A Winter’s Love

They said she came of Winter, who had long ago dallied with a mortal.  The chill still ran through her blood. Everything she touched seemed cooler, and her lips never warmed to mine. Never. Even under heavy blankets, I shivered when I touched her, and in sleep I rolled away, seeking warmer places.

She herself lay cool and still, unmoving in her sleep. And if she did not turn to me – well. I told myself it was out of kindness.

She could be as kindly as a soft winter snow.

They named her ugly, cold.  I found her beautiful, exquisite, though others deemed her too pale for beauty.  Her eyes still held the color of fine ice in sunlight; they hurt to watch for too long.  Her hair held the dark shadows of deep ice upon a lake, though at the same time it was clear, cold and white.  It shimmered in the sun, and turned dark in the candlelight.  I could not keep my eyes from it, or from her pale, bleak skin.

She had come here, to visit our summer gardens, and she had stayed through our fall and winter.

We call it winter, although any who have known a true winter would laugh at the description.  We are south enough to escape snow and ice in all but the bitterest years, and I can hardly remember the last of those years.  Still, the days cool, and the rain retreats, and some of the leaves change color and fall, and the tall grasses turn brown in the sun.

She had come to wander in our roses and other flowers.  I had lined the walls with bougainvilleas, grown roses near the house. I had let the maples and live oaks line the pathways to the small lakes and cut paths through the heavy trees and grasses on the shores.  I watched her bend her lips to the roses, watched them droop and frost over.

“You could preserve them, if you wish,” I said.  “Freeze them in ice.”

“They would lose their scent, if I did,” she said.

I did not know why she had come to my bed, why she lingered in our heat, when the cold so warmed her that on our colder days, she slipped out each morning before the sun rose, to wander, bare armed, in the chill.  In the warmest part of the day, she hid in shadows.  I brought her tea to warm her.  The porcelain cup cracked in her hands.

“Have you seen the snow?” she asked.

“A few times,” I admitted.  I had travelled some, in my younger days, although now I preferred to remain in my house, in the glass lined room on the second floor that watched the lakes and the hanging trees.

“And yet you remain here,” she said.

“I find the heat pleasant.”

Another woman might have shuddered.  She remained still, and cold.

I served her hot salads, cold soups, exquisite desserts, both hot and cold.  She did not cook much, she told me, preferring to sup upon ice. Ice we had little of, but I arranged to have it shipped down from the north, wrapped in sawdust, for her to drink and eat. When she saw it, her pale skin turned red, a little, and then she was white again, as she licked at the ice.

My own hands felt chilled.

That night, I tried to warm her with my mouth and hands, and felt her ice seeping into my heart.

I brought friends and guests to entertain her, I, who only wanted quiet and the calls of water birds.  The house rang with conversation; it hurt her ears and mine. I played music for her: broken notes on the harp, softer songs on the violin, harsh airs on the flute.  I stumbled as I played, her ice encircling my fingers.  I took her to the lakes, where the water ran slowly, walking across the brown green grass, past the oaks that never lost their green, to watch herons seize fish in the still water.  She told me of snowbirds, of flowers caught in glaciers, of the slow movement of the ice.

The grass grew bright in spring, and my flowers danced in the sun, and my house warmed, freed from her chill.

In our bed, I found three roses, encrusted with ice.  She was right: the roses had no scent. They burned my hands when I held them.  No matter what I did, I could not make them melt. Even when their icy thorns pricked me, letting my warm heart’s blood seep onto their delicate petals.