The Ice Queen by Alice Hoffman Page A

thought about Lazarus. I was the Ice Queen who wanted to be burned alive. I wanted to take the path full of stones that led through the forest of ashes. At the end of that path I would find what every fairy-tale creature yearned for. Not pearls, not kingdoms, not gold. I was looking for something better than that. Real treasure. Real truth.
    “You’ve got to help me,” Renny pleaded.
    “Is this about Iris again?” Iris McGinnis, nymph of sorrow, so far away she might as well have been living on the moon. Renny loved to talk about her. I usually just tuned him out and let him drone on, but my patience was wearing thin.
    “Not Iris. Not this time.”
    He was failing his architecture course; his end-of-the-summer term project was due and he couldn’t work on it himself because of the pain in his hands. He was taking Demerol, along with Tegretol for the tremors. I could feel guilt rise up inside me like a living being. I wanted to tell him no. After work I planned to get in my car and drive to the secret country where oranges were white. I wanted to walk into the cold pond where Lazarus and I went swimming on clear nights, after all the workers had left, after the trucks had been loaded up and driven away, after it was dark. The mud between my toes under a black and starless sky. I’d been thinking about it all day as I shelved books. I wanted to be dragged under, forget there was anything else in the universe.
    But how could I deny Renny, my friend, Renny the sorrowful? How could I tell him what I really wanted? Go away, go away. I’m in a different country now, one where no one can find me, one where there’s no difference between fire and water.
    I should have advised him to pick a new major. But no. Always the volunteer, I offered to do the work if he would instruct me. Renny came over that night. I could tell he was desperate. We were that much alike. His tremor was worse. His hair was long, knotted. He hadn’t bathed. All the signs of despair. It was my clicking that kicked in when I felt that way. Sometimes I couldn’t hear the TV over the sounds in my own head.
    “You’re sure you’re up for this?” I asked.
    Had he been drinking, smoking weed? His eyes were red. And then I thought, Oh, no. He’d been crying.
    Renny gazed at his gloves; from his expression he might have been looking down at cloven hooves or a lion’s paws. “Maybe it’s time for me to give up architecture.”
    Like drawn to like, story to story. I should have said, Yes, give it up; study literature or art history — any discipline he might have a chance at rather than a field of study that would surely lead to failure. But that wasn’t the way it was going to happen. Jump down the well, sleep for a hundred years, tie yourself to a tree at the base of the mountain, the one where snow falls every day and the ice is ten feet thick.
    “Don’t be silly.” Here I went, pushing him down the well. “Architects don’t actually do the building. They inspire and create. Carpenters do all the work.”
    “I should give it all up. Architecture and Iris. Ridiculous dreams.”
    “Give up and it will never happen.”
    I sounded like a character out of an Andersen story, on the side of reason and goodness. I was his cheerleader, his friend, his familiar, his liar. Step up and make the leap. Don’t bother with a helmet or a life preserver. You can do it if you really try! Walk on glass, pull the sliver of ice from your heart, face up to it. Overcome.
    I sounded so false to myself, but Renny grinned, won over. I suppose people needed stories like Andersen’s sometimes. The should-be story, the could-be tale. Renny ran a gloved hand through his messy hair. “I don’t have a chance,” he said, but I could hear it in his voice — he was being coerced into believing.
    “Let’s do it.” I always got in too deep. I didn’t even want to be here, now I was committing to a major project. “First the temple, then Iris. Inspire me. Boss me around.