He has just started eating when she enters the tavern, bringing all conversation to a halt.
She is, he supposes, beautiful. But that’s not why he–and everyone else–is watching her. Nor is it the rich redness of her mouth against the absolute dead whiteness of her skin, or the shimmering fall of white hair framing her face and dancing in the light, or even her eyes, dark blue and glittering.
No.
It’s the way she walks.
The way she moves.
The promise in her step.
He cannot pull his eyes away.
And then she is at his table.
His table. Yes. He is sitting at a table. A rough, awful table–it’s not good enough for her. Nothing is good enough for her. His mouth is dry. He needs water. He needs–
Her.
His hands fish on the table, searching for the cup of water that was on it, at one point. A quick glance would show him, but she is standing right before him and oh–
He’s knocked down the water.
It doesn’t matter.
“Jacques?”
And oh, her voice, rich and sweet as honeyed wine.
She is sitting by him.
He catches his breath. She is, if possible, even more beautiful, more exquisite, more desirable, than she had been at the doorway.
And the pain in his leg that has been troubling him so badly over the past few weeks seems to be completely gone.
“Jacques,” she says again.
He can’t speak. He can barely even breathe.
And then she is reaching out and–touching him. Touching him. Running a cold light finger down his hand. It is the most exquisite sensation he has ever felt.
He wants her.
He wants her very badly.
Her eyes shut.
Her face–
It almost looks as if she is in pain. And when she opens her eyes–
Sorrow. A vast, deep sorrow that almost seems to engulf him.
No. She can’t be sad. This woman can never, ever, be sad. It is wrong for anyone so beautiful to be so sad. He won’t let her be sad. His heart is pounding; every muscle in his body feels fatigued, but he will make her happy. He will.
“Jacques,” she says, for a third time, and oh, the sweetness, the promise. Her lips. “Jacques. Would you like to come with me?”
Both of his legs shriek in agony as he stands to follow her. It doesn’t matter, no more than the sudden fatigue that hits him. Coming with her would make her happy. He has to make her happy. He has to touch her. Hold her. He stumbles against the table as he moves forward to grab her hands, not seeing anything but her. And her hands–her hands–soft and cool and he can imagine them touching his skin as he her eyes her eyes oh god those eyes–
“I don’t even know your name,” he babbles, as they leave, his hand in hers. He should know her name. Women like that.
She darts a glance at him, under lashes that are–he realizes–as exquisite and beautiful as everything else about her. He could spend days kissing those lashes, adoring those lashes. He should write a poem about her lashes. Only that might take time away from kissing her lips, from–
“Belle,” she tells him, not releasing his hand.
He shivers.
And then he is back to contemplating her flawless, snowy white skin.
She leads him from the town, along the road, up the hills. He hardly notices. He is too focused on everything else: her skin. Her eyes. Her legs–how could he have not noticed her legs? Her legs; he could spend hours, days, years kneeling in front of them, studying their sculpted perfection. He hardly notices the crowds parting for them, the eyes that follow them–not, not them–her. That doesn’t matter. The only thing that matters is that he loves her. Loves her. This is obviously love. He will do anything for her. Anything. He is never going to leave her.
They pass his mother on the way. Her eyes fill with tears. He does not see her, does not notice. He says nothing to the friends that shout at him, that wave to him. The world is only snow-white skin and blue eyes and he loves her, loves her. Nothing else matters. Not the worsening pain in his legs. Not the fatigue. Not his own skin, pale and grey against hers. Only her. Only her.
The hillside is very cold. He does notice that. But he will be kissing her soon, burying himself inside her–he is certain of this–and so the cold does not matter.
“Lie down,” she whispers, and he does, gratefully.
His body shakes when it feels the coldness of the earth, and it is hard, so hard to breathe again, almost as if an iron band is around his chest. Love. He reaches for her hand to bring it to his lips. Pain pulses through his knees, his ankles.
And then they are falling through the hillside.
It is cold, so cold.
Something soft and cold is wrapping itself around him, slowly, gently, pulling his legs together, pulling his arms against his chest. It is tight, so tight. And cold, so cold.
No.
He opens his eyes.
After a second, he can see: the huge underground cave. The shimmering crystals on the ceilings and walls. And the people: men, women, young, old, middle-aged, thin, fat. Dressed in metal, dressed in cloth, dressed in cloth of gold, dressed in simple brown wool, all curled up, as if asleep, except their eyes are looking at him. No, not at him. At the white woman behind him, who is moving around him, wrapping him in cold.
Something inside him wants to scream.
But his chest hurts, and his arm hurts, and she is touching him. And then she is bending over him, and he cannot speak, cannot think. He can only stare at her, at her eyes, at the bodies beyond them both.
No.
He can do something else. He can shut his eyes.
It is the hardest thing he has ever done.
She is still watching him, he is certain. Watching and watching and oh it is so hard, so cold her eyes her eyes even with his eyes shut he still feels the cold the cold the need to fall–
He dreams of knights.
He dreams of her lips on his.
He dreams of shadows.
He dreams of writhing beneath her, of screaming her name.
He dreams of warning.
He dreams of knights.
He dreams of pain.
He dreams of her.
He dreams of light.
He awakes to bright lights. He is throwing up, or trying to, over and over. A warm hand is placed on his head, another on his chest. He tries to throw up again. Voices speak to him. He picks up words here and there, strange words, incomprehensible. Surgery. Osteosarcoma. Recovery. The lights hurt his eyes. Warm hands push him down onto–a cot? A bed? It feels like nothing he has ever been on. He has to get out of here. He has to–
The hands are on him again, pressing him back. The voices are gentle, soothing. He shuts his eyes. He sees her face again.
This time, he does not dream.
She is standing beside him when he wakes the second time.
He might be dead. Those strange, inexplicable sounds are back again, combined with the murmur of low, incomprehensible voices. And the room–it is definitely a room–is like no place that he has ever seen, with smooth white walls hung with strange things and a large window set with–it is impossible, but it is happening–a huge piece of glass. Glass. Impossibly large glass at that. The sight makes him slightly dizzy. He shifts his eyes to look at her, then shifts them back to look at the glass. Because what is out there–
Wait.
He looks back.
Her skin is still flawless, white as snow; her eyes still blue. Her hair is now tied back tightly, and her clothes–he flushes a little. She is wearing something that reveals her long, white arms. She is beautiful, beautiful–
But his eyes can roam the room.
She places a cold hand on his head.
“Jacques,” she whispers, iced honey.
“What’s happening?”
He thinks he knows. Surgery. Recovery. The first word is strange. The second is not.
“Jacques.”
“I heard,” he chokes. “Heard, but I thought–”
“Jacques.”
He wants to place his hands around that perfect throat, and tighten them, tighten them until her neck is bruised and bleeding and imperfect. He wants to see her cry.
“You took me. Took me beneath your hill–”
“To let you dream until the mortals learned the tricks needed to heal you.”
“Dream.”
She should be the one choking. He cannot breathe.
“You will need this,” she says, dropping something on to the small strange table by his bed, before turning towards the door.
“Wait.”
She turns back.
“Under your hill–” He feels himself reddening, choking. But he needs to know. He thinks he needs to know. “Was it all a dream?”
Her face never changes. “It was under the hill,” she answers, and she is gone.
It is a few days before the place of healing–the hospital–allows him to leave, with her gift to him–a wallet, containing a name and money and other things he will need. He steps outside painlessly, cautiously, and flinches.
Outside is loud and bewildering and horrible, filled with angry sounds and metal monsters and people, so many people. He has to hold on to the hospital door for a moment before he can take the first step, let alone the second, and even then, he finds himself flinching or jumping at every new sound. And yet it is easier, somehow, than it was before, before he went with her to the cold hillside, as if whatever was around his chest has been broken.
He could, he thinks, find his way back to the cold hillside, find a way back to sink into his dreams again. But he does not. Instead he wanders, and eats, and wanders again, finding bits and pieces of his old town–his home–beneath the new. No more than that. No more than fragments. Nothing, no one that he once knew.
Though from time to time he thinks he sees a face that, like his, remembers something older, something colder. But he does not approach them, and they do not approach him. He is alive, after all, and walking, and somehow, no longer cold.
| Other work by Mari Ness appears in multiple publications including Tor.com, Clarkesworld, Uncanny, Lightspeed, Nightmare, Apex, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, and Nature Futures. A tiny collection of tiny fairy tales, Dancing on Silver Lands, was the 2021 Outwrite Fiction Winner, and is currently available from Neon Hemlock Press. A poetry novella, Through Immortal Shadows Singing, is available from Papaveria Press, and an essay collection, Resistance and Transformation: On Fairy Tales, from Aqueduct. Mari still hasn’t quite given up on Twitter—yet—and tweets from there at @mari_ness; more info can be found at marikness.wordpress.com; free to read reprints at Marikness–Medium, and the occasional original poem at Patreon. |  |
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