The Melting Queen

by Bruce Cinnamon

  “She felt it like we all felt it,” gasps Clodagh. “She ran from it like we all run from it. But she was the only one who couldn’t run fast enough.”

  “WHO?” I cry, stepping toward Clodagh as she teeters on the edge.

  She cries out and her features twist back into their first form, the girl with the young face and the old eyes.

  “You know who I am,” says Shishira Sarasvati, and she falls backwards off the tower.

  I rush to the edge, but Shishira is gone. The city below has stopped shifting, but it hasn’t gone back to normal. The dust has settled, the constant shuffling has ended, and Edmonton has been reorganized. All the city’s landmarks have been rearranged, scattered across a strange new map. The Stalk stands at the centre of a big circular metropolis, the needle at the heart of a great sundial. Twelve huge canals cut through the city, full of sparkling green water, all leading here. The Stalk is on an island, surrounded by a lake whose waters are dazzlingly silver and bright.

  I stare out at the new city, watching the shadows of clouds spread across the landscape like oil stains on a map. I wait for this bizarre Intrusion to end, to jolt me back to reality like all the others. But nothing happens. I’m still here.

  The wind has died down, and I walk across the park, lie down in the place where I first woke up. I close my eyes. I take deep breaths. I count to a hundred in my head. But nothing works. I’m stuck here, alone, in this nothing-place with no escape.

  I stand up.

  “Hey!” I shout at the sky. “Let me out of here!”

  I look around, but Shishira is nowhere to be found. I walk around the park again and find a doorway to some emergency stairs. They lead me down into the Office of the Melting Queen. I walk along the long, curved hallway and see a hundred grand oil portraits, with Chinese dragons and Pride parades and dark forests. A hundred Melting Queens, and every one of them has Shishira’s face.

  “You know what you have to do.”

  Her voice whispers in my ear, but when I whip my head around the hallway is empty.

  “Where are you? Let me out!”

  “It’s finally time for someone else,” she says, “to see what I have seen. To be who I have been.”

  The forest floor is wet and cold. Meltwater soaks through my clothes, just as cold seeps into my skin and muscle and bone.

  I feel their hands all over me. They tear at my clothes, pull my hair, turn me over so I’m facing the sky. I shut my eyes tight, twist my face away. I don’t want to see them, don’t want to see myself reflected in their vicious eyes.

  “No!” I cry. “Please stop! Please.”

  “Stop resisting it,” says Shishira. She sits in the middle of Churchill Square, under the great copper statue of May Winter. Its burnished leaves are falling off, one at a time, leaving a dull steel skeleton exposed. Shishira doesn’t seem bothered by the clanking pieces of metal falling around her. She’s drawing infinite circles in the air with pink spraypaint. They hang in front of her unnaturally, spirals of neon-bright pigment.

  “Stop running from it,” she says. “You have to know the truth.”

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” I say. “All I know is that you’ve trapped me here. Let me go. Let me out of this place!”

  Shishira winces and clutches her belly. She throws the can of spraypaint away and it clatters across the abandoned, windswept square.

  “Maybe there’s only one way,” she groans. “Maybe if you feel what I felt, then you’ll understand.”

  “Feel what? What are you talking about?”

  “I gave birth to myself,” she says. “Every day. And in that pain, I remembered what my mother forgot. I skipped back even further, from one memory to another, to an even deeper pain. It was stronger than any other Intrusion, magnified and concentrated beyond comprehension, a double refraction that split me to pieces. I experienced what no one else has experienced: I had a memory within a memory. I was myself. I was my mother. And I was another.”

  Shishira’s belly swells and she grits her teeth.

  “I remembered the truth that my mother had lived, that all our sisters have known but none have let themselves believe.”

  “I don’t know any truth,” I say. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I don’t want to know. Just let me go!”

  “I tried to run,” she says. “I tried to hide. But there’s no escaping the undertow, once it catches hold of you.”

  The earth starts to rumble. The wind starts to blow. The ground buckles and cracks, huge crevasses opening up. The last leaf falls off the statue, and May Winter tumbles backwards into the earth.

  “Give in,” says Shishira.

  “No!” I shout, scrambling back from the edge of the chasm.

  The wind howls, stirring up dust around us. Pieces of the sky shatter like a glass globe, falling to earth around us. Shishira stands amidst the chaos, unscathed.

  “Give in!” she cries again. “You have no choice. You can remember. Or you can die.”

  I meet her eye, stand my ground, and the world collapses around us.

  “PUSH!”

  The voice booms in my ear like an atomic blast. Pain erupts through my body, setting me on fire.

  “Come on Vasanta! You’re almost there! PUSH!”

  A bright round light shines down from the cracked ceiling above. There are shadows moving above me, people looking down, telling me to breathe, telling me it’ll all be over soon.

  I blink and the world snaps around me, throwing me from a warm, soft hospital bed onto the cold hard frozen dirt of the forest floor.

  The full moon shines down from the night sky above. The men are shadows, plumes of warm breath in the cold night air.

  “This is what you get for coming to our town and trying to bring your filth here.”

  He slaps me across the face. My ears ring. My skin sings.

  I’m lying in a hospital bed.

  No.

  I’m lying on the forest floor.

  No.

  I’m doing both at once. I’m being split in two by a pain unlike anything I’ve ever felt.

  “Come on, Vasanta, come on. That was almost it. You’re so close, you have no idea how close you are.”

  “I can’t,” I gasp. “I can’t.”

  “Yes you can! Keep going, come on. One last big push, that’s all, that’s all you need.”

  Their feet smash against my side, into my ribs, knocking the wind out of me. I gasp for air and beg them to stop but they can’t hear me, no one can hear me. I struggle against them but they’re too strong, too determined to hurt me. Two of them hold my thrashing legs down and another draws his foot back.

  He kicks me between the legs, igniting pain like I’ve never known before. Pain that splits me in two.

  The pain splits me in two. I can’t do this. I can’t take this anymore.

  “Push, Vasanta!”

  My breathing quickens, my heart hammers. I feel the pain exploding and I push, I push, I squeeze as hard as I can and I try to relax even though it’s impossible. The pain obliterates everything, I feel my body breaking down.

  The men hit me. Across the face, across the chest. They kick me in the side. They rip out part of my hair and howl to the moon. I scream and I scream but no one can hear me. No one is coming to save me.

  I hear the screams. The choking, gasping wail. The slap on the back, a kiss on my hair. An arm wraps around my shoulders. I’m on the verge of passing out. One thought rings through my mind like the clear peal of a bell. One question I must know before I go. The only thing that matters.

  “What is it?” I croak.

  “It’s... It’s a girl.”

  {16}

  A shattered river

  “Adam.”

  A stern-faced woman leans over me.

  “He’s awake. Get the doctor.”

  She looks at the man next to her. He folds up his newspaper and leaves the room.

  Something is wrong. I lift my hand to my head
and feel scratchy stubble where my smooth silky hair used to be.

  “We had to cut it off,” says the woman. I have a strong image of her wielding shears greedily, hacking off my golden hair with glee. Or is it black as coal? Or is it red like cedar?

  “What did you do?” I rasp out.

  “Don’t try to talk,” she says. She pats her finger on my dry, cracked lips.

  “Where am I?”

  “In the hospital. You’ve been unconscious for almost two weeks! We were so worried. They found you on the riverbank. They said you had no brain activity! Your father almost suggested… but no, I would never let them do that.”

  The woman brushes an imaginary tear away with quick, violent swipes.

  “Who are you?” I ask.

  The door opens and a man with a newspaper comes in, followed by a doctor in a white coat and a blue turban.

  “He just asked me who I am,” whispers the woman. “He doesn’t remember!”

  The doctor comes to my bedside.

  “Hello,” he says amiably. “I’m Doctor Kanwari.”

  “Hello,” I say. “I’m—”

  I open my mouth to tell him my name, but I don’t know what it is. It’s like reaching on top of the armoire for a hatbox you know is always there, but your fingers only pull down dust. I grasp desperately for my name. For any name. But nothing comes.

  There are three people in this small room watching me. One of them holds a clipboard in his hands, so he must be important. He clicks his pen.

  “I’m going to ask you a few questions, okay Adam?”

  “Okay,” I respond. The name feels wrong, but I don’t correct him. What’s my name? Victoria? Isobel? Alice? Iris? Names bloom and wilt in my head in rapid succession. I feel a rush of joy at each one before I realize it’s wrong and I crash back down into uncertainty.

  “Can you tell me the last thing you remember?”

  A hundred images speed through my mind, like I’m stopped at a railway crossing with a train rattling past. Each train car houses a big screen, playing a different movie. All of the movies are about me, but they all star different actresses. I can’t focus on any of them. It makes me nauseated to try.

  “The only way to make it stop is to go where you don’t want to go.”

  I twist my head around and see her there, leaning against the wall in the far corner by the door, dressed all in black like an evil spirit.

  “You can stop this! You’re doing this!”

  “You were almost there,” says Shishira. “Just give in. It’s all you have to do.”

  “I don’t have to do anything.”

  “It won’t stop until you remember,” she says. “It’s happening to you like it happened to me. You’re falling to pieces. You’re losing yourself.”

  “Adam! Who are you talking to?”

  Hands on my shoulders, spinning me around. Mean buzz of ceiling fluorescents. Fingers digging into me.

  “Get off me! This is outrageous!” I shout at the woman who placed her beefy red hands on my body. “Don’t you know who I am!?”

  I can’t believe these people! Kitty and Joan and the other ladies at the yacht club are going to be so superior when they see me knocked off my perch like this. The thought of their smug, gloating faces makes me sick to my stomach.

  The Pakistani reaches out his hand and I jerk my arm away from him.

  “Don’t touch me! What kind of hospital is this, anyways? I’d like to speak to a qualified doctor, at least. Not someone who ought to be cleaning the floors.”

  “Adam!” The woman swats my shoulder with her hand and I slap it away, incredulous that I should be assaulted in this way.

  “How dare you, madam? That’s Mrs. Sable to you. Just wait until my husband hears about this. He’ll have your sham licence revoked,” I spit at the so-called doctor, “and he’ll destroy your reputations, whoever you are.” I curl my lip at this low-class man and woman. “He’s a very prominent attorney, I’ll have you know.”

  The sham doctor gets off my bed and I breathe a sigh of relief—honestly, you can never know what that type might do to you. The three of them have a whispered consultation in the corner and then turn back to me.

  “Mrs. Sable,” begins the fraud. “Can you tell us—”

  The dragon dances along the street. Ten thousand lanterns float in the sky. According to legend, we light lanterns to fool the Jade Emperor. He’ll look from high above and see that the city is already on fire, and so we’ll be spared his wrath.

  I smile at the crowd and see Birch’s old face looking on with satisfaction. Yeah. Enjoy it while you can, old man. In a couple months you won’t be smiling quite so much.

  I don’t like to look in the mirror. When I do, it’s not me I see looking back. Some stranger. Tall. Mannish. With an angular jawline and fiery red hair cropped short. I move my arm up and down, and the simulacrum moves its arm as well.

  “River.”

  A Muslim woman in a green head scarf appears in the mirror behind me. I turn around and see her standing there awkwardly, in the middle of a shabbily decorated living room.

  “What river?”

  The woman glances at the young, thin, anxious-looking Asian man sitting on the couch, surrounded by piles and piles of books.

  “These Intrusions aren’t just pulling River away from themselves anymore,” he says. “They’re taking over River’s identity in the present. I’ve heard that sometimes a Melting Queen will bring something back with her—she’ll take a couple seconds to remember who exactly she is, until her mind digests the foreign memories and stabilizes—but nothing like this. It’s like a hundred and fifteen people are all competing for one body.”

  “Evelyn and I have a very close relationship,” I tell my advisors. “I’m sorry that people refuse to understand that, but I will not send him away. It’s no one else’s business but our own.”

  The woman looks at me with the same frightened, confused expression I’ve seen a thousand times.

  “It’s okay, Vivian.” The young Asian man stands up, pats my hand. “We won’t make you send him away.”

  He looks at the woman in the green head scarf beside him.

  “Vivian Tegler,” he says in an undertone, “1962. She declared her twin brother Evelyn as her co-Melting Queen. Everyone thought they were lovers.”

  “And is she here now? Or is it just River?”

  The man shrugs.

  “I don’t know,” he says. “But I’ve noticed a pattern.”

  He stares into my eyes, searching for something.

  “River seems to be moving backwards. They’re jumping around, all over the place, but their Intrusions are getting further and further back in time.”

  “So maybe once River experiences them all, then everything will be fine?”

  The man shakes his head.

  “I don’t know,” he says. “But it needs to happen soon.”

  He squeezes my hand. His voice is pleading, imploring.

  “I don’t know if you can hear me or understand me, River. But you need to come back. Odessa is beating us. She stopped her campaign for a few days, condemned the attack on you. But now you’re gone. Nobody has seen you. They’re going to pick her by default if you don’t come back to us. We missed Klondike Days. We missed Heritage Days. We missed Folk Fest and Taste of Edmonton and the Dragon Boat Festival. We even missed the Fringe. The Fringe, River! No Melting Queen has missed the Fringe since Breanne Breg launched it in 1982. You need to be seen in public.”

  “We can’t just throw River to the wolves,” says the woman. “Everyone has a cell phone. Imagine what they could post if something bad happens. Going out in public is a very bad idea. Don’t you think, River?”

  “What’s a cell phone?” I ask, intrigued. They shake their heads and don’t answer me. Quite rude, I should say.

  I notice that my fingernails are bitten down to the quick. That’s a filthy habit that I’ve never had. It was always my sister who couldn’t control her slove
nly impulses. I look around for my purse, to take out my nail file, but I must’ve set it down somewhere. I glance in the mirror and feel my blood run cold.

  She’s behind me, staring at me from the edge of the room like a cobweb in the corner.

  “Stop fighting it,” says Shishira. “It’s only getting worse.”

  “Because of you!” I shout, whipping around to face her. “Why are you doing this to me?”

  “River!”

  Sander and Kaseema look back and forth between me and the corner, horrified.

  “Who are you talking to?”

  I recognize both of them, but the thrill is eclipsed by my fury with Shishira.

  “She’s still here, Sander. She won’t go away, no matter what I do.”

  I can feel the current trying to pull me back under, trying to suck me back down into the whirlpool of memories. I try to hold on to the shreds of my identity, gasping for air.

  “Your friends can’t help you,” says Shishira. “Only you can make it stop.”

  I feel the panic racing up my spine, that implacable terror that sets my nerves ablaze. I feel an echo of pain, the wind knocked out of me by a phantom blow to my stomach.

  “No!” I shout, staring down Shishira as Kaseema and Sander gape at me. “No, I won’t.”

  “Then it will never stop.”

  “River!”

  Sander grabs me by the shoulders, forces me to meet his eyes.

  “Who are you talking to?”

  “She won’t leave me alone. She’s the one doing this.”

  “Who?”

  “Shishira.”

  We march along Whyte Avenue, a rainbow-clad regiment of queer soldiers. Protestors line the sidewalks, chanting the same hateful slogans I’ve heard since I was young. I’ve always been too butch to hide what I am, and people have always felt the need to tell me exactly what they think of me. They might think they’re tearing me down, but they’ve made me stronger than anyone else. I’ll fight every single one of them, if I have to.

  I look to my right, and see Kaseema holding the sign we made together, demanding marriage equality. I see the fear in her young face, and I feel my heart swell with love and gratitude. That bastard Birch told her not to come. Her mother told her that they wouldn’t let her back into her mosque. But she’s here. For me.