I Stole You
Page 9
In my dreaming, I saw you as a strong child with your face against the wind and your hair blowing behind you like a dark cape. I saw the stick as your weapon, your talisman. You swung it over your head. You made battle cries to an empty plain surrounded in jagged peaks. You ruled the white lands. Everything covered in snow was yours. You dug holes in search of frozen animal bodies for food. Your stick guided you, helping you to find just the right places to dig so that you wouldn’t lose precious energy by digging ten holes before you found something to eat.
You fed on iced meat by the light of the moon washing over the land. You ate the snow for water, holding clumps of it in your mouth until they melted.
For many years, you were alone, growing from a small child to a teenager. Sometimes you liked to dance with your stick. You spun it round your head, you threw it, you leaped over it, you held it like a dance partner, wishing for someone. You lay down in the snow and wished and wished until one day you sat up and saw the silhouette of another creature on the horizon.
You ran so fast, you couldn’t even feel your legs and you almost left your stick behind.
The other human was so cold you gave her your extra animal skins. You embraced each other full of the knowledge that you were both alone, so there was no reason to be particular. You could love each other like the last people on Earth.
Days became years.
You grew old together.
When your partner couldn’t dig for their food anymore, you did it for her.
When she couldn’t walk anymore, you carried her on your back and used your stick to help you bear the extra weight.
When all she could do was lie down in the snow, you lay down with her.
I dreamed that you two died hand in hand so that neither of you would be alone. Your hearts stopped beating one and then the other like a song.
When I opened my own eyes, I looked down at your unfrozen black hair on your still-frozen body. I lifted you again and walked until I was at the foot of the mountains. For the first time in my existence, I began to climb.
I don’t know how many days or weeks I spent climbing.
Walking uphill felt the same as walking across the valleys. There was nothing but snow and sky and rock around me. I kept going until I reached a small plateau with a view for kilometers all around me. I felt like I could see the entire world of snow spread out before me.
I had to do something besides dream.
I had to dig.
I took the stick out of your hands in order to dig my own hole in the snow. I had gotten used to walking across this land but I wasn’t used to doing something like that. I had to focus every ounce of my energy on the task of making a child-shaped hole for you to rest, though it wasn’t really for you to be buried.
I needed to plant you.
I dreamed that if I laid you down inside the snow and covered your frozen limbs, that maybe—if I planted enough hope with your body, if I spent every day from then onwards sitting beside you—maybe you would grow.
Perhaps I wasn’t left alone, the last creature on a frozen planet, burying a dead child. Perhaps through your burial you could become something else.
So I laid you down. I laid you down carefully inside the hole and covered you in the white dust.
I dreamed you could be a seed.
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The story “A Murder of Two” previously appeared in Callisto: A Queer Fiction Journal.
This book couldn’t have happened without my retreat time spent at Gullkistan Residency for Creative People in Iceland nor my time in Amsterdam, Thailand, and India. These stories were born out of my experiences with the elves in Iceland in particular, which opened me to all the other fae I’ve connected with thus far. I’m thankful for the Fuseli painting The Nightmare, which partially inspired my story “The Dream Thief.” I’m grateful to everyone I’ve spoken with about fae creatures and everyone who has read some of these stories. You are all magical to me and far too many to name.
Some of the stories are dedicated to the following people:
“The Dream Thief” is for Jaimee.
“Shining Orange” is for Ann.
“So Many of You Want to Die” is for Sean, Sylvia, Anne, Virginia, and the rest of them.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Kristen Ringman is a deaf writer, traveler, and mother. She writes multi-cultural lyrical fiction and poetry inspired by her persistent wanderings to far off places. She is the author of Makara: a novel (Handtype Press), a Lambda Literary finalist in Debut Fiction, and the editor of Everyday Haiku: an anthology (Wandering Muse Press). She received her MFA from Goddard College in 2008. She’s currently working on her first poetry collection and literary fiction novels that play with the boundaries of magical realism, fantasy, and horror. Her work can be found in various anthologies such as Deaf Lit Extravaganza and QDA: A Queer Disability Anthology. [kristenringman.com]
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