The Ice Queen

As for me, I was ready for anything. I thought I might explode, the way I had when I shoved my hand through the window. I told myself if he didn’t come out of the house in five minutes, I would leave. Maybe I was indeed getting exactly what I deserved: nothing. A few minutes more and I probably would have been grateful for the opportunity to turn and run, the way I always had before. But I hadn’t planned what I’d do next. Leave and do what? Drive off the Interstate into a canal? Jump from a cliff? Go home, lie down on the couch, look at the ceiling fan? All I knew is that I wanted to fly away. I wanted to be something brand-new. I felt like those human beings in fairy tales who suddenly find themselves in another creature’s skin, trapped in sealskin, horsehide, feathers.

Lazarus Jones came out to the porch. I looked down at the ground. If he saw the expression on my face, I’d scare him off. Had I looked into a mirror, I would have frightened myself. I was desperate, you know. I was mired in death and wishes, trapped in the wrong skin. I was the donkey, ugly and braying, the goose girl asking for mercy, the beggarman in need of a crust of bread. The straps of my dress were falling off my shoulders. I didn’t care. Dust was on my face and on my fingers. He’d had forty minutes of knowing everything; all I wanted was a little piece of what he’d learned on the other side. I didn’t want to dissect him or photograph him or measure the radioactivity under his skin. I just wanted to be in the presence of a man it was impossible to kill.

There were birds overhead and I saw their shadows float by on the porch floorboards. It hurt to breathe. I should have apologized for intruding, or told him that I’d come a far distance only to ask how afraid I should be of death. I should have told him that the worst thing in the world is a wish that comes true. But I remained silent, the way I had so many times before.

“Who told you to come here?” he said.

What was I supposed to say? Fate? A butterfly on the other side of the world? The donkeyskin I wore, so itchy, so ill-fitting? An eight-year-old girl who breathed out one wish and changed everything?

“Are you trying to interview me, or something?” he wanted to know. He came over and took my arm. Did he test for lies this way? Could he feel a betrayal as easily as he could stop clocks?

His touch was so hot I almost fainted. But that might not have been about lightning.

“I’m just a librarian, not a reporter. From Orlon. I just wanted to see you for myself. They talked about you in my lightning group. They said you died and came back and now you’re not afraid of anything. So why would you care whether or not I was here? You’re not afraid, are you?”

Those were more words all strung together than I’d said in years. It was exhausting to talk. I felt as though I’d had to pull each word out of my throat, like stones I’d swallowed, with sharp edges.

Jones looked at me more carefully now that he understood I’d been struck. I wasn’t just anyone, some busybody who had no idea of what he’d been through. He let go of my arm.

“If they say that about me, they’re idiots. And if I wasn’t afraid of anything I’d be one, too.”

He was studying me, up and down. I felt too hot. I remembered I was in Florida. I remembered it would never snow here. I could be honest. To a point.

“My strike affected my left side,” I said. “Nerve damage. Some cardiac damage as well. And I can’t see the color red.”

He laughed out loud; for a moment, his whole face changed.

“Is that funny?” I asked.

He stopped laughing. Stared at me. “Maybe.”

“You’re not going to pull a gun on me like you did to Dr. Wyman?”

“It wasn’t loaded,” Lazarus told me. “He ran before finding that out.”

What no one had mentioned about Lazarus Jones was that he was beautiful. Younger than I was; twenty-five or thirty, I couldn’t tell. His eyes were dark, darker than mine. I wondered if whatever he’d learned in those forty minutes had turned him to ash. He wore a long-sleeved white shirt and old jeans, work boots. His hair was dark and he hadn’t had it cut in some time; it was longer than mine. When he stared there was something hot in his gaze, as though he could burn you alive if he wanted to. If you gave him a reason.

“Well, you’re here,” Lazarus said. “What do you want?”

This sounded like a trick question to me. If I answered incorrectly, perhaps I would turn into ash myself. Burned alive.

We stared at each other. Putting my hand through glass was nothing compared with this. I was in this moment, no other time. Now when I thought about New Jersey it was like remembering a mythological country.