The Ice Queen

Renny decided he would show me this final effect of his strike. The one he kept from everyone. I had the feeling this might be the deep secret, the riddle of who he was. I wasn’t certain I wanted to know. But there was no stopping him.

The whole thing was much too personal. I wanted out. I wanted solitude. I wanted to tell him not to show me. I wanted to say I only appeared to be someone who was interested and concerned. But I just sat there next to him. Frozen.

Renny took off his gloves. I could hear him doing it; he grunted with the pain, the rub of the leather against his ruined skin. And then I saw. Amazing. Bits of yellow and green glowed on his skin. It was so strange, and in some way quite beautiful. You could see it only in the dark, the gold in his skin had been woven into him, as though he were a tapestry. The gold went beyond the area where his watch and ring had branded him, as though the metal had been splattered over his hands. But I understood why he feared love as much as he wanted it: he didn’t look quite human.

“They did a biopsy to see if it could be extracted, but the gold is mixed in with the fat and tissue under the skin. I’ll never get rid of it.”

I gently took his hands in mine. I felt like crying. I wondered if damaged people ever got over what had damaged them.

“So you’re made out of gold. It’s better than plain flesh.”

“Yeah, right. I’m a freak.” Renny went to put the porch light on. He kept his back to me and pulled his gloves on. “And so is he, I’ll bet. Your friend Lazarus.”

Like understands like. I believed that. Renny turned back to me.

“He’s hiding something,” my friend said.

I never should have told him. Never talked to him. Never gotten involved. “Well, then, I hope it’s something as beautiful as your hands.”

Renny looked at me as though I were a total fool. “Don’t you get it? You don’t hide what you think is beautiful. You hide what’s broken. You hide when you’re a monster.”

We dropped the subject, but it was too late. Certain ideas, once they’re planted, grow in spite of you. I had begun to think about broken things.

“What do you think moles eat?” Renny asked when I drove him back to the university.

Of course he was going to keep the mole, turn this blind, wounded creature into a pet. What then? Would the mole speak to him? Would he grant Renny three wishes? Take the gold from my skin, the ring from my fingers, the watch from my wrist?

“Grubs?” I guessed. “My brother would know, but he’s too busy to talk to me.”

“Grub stew.” Renny grinned. “Grub cakes.”

“They probably sell mole food in the pet store. Or try Acres’ Hardware. They seem to have everything.”

I was thinking of how Ned used to leave out food for the bats that nested in our roof. He’d set a mixture of suet and honey and fruit in the rain gutters. I’d hide my head under my pillow, but he’d watch from the window.

They can find it without seeing where they’re going, my brother told me. That’s how defined their senses are. They fly blind through the dark.

At night the quad at Orlon University was quiet. I felt as though I were delivering Renny to the wrong place, though. It was his brokenness. The campus was so groomed, so perfect, and he was falling apart. A true friend would have been able to weave gloves out of reeds and moleskin for Renny; when he wore gloves such as those for three days in a row, he’d be cured. The first girl who passed by him in the cafeteria would fall in love with him, and it would be Iris. Iris McGinnis would truly look at him, she’d look inside him, and when she saw the way he loved her, she’d be so moved she’d begin to weep.

Renny reached into his pocket for the mole. He was right about me. I probably would have assumed it was beyond help and tossed it into the shoebox with its predecessor to become skin and bones, another curled-up leaf. I wouldn’t have even checked for a heartbeat.

“Still alive,” Renny said.

“Can’t ask for more than that. Can we?”

“Forget what I said about Lazarus. Maybe I was jealous that you’ve found someone.”

As if I could forget. If there was a negative point, I clung to it. A life raft of doubt and fear.

“Sure. Don’t worry about it.” I was trying for cheerful ease. “And it’s not like we’re running off to the chapel anytime soon. It’s not love, Renny. It’s nothing like that.”

“I’m happy for you. Whatever it is. I mean it.”

He was. He could be brokenhearted and still be happy for someone else.