This Water

by Beverley Farmer

  She stands transfixed, willing it to turn and see her at the window and come to her. But it stands still, for so long that it seems to be shifting, along with its shadow, in time with the sun in its round; just as the dome itself seems to be shifting, along with its watery rim of shadows. The aspect of the figure is changing with the light. It is all hooded and cloaked in white that flutters now and then, falling into folds of shadow. But even in this new light and shadow no face – which way is she looking? How far away is she? Is she veiled as a bride? No way of telling. She decides that the snowstorm must have swept up this figure just here, for what else has there been but snow and storm? And so a bride of snow has come into being, or of ice – unlike her Lord, she can never tell the difference. Is this how it begins? And now will she come and live inside? A new bride?

  Suddenly the vast dome is too small for the bride at the window. She is used to the way that he and she will grow smaller in the mirrors of each other’s eyes as they part, only to grow back as they approach each other again, until they reach full size. She has seen how little her face is on the shiny dome of his eyeballs, although her face and his are the same size. She knows her eyes are not to be trusted. All the same, she can hardly take them off the stranger in the snow.

  During one of her times of vigil in the light in the snowy world she makes up a game of her own, where she takes up a pose at the window in full sight of her counterpart in the outside world, the other bride, and holds it for as long as she can. She watches for the least sign of response, but no. And yet, because of the game, over time a kind of intimacy grows up between them, a wayward fellowship of dependence that is not love as she knows it but an easier feeling than love, lighter but happier, more free. Now she tries bobbing down, hiding from the other bride, to catch her unawares; now she turns around or waves her arms, hoping all the while for an answering movement, and more than once she is almost sure she has caught sight of a twitch, a quickening of attention, a turn of the head and a sidelong glance. Can the other bride not see her though the wall as she longs to be seen?

  The last she sees of the pitiful figure it has crept nearer and is larger, its broad cheeks furrowed from the closed eyes down, as if its fingers have clawed at them or runnels of water frozen.

  As the days pass, the pattern in the course of the light can be seen and felt more clearly. A period of long darkness is broken by a short time of light, during which she has no desire to sleep, only to see and explore further. A constant pattern, unchanging, except that one time in the dark without warning it is daylight again in her sleep and she is standing at the window when the snowy figure at last drifts towards her across the expanse of snow and then through the melting window, letting fall her white cape, a revelation! – a breast, broad arms uplifted. But although the bride’s eyes are still wide open, she is in bed alone. No one is with her or will take her place or fold her in its arms and nurse her.

  I know I am the inside bride, she says into the dark, the true bride. But there is room for another.

  She closes her eyes, to go back to where she was in her sleep and find the intruder, trespasser, the other lost self, if it has heard what she said and come in. But not even sleep comes. She struggles to bring back the picture of what happened, to see if she caught sight of the form under the furry cape as it slid away, but the moment only repeats itself in her head over and over. What is she made of underneath, this other, this seeker who has found her, this veiled silence? She has left no trace, not even the shadow of a footprint.

  Then the bride’s heart sinks, as when her Lord first left. Her whole being is hollow with loss. She has learnt not only sorrow, but pity too, not by name but by example. Sleepless, she lies grieving under the dome full of stars. They look like snow as well, but fixed, frozen, not wafting and flickering as snow does as it falls, as if it were alive, suspended in the dark. No silver bowl of a moon comes sailing up into this long night. She tells herself that if the mourner in her cloak of snow is like a moon, she may come again. A vagrant one, yet constant.

  Soon the times of light are more frequent, and brighter, with no sign of where it comes from, until one day the rim of what looks like a red moon appears at the far edge of the snow, and sinks away. But it comes back, and rises higher for longer each time, paling, scattering glimmers and reflections and blue shadows over the snow. It makes a red stain on whatever it touches, and turns blue all that remains immersed in shade. Ravished at the new ever-changing beauty of the visible world, she sleeps less and less so as not to miss any of the transformation. One day the bright shape rides up clear of the world, round, a new full moon. After that, gaining in strength and height what it has lost in ruby red, it burns ever whiter, only golden when close to the world’s rim, only red at the very last moment, the moment she loves best. And now it comes right inside, catching on the edges of one shelf after another in flashes and splinters, setting off small stripes of all the colours. Even in the room of the stones it kindles stone, shell and shard and spills reflections and shadows at full length over the walls and blinding floors. It flows over her as well – why is he not here to see her like this, iridescent? All through this wonder he has been away and missed everything – and she discovers that she is not only white, any more than the world is; the light flows over her in a tide as golden as wine, coating her in itself until she looks as wet as if she had just stepped out of the bath.

  Much as she has longed for company, she is shocked one day in her prowling to glimpse a golden light, a lantern moving from room to room of the labyrinth, deep down where no ray of light has yet gone and nor has she. She glances up, in case it is just a reflection of the moon, or a bright star, but no. A lantern is burning somewhere down there, in a passage she has never ventured into, as far as she knows, or even gone with her Lord holding her hand to guide her. The glow is not fixed, like other lanterns, but wobbling, flickering, as if the intervening walls and floor were water, and it afloat; not only that, but moving, she sees, moving down below at the same speed as her own walk over the crystalline floors. She quickens her pace, trying to keep track of it and head it off. Has her Lord returned behind her back, and is this a new step in the marry dance? The pace of the lantern does not change but still it eludes her, now further, now nearer, as she hurries along passage after passage with no doors, rooms with empty shelves, heedless for the first time, abandoning caution and all thought of getting lost, just to keep up; and drawing closer, only one or two skins of crystal away, so close that at last she makes out a shadow, a cloaked form, a hooded head bent over the lantern, which is not like any other lantern, but like some living thing, like water, or sun and wind in one. And then a face jerks suddenly up, a thick nose scored with two black folds of shadow, and flanked by two lantern-flashes of ruby that are its eyes, fixed on hers.

  The shock crumples her to the floor in a faint. When she opens her eyes she is lying deep down in the labyrinth alone, she has no idea why. Where is she, and how has she come to be here? Then it comes back to her, the glow in wall after wall, the lantern leading her on a marry dance. In her mind’s eye she tracks her way along, now near, now far, to the cloaked figure that is not her Lord, that has swung around, eyes flaring, to face her. What is it doing here? Why has it run away, where to? What does it want? What will happen now?

  It takes her a long time, winding up her golden ball, to make her way back up into the higher, lighter rooms under the sky that are her domain, inviolate. Or are they? By now it is clear to her that she can never rest easy again until she finds it, and that before it finds her, face to face. She will neither rest nor sleep – can she ever sleep in peace again with an intruder on the loose? Is it watching her now, the lantern dark, hidden under its cloak? What will it do if it catches her unawares? In an instant she has learnt an overruling rule, that of mortal terror.

  All the same, the next time a lantern glows in the dark where no lantern should be, she follows it. She tracks it down, resolute, shaking all over, never once looking back, as
it leads her deeper and deeper, to a set of stone steps and a round stone door half opening onto walls, stone walls that let no light in or out, lit by – not a lantern only, but a deeper, looser glow – rippling, ruby, like those eyes in a shadowy recess in the back wall.

  Wide open out of the dark at first her eyes catch only the flicker and flow of the light, the hidden treasure, as it washes over whatever is inside it, and over her, coating her clothes and her skin, and then the mimic images of itself that that it sends out all over the stone walls and ceiling of this most wonderful of all rooms. But when her eyes come clear, there is no lantern, and no red hand afloat in midair or hooded form; and nowhere else it can have got to, or she would have seen it through however many thicknesses of silvery crystal during her long retreat.

  Even so, only after empty days with no further sign of a presence does she dare to creep back, breathless with the now familiar dread, along the passages to sit on the stone seat and gaze again into this apparition as it flows twittering and flapping inside its alcove, oozing, and sends out a cloud of breath that, while it lasts, stops her own breath. There is no name she can put to the amber incessant body of it. The nearest thing she can think of is the sun, or the clouds – but not near at all, this is alive. She closes her eyes against it and they see blue in the dark, and sometimes she is even lulled asleep by the hum and crackle of the room.

  Opening them one day, however, she sees a roundness, a bubble, issuing, swelling up and shrinking back into flames, faint hisses, a flare. What can it be? Too afraid to move, she waits desperately for it not to be whatever it is, for it to get away. But far from that, it is taking firmer and firmer shape, and substance, or so it seems; and even so, devoured as much with curiosity as with dread, not daring to run, not with that being hot on her heels, maybe, whatever it was – she stands staring until at last the shape breaks out of the flames on to the flagstones, towering – the intruder! It has come out of the flames and their shadows, or so it seems, drowsy as her eyes are in the dark, through the red daze blurring the room. But how could it have?

  It steps up, making a shimmer all around, sweeps the cap off its burning head in a deep and graceful bow, and greets her as ‘my Lady’.

  What are you? she cries.

  Why, your servant, my Lady! You know me! he utters from deep inside the tangle of wiry red hair that almost hides his lips. His eyes are steeped in shadow. Only his brows glint, wiry and red.

  I do not! You came up out of there! She points, stepping back. I saw you!

  Out of the hearth? Much may seem so to the eye, my Lady, and not be so.

  She knows that.

  Who are you? What do you want? Why are you following me?

  Is it not more a case, my Lady, of you following me?

  You began this marry dance! What are you doing here?

  Might you not do better to be asking yourself that?

  She shrinks further back. You will not say!

  My Lady, I am here only to guard you and do your bidding. Your servant.

  What is that?

  One who sees to all your needs.

  I have none!

  So it may seem, my Lady, but even so I am at your service. He bows low. Yours and the Lord and Master’s.

  I have never seen you before! Where did you come from?

  I am your Fellow of all work, at the Master’s service and yours, my Lady. Your Servant and your Fool.

  Our Fool?

  Your Fool, about his task of making his Lady laugh and keeping her company.

  Why?

  The Master’s orders. Not for me to ask.

  But he is away!

  I have my orders.

  Why now? Why would he not have said?

  That is his way, my Lady, as you know.

  She does. So this is a lesson, like the half-open doors and the marry dance.

  Baring his teeth inside his burning beard, the stranger sweeps out his arm to the moving light. Now, will you come and sit by your fire, my Lady, if you please?

  Is that its name? Fire?

  Fire it is.

  She smiles. And does Fire know its name?

  I daresay not – my Lady.

  She takes the point. I know my name. I am the Lady Bride.

  And I your humble Fool, at your service.

  She nods. In that case – fire, you said? And before that? The heart?

  Hearth. But very like the heart. It is where Fire lives. Its bed, my Lady.

  And what is it for, Fire?

  Fire is for burning, my Lady. Fancy you not knowing that! Do you not feel the heat of it? The hot breath of its mouth?

  Hot? She shakes her head.

  Nothing?

  What does that mean? I feel a deep red light moving like water, but in the air, like a lantern.

  Like the sun?

  The sun?

  That golden fire in the sky is the sun. He holds his hands out to the fire, palms up, rimmed in bright red. Come closer, my Lady.

  She steps lightly forward until she is close to the flames, so close that her white robe glows in their light, and holds out her own hands. Even her own self has a faint fiery glow, an inner radiant form she never knew she had. She is entranced with this sudden new beauty infused in hers, the rim of light around her clothes, her hands.

  Very well, my Lady, she half-hears him say at her back. You are deep in the grip of ice. But time will tell.

  So my Lord says, she says sleepily.

  And she knows no more until she wakes and finds herself lying on the stone seat by the hearth, the fire low, still fast asleep in its bed of stone, and it is time to go.

  Next time she asks him what laugh means, and he throws his head back and gives himself up to an ecstasy of hoarse little cries, his belly jumping under the red jacket.

  Now you, my Lady. Why not? It will do no harm!

  Harm? What is harm?

  Never mind. You may never need to know.

  Why not?

  Let us just see if you can.

  She is bewildered but she likes the look of him, the glow. While she is wondering what to do, he leaps up and goes frisking around her, a twirl here, a caper there, and she has to revolve, to follow his every move in fascination, until, just as he is executing a last flourish and bow, his beard to the floor, his little red eyes fixed on hers the whole time, beady eyes, each with a point of fire at the core, she bursts out shaking, just as he had, and gasping aloud, rhythmically, her eyes squeezed shut and her mouth stretched wide, jerking out cry after cry, not hoarse but trilling, helplessly, in a voice she has never heard come out of her mouth. The laugh has got a hold on her and will not stop. When at last it does, her eyes are dripping water down her face. So this is what it is to laugh? Not that it matters, just as he said, except for the feeling of helplessness. Never make me do that again, she opens her eyes to say – but he has slipped away and left her alone with Fire.

  Gathering her hem in her hands she runs blindly away, stumbling as never before, the golden ball useless, finding her way at last only by the constellation of lanterns up to the dome. Never again, she had said, but he already had. What if he has done her harm? Why? Barely breathing she lies under the white sky until she is calm enough to sleep.

  My Lady, growls the apparition, bowing low.

  You do come up out of the fire! she accuses. I saw you!

  Come now, my Lady!

  You live in the fire!

  He roars at this, hissing, bent double, and she watches with cold eyes. No bracing of herself is necessary, she is in no danger of joining in his laughter. Once they are seated on the floor on either side of the hearth looking into the flames, she looks at him sidelong.

  Why did I never know of this room until now?

  It was high time.

  High time? And you left without taking your leave.

  I did, my Lady. Pardon me, my work called me away. It will happen now and then.

  Will it? Well, laughing shall not. Do you hear?

  May I n
ot laugh, my Lady? Is my laughing so –

  If you must. But not in front of me.

  As you please, my Lady. But was it not the lightest, sweetest ripple of sound ever heard in this place, the laugh that came out of your mouth! Where is the harm? It does the heart good.

  Tell me what harm is.

  He dips his beard into his fur collar, shaking his head, and again she lets it pass. What is your work, then?

  Ah, well now, by and large I keep an eye on things down here. I drive the Master on the sled now and then. You know the sled, my Lady! No? The long night ride over the snow?

  What are you talking about? she says in a small voice.

  Pardon me, my Lady, did I not drive you here myself on the sled with the Lord and Master at your side, and me at the back hanging on to the reins! Wrapped up in furs we all were, behind the white one, great beast that he is, and tireless, and he wreathing us all in his clouds of breath? And for you not to remember a thing!

  As far as I know, she says in the same small voice, I have always been here.

  He stands up. I know, my Lady. Forgive me. It was only my Foolishness.

  She bows her head in consent, frowning, and when she looks up he has already gone, again without taking his leave. He is alarming and abrupt and she wants no more to do with him. She will stay away from now on.

  But she goes back, if only for the sake of the fire, and he is not there but the fire is, and soon she is forever gazing into the heart of it, the runnels and shifts and flapping cloths of light. And one day there he is before her, a shadow in front of the fire, bringing out a shower of sparks. With a cry she blocks her ears.

  My Lady! There you are. There now, what is there to be afraid of!

  It was the surprise, she says. The glitter. Like the night sky.

  A last spark cracks, leaps and goes out. She backs away open-mouthed.

  Like the stars, she insists.

  Very like. White fire is what they are at heart.

  White fire? Are they?

  He pokes the belly of the fire with a rod until it is lying quiet in its lair, all its black skins running over with a red and amber glow.