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SHOWCASE EXTRA

For Kara's story, 'South by South-East' click here; for the story, 'Mermaids,' click here, for a selection of Kara's film, book and music reviews on The New Review section of the site, click here or to read Kara's latest showcased story, click here

'WINTER'S TALE'

Frosted cobwebs decorate the corners of the window. The weeping willow that shaded me last summer hangs in icy stillness. There are no birds out there, no signs of life.

When the snow came last night, Vivienne called me and read out a description, written a thousand years ago, of snow falling in Kyoto. There are highlands in Japan, mountains too. What I marvel at is that houses could ever be made of wood and paper. �That wouldn�t work here in Scotland,� I told her, and she laughed.

Now she sits on my couch, in front of the fire that never warms me. When I sit down beside her, she takes my hand. She doesn�t flinch at the touch.

�Feel how cold I am.�

�I know this already,� she says.

I let go of her hand to spare her the necessity of letting go of mine. Instead, I pull up the sleeve of my jumper. �Look at my veins. You could trace every one.�

She smiles. �Is that an invitation?�

�There are things I want you to know.�

�Alright, Helena� she says, �I�m listening.�

It�s a story I�ve told once before. Part of it anyway. That when I was born, the doctors had me whisked off to an incubator where I lived for months while they performed endless tests. The world and my mother were held at bay behind the transparent walls of my cocoon. In the end, completely baffled, the doctors sent me home, to the small village in the highlands, in the shadow of the mountains. There, I became an object of curiosity for yet more people. This was a piece of luck for my father. Neighbours, family and friends offered blankets, hand-knitted baby clothes and suchlike, while he spent the savings on keeping himself warm with a bottle of whisky.

All this was bound to attract attention when I started school. I was met with curiosity and revulsion. Children and adults alike marvelled at my pale skin, but the kids refused to take my hand in games, complaining that I felt too cold.

I�ve often pondered on the terms warm- and cold-blooded. Cold-blooded creatures have body temperatures that vary according to surroundings. My dictionary also tells me that they are unfeeling and deliberately ruthless. To be warm-blooded on the other hand is to have blood that stays between 36 and 42 degrees centigrade. A doctor once told my mother that, by all accounts, I should be dead. My mother burst into tears. Presumably to be warm-blooded also means to be the opposite of deliberately ruthless, which could just as easily be randomly ruthless, ruthless in a kind of thoughtless way.

It�s the sharp intake of breath, the withdrawn hand, the narrowed-eye look. It�s the distance between me and the world. Do I breathe on them like winter and frost them over? Do I turn their blood to ice? Once upon a time, twice upon a time, I did.

Vivienne sits, and somehow my hand is back in hers. She writes poetry. Beautiful, sparse, perfect words dropped on a snowy white page. She writes them in English, she writes them in Japanese, the language of her father. Her favourite colour is red. Her black hair, her dark eyes, all sit well with that colour. But she wears white too. White, the colour of a clean sheet of paper waiting for the first strokes of an ink-tipped brush, the colour of the dress she wore the first time I met her when she gave a poetry reading at a Glasgow bookshop. Poems about the highlands of Scotland, and the highlands of Japan. Poems about cherry blossoms blowing down a Glasgow street, a shrine she once visited in Kyoto. Poems about a lover�s face in a moonlit garden.

�I�ll tell you a story my mother once told me,� I say to her now, �after my nightdress caught fire. I was six. I�d tried to sit too close to the fire, hoping to make my skin warm like everyone else�s.�

Once upon a time there was a girl made of snow and ice. Her name was Winter. No-one knew how she came to be so made. Some said it was magic, but others with small minds and nasty tongues said mean things to her. They wouldn�t invite her to their homes, nor befriend her. Winter felt very alone, for everyone wants friends after all. Winter thought if she could be like everyone else, she wouldn�t be alone anymore. So she went south, to the lands of endless summer, where she stood in the hot sun.

She stood and she stood. Gradually she became warmer. People came to her. She found many friends. But what none of them bothered to tell her was that everywhere she went she left wet footprints and a small puddle. Winter was melting. Soon she realised it herself. She felt warm, she had friends, but in the lands of summer she would melt away to nothing. She would die. Winter did not want to die. She went north again, to the lands where night could last for months. But so much of her had melted away that when she reached the land of ice and snow, there was little left of her. She wept bitterly at her fate and her tears froze. Gradually, she began to grow as more and more of her tears turned to ice. Soon, she was her own self again.

�When I lay in my bed that night,� I tell Vivienne, �I knew there was no one in the world like me. I�d always be alone. Winter didn�t meet anyone like herself in her own lands. I remember the curtains were half open. I could see the moon, a sliver of cold light. I recalled that the dead were once thought to live up there. And here was I as cold as the dead, as one of my schoolmates had pointed out. So I imagined walking around with the dead up there, with the famous people I�d read about in books. They would be wraithish blue-white, wise and ever watchful of life on earth. Their hands would pass through mine, but our conversations would be long.�

There is a brief silence, interrupted only by the crackling of the fire and the ticking of clocks. They tick our way to the grave.

�I�d always imagined other people to have wee balls of fire in them, like the sun, keeping them warm. Now I began to see myself as having the moon inside.�

�The moon,� Vivienne repeats, as though she�s turning over the concept in her mind.

I remember our first conversation.

�A poem,� she told me at the bookshop in town, after the other listeners had departed, �is like a loch reflecting a mountain. The mountain is the concept, the idea, the theme. The snow-capped peaks are the poem�s purest moments, like a note perfectly pitched. But the mountain is reflected in the water of the loch. Which ripples. Because language ripples. The words are the surface of the water, reflecting the themes. But below that, below the surface, are the symbols, the myths, things beyond words. Sometimes they break the surface, sometimes they�re just below, just visible in the language. Other times they lie deep and you have to dive deep to find them. That is a poem.� She paused. It was then that she asked me if I�d like to go out for a drink sometime.

That was back in the summer. For months I�ve been circling her like the moon around the earth, never touching. Even when she tries hard to reach me.

Her image of the loch vexed me because it got to the heart of the matter.

Some years ago, I had a lover called Peter. Not just someone passing through, briefly attracted to my difference. He was the real thing. And he�d arrange for us to spend occasional weekends at a friend�s lochside chalet where a spa and sauna were to be procured. The loch was always cold, even in summer. In that respect it was just like me. One afternoon, I went swimming in it. When I walked out, he laid me down and held up my limbs to the blazing sun, drying them one by one. Turning my body this way and that, as though I was boneless.

Vivienne knows that I lived with someone, a man, for almost two years. The only time I ever lived with anyone. She knows it came to a sudden end. She doesn�t know how. It�s all very simple.

I put my hand to his neck one night. And then it was all over.

So I tell her now about Peter. The first person not to be put off by my cold skin. I met him about seven years ago at a New Year fancy dress do at a nightclub. He stood out from the rest of the crowd, a perverse party pooper, in a rather stylish suit and white shirt.

�And who are you meant to be?� he shouted over the music when I went over and asked him to dance.

I wore a dress of blue and silver brocade, trailing to the floor. Streaks of silver and white had been added to my hair. I�d tossed some white glitter over myself for good measure.

�Winter,� I said.

He laughed. It was a laugh he threw himself into, his head tipping backwards. His hair for a moment was a halo of light. Heat radiated from him.

I put my palm on his cheek.

He jumped away in shock.

He thought I�d been holding ice cubes and I let him think that for a time. When I told him the truth, it took him a while to believe it.

�For me, there are two kinds of people in the world,� I said to him in the taxi home. �Those who are put off at the start, and those who are put off later. Don�t bother with excuses when the time comes. I�ve heard them all before.�

�Is that what you say to everyone?� Vivienne asks now.

Since Peter there�s been no one in my life. All the same, I say, �Yes.�

�What about those who aren�t put off, ever?�

�That�s what he said.�

Telling it is like reliving it. I don�t want to relive it. But I want her to know. �All my life I�ve craved heat. I miss it, though I never had it. Except, I think, in the womb. It�s become an obsession. I�ve lain for hours in steaming baths, periodically emptying out water and replacing it with more from the hot tap. I�ve stood beneath countless showers, turning the dial evermore towards red. Hot water is the one thing that warms me, if only for a wee while. If there was a shrine to hot water, I�d worship there.�

Vivienne laughs.

�Hot water from the shower made me warm enough for him that night. With male lovers in particular, there are wee practical matters like that to take care of. In bed, I wrapped the duvet around him, before snuggling up. When I woke in the morning, the winter sun lit up his hair. The strands lay like wheat on a pillow of snow.

�There are particular memories that stand out. Like the morning after a fall of snow, we decided to go out for a walk. I lived then in a flat on the Southside, near the Country Park. There we walked under the arched entrance and trees stretched their frosted branches across the river. I remember a fox pausing, and the Highland cattle further along that came over when Peter called them. And the snow-covered fields sweeping up towards a bank of trees on a hill. He wrote my name on the snow with a broken branch. It was easy to forget we were still in the city, that beyond the walls of this place, Glasgow, the city I�d moved to at eighteen, still stood. In the museum, stone cold statues of ancient goddesses and gods looked on us blindly. Staring out of the past, or into it. He claimed to know all their names and made up stories about them. Mostly rude. I laughed a lot that day. It was a happy day.� I pause. My eyes are stinging. I blink once, twice. �But the glass walls of the museum revealed the woods beyond. A frozen, still world.� I stop. Looking down, I see my hand still held in Vivienne�s. Her other hand is cupped over it. My hand feels as if it�s been immersed in very warm water.

�It was a long time before I trusted him. I kept thinking he�d get tired of me, of the coldness of my skin. Others had. Why not him too? I have to say he took to the hot water thing with great enthusiasm. We spent a lot of time in the bath.�

�I love a long hot bath,� Vivienne says.

For a moment the past is wiped out by the image of Vivienne naked, something I�ve never seen, stepping into a tub. I shake my head to rid myself of the thought.

�With Peter, I took precautions as I always had. But I�d assumed I couldn�t get pregnant. Because I wasn�t normal. But a year and five months after we first met, something changed. I began to feel warmer, deep within myself. At first I ignored the signs. It seemed so unlikely. Since I�d never been in love before, I thought maybe it was that. But what was happening was more physical than that. My skin was warmer to the touch. I had colour in my cheeks. When I finally realised, I worried the baby wouldn�t survive in me.

�Peter was overjoyed at the news, but the doctors weren�t confident I�d carry the child to term. My body defied them. Meanwhile, we sold our flats and bought this house.�

Vivienne�s hand is tighter around my own, as though she knows what�s coming. If only I�d known myself what was ahead. I could have done things differently. Changed the future that is now the past.

I look into the dancing amber flames of the fire. They flicker happily. They have no regrets. �We made plans, discussed names for the baby. The usual stuff. I remember one night we were bathing together. I could see the full moon through the bathroom window.

��Do you know that people used to believe that the dead lived on the moon?� I asked him. �I used to believe it too. Sometimes I still do.� I reached up my arms and curved my hands around the ghostly disc. It sat on my palms until Peter pulled my arms down into the water again.

��I�ll know where to look for you if you die before me then,� he said.

��Maybe I�d always keep to the dark side,� I told him. �Where it�s cold.�

��But you�re not cold anymore.�

��What if I change back?� I asked.

�He put his arms around me. I was sitting with my back to his chest, and he pulled me against him and told me it wouldn�t matter. That it hadn�t mattered to him before. �Stop worrying about the future, Hel.� Those were his words.

�That night I had a dream about my parents who were both long dead. They sat on a rock and behind them were the star fields of space. My mother was rocking something in her arms. A baby wrapped up in a blanket. �Don�t you worry, Helena,� she told me. �We�ll take good care of her.�

�I woke up. I felt sick, panicked, and terribly cold. My hands swept over my swollen belly, but the heat was gone. It was winter again, winter in me, winter outside too. The roads were icy. Peter drove me to the hospital, all the time trying to reassure me, but I knew the truth. My baby was dead. My body had killed it. I told him this, screamed it, as he drove through the still-dark morning.

��We don�t know that, Helena,� he said.

�To make him understand, I put my hand on his neck, above the collar of his hastily buttoned shirt. It must have been a shock. That icy touch he hadn�t felt in months. Because for the first time he pulled away. Or rather, he jerked out my reach. Suddenly we were skidding across the road. He lost control of the wheel. There was a wall. I was wearing my seat belt. We both were. Everything went black. When I woke up, I was in hospital.�

Vivienne squeezes my hand tighter. �And Peter?�

I shake my head. My blurred eyesight could be put down to staring into the fire. But it�s the past that scorches. �The staff said it was a miracle I was alive. But I�d lost both of them. Peter and the baby. What did I care about miracles?�

I can still hear my screams in the hospital when they told me the news, then a pinprick in my arm that brought on dreams. And in those dreams he was still alive, so I knew it was all a lie. I could see him through clouds of billowing mists, like on that dance floor the first time we met.

�And who are you meant to be?� he asked me.

�Winter,� I said again. I put my hand on his cheek and his skin slowly began to turn blue until suddenly he was lying in a mortuary drawer. I called his name but he didn�t answer. I took a knife and slit open his stomach. And then I crawled inside, pulling his skin over me. I wanted his warmth, but it was gone. He was dead.

Vivienne breaks the long silence.

�You think it was your fault. That you killed him. That you killed them both,� she says. �But it�s not true.�

I take my hand from hers. �I know I did.�

She turns to face me properly, drawing her legs up under her on the couch. �What do you think I�ll do now that you�ve told me? Get up and leave? Is that what you expected?�

�Something like that.� I hold my own hand. It feels warm now, a little.

I could tell her that Peter came to me recently in a dream. We walked on the sunlit face of the moon, talking. He showed me the child, now running around, her footprints preceding us across the dusty valley. He told me he missed me but that I should move on. Ahead of us, the earth hung in space. For a moment, I raised my arms and cupped it in my palms. A different globe this time.

Now I take a breath. �It�s a long time since I�ve been with anyone. Not since Peter.�

Her warm fingers sweep the moisture from beneath my eyes. �You�re frightened,� she says, moving closer, her long black hair falling over my hands. �Because your heart isn�t cold. Not at all.� She pauses. Her breath bathes my cheek in heat. �This is what we�ll do,� she says. �I�ll write poems on your skin, not in ink, but in heat, with the tips of my fingers or my tongue. If there�s a word that isn�t just right, or a phrase, I�ll breathe on them, blow them away and start again. I�ll use your veins to map out the verses.�

�And then what?�

�And then? When you wake up in the morning, I�ll write some more.�