He landed on her island. Frost from his dispersing cloud mingled with the morning mist and painted a thick mat of pine needles white. The island was covered with pine trees. The rocky ground never really leveled, slowing any approach to the cabin. The cabin was built into a hill, one side on stilts, with firewood stored beneath. He listened carefully as he approached but heard only birdsong. Smoke rose from the chimney: she was home. He formed a snowball in the palm of his hand and lobbed it at a window—a direct hit. He saw movement and the window swung open. Mother Bear pushed the hair out of her eyes and gave him a casual wave. A rare smile cracked his face.
She was still pulling on a pair of old jeans as he entered the cabin. Her door was always unlocked. This was her island and anyone who entered uninvited did so at great peril. The cabin was one big room, toasty from the fire in the fireplace. She immediately opened more windows to cool the room on his behalf and then walked over to give him a great big bear hug. The constant cold that radiated from his flesh never bothered her; bears can naturally withstand low temperatures. He relaxed and fell into an old recliner. A four-poster bed under a jumble of flannel sheets consumed one whole corner. The walls were covered with shelves stocked with necessities. The floor was carpeted with deerskin rugs, animals Mother Bear had hunted and killed herself. A giant freezer stretched beside an equally large refrigerator. She offered him coffee, black. He took the mug and blew on it until it was perfectly chilled. He realized that he was jet-lagged and malnourished; he hadn’t slept or eaten in days.
“Your handiwork made the news.” She blew on her own steaming cup of coffee and nodded toward the television. When she wasn’t rambling in the woods for days on end, Mother Bear was glued to the television. She was a news junkie, constantly channel surfing for news of unexplained phenomena that might help her locate new, hopefully malicious mutants. That and she devoured true crime paperbacks. He often teased her over her choice of literature and yet he relished the facts she would spout about serial killers and Nazis.
“Yes, it was one of my better sculpture gardens.” He yawned.
“You look famished, dear. I’m making stew.” The light aroma of which had just reached him.
Dirty hiking boots much too small for Mother Bear stood idle by the door. A bloody bone protruded from one. He eyed her.
“Oh you didn’t.”
“Well she couldn’t play cards worth a damn, and I was getting hungry.” She exaggeratedly licked her lips and smiled.
The Ice King let out a short chortle. “You and your girlfriends. You’ll never settle down.”
She lifted the spoon to her lips and blew.
“Yes, I’m something of a nomad, but not as much as you. I can tell this is just a stopover, what are you planning?”
His eyelids grew heavy. “Something big, something really, really big,” he yawned.
Sleep was an impending avalanche of shadows.
The Ice King woke in total darkness. It was well past midnight and the cabin was still. Through the open window stars were visible in the night sky. He felt rested and ready to leave, but knew that would be rude. Not that Mother Bear would mind, but he hadn’t come all this way just to power nap. She snored and shifted under a mound of blankets.
He put his hands behind his head. Mother Bear was a large woman, what people would call “big boned.” Crooked teeth and a man’s chin were softened only by the thick brown hair which curled to her waist. Reading glasses also made her look less dangerous, more librarian than carnivore. Yet besides himself, she was the most treacherous criminal he knew. Likely they were drawn together because they were equally misunderstood; while often labeled “psychopaths,” each had a natural understanding of what other people were to them: prey.
The room was still lightly scented from the stew. Though he didn’t eat as much of it as she did—no one could put away food like Mother Bear—he savored the rawness of the undercooked meat, the naturalness of the sparsely used herbs and spices she had caringly gathered from the woodlands of her island. Both had laughed when she had momentarily gagged and then spat out a human tooth.
When The Ice King reflected on the difference between himself and others among the elite of the super powered, there was one singular factor: determination. Mutants were a genetic crapshoot, some with a less-than-fortunate outcome. None had purposefully sought power as The Ice King had. He had struggled in the industry of cryogenics. His willingness to experiment and take risks was frowned upon by the very management poised to reap profits from the outcome. That was lesson number one: the brightest are always managed by the dim, the weary, the weak. He was once weak. So he trained his body as he had trained his mind, consistently and toward two goals: strength and success.
In his experiments he asked himself a simple question. If we can preserve a dead body by lowering its temperature, why not find a way to strengthen a living being with the same principles? He thought it was ludicrous and limited that his field was focused solely on conservation, and not enhancement. Revolutionary ideas weare often dismissed as the ravings of madmen, so he kept quiet. He needed equipment and chemicals and research subjects, not peer approval. He still savored the memory of blowing out the windows of the laboratory. Shocked employees gathered in the parking lot. They thought the clouds smoke, the initial snow, ash. They were perplexed when they saw their breath. When the first frozen corpse of a security guard was hurled onto the pavement below, shattering like an icicle, they ran for their cars. He laughed as they fled. Testing his new powers, he conjured blasts of icy wind, strong enough to rip through the elevator doors and sever the suspending cables, dropping those trapped within to their doom. Going from office to office, he killed at random. Laughing, he commanded swirls of snow and ice to shoot from his hands and coat every surface. Desks turned into giant ice cubes. And if a luckless secretary huddled beneath it, so be it. He had made no friends at the company. That thought, in particular, had made him howl in delight. Everyone had called him the “ice queen,” and not always behind his back. Now he had showed them he was, indeed, made of ice. He was in control, he was the strong one. A thin layer of ice frost covered his skin and hardened against the words, the snickering –he was finally, truly, impenetrably, cold.
Mother Bear shifted in her bed. The Ice King squinted, trying to discern what shape she had taken. Often she slept in bear form. A most peculiar aspect of her transformation: when she shifted, her animal form was male. Functionally male. Size-wise, impressively male. A massive furry paw kicked the covers away. The Ice King rose from the recliner and thought, isn’t it dangerous to disturb a sleeping bear? He took a running jump and dove into the bed. Mother Bear, annoyed, desolately roared. She swiftly pinned him, bearing her teeth less than an inch from his face. He pulled on her fur. She batted him roughly until he rolled on his stomach. The claw marks that marred his back from their last encounter were permanent. He relished the scars, that she could cut through his icy layers. Her rising girth threatened his buttocks; she slashed his leather jockstrap to ribbons and bore down with all her weight. A mighty roar shook the nearby trees, overshadowing his whimpers of delight.
Light Stream flew high over Lake St. Claire. The sight of the desolate, choppy waters below cleared his mind. Though he spent most of his time flying between Vancouver and the newly erected headquarters of the World Guardians in New York, he relished his trips to Toronto. He loved the height of the city, and like the residents there, thought of it as a cleaner, more civilized Manhattan. And the Great North. To be able to dive off the top of CN Tower and rush across the mountains and over untouched forest was the only time he felt at peace. Above a large portion of the world without humanity, Light Stream was able to free himself from the confines of the word “hero.” Sometimes he thought that if he ever wore a cape he would wrap it around his neck and choke himself; of all the members of World Guardians, he was the only one who seemed to live the mission. The others sh
ed all responsibilities when they took off their masks. Well he didn’t wear a mask. He was through with masks. In high school and college, well after he knew he had been blessed with the ability to fly and bend light, he never dared use his powers. He never acted on his desire to soar, to snap his fingers and spin lightning into the air. No, it took him a long time to know who he was and why he was here. That left no room for masks. His costume was designed strictly for aerodynamics. He had purposefully chosen a dark purple to help pilots see him at a great distance. His hair was long simply because he never thought to get it cut. He didn’t think of himself as handsome and was amused by how the press portrayed him as vainglorious. As a flock of geese changed direction to avoid him, he banked low, giving them plenty of room.
Flying close to the lake, spray from the choppy water flecked his face. Whenever he was alone, feeling the pressures of his chosen path, he compulsively reviewed those moments in his earlier life when he had failed to grapple with his problems, the opportunities he had let slip away, needs that had gone unexpressed and unfulfilled. He remembered his first college roommate. They were both the skinniest boys in the dorm, the bespectacled outcasts. All that they had in common should have bound them together, but they never formed a friendship, rarely spoke beyond the bland pleasantries demanded by their shared space. Yet at night, from the bottom bunk, Light Stream could tell when his roommate was pretending to sleep, that they both were awake, aware of their barely clothed bodies, yearning to be touched. But they only touched once, the last night of the semester. After summer break he returned to the dorm room, having stored up the courage to confront his roommate about their mutual inclinations, only to find that the other boy had transferred to another college without so much as a goodbye. It was something he had always regretted, yet the moment was a catalyst. It was at that point that he decided to live deliberately and plot his difficult destiny.
He rose slightly to avoid a buoy and decided to head back to the city. But which one? Wherever I decide to go there will be a problem I need to solve, an emergency to tackle. And wherever I don’t visit, a crime will be committed. Funny, now that he had finally come to terms with his powers and had dedicated his life to public service, gained the rock hard body such training and discipline demand, he still found himself attracted to the youngish, thin men who sheepishly asked for his autograph, their intelligence and interest shining through their thick glasses. He knew that his nervousness at their proximity came off as typical superhero aloofness; this in turn fueled their worshipful deference, meaning he slept alone most nights and, when in Manhattan, was forced to dine out with whatever character from the World Guardians happened to be available.
Just as he turned north, he noticed an unusual glimmer from within a dark cloud over Detroit. Even though he had flown all over the continent, he still found it unusual that an oddity of geography placed Detroit north of parts of Canada. The black cloud was stationary over the city. Light seemingly reflected off a new skyscraper from within, impressive at even such a distance. Light Stream decided to investigate.
I don’t remember seeing a new skyscraper the last time I flew over Detroit. And Detroit was a shrinking city. It had lost population in the seventies and never recouped. Its crime rate made him a repeat visitor. New construction of this magnitude and speed was unbelievable.
Instinctively, Light Stream again flew low to camouflage his approach. He slowed his speed to better assess the situation and, as he did so, the hero noticed a considerable dip in the temperature. Large chucks of ice started to crowd the waters below.
But it’s only September.
He was close enough to discern that the Marriott hotel, the tallest building in the city, had been engulfed by ice. Frozen towers shot up into the air, so much ice that the massive complex of skyscrapers known as the Renaissance Center that surrounded the hotel was consumed as well. Light Stream hovered and shivered, gripping his thick shoulders he marveled at the giant crystal castle; it was nearly a work of art. But within the frozen turrets he noticed little black dots. He floated closer. People. A man with a briefcase. A woman still in her robe frozen in mid-leap as she tried to escape the surging cold by jumping out of her hotel room window.
The Ice King.
Light Stream’s frame glowed with an angry light. His powers roiled and halos of angry sparks ignited around his wrists. Immediately, he soared upward and sought a defensive position in the clouds. Just as the Ice King had planned. The blow from behind was powerful. The impact knocked the breath out of him. Light Stream exhaled and folded and would have fallen except for the cold arms that embraced him. Consciousness flickered and for a moment he relaxed into the arms that gripped his chest. The clouds were sheets and pillows and this was the way he wanted to wake up in the morning, caressed lightly, strong arms around him, protecting him, loving him. But the embrace was cold. The dull burn of frostbite bit through his costume and he was revived but at a loss. Why hasn’t the Ice King tried to kill me? And with that he felt a slight nip on his ear, the tickle of a frigid kiss, and he was released.
Light Stream plummeted. The cold villain floating above shrunk rapidly, mockingly waving “bye-bye” as the hero fell. Light Stream struggled to regain flight but he was falling too fast; the cold of that kiss clung to him like a memory. That last night in the dorms. It was hot and humid. Both boys slept on top of their sheets, or tried to sleep. The sound of his roommate shifting restlessly above, struggling against the oppressive heat, was just too much. In his mind he had climbed to the top bunk a thousand times and added his heat to that of his roommate’s. He noisily shifted on his mattress and in a moment of frustration, he stripped off his sweaty underwear and threw them into the middle of the room. Startled by his own rash action, he froze as his roommate moved heavily above. The mattress groaned and he covered himself with the damp sheet as his roommate, too, tossed his underwear onto the floor. Both pairs overlapped—white flags of surrender on the threadbare carpet. Silence. Neither boy moved. And then from the top bunk his roommate dangled one leg, then the other. An excruciating minute passed. The young Light Stream reached out and tentatively stroked one fuzzy calf. Both boys shivered and in an instant his roommate had jumped down and turned to face him, proudly displaying his body, his arms above his head gripped the railing of the bunk bed. Shadows leaked from his armpits and painted his ribcage and thin waist in darkness.
His roommate, who had always been so cold, never changing clothes when they were in the room together, now swayed alluringly just inches from his face. The young Light Stream was breathless. Worried that he would accidentally levitate, he grabbed the mattress and the sheet which covered his nakedness fell away. His roommate examined his body, first with his eyes, then with hesitant fingers. Both boys gasped as each simultaneously gripped the other’s heat, sweaty palms demanding that they pull on one another and join, one boy on top the other, lips together, sharing the same hot breath yet never actually kissing, except for a furtive nibble on his ear.
Falling fast as a bullet, Light Stream blinked. He must have momentarily passed out. With a bust of adrenaline he summoned all of his power and braked hard. And The Ice King flew by as Light Stream hovered in midair to gain his bearings. The Ice King banked far below. Light Stream bobbed in the sky, the memories from college still fresh in his mind.
His roommate had always been so cold.
Perplexed, Light Stream levitated and watched as The Ice King approached within a black cloud trailing icy hail.
Impossible, he’s so big. Well of course it could be him, why would I assume he’d still be so skinny. College was almost twenty years ago. Look at how I’ve changed.
And he realized that he had changed in all the right ways.
No matter my challenges, I always faced them. My old roommate had run away. And look at what he had become.
The Ice King drew on the knowledge of their first battle, and surmised that Light Stream
drew power from the sun. He kept the sky dark with thick snow clouds. Whenever the hero rallied, The Ice King would drop large formations of ice onto the dumbstruck crowd shivering in the streets below, using Light Stream’s morality against him. Though the villain was proud of his strategy, and Light Stream certainly looked bested, his blond hair was matted to his back with frost and sweat, The Ice King couldn’t help but feel that the hero was holding back. He craved more than an epic melee and flew closer, to better encase his foe in ice and bring the combat to more intimate terms. The weary hero prepared for the onslaught and turned slightly, so The Ice King would not see the ball of energy forming in his hand. But as he bobbed in the wind, he allowed the powerful globe of light to dissipate. He extended his hands, palms out, and tried another weapon.
The Ice King was upon him. Bitter cold lashed his cheeks as the villain raised his fists, now covered with frozen icicles, ready to pummel Light Stream.
“Kelvin, is that you?”
The Ice King faltered. The largest icicle protruding from his knuckles cracked and tumbled to the frozen waters below. No one had called him by his given name in years, not since he had gone cold at the laboratory. He’d thought that name was gone, dead, buried in the snow banks of his fury.
“It’s me, William, your roommate freshman year.”
A variety of emotions flashed across the tundra of The Ice King’s face. Reflexively, he fingered the scar on his arm. Light Stream floated closer and looked into the eyes of this killer, this madman, the dangerous freak who had playfully decimated the community Light Stream has sworn to protect. They had known each other briefly, during an innocent yet formative time, when neither knew what it was that they wanted, except that such desire made them outcasts. Light Stream’s gaze was met with frosty resistance that wavered with recognition, and then longing.
The Lavender Menace Page 10