The Melting Queen

by Bruce Cinnamon

  I look at Victoria and Alice, Iris and Isobel and Clodagh. I feel my connection to them the deepest, these abandoned queens that I have befriended. They look at me with love, giving me the strength to tell this story.

  “I never heard about Intrusions,” I say. “And I didn’t understand why not, because they prove the magic of the Melting Queen more than anything else. Why not tell everyone that the Melting Queens are all connected, that we can remember our whole history, going all the way back?”

  I look at Vasanta. She gives me a small, sad nod.

  “Because there’s a secret. There’s something that Birch doesn’t want anybody to know. Something that he learned long ago, and has been fighting to hide ever since. Something that he saw as a threat to his grand mythology.”

  “What are you talking about?” says Oswin Thompson, who led the campaign to make publicly funded education completely secular. “Get to the point.”

  Some other queens grumble their agreement. I take a breath. It still hurts to think about it, to cast my mind back to that night. But I have to make them remember.

  “The point is that we’re all living in the shadow of May Winter,” I say. “She was the perfect Melting Queen, the mother goddess that nobody else can ever live up to, the ideal woman. Edmonton always wants us to be her, reincarnated. But none of you has ever been May Winter, have you?”

  I look at Tanya Schmetterling, who tried to replace Christmas with a Saturnalia Festival.

  I look at Zophia Volga, who tried to create a Great Edmonton Movie and ended up with a four-hour-long cinematic monstrosity, ridiculed for its ludicrousness and adored for its ambition.

  I look at Philippa Scalderson, who revolutionized Edmonton’s waste management system and introduced the blue bin recycling program.

  All of them shake their heads, as I knew they would.

  “That’s not true,” I say. “You have all been May Winter. You’ve run from it, and made yourself forget it. But you all felt it. Every one of you.”

  “I think I’d remember the honour of being the first Melting Queen,” says Tiller Sable with a laugh. A bunch of the queens beside her titter along. She’s already built a little clique around herself of queens who I know prefer Odessa.

  I stare her down, not angry that she supports my rival, just sad that this has to happen.

  “You do remember,” I say quietly. “You remember fear. You remember running through the forest. You remember the men chasing you.”

  Tiller Sable blanches, and I see the panic tear across her face as her memory cracks open like a rotten egg, filling her with its noxious stench. A shiver goes around the circle of queens. I see all of them going through the same process. The dam bursts at the back of their minds, flooding them with the fear and the shame and the pain. They might not have seen it all. They might not have gone through it all, all the way to the end. But they can all feel it.

  “I don’t know if it was destiny for me to become the Melting Queen,” I say, looking at Alice and René, who share a guilty glance at each other.

  “I don’t know if it was fate for me to have been thrown off a bridge and into the memories of Shishira Sarasvati,” I say, looking at Vasanta, who gives me a watery smile.

  “But I do know that it was my choice to bring you all here, so we could face this truth together. They didn’t Name her to praise her. They did it to shame her. They did it because they were afraid of her, and disgusted by her, and wanted to put her in her place. They did it because May Winter was born as Albert Herring, and they hated everything about her.”

  The queens aren’t shocked. They’re not surprised. They know, deep down, that I’m telling the truth. They can feel it, in their own memories.

  “They didn’t believe in any of the magic they pretended she had. It was all a joke. A mockery. But then, against all odds, it became real. They unburdened themselves of their guilt. They confessed their sins. They felt lighter, and she felt heavier. And then, after all they’d done to her, she died.”

  I feel myself shaking with rage, wishing I could reach back through history and destroy everyone who hurt her.

  “They murdered her,” I say through clenched teeth. “And now we pretend that they revered her.”

  I feel the wave of disgust that’s sweeping through the circle of Melting Queens—the anger and the pain and the horror that they all feel. We feel it together, as if we’re a single entity.

  “May Winter deserves justice,” I say. “The truth has been buried beneath a mountain of lies, a grand mythology that erased the real person and replaced her with a fantasy. Kastevoros Birch has done everything in his power to cover up the truth, and now we have to expose it. We have to tell the story of May Winter, and tell the story of Albert Herring.”

  Ananke Cosmopoulos leans back in her chair.

  “So May Winter was a man,” she says, hardly believing her own words.

  “No,” says Iris, shaking her head, eyes wide from the memory that’s still freshly rekindled in her mind. “May Winter was a woman. A brave, strong, transgender woman. She might have been born as Albert Herring. But she chose her own name.”

  Iris looks at me, pride in her eyes, and I feel the strength of her unconquerable will flowing into me.

  “It’s time for everyone to remember,” I say. “For Edmonton to remember who we are, and face our true history.”

  “You’ve probably all heard that, after River disappeared, Kastevoros Birch cancelled the referendum and declared Olechka Stepanchuk Melting Queen by acclamation,” says Kaseema. “They’re having a coronation ceremony for her next week.”

  “We’ll go there,” I say. “And force Edmonton to confront the truth.”

  “Why should anyone believe us?” says Oswin Thompson. “We’re just a bunch of washed-up old Melting Queens.”

  “They’ll believe it because it’s true,” I say. “They’ll believe it because I’ll show them who we really are, and remind them of the power that they’ve given us. And they’ll believe it because we have proof.”

  I look at Sander and Kaseema, and my two faithful friends step forward.

  “It was there, in the ECHO archives, all along,” says Kaseema. “I worked there for fourteen years, and still they never granted me access.”

  “I’ve requested access to their archives for years,” says Sander. “But ECHO doesn’t open their archives to accredited historians, let alone PhD candidates. And now we know why.”

  He holds up a photograph for all the Queens to see. I don’t have to look at it to know what it is—May, her dress in tatters, covered in leaves and mud, her face swollen and bruised, standing beside the smiling man who murdered her. I look away. I don’t want to see it. Neither do any of the Melting Queens, but they can’t help but stare at this final, damning evidence.

  “After River told us what happened, we knew what we had to do,” says Sander. “We broke into the ECHO archives in the middle of the night, under their noses, and found more than we ever imagined. Not just this photo. There are diary entries from witnesses, newspaper clippings... an autopsy report.” He gulps, then his face darkens with anger. “They kept all of this, from everyone. They never thought anyone would find it, or hold them accountable. It’s hard to grasp the scale of their arrogance.”

  “I still had building access,” says Kaseema. “We practically walked inside. They didn’t even have an alarm on the main archive vault.”

  She looks out at the Melting Queens, her life’s work, and shakes her head bitterly.

  “Kastevoros and ECHO need to answer for this,” she says. “They’ve run the show for too long. They’ve used all of you. I should’ve done something about all this years ago. I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t apologize for them,” says Iris, staring at Kaseema like a protective older sister. “Don’t you ever blame yourself for this. They’re the ones who kept this whole sick tradition going year after year, even though they knew the truth. They’re the ones who are going to pay for this.”
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br />   She looks to me, gives me her full support.

  “Burn it to the ground, River.”

  I return her angry smile, then look out at the rest of the Queens.

  “It’s not just about what they did to May Winter,” I say. “It’s what they did to us too. This vicious tradition started with her, and the pain has been echoing down ever since. You’ve all been scattered around, dealing with the aftermath of all these Intrusions and Confessions on your own. Your minds were put through the wringer. You were forced to absorb all of Edmonton’s negativity. And then you were disposed of and replaced.”

  I look at René, whose black-white-and-blue hair tumbles down around his shoulders. I feel the power running through me, the power of a hundred and fourteen women, the power they never knew they had.

  “Come here,” I say.

  He hesitates a moment, then walks across the circle, to my side.

  “Hold out your hand,” I say.

  He pauses again, then does as I tell him. I unfold his fingers and see his black stone sitting there in the middle of his warm palm. I pluck it off his hand.

  A shiver rips through my body. The kidney-shaped stone is colder than a chunk of ice. It presses down into my hand, heavy as a boulder a hundred times its size. I feel its malice, as if I’ve woken it from its slumber and now it will destroy me.

  I can feel its truth better than I could ever see it. It’s not a solid, smooth stone like I’ve always imagined. It has tiny fissures all across its surface. This is not one simple thing, his externalized tumour. It’s not an ultra-dense singularity, sucking in all light and energy. It’s not smooth or perfect. It doesn’t have a pure, single kernel at its core. It’s an accumulation of tiny particles all accreted together. Every dark feeling, every poisonous thought that’s ever coursed through René Royaume. He made them into little black flakes, infinitesimally small, and forced them all together in a structure that’s as powerful as it is fragile. This is a sootstone.

  I hold up the stone for all my sisters to see.

  “This is what we are. This is what they made May Winter become. This is what they made us become. We are an externalized tumour. We are a sootstone—a tool that Edmonton uses for purging its darkness. The Melting Queen is powerful, but she is also disempowered. She’s a dirty rag that they use, to clean up their stains before they throw it away. But not anymore.”

  I close my fist around the stone. For all its ultimate fragility, I know that no matter how hard I squeeze I won’t be able to make the sootstone crumble. So instead I cradle it in my hand, wrapped around it with gentle strength. I lift my fist to my face and release a long breath through my fingers, to warm this shard of ice.

  I feel myself draining out the sootstone. I feel myself disrupting its clenched fury. Before our eyes, the stone in my hand begins to glow. I open my fist and there it sits, radiant. Light seeps back out of its blackness, until it forms a brilliant point, brighter than the sun. The luminosity flares for a moment, then dies instantly. René snatches up the stone. It’s perfectly clear, a chunk of pure glass.

  “We are powerful,” I tell my sisters. “They mocked her. But they also gave her power. They killed her. But they made us strong enough to avenge her.”

  I look at all my sister’s faces, the exhausted eyes, the sunken cheeks and frown lines.

  “I will not Name another Melting Queen. I will not force another woman to endure this. When the ice breaks, and the river runs on again, the city will not have another disposable goddess to worship then throw away. Instead, people will drain their darkness into another sootstone, larger and more powerful than any ever made in Edmonton. They’ll learn to purge themselves of their own darkness. They’ll learn to cope without a Melting Queen.”

  “How?” asks Alice.

  I look at Clodagh and smile.

  “I’m going to build a fountain.”

  {19}

  The fiery sun of summer returns, to free us from our winter prison

  The birthing dome is made of green glass, a fragile mosaic of smashed Canada Dry bottles. Its giant curve swells into the sky, reminiscent of a pregnant belly. She built it in the most obvious place, right next to the river, in the heart of Coronation Park.

  Good.

  The crowd parts for us as we enter the park. Some give me dirty looks, but I’m used to that by now. Mostly they just look stunned. I was supposed to be dead, or comatose, or just conveniently out of the picture.

  Or maybe their eyes are so wide because of the women behind me, who walk and roll along in my wake—all these old broken dolls they’d stuck back up on the shelf, come back to remind them of their existence. The Melting Queens wear a rainbow of colours, but I am all in green: forest and fern, olive and mint, shamrock and emerald and honeydew. My dress is stitched together from the Coronation gowns of my sisters—donated to my cause, torn apart into patches of silk and lace and cotton, sewn together into a giant patchwork of foliage. I sit atop the big blue horse, Poseidon, as many queens have done before me as they ushered in the spring. My long green train trails off Poseidon’s rump, flowing down the street behind us, supported by the nearest of my sisters.

  The crowd might be dazzled by us. But we do little to impress the old man who stands at the entrance to the birthing dome. Kastevoros Birch crosses his arms and pierces me with cold, sharp eyes as I lead the parade of Melting Queens through the crowd, to his door.

  “Step aside,” I cry from atop Poseidon, hoping that my voice will carry throughout the park, over the heads of a thousand people.

  “Never,” says Birch. “You have no place here. You are unimportant.”

  “I am important. I’m River Runson. I am the Melting Queen.”

  “You’re Adam Truman.”

  “No. I’m not. I’m Clodagh Paskwamostos. I’m Shishira Sarasvati. I’m May Winter.”

  The old man darts his eyes at my champions, who stand proudly at my back.

  “You’ve embarrassed yourself enough, young man. You’ve brought shame on our traditions and yourself. You will never sit the Spring Throne. Go home.”

  I look him right in his eyes.

  “You’re right,” I say.

  I turn my back on him and face out at the crowd. They’d gathered around Odessa’s dome for a murky, glass-obscured view of her birth performance. But I have stolen the show.

  “I will never sit the Spring Throne. Nor will Odessa Steps. Nor will anyone, ever again.”

  I look back at Birch, fuming noxiously beside the great extravagance of his pretender queen.

  “Your traditions are over. Your lies are over. We’ve learned your secret, Kastevoros Birch. I’ve seen it. We’ve all seen it. And now it’s time for everyone to know it.”

  I ride Poseidon through the crowd, people melting away from us like ice in the rays of the sun. We go up the little hill, so everyone can see me.

  “I have been away too long,” I cry out. “Too long, lost to myself. Too long, haunted by a memory too horrible to contemplate. I resisted it. I ran from it, just like every Melting Queen before me. I fell to pieces. I lived a hundred lives. I jumped back in time, through the memories of all my sisters.”

  The crowd watches reverently as the Melting Queens follow me up the hill, forming a circle around me and the Spring Throne. I look down at its gnarled roots and twisted branches and I grimace, remembering her. Remembering that night.

  “We are all connected,” I say. “All of us Melting Queens. We draw strength from each other, and we feel each other’s suffering. I felt the suffering of Albert Herring.”

  Kastevoros Birch gives out a choked wheeze. But he can’t stop me.

  “Albert Herring,” I repeat. “That was the name May Winter was born with, before she named herself. She wasn’t a goddess and she wasn’t a fertile mother and she wasn’t a legend in her own time. She was beaten, and ridiculed, and humiliated. She was shamed, and used, and abandoned. She was mocked. She was degraded. She was murdered.”

  I look out over the cr
owd, all of them standing here in the very place where she was tormented.

  “The good people of Edmonton celebrated that first Melting Day by murdering a woman. Every year, we repeat the lie that conceals their crime. Every year, we sacrifice another woman to this sacred institution—another woman to criticize, to use up, and then to discard. This has been our tradition for too long. It ends today.”

  Clodagh helps me dismount the great blue horse, and we face the crowd together. The eyes of a thousand strangers drink in the spectacle.

  “Our traditions are evil.”

  I look at my sisters, who’ve been made to bear the weight of their city, then suffer in silence for the rest of their lives.

  “Our history is a lie.”

  I put my hand on the arm of the Spring Throne, which still hasn’t flowered.

  “And this? This is just a dead stump.”

  I nod to Magpie and Alice, who come forward with the gas can. Magpie throws the fuel across the Spring Throne’s withered branches, atop its wooden seat. Alice hands me the box of matches.

  “Stop this!” yells Kastevoros. “Stop him now!”

  Some people in the crowd respond to the old man’s cries, and strong men start pushing forward, towards my circle of Melting Queens. But they’re too late. I strike a match, and throw it on the chair.

  The Spring Throne erupts in a ball of fire. It twists and contorts itself like a living creature as its bent boughs begin to burn. The crowd shrinks back from the heat, shields their eyes from the unnaturally bright light. I face them fearlessly, the fire at my back.

  “EDMONTON!”

  I speak with a hundred and fifteen voices, all woven together like a rope made of sound, a chorus of queens from first to last. The words boom out of my mouth, reverberating across the river valley in powerful harmony. Odessa’s birthing dome trembles against the power of my voice—all our voices, finally speaking as one.

  “Ladies and gentlemen and others! Hence forth you shall have no Melting Queen to trouble and to torment. No one will ever again be made to wear a false crown or sit a dead throne.”