmed inside me, reaching up with heated hands, pulling me back to the surface of myself. I tried to calm myself, but I trembled all over, flushing with the voluptuous warmth she brought to me like a patron god of hidden hungers and ancient longings.
