Stranger Things Happen (12 page)
"So he was here, in this bed, you're the icy slut in the sleigh
at the corner store, you're not even bothering to deny it," you
say.
She shrugs her pink-white shoulders. "Four, five months ago, he
came through, I woke up," she says. "He was a nice guy, okay in
bed. She was a real bitch, though."
"Who was?" you ask.
Briar Rose finally notices that her new husband is glaring at
her. "What can I say?" she says, and shrugs. "I have a thing for
guys in squeaky boots."
"Who was a bitch?" you ask again.
"The Snow Queen," she says, "the slut in the sleigh."
#
This is the list you carry in your pocket, of the things you
plan to say to Kay, when you find him, if you find him:
I'm sorry that I forgot to water your ferns while you were away
that time.When you said that I reminded you of your mother, was that a
good thing?I never really liked your friends all that much.
None of my friends ever really liked you.
Do you remember when the cat ran away, and I cried and cried and
made you put up posters, and she never came back? I wasn't crying
because she didn't come back. I was crying because I'd taken her to
the woods, and I was scared she'd come back and tell you what I'd
done, but I guess a wolf got her, or something. She never liked me
anyway.I never liked your mother.
After you left, I didn't water your plants on purpose. They're
all dead.Goodbye.
Were you ever really in love with me?
Was I good in bed, or just average?
What exactly did you mean, when you said that it was fine that I
had put on a little weight, that you thought I was even more
beautiful, that I should go ahead and eat as much as I wanted, but
when I weighed myself on the bathroom scale, I was exactly the same
weight as before, I hadn't gained a single pound?So all those times, I'm being honest here, every single time,
and anyway I don't care if you don't believe me, I faked every
orgasm you ever thought I had. Women can do that, you know. You
never made me come, not even once.So maybe I'm an idiot, but I used to be in love with you.
I slept with some guy, I didn't mean to, it just kind of
happened. Is that how it was with you? Not that I'm making any
apologies, or that I'd accept yours, I just want to know.My feet hurt, and it's all your fault.
I mean it this time, goodbye.
#
The Princess Briar Rose isn't a bimbo after all, even if she
does have a silly name and a pink castle. You admire her dedication
to the art and practice of sleep. By now you are growing sick and
tired of traveling, and would like nothing better than to curl up
in a big featherbed for one hundred days, or maybe even one hundred
years, but she offers to loan you her carriage, and when you
explain that you have to walk, she sends you off with a troop of
armed guards. They will escort you through the forest, which is
full of thieves and wolves and princes on quests, lurking about.
The guards politely pretend that they don't notice the trail of
blood that you are leaving behind. They probably think it's some
sort of female thing.
It is after sunset, and you aren't even half a mile into the
forest, which is dark and scary and full of noises, when bandits
ambush your escort, and slaughter them all. The bandit queen, who
is grizzled and gray, with a nose like an old pickle, yells
delightedly at the sight of you. "You're a nice plump one for my
supper!" she says, and draws her long knife out of the stomach of
one of the dead guards. She is just about to slit your throat, as
you stand there, politely pretending not to notice the blood that
is pooling around the bodies of the dead guards, that is now
obliterating the bloody tracks of your feet, the knife that is at
your throat, when a girl about your own age jumps onto the robber
queen's back, pulling at the robber queen's braided hair as if it
were reins.
There is a certain family resemblance between the robber queen
and the girl who right now has her knees locked around the robber
queen's throat. "I don't want you to kill her," the girl says, and
you realize that she means you, that you were about to die a minute
ago, that travel is much more dangerous than you had ever imagined.
You add an item of complaint to the list of things that you plan to
tell Kay, if you find him.
The girl has half-throttled the robber queen, who has fallen to
her knees, gasping for breath. "She can be my sister," the girl
says insistently. "You promised I could have a sister and I want
her. Besides, her feet are bleeding."
The robber queen drops her knife, and the girl drops back onto
the ground, kissing her mother's hairy gray cheek. "Very well, very
well," the robber queen grumbles, and the girl grabs your hand,
pulling you farther and faster into the woods, until you are
running and stumbling, her hand hot around yours.
You have lost all sense of direction; your feet are no longer
set upon your map. You should be afraid, but instead you are
strangely exhilarated. Your feet don't hurt anymore, and although
you don't know where you are going, for the very first time you are
moving fast enough, you are almost flying, your feet are skimming
over the night-black forest floor as if it were the smooth, flat
surface of a lake, and your feet were two white birds. "Where are
we going?" you ask the robber girl.
"We're here," she says, and stops so suddenly that you almost
fall over. You are in a clearing, and the full moon is hanging
overhead. You can see the robber girl better now, under the light
of the moon. She looks like one of the bad girls who loiter under
the street lamp by the corner shop, the ones who used to whistle at
Kay. She wears black leatherette boots laced up to her thighs, and
a black, ribbed T-shirt and grape-colored plastic shorts with
matching suspenders. Her nails are painted black, and bitten down
to the quick. She leads you to a tumbledown stone keep, which is as
black inside as her fingernail polish, and smells strongly of dirty
straw and animals.
"Are you a princess?" she asks you. "What are you doing in my
mother's forest? Don't be afraid. I won't let my mother eat
you."
You explain to her that you are not a princess, what you are
doing, about the map, who you are looking for, what he did to you,
or maybe it was what he didn't do. When you finish, the robber girl
puts her arms around you and squeezes you roughly. "You poor thing!
But what a silly way to travel!" she says. She shakes her head and
makes you sit down on the stone floor of the keep and show her your
feet. You explain that they always heal, that really your feet are
quite tough, but she takes off her leatherette boots and gives them
to you.
The floor of the keep is dotted with indistinct, motionless
forms. One snarls in its sleep, and you realize that they are dogs.
The robber girl is sitting between four slender columns, and when
the dog snarls, the thing shifts restlessly, lowering its branchy
head. It is a hobbled reindeer. "Well go on, see if they fit," the
robber girl says, pulling out her knife. She drags it along the
stone floor to make sparks. "What are you going to do when you find
him?"
"Sometimes I'd like to cut off his head," you say. The robber
girl grins, and thumps the hilt of her knife against the reindeer's
chest.
The robber girl's feet are just a little bigger, but the boots
are still warm from her feet. You explain that you can't wear the
boots, or else you won't know where you are going. "Nonsense!" the
robber girl says rudely.
You ask if she knows a better way to find Kay, and she says that
if you are still determined to go looking for him, even though he
obviously doesn't love you, and he isn't worth a bit of trouble,
then the thing to do is to find the Snow Queen. "This is Bae. Bae,
you mangy old, useless old thing," she says. "Do you know where the
Snow Queen lives?"
The reindeer replies in a low, hopeless voice that he doesn't
know, but he is sure that his old mother does. The robber girl
slaps his flank. "Then you'll take her to your mother," she says.
"And mind that you don't dawdle on the way."
She turns to you and gives you a smacking wet kiss on the lips
and says, "Keep the shoes, they look much nicer on you than they
did on me. And don't let me hear that you've been walking on glass
again." She gives the reindeer a speculative look. "You know, Bae,
I almost think I'm going to miss you."
You step into the cradle of her hands, and she swings you over
the reindeer's bony back. Then she saws through the hobble with her
knife, and yells "Ho!" waking up the dogs.
You knot your fingers into Bae's mane, and bounce up as he
stumbles into a fast trot. The dogs follow for a distance, snapping
at his hooves, but soon you have outdistanced them, moving so fast
that the wind peels your lips back in an involuntary grimace. You
almost miss the feel of glass beneath your feet. By morning, you
are out of the forest again, and Bae's hooves are churning up white
clouds of snow.
#
Sometimes you think there must be an easier way to do this.
Sometimes it seems to be getting easier all on its own. Now you
have boots and a reindeer, but you still aren't happy. Sometimes
you wish that you'd stayed at home. You're sick and tired of
traveling towards the happily ever after, whenever the fuck that
is—you'd like the happily right now. Thank you very much.
#
When you breathe out, you can see the fine mist of your breath
and the breath of the reindeer floating before you, until the wind
tears it away. Bae runs on.
The snow flies up, and the air seems to grow thicker and
thicker. As Bae runs, you feel that the white air is being rent by
your passage, like heavy cloth. When you turn around and look
behind you, you can see the path shaped to your joined form, woman
and reindeer, like a hall stretching back to infinity. You see that
there is more than one sort of map, that some forms of travel are
indeed easier. "Give me a kiss," Bae says. The wind whips his words
back to you. You can almost see the shape of them hanging in the
heavy air.
"I'm not really a reindeer," he says. "I'm an enchanted
prince."
You politely decline, pointing out that you haven't known him
that long, and besides, for traveling purposes, a reindeer is
better than a prince.
"He doesn't love you," Bae says. "And you could stand to lose a
few pounds. My back is killing me."
You are sick and tired of talking animals, as well as travel.
They never say anything that you didn't already know. You think of
the talking cat that Kay gave you, the one that would always come
to you, secretly, and looking very pleased with itself, to inform
you when Kay's fingers smelled of some other woman. You couldn't
stand to see him pet it, his fingers stroking its white fur, the
cat lying on its side and purring wildly, "There, darling, that's
perfect, don't stop," his fingers on its belly, its tail wreathing
and lashing, its pointy little tongue sticking out at you. "Shut
up," you say to Bae.
He subsides into an offended silence. His long brown fur is
rimmed with frost, and you can feel the tears that the wind pulls
from your eyes turning to ice on your cheeks. The only part of you
that is warm are your feet, snug in the robber girl's boots. "It's
just a little farther," Bae says, when you have been traveling for
what feels like hours. "And then we're home."
You cross another corridor in the white air, and he swerves to
follow it, crying out gladly, "We are near the old woman of
Lapmark's house, my mother's house."
"How do you know?" you ask.
"I recognize the shape that she leaves behind her," Bae says.
"Look!"
You look and see that the corridor of air you are following is
formed like a short, stout, petticoated woman. It swings out at the
waist like a bell.
"How long does it last?"
"As long as the air is heavy and dense," he says, "we burrow
tunnels through the air like worms, but then the wind will come
along and erase where we have been."
The woman-tunnel ends at a low red door. Bae lowers his head and
knocks his antlers against it, scraping off the paint. The old
woman of Lapmark opens the door, and you clamber stiffly off Bae's
back. There is much rejoicing as mother recognizes son, although he
is much changed from how he had been.
The old woman of Lapmark is stooped and fat as a grub. She fixes
you a cup of tea, while Bae explains that you are looking for the
Snow Queen's palace.
"You've not far to go now," his mother tells you. "Only a few
hundred miles and past the house of the woman of Finmany. She'll
tell you how to go—let me write a letter explaining everything to
her. And don't forget to mention to her that I'll be coming for tea
tomorrow; she'll change you back then, Bae, if you ask her
nicely."
The woman of Lapmark has no paper, so she writes the letter on a
piece of dried cod, flat as a dinner plate. Then you are off again.
Sometimes you sleep as Bae runs on, and sometimes you aren't sure
if you are asleep or waking. Great balls of greenish light roll
cracking across the sky above you. At times it seems as if Bae is
flying alongside the lights, chatting to them like old friends. At
last you come to the house of the woman of Finmany, and you knock
on her chimney, because she has no door.
#
Why, you may wonder, are there so many old women living out
here? Is this a retirement community? One might not be remarkable,
two is certainly more than enough, but as you look around, you can
see little heaps of snow, lines of smoke rising from them. You have
to be careful where you put your foot, or you might come through
someone's roof. Maybe they came here for the quiet, or because they
like ice fishing, or maybe they just like snow.