We have worshipped the wrong gods. Glory to Snow Queen; even her shadow is holy. Look, do you see her? She’s coming now. Do you see the corona haloing her shadow-head, blue as a ghost on the inside, red as blood at its edge? A pack of sun dogs follows her across a darkling sky; the wild hunt gallops, greening, at her command.
Come with your flaming torch, come with your burning times. Snow Queen will forge permafrost from your corpse.
Listen, do you hear her, footsteps crunching lightly on crisping ice? Are you catching a glimpse of her yet, lily-white hands reaching out to us through clouds of drifting snow? Do you hear it, the birthing song of this joy-filled, whitening land? Ice sings; did you know? Listen: I will sing an icy Angelus for you now.
It will hurt at first, and then you will feel numb. But Snow Queen will kindle you back to life. Ice crystals will fly like sparks from your fingertips; you will dance with the aurora under glittering, wheeling stars. Snow Queen will constellate you; Snow Queen will make you whole. Howl at the moon if you must, but Snow Queen will make an ice cave of your skull.
I have always dreamed of ice. Have you dreamed it too? Is that, perhaps, why you came? Snow Queen draws you to her in your dreams; Snow Queen is gathering us all in. Together, we will refashion the world.
When the ice melted, the world burned. Snow Queen has brought the ice again. She has carved new ice cliffs and hollowed out new ice caves; she has painted the sun’s pink pigment on snow-clad peaks. She has hoarded moonlight in her icy passages; she has raised up ice cathedrals with windows of blue-stained glass.
The ice is coming; the ice always comes again. The ice is coming for you all. Ice will sweep the world clean. Snow Queen will bend the light that enters your snowblind eyes; Snow Queen will teach you how to truly see.
Do you understand now, can you fathom it? Ice is the new ark. Do you know what Snow Queen has laid away in the blue-candled chambers beneath her newborn glaciers? A trove of all the treasures of the world. Bearded seals and whiskered walruses, great brown bear and Arctic fox. Eagles sleep gently there, and ravens; caribou, reindeer and moose. Frozen now, they rest there – but one day they’ll return. When the world no longer burns, when sharp-sworded ice has won its battle with the splintered souls of men. Snow Queen is unravelling the world; she will ravel it again in her dreaming. The great whales will raise up songs in the deep; Sedna’s fingers will grow plump again, as green-tinted flesh forms on her shrivelled bones. Shamans will come once more to comb her seaweed locks; her shivering seas will teem with shoals of silvered fish. Women will marry polar bears again, and men will marry seals. Time has no hold on ice; Snow Queen will hold it tight.
The world fails, but Snow Queen will not fail. Snow Queen will not fail the world. Snow Queen is a Trickster queen; they will not out-trick her now. Snow Queen will out-ice them, in the end.
Snow Queen is the true north; she is all that now holds true. Snow Queen will save you; Snow Queen will save the world. Snow Queen will save the world from you.
Look – do you see her? Her gauzy gown alight with snowflakes, her eyes ablaze like midnight stars? Do you see her beckoning? Do you see her beckoning to you?
Go now to Snow Queen; even her shadow is holy.
She will make an iceberg of your heart.
THE SATURDAY
DIARY OF THE
FAIRY MÉLUSINE
WHEN FIRST YOU saw me. There by the wellspring, pretty as a picture, the perfect fairy woman in the wood. Did you think I was a monster then? It’s possible that you thought me La Belle Dame sans Merci – for my hair was long, my foot was light, and my eyes were wild; you made me a garland of muguet for my head.
You entered into my shadow-realm like the sun; you pierced my heart with rays of blue-eyed light. You loved me, you told me, from the moment you saw me; from the moment I saw you I was lost. A great romance, you said; one of the big loves. They’ll write about us someday, you said. Sing songs about us; make poems.
What, you asked, as you held my hand in yours there, by the fountain in my golden-bowered wood. What are you? you said – not who. I see now that I should have told you the truth.
My mother never forgave us for the fact that our father loved the three of us more. Loved us one after the other, every Saturday night, while she was locked away in her bathing chamber, alone. He said it didn’t matter, that we weren’t quite human anyway; it was then I understood how much he’d seen.
She left him because he’d watched her bathing, not for using us as he did.
A mother’s love can be a complicated thing.
When you told me first that you loved me. What did you think I was, then? People are not always as they seem. Can we ever hope to penetrate a lover’s secret core? There are rooms in every heart that shouldn’t be entered. Donkeyskins, seal-skins, singing bones – there is a chamber in mine that is full of them. Whose headless bodies do you hide in yours?
What do you think I am now, that I was not then?
Can you honestly tell me that you love me still?
What is it, do you think, that has changed?
We bided our time after she took us away, and time bided a while for us. I was fifteen when we went for him, when we cast our spells and locked him away for good. We saw to it he’d never betray a woman again.
Or a child.
A child.
What she gave us in return:
1. Meliot, banished to an Armenian castle for all time.
2. Palatine, imprisoned in the same stronghold in which we’d put away our father.
3. And me? A serpent from the waist down, every Saturday. No man could gain entrance to me then. Did she think that an appropriate joke?
It’s difficult, really, to understand her point of view.
*
That summer when we were married. The summer that seemed to last forever; the year when winter never really came. The games we played in bed through the long, hot nights; the questions by which we came to know each other’s truths and lies.
What is it, you asked me, that never fails to make your heart sing?
A fire-dipped fox dancing in the heart of a winter wood, I said; and I cried.
You cupped my face in your hands and kissed me; you said I was an angel. A fallen one, I laughed, but you didn’t laugh back.
This morning, when you called me a monster. What is a monster, then, to you? Don’t you find my tail beautiful? Am I not beautiful, wrapped all around here in the fullness of its iridescent glory? The truth is, I love my strong tail, its layered scales green and glowing like the pulsing heart of the living earth. There is a wisdom in that tail I would not willingly forgo. Not even if I could.
Not even for you.
Is to be different always to be a monster? What do you really risk, in loving what is other? How much more might you gain?
What would you do for love, I asked you, and again you didn’t answer. I don’t like these word games any more, you said. All right then, I said; try this. What have you already done?
*
Saturdays. It was only ever Saturdays. Only then.
Why do we choose the men who fail us as our fathers did?
I entombed my father in a mountain. What then, if I were the monster you imagine me to be, do you think I should do to you?
Is it your God who causes you to speak to me so? Who makes you think that what I am is evil? Does He tell you I’m the serpent in your Garden? The temptress, the embodiment of sin?
Is it Him?
Sometimes I think He does not love women. Sometimes I do not think He loves us at all.
I dreamed of wooden carts and pricking pins; of witch-finder generals and dunking pools. I dreamed of crosses, of nooses, of fires. I dreamed that you were standing there, watching me burn. You would not pull me, screaming, from the flames.
This story didn’t go exactly according to plan. Where’s the happy ever after? Did you forget the fairy tale we were supposed to be in?
This is not the story we were supposed t
o be in. Where did that story go?
You crossed yourself. At me.
*
What is it anyway, to be human? Are you cleverer, finer, truer? More beautiful, more whole? Does your heart beat more soundly in your breast, do you love truth and honour more?
What are you?
I do not think you even know.
I will shatter my mirror before I go. It is hard to see yourself in another’s eyes.
Last night when we lay together, your arm across my waist, our feet entwined at the bottom of the bed. I counted your grey hairs while you slept.
Was I a monster then? Is it a monster who has loved the shadow of your breath, the shadow of your shadow, the shadow now that darkens your blue eyes? Will you take a candle to me now, to reveal the monster who’s sleeping by your side? Will you spill hot wax on my shoulder, will you weep when I unfold my dragon’s wings and fly?
Will you risk the wrath of Venus for me, then? Will you risk the wrath of your great God? Will you come for me, anyway?
Will you come?
In my dreams, it is my mother who sets the woodpile beneath me aflame.
You didn’t mind at first. Laughed at my day-long baths. Said Saturday absences only made Sundays sweeter.
Secrets are secrets for a reason. It’s best to leave them be.
*
Okay then, you asked me finally, when I pressed. What can’t you forgive?
It was my turn to be silent.
What do you see, now, when you look at me? The mother of your children, your benefactor? The castle I built for you; the castles I built for our sons? The cities which grew and flourished by my hand? You cherished me, and I brought richness and fertility to your lands. I brought laughter into your house and love into your bed.
Where does she go, when you look at me now? Where does she go, the woman you loved who did those things? Has someone hidden her, has someone abducted her?
She is still here. She has not gone away.
She has a tail on Saturdays, that is all.
You wonder if I have a soul. Do you?
The things I wanted to be when I grew up. A serpent wasn’t at the top of my list. I could have been a fairy godmother; I could have been a fairy queen. I could have lingered by my fountain in the oakwoods; I could have been La Belle Dame sans Merci.
I could have married a man who would love me as I am.
I thought that man was you.
Listen, mother. I took your curse upon myself, inside myself. I became your curse and I have worn it with pride. I understand what you do not: the body, at the best of times, is an unstable site. We cling to fixed forms at our peril. What do you think happens when we die?
I was always drawn to the depths of my woodland well. Water was my element – I wonder what you think is yours? In the water, you have no choice but to let go.
Sometimes, I find it hard to pull myself from this bath. To come back to your world – reduce myself, limit myself. The things I could have been, if it were not for you. The things I could have done, if I had not done things for you.
You drank from my well by choice, as he drank from my mother’s. It’s no use being sorry now.
What’s the worst thing you’ve ever done, I asked you, and you wouldn’t meet my eyes.
If I could do it all again, is there anything I would change?
Do you know what makes me weep every time? The look on my son’s face as they led him away. Call a thing a monster and you make it so. He was no monster, until your people taught him he was. Until they laughed at his boar-tusk, and made of him an other. They cannot forgive what is not themselves. They cannot forgive themselves. They cannot forgive.
The soft down of my grandbabies’ heads. Must I leave them too?
Look, I will shed another skin for you. Another skin, if only you will take the words back. The words. If only you will take them back.
*
I have some last questions for you, now. What would you risk in the face of tyranny? When did you ever take a stand? Would you have the courage to face a dragon?
You will not quench the fire in me.
I can’t stay, you know. I can’t stay now. I will shed this one last skin, and I will go. Look, now – have you seen my newborn wings? See how they glow; don’t you think they’re beautiful, too? Am I a monster to you, still? I will open my mouth and swallow this world as I have lain for years here, swallowing my own tail. I will flash like lightning through the sky; I will rip burning stars from the heavens and rain them down on your castles.
You know I will not.
I will not look back. I will not come again, no matter how you call for me.
I will not look back.
THE MADNESS
OF MIS
YOU BEGGED YOUR father not to go; were worried it might not end well. But men so love their wars. He laughed, as fathers do. As fathers do at their daughters. Laughed, and went to war. Warring is how he came to be King of the World. At least, that’s what they called him: the most powerful king in Europe. And with all of the other kings behind him, it shouldn’t have been hard to conquer little old Ireland.
But the men of Ireland had one thing that Dáire Donn – Brown Darragh, King of the World – didn’t. They had Fionn mac Cumhaill.
When you were young you heard the stories that were told about Fionn. When you were young, and oh, you were young. Even his enemies secretly admired him. All except your father. Who hated him with an unreasonable passion. Wanted to be him – who wouldn’t? Fionn had everything. A free life as a wandering warrior; success and glory in battle. The gift of wisdom from the silver-skinned Salmon of Knowledge. Nine hazel trees around the well of wisdom. Nuts from those trees; Fionn ate the nuts. Or was it the Salmon? The Salmon ate the nuts. The Fionn you knew would have eaten the wise old Salmon. He had brave companions; beautiful women. It was the beautiful women that were the final straw. The final straw for your father. Broke his back. Or was it his heart? Bad enough, he growled, to elope with the wife of Bolcán, King of France. To carry off his lovely daughter as well was excessive, even for Fionn. But to invade Ireland for revenge on Fionn was excessive, even for your father. Even for your big, brown, impetuous bear of a father.
But he was confident of his victory, your father, Dáire Donn. So he brought you with him to his Irish war. What did you really know, spoiled little princess that you were? You thought it might turn out to be an adventure after all. It was the final straw, and you were young. You turned all your thoughts to what you should wear. What jewels, what gowns. To properly reflect the status of the new King of Ireland’s daughter. A princess has to be properly dressed. Jewelled, and gowned. To stand serenely on the deck of her ship and watch her father swashbuckle his way to glory. Afterwards, to preen at his coronation. You grew up safe and you grew up spoiled. Your father laughed, and went to war. Bolcán of France went with him, of course, and the kings of Greece, and Spain, and Norway. Lughman, the lord of the Saxons; three kings from the lands where the sun rises in the east. Oh, it was a fine fleet; white-sailed and strong-oared. Every ship crammed with soldiers from every corner of Europe. How could they possibly lose?
Mis, they call you; it rhymes with ‘fish’. Mad Mis, mad as a fish. Do you remember now? That’s you.
*
The shores of Ireland loomed ahead, and a storm loomed too. A great storm on your fine fleet. Your father should have taken it as an omen, but he laughed. Wind raged; waves towered high above your ships. Thunder so loud and lightning so bright that you all feared for your lives. Were you the only one to wonder if the gods were angry? Who heard the laughter of mermaids in the heaving green seas around Skellig Michael? No welcome there for the warships of Europe. No vessel in your fleet that was not battered by that storm. Masts snapped in two; wooden sides ripped away to expose fragile bellies. But your father stood tall and firm at the bow of his ship, and the men of Europe weathered that storm. Weathered the laughter of mermaids, drew lots for the final straw.
On
you sailed, then, on to Ventry; on through the black storm’s dying gasps. When you came as close as the ninth wave, a blood-red sun was falling into the sea. That was an omen, after all. But so beautiful it was – so calm. Till the warships of all Europe sailed in and filled the harbour with dread.
Dread was how it began: dread. Dread and dead and dead and dread. See how you shake your head. You remember it now, their first move. You remember those fine-fettled kings of Europe. Remember what they did to the people of Ventry. Crept into their forts and burned them alive. Kings and commoners, women and children, dogs and horses and cattle and fowl. Skin fried and peeled, flesh beneath melting like hot lard. Nothing left but singed bones.
That is what the men do. That is what they do, in their wars. When you ask them why, they laugh. But it is Mis, they say, who is mad.
Your father underestimated Fionn. Who didn’t? Fionn had friends in high places. A druid told him what would happen, and Ireland was on guard. It was Conncrithir, son of Bran, who was watchman that night in Ventry. He was woken by the music of atrocity. Splitting shields; clashing swords. Striking spears, and the cries of creatures caught in the flames. Word was sent to Fionn.
You were woken from sleep that night, too; wrenched out of the last thoughtless slumber of your childhood. Lurched upright in your warm bed of fine furs, tucked away in a safe corner of your sturdy ship. Heard the screams, smelled the burning bodies. Shouts of glee from your father’s men. You rushed out onto the deck and looked landward. You have always been told war is good. War is good, your father said. But it is not good. That night, for the first time, you understood what war really was. War, and the men who waged it.
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