The Melting Queen

by Bruce Cinnamon

  We face down the protestors together, hold our heads high, and march on.

  Rain runs down the car window, splitting apart and rolling together in runnels. I watch the water, mesmerized as it converges and diverges endlessly.

  “River.”

  I turn and see a gigantic woman, sitting beside me in the driver’s seat. Her tired face has seen better days. Her black hair is greying. Her black eyes are surrounded by crow’s feet. Her brown skin hangs loose on her face.

  I look past her, out the window, and see a very average house on a very average street.

  “Where are we? What are we doing here?”

  “We’re here to see Vasanta Sarasvati. Your friend Sander said that she’s the only one who could help. She’s been through all this before, with her daughter. Come on, we’re late.”

  I follow the woman—Clare? Cashla? Caragh?—up the front walk. The door opens for us, and a round brown woman stands in the entranceway.

  “Come in, come in,” she says. “Get out of the rain.”

  I recognize her from my memories. But the Vasanta Sarasvati I remembered was younger, smaller and more vibrant. This one looks like a cruel caricature of her former self, like a faded and distorted old photo. She’s put on a lot of weight, but not in that warm, plump way of a mom who always bakes every weekend or a grandma who always has chocolates in her purse or an auntie who always has one glass of wine too many at dinner. Instead she looks like a supermarket strawberry, swollen with water until it’s bloated and flavourless. She doesn’t look at home in her body, and she moves like she’s still not used to it. When I look at her, I can see her old face buried under the new one, like an ancient temple half-submerged in sand.

  “I made us some tea and sandwiches,” she mumbles as I slip out of my shoes in her front hallway. “I hope you like smoked salmon.”

  “I’m sorry,” I say, “but I’m a vegetarian.”

  “Don’t worry,” grunts the big mountain of a woman beside me, rolling her eyes. “You won’t be in a few minutes.”

  We follow Vasanta into her front room and sit down on her couch. She serves us our tea and sandwiches and then sits down in the chair facing us. I look out the window behind her and watch the rain pelting the street. It must have been hot out earlier, because the black asphalt is steaming. I try to enjoy this rare moment of tranquility, as the winds which have been pulling me apart die down and I can just sit in silence.

  After a few moments, I notice Vasanta watching me intently.

  “What?”

  “Nothing,” she says, blushing and looking away. “I just... I wondered if you’d seen her again. Sander Fray said, on the phone... Never mind...”

  She picks up a sandwich and takes a small bite. I notice that there’s one in front of me too, and I have a taste. It’s delicious, with crunchy cucumber and crisp chives and buttery smooth smoked salmon. My favourite.

  “We’re hoping you can help us,” says Clodagh, whose name I can finally remember. “It’s been hard to piece together, but we think the same thing is happening to River that happened to your daughter. They’re having so many Intrusions that they’re fragmenting and forgetting who they are.”

  Vasanta glances at the wall, where a bunch of Shishira’s old school photos are hung.

  “I wish I could help you,” she says. “But I don’t think I can. I spoke to your friend Sander for a long time for his book, and I told him everything I know. I told him about my time as the Melting Queen, and I told him about Shishira. How I went to the statue with her and stuck up her leaf. How I coached her through the coronation. How she... how she died.”

  She takes a sip of her tea and her cup clatters against the saucer.

  “I’m sorry,” she says, not looking at us. “I thought I could do this but I don’t think I can.”

  She meets my eye, and I see every day of the past two decades strung around her neck like ten thousand tiny millstones.

  “I couldn’t help her,” she says, shaking her head back and forth. “I can’t help you either.”

  Vasanta starts to stand up, mumbling that she’s sorry, that we should go.

  “I keep seeing her,” I say.

  Vasanta stops. She looks at me, devastated and jealous and desperate to hear more.

  “I keep seeing her, in front of me, talking back to me, like none of the other Melting Queens. I’ve never had another Intrusion like that.”

  “What does she say?” asks Vasanta, sinking back down into her chair. “What does she look like? Is she okay?”

  “She tells me I have to remember,” I say.

  “Remember what?”

  Vasanta is on the edge of her chair. The wind gusts and raindrops speckle the window. The trees across the street bend in the gale.

  “Something bad. Something buried, deep down. I’ve been seeing it since I was first Named as the Melting Queen: I’m running through the trees, desperate to get away from someone. And then they catch me.”

  I look between Vasanta and Clodagh, and I see the recognition on their faces.

  “She said that everybody knows,” I say, “but nobody lets themselves know. She’s the only one who saw it all, who felt it all.”

  Neither of them will meet my eye, and I can tell they’re feeling what I’ve felt since the beginning: a frantic, primal aversion. An overwhelming urge to run, to avoid, to forget.

  “It’s true, isn’t it? You’ve all felt it, and you’ve all run from it.”

  Vasanta holds her head in her hands.

  “Do you think... do you think she’s still in there somehow?” she asks. “Connected to the Melting Queens somehow, through your memories?”

  She looks at me, eyes glistening.

  “I don’t know,” I say.

  Vasanta looks back at the school photos on her wall. Shishira’s smiling faces watch over us.

  “Alright,” she says. “Alright. Come with me.”

  She leads us down the beige hallway, towards the back of the house. The drabness of the walls seems to pull all the colour out of my clothes. I start to feel numb, sleepy. The dull decor is exhausting me. But then we come to a room which vibrates with colour.

  The bedroom’s walls are covered in all types of art—chalk pastels and oil, acrylic and charcoal—in every shade of the rainbow. None of it is a masterwork, or even very good at all. But there are strong colours and clear scenes in each piece. Wheat fields. Snowy prairies. Foothills. Mountains. The sky. The sea. Stars and nebulas, office towers and interchanges. Rivers.

  “This was Shishira’s room,” says Vasanta. “Over that last year, the only thing that brought her peace was to paint and draw and make art. But even that wasn’t enough, in the end.”

  She touches one of the paintings, a landscape drenched in honey-yellow sunlight.

  “She had so many painful Intrusions. She saw so many dreadful, horrible things. So I told her to focus on the most beautiful thing she’d seen every time, and she would reproduce it from memory as soon as she came back to herself. No matter who she was, no matter how much she forgot herself, she would always grab for her paints and chalk and pencils.”

  She runs her fingers over a turquoise blue lake, smiling the tiniest of smiles, a weak little light on her face.

  “At first they were all colourful pictures like these,” she says. “But then they changed. She changed.”

  She walks over to a dresser, opens a drawer, and lifts out a stack of papers with visible effort, as if they weigh a ton. She sets them down carefully on the bed.

  The topmost piece of paper is almost completely black, a shadowy vortex of trees in dark charcoal. Vasanta flips to the next, and the next, through a dozen paintings and sketches and drawings. It’s all forest, dark and terrifying, with visible gouges in paint and pencil where Shishira tried to exorcise the memory onto the canvas.

  I shiver.

  “She kept trying to tell me something, but I didn’t understand what it was,” says Vasanta. “All I had were these.”

/>   She touches one of the dark artworks tentatively yet reverently, a keepsake that she clearly hates but could never bring herself to throw out.

  “She tried to tell me what was really happening. That there was something more, something even worse than the pain of giving birth to herself every day. But every time she started talking about it, she was thrown back into the darkness, and it would be days before I could get her to remember who she was.”

  Vasanta looks up at us. Her eyes are exhausted, haunted, underlined by dark circles.

  “So I told her not to talk about it. I told her to try to forget it, to avoid it. It was the only thing I could think to say. Kastevoros Birch agreed.”

  “Birch?” Clodagh spits his name. “He knew about all this?”

  “He tried to help,” says Vasanta. “He was here all the time, talking to Shishira about it. But he didn’t know any more than we did about what this meant, where these memories came from. He just said Shishira should try to avoid talking or thinking about it as much as possible.”

  Vasanta looks at the head of the bed and I know she’s remembering Shishira there, watching helplessly as her daughter thrashes about fitfully, fighting to survive a memory of unparalleled pain.

  “It didn’t work,” she says. “The harder she tried to avoid it, the more often it happened. She fought against it for so long, longer than I ever could have. I told her that she just had to wait until the next Melting Queen was crowned, and then she’d be okay. But after she Named Victoria Goulburn, she still kept having Intrusions. It even got worse. And so...”

  She looks down at the dark drawings, the poison at the heart of her daughter’s sickness.

  “I don’t blame Victoria Goulburn,” she says. “It wasn’t her fault. It was mine.”

  “That’s not true,” I say. “You know that’s not true.”

  Vasanta looks up at me, and in the corner of her eye I can see the formidable foe I’m up against, the voice in her head which for two decades has whispered this narrative in her ear.

  “It is true,” says Vasanta. “I pushed her into being the Melting Queen and it killed her. It’s that simple. Her mind was torn apart. She had this dark memory, and it only got worse after she tried to avoid it. And the worst part is...”

  She covers her face with her hand, filled with shame at her confession.

  “The worst part is that I did know what she was talking about. You were right. I had seen the woods. I had felt myself running, long ago when I was the Melting Queen. But I never let myself face it. I locked up those memories so tight, so deep inside myself, that even when my own daughter was being tortured I wouldn’t let myself remember. Not even to save her.”

  Vasanta Sarasvati lays a hand on the pillow beside her. For a second, I see her as she was twenty-four years ago—not the faded remnant of today, but a desperate, loving mother, powerless to help her child. Memories from Shishira swirl through my mind, and I feel Vasanta laying a damp cloth on my hot forehead. I hear her whispering in my ear, telling me that she’s right here and she won’t leave my side.

  “Birch made us say it was cancer,” she says. “We couldn’t have a Melting Queen who killed herself. But she did. She snuck out one night and she... she jumped off the bridge. Because of me. Because I couldn’t face it.”

  She stares through the bed, through the pile of dark drawings, through the earth itself, numb and empty.

  “It wasn’t your fault,” I say. “She didn’t kill herself because of you.”

  Vasanta looks at me for a long minute. Now I can see two voices, one begging her to believe me and the other, long-dominant voice convincing her that she was to blame. She sighs and looks down at the drawings.

  “I’m sorry,” she mumbles. “I can’t fix you. I couldn’t fix her when her mind broke. We can’t fix anyone. All we can do is live our lives and try to forget.”

  I look at this woman, crumpled and worn out and broken, trapped in this house with nothing but painful memories to keep her company. I think of Victoria, suffering the same fate for the same reasons, blaming herself for Shishira’s death. I think of Iris, trying to burn up her pain with righteous anger, and Isobel, locked away in a nursing home with no visitors, and Alice, so consumed with bitterness that she’d take a hammer to her legacy. I think of Clodagh, shuttering her travel agency, watching her dreams melt away one by one, making bacon sandwiches for one and watching old movies in her shabby old house. And finally, I understand.

  “No,” I say.

  I reach out and put my hand on Vasanta’s shoulder. She looks at me hopelessly. The evil voice, as always, has won.

  “No,” I say again. “We have to remember.”

  I take Clodagh’s hand in mine. She has an awkward look on her face, but she gives my hand a gentle squeeze.

  I look around Shishira’s room: the explosion of colours, the dark pit of images at the centre of the room, trying to pull the three of us down into the abyss.

  I look at the corner and see Shishira standing there, watching us, a hint of hope in her ancient eyes for the first time.

  “Okay,” I say to her. “Okay. I’m ready.”

  I take a deep breath. I close my eyes. I let myself fall backwards, into the storm.

  {17}

  That glorious day

  “May!”

  A big burly bearded man is coming toward me, swaying unevenly as he crosses the sloping lawn. He holds a bottle loosely in his hand.

  “Mr. Moon,” I say cautiously. I look over his shoulder at the bonfires where everyone is gathered. I’m suddenly very aware that I’m alone over here at the food tent. I see the way his eyes rove over me and I pull my shawl tighter around my shoulders. I should never have worn this blouse. It reveals too little and too much.

  “Do you want some pie?”I ask him. His tongue hangs out of his mouth like a hound’s.

  “Oh no,” he shakes his head. “Just came over to say hello. What’s all this Mr. Moon? That’s Bill to you! Mr. Moon makes me sound like an old man, heh heh!”

  He wiggles his eyebrows at me, with that theatrical flair that’s made his vaudeville shows the most popular acts in town. I give him a polite smile.

  “Bet you’ve got all the boys chasing after you, don’t you? Hank Sheer’s boys, and those McClaskey twins. Wild young lads, but growing into stout-hearted men.”

  He beams blearily, proud of his city’s young sons. I don’t know who any of those boys are, but I can imagine them. Ready to inherit the earth from their fathers. I feel my eyebrow twitch but I know I can’t let anything show on my face.

  “No,” I say sweetly. “No boys for me, Mr. Moon. I’m just focusing on working. Mrs. Rutherford has been so kind.”

  “Is that so?” he says. “You’re just the perfect girl, aren’t you?”

  He looks me up and down.

  “You know,” he says, “some people are saying we should get a pretty girl to give a speech, some kind of May Queen. I heard they were writing a whole fancy proclamation to celebrate the spring. Maybe you’re just the girl to be that Queen, Miss May, and read out that proclamation in front of everyone. Would you like that?”

  His speech is slurred but his eyes are sober, too sober.

  “I wouldn’t really know how to make a speech,” I say. “I’m sure you’ll find someone else who’s much better than me.”

  He says nothing, just leers at me, tugging at my shawl with his eyes.

  “Here, have some pie,” I say to cut the tension. I pass him a plate with a thick wedge, bursting with saskatoons which tumble out and roll across the plate.

  He takes it into his big hairy hands. His fingers close over mine as I pass him a fork. I jerk my hand back. Mr. Moon frowns. He scoops up a big bite of pie and slides it between his lips, never taking his eyes off mine.

  “Mnph,” he groans, “that’s just perfect. D’you make this?”

  “No, Mrs. Morris did.”

  “Course she did. Darn fine pies, that woman makes. Nothing beats her saskatoon p
ie. You oughta ask her to teach you how to make pies this good. Then you’d have all them young men around your finger. More than a pretty girl like you already does, anyways.”

  He gives me a wink, licks his fork. A dribble of saskatoon jelly is stuck in his beard.

  His eyes glow with a mischievous hostility that makes me nervous. He sets down his plate on the table beside us, uses a dirty finger to wipe up the remaining pie filling. He sticks his finger in his mouth and frowns at me as he pulls it out with a wet pop.

  “You know, some people get mighty curious when a pretty young girl don’t give the time of day to any fine young man. Some people talk about that.”

  I feel a blush rising up my neck, feel my heart quicken. I try to breathe normally.

  “I… I don’t know what you mean.” I try to keep my voice level, polite.

  Mr. Moon comes towards me and I move around to the other side of the table, inside the tent. I start cutting more pieces of pie and placing them on plates. I glance up at him to see his eyes fixed intently on me.

  “I should bring some of this over to the party,” I say, picking up two of the plates. He steps sideways and blocks my way.

  “Excuse me.”

  I go to walk around him and he steps in my way again. He speaks softly, reaches out and hesitates a moment before putting his hand down on my shoulder like a caring father.

  “I saw something queer in the fall, down at Mill Creek.”

  His voice is just shy of a whisper, barely audible above the hoots and hollering of the party across the lawn. I look down at the pieces of pie I’m holding.

  “You know,” he says, “where those boys dam up the stream and make a pool? They’re gonna be doing that any day now that the snow is melting. I saw something mighty peculiar down there in the fall. Can you guess what it was I might’ve seen?”

  I force myself to meet his eyes. I try not to look frightened, even though he can probably feel me shaking.