‘Lots of times.’
‘And if her place isn’t there, she’ll never come back!’ exclaimed Siss – and at that moment her wild assertion did not seem absurd. A quiver passed through them all.
The teacher said, ‘I think that’s going too far, Siss. None of us should say things like that.’
‘But can’t the desk stay as it is?’
‘I like the way you feel, Siss, but you mustn’t go too far. Wouldn’t it be better for someone to sit there for the time being? That would be quite natural. Nothing would be spoiled by that, would it?’
‘Yes, it would,’ said Siss, unable to think very far ahead in the tumult of the moment. She stared, shocked at the teacher, who could not understand her either.
The new girl was still standing in front of the class, unable to join them. It was obvious that she would have preferred to run away from it all. There was clearly a feeling of ill will against her for which she was not responsible. The class sat securely behind Siss in a topsy-turvy kind of satisfaction.
The teacher came to a decision.
‘All right, I’ll fetch another desk.’
Siss looked at him gratefully.
‘It’s not worth spoiling a thing like this,’ he added. He went out into the corridor.
At once their attitude towards the girl was changed. She was no enemy. She was welcome.
For some reason they asked Siss, who was crouching in her seat again. ‘You’ll join us again now, won’t you, Siss?’
She shook her head.
She could not tell them about the promise and that she had been given a great gift. All she was waiting for at that moment was to turn towards the teacher who came dragging the desk.
12
A Dream of Snow-Covered Bridges
As we stand the snow falls thicker.
Your sleeve turns white.
My sleeve turns white.
They move between us like
snow-covered bridges.
But snow-covered bridges are frozen.
In here is living warmth.
Your arm is warm beneath the snow, and
a welcome weight on mine.
It snows and snows
upon silent bridges.
Bridges unknown to all.
13
Black Creatures on the Snow
A movement up in the treetops is the first warning. There is no wind, merely a current through the green tops of the conifers in the early evening. Only when night falls will it become a strong draught, a nocturnal stream.
Snow has fallen today, too. Everything is shining new and white, but the sky is heavy, the clouds low and smooth.
Now it begins. People out walking in it feel it and change to a different rhythm, as if wanting to get home in good time. How mild it is, they say to themselves. But they have no desire to speak. Now it begins.
The stream has increased and is flowing more strongly up in the forest. The pine needles stretch their tongues and sing an unfamiliar nocturnal song. Each tongue is so small that it cannot be heard; together the sound is so deep and powerful that it could level the hills if it wished. But the air is mild, the snow lies wet and unmoving below, no longer rising in snow flurries.
How mild it is, say the people out walking late. They leave the forest and come out on to open ground – and there they meet the mild stream itself. They are moved, and welcome it as they would a friendly envoy. It has been cold long enough – and it will probably be just as bitter again soon. But in this wind they are for a moment as they prefer to be. The wet wind in the winter darkness can make the face radiant.
Nothing has yet been released, but something will come; it is tied by its own warning up in the clouds. In this state they finally return from their walk to the sleeping house. No one will know tomorrow that for a little while this evening they were radiant and altered.
In the morning and when it gets light it is still very mild, with the trees soughing and swaying. When the daylight comes the wet snow is seen to be scattered with minute black creatures; on every inch of snow, and for miles in all directions. They are alive, creeping as if on the move; recently they were a cloud, windborne and nightborne, a glimpse of what goes on in the universe, and they will turn into a stripe in the drift after the next snowfall.
14
The Vision in March
March arrived with its clear sky after all the midwinter weather. Now the mornings came early, shining and frosty. The drifts had settled, making for good skiing. It was the time for ski trips, the time for the trip to the ice palace. It was the end of March now.
The class had decided on the ski trip one Saturday just before they went home. They would go on Sunday morning. The trip would be extra special, because Siss was coming with them.
They decided they had won Siss over. Three of them had approached her.
‘Come with us on the trip, Siss. Just this once.’
They were the three she liked best.
‘Oh no,’ she said.
Just those three. The group knew who to send.
The three had no intention of giving in at the first refusal.
‘Come with us, Siss. You simply can’t go on cutting us like this. We haven’t done anything to you.’
Siss had a strong current against her. She intended to go to the ice palace on her own, and yet …
The one of the three who knew she was the strongest took a step forward and said softly, ‘Siss, we want you to come with us.’
‘Siss,’ she repeated, even more softly, making it into a dangerous weapon of temptation. The other two stood stock-still, giving even more effect to her words.
And they were too strong. The promise was pushed a little aside, Siss answered in the same dangerous tone as her tempter had used and with which one answers tempters. ‘All right, I’ll come. But if I come we’re going to the ice palace.’
The three of them glowed, ‘Now you’re being sensible.’
Siss had a guilty conscience as soon as she was alone. But Father and Mother were so happy when they heard about it that the hurt seemed to come from that source.
In the morning the group collected and set out with a lot of shouting and noise. It was a frosty, clear morning, with a little loose snow on top of the firm foundation, as it should be when at its best. Everyone was pleased that the trip would take them past the waterfall, and there was general rejoicing that Siss was with them. Siss was conscious of their friendliness; it sustained her buoyantly as her skis did on the snow-crust with the new snow on top.
Everything was and was not as it should be.
They followed a track that would bring them to the river just below the waterfall. Here were great silent pools where ice had formed and where you could cross over if you wished. The waterfall roared in the silence. They went right up to it.
All of them had been here to see the ice palace once or twice during the winter, so it did not take their breath away – yet it towered above them, powerful and mysterious. It was shining and free of snow now. The March sun had found the way to it early today, and was playing over the ice formations.
They conscientiously remembered to say nothing to Siss about dangerous subjects. She understood this and felt simultaneously secure and embarrassed. She was secretly in tumult at the sight of this place again. The men had cemented the link between the palace and herself that night. She would have to stay behind and take leave of the others here.
They feasted their eyes on the palace, listened to the roar of the falls which would soon become much stronger – and then they were ready to go on.
Siss stood stock-still. What they feared had happened. It had occurred to them that perhaps they had not won her over after all. They stood waiting for her to say so.
‘Look,’ she said, ‘I don’t think I’ll go any further. I really only wanted to come here.’
‘Why?’ asked someone. But one of the three tempters said at once, ‘Siss must decide. If she doesn’t want to come any further it�
�s none of our business.’
‘No. I’ll turn back here,’ said Siss, with her usual expression when she wanted to prevent opposition.
‘We’ll turn back, too, then,’ they said generously.
Siss was embarrassed. ‘No, of course not. Please. Can’t you go on as you’ve planned? I’d like to be here alone for a bit.’
Their faces fell. Can’t we stay with you? was written on them plainly. The solemn way she had talked about being there alone reminded them of how Siss had been all winter. It made them silent and constrained.
Siss saw from their expressions that the day was spoiled, but as far as she was concerned there was nothing to be done. It was too late; the promise had risen up inside her like a wall.
‘So you don’t want to be with us any more today?’
‘No, I’d rather not. You don’t understand, I know. It’s something I’ve promised,’ she said, startling them.
When she said it like that, they dimly realized that it was a promise made to Unn, and nobody knew whether she was alive or dead. In that case it was powerful and dangerous. It put a stop to all discussion.
‘You know I can find my way home on my own. I have our tracks to follow.’
Since she spoke so normally they regained their voices and were able to reply and even argue.
‘Yes, of course,’ they said, ‘but it’s not that.’
‘You’ve been standing by the wall the whole winter,’ one of them dared to say.
‘And we thought everything was going to be as it used to be.’
‘I’ll get home before you do,’ said Siss, who had no desire to discuss the matter.
‘Yes, but we thought everything was as it used to be, you see.’
‘Go on, and don’t talk like that,’ she pleaded.
They nodded to her and then, one by one, began to ski down the slope. They collected again on a small plateau, stood there as if in conference, and then swung away in a tightly knit group.
Siss, shamefaced and unhappy, ran on her floating skis back to the waterfall and the walls of ice. The roar drew her as if a voice were calling.
The memory of the men. They had stood here so strangely that night, as if something unexpected was about to happen. Because they believed it might have happened here. There was nowhere else to go when at one’s wits’ end.
She repeated the thought: I am at my wits’ end. The sort of thing people said many times a day without meaning it.
Shamefaced and unhappy she ran away from her companions and straight into the roar, straight towards the ice palace.
It was just as alarmingly tall and strange from whichever angle you looked at it. Polished and sparkling, free of snow, and with a ring of cold around it in the middle of the mild March air in which it stood. The river, black and deep, moved out from under the ice, gathering speed on its way downward and taking with it everything that could be torn away.
Siss stood there for a long time. She wished she could have stood as the men had done before they left, just before the start of the sombre song. They had stood in the flickering lantern-light as if they expected the missing child to emerge before their very eyes and tell them that there was nothing to find. Siss could not believe such a thing.
A great bird sliced past, making her start, but by that time it was already out of sight.
Nothing to search for here, nothing to find. But all the same … For the sake of the grown men …
She decided to stay. She took off her skis and walked on the firm snow up along the ice wall. The ice palace alone was fascinating enough, the way it had built itself up out of spurting and trickling moisture. Now all of it was compact and strong. Siss decided to go to the very top, to climb about there, simply to be there.
When she came up she looked out over a confusion of ice shapes. It was all blown clean of snow. Cautiously she let herself slide out on to the sloping ice, down into deep gulleys, half afraid that it might not be strong enough after all – and with the gnawing thought: perhaps it was like this, exactly like this that it happened?
Just now she had left her friends shamefacedly. Now she was shamefaced because she had somehow betrayed something when she went with them, forgotten her promise for the tempting eyes and lips of friendship and a ski trip. No, not the ski trip, but it had meant a great deal to be with them. It had gradually become more difficult to resist. She had resisted until she was worn out.
Siss’s feelings were in tumult up there on the tall, intricate dome of ice. She let herself slide along gulleys and down into fissures and came out on to a shelf some way down and at the very edge, facing the sun and the falls. She was in tumult on account of the place. She climbed down a hollow of transparent, solid ice. The sun shone on it and sparkled in hundreds of different patterns.
She screamed as she did so: for there was Unn! Straight in front of her, looking out through the ice wall.
In a flash she thought she saw Unn, deep in the ice.
The strong March sun was shining directly on her, so that she was wreathed in glinting brightness, all kinds of shining streaks and beams, curious roses, ice roses and ice ornaments, decked as if for some great festivity.
Siss, paralysed from head to foot, took it all in. For a moment she was unable to move or to make a sound beyond her first scream. She realized she was seeing a vision. She often heard about people who had had visions; now she was one of them. She was seeing a vision, seeing Unn, for the brief while she could bear to look at all.
The vision did not fade, it seemed. It remained unmoving in the ice – but it was too overpowering for Siss to look at. It had come like an assault.
Unn was enormous in this vision behind the running ice walls, much bigger than she should have been. It was really only her face that showed; the rest of her was vague.
Sharp rays of light cut across the picture, coming from unseen fissures and angles. There was a dazzling brilliance about Unn that made it difficult to grasp. Siss could not bear the sight. She regained the use of her limbs and crawled over into other hollows, without a thought other than that of hiding. She had gazed too long as it was; she was trembling.
When she came to her senses she was a good distance away. She thought: it must have disappeared by now, too. Visions do disappear quickly.
So it must have meant that Unn was dead.
Of course. Unn is dead.
Siss went to pieces as the realization struck her. This thing that she had not wanted to think, had not mentioned to herself, but which had been a horror in the background all the time- – and which people round about had certainly said so often and so openly – now there was no way of avoiding it. She had to believe it.
As she lay thinking she heard a swish close behind her, felt a sudden puff of wind, saw a streak in the air – all at once. Very close.
She shivered. It was cold lying on the ice. She began to crawl along in the slippery cavities. The way back was more difficult. Beneath her, in the ice, there was a curious play of sparkling fissures and light effects all the time. Occasionally it looked dangerous; she slid on to places without intending to. But she managed to climb up again. When she reached the top everything seemed so depressing and difficult. She stood looking out and began to wonder whether she really had seen anything.
Of course she had.
And she thought: One day in the spring this whole mountain of ice will be smashed to smithereens. It will crack up, and the floodwater will take it, smash it, tear it away on its downward course, dash it into even smaller fragments against the rocks, and wash it all out into the lower lake – and that will be the end of it.
Siss imagined herself standing there that day, watching it happen. She imagined, too, for a second that she was standing up on the ice palace at that moment – but she rejected the thought immediately.
No.
Siss found her skis again. Instead of putting them on she sat down on the warm wood on the warm, sunny slope. She had not yet come to her senses sufficiently. She was bewilder
ed by the vision of Unn, ornamented with ice.
One thing was certain: she could never tell anyone about this. Not anyone in the whole world!
Why should she have seen this? Had she forgotten Unn too often?
Not a word to Father and Mother; not a word to Auntie, not to anyone.
Had she seen it? Had she perhaps dozed off up there in the sun, and dreamed for an instant? When she looked about her in the sunshine, sitting on her skis, it was easy to believe she had imagined it all.
No, it wasn’t so easy as that. She was quivering all over. That doesn’t happen after a brief dream.
She managed to put on her skis with trembling fingers. She looked up at the ice palace and thought: I expect I’m seeing it for the last time. I daren’t come here again.
And she set her skis in motion.
Siss came home tired and sweating after her run. They saw, crestfallen, that all was not as it should be.
‘Are you back already? Did you feel ill?’
‘No, it’s nothing.’
‘But we know the others won’t be coming home for a long time yet. We phoned to find out.’
‘I turned back at the waterfall.’
‘But why?’
‘It’s nothing,’ she replied to their nervous questions. ‘I felt I couldn’t manage the whole trip, and so I went with them as far as the river.’
‘You couldn’t manage it?’
‘I’m all right now, though. I felt I couldn’t manage it just for a while.’
Her explanation did not ring true. She was not usually the first to give up.
‘We’re upset about this,’ said her father.
‘Yes. We were happy today. We thought you’d got over it at last,’ said her mother. ‘We thought things were going to be just as they used to be.’
Got over it, they said.
They cut right through and drew out the truth about what she was expected to do: get over it. It was easy to say, but how could that happen as long as the vision was dancing before her eyes? She realized she had lied to little purpose; they could not be taken in. But at any rate she could keep her mouth shut. She would willingly have pleased them in some way at that moment but could not lie to do – and how else could she do so? She looked at her mother in silence.
The Ice Palace Page 9
