Alice Hoffman - The Ice Queen

“Is he dead?”

Our pizza was getting cold, but I came to examine the mole. It wasn’t moving.

“I’ve got another one out on the porch.”

“Seriously? Another mole?”

I brought Renny out to where I’d left the shoebox. I lifted the cover. “This one’s definitely dead.”

“Are you collecting them?”

We laughed, but it wasn’t funny. There in the shoebox was the little fallen-leaf mole, curled up, not much more than skin and bones. Could it be that I’d even become at­tached to this poor little thing? It smelled like dust and earth, a sad, bitter scent.

“Well, this one’s alive,” Renny said of today’s mole. He put it in his jacket pocket. “I’ll bet that one was alive, too. Just playing dead. It’s difficult to tell, you know.”

I was still the death-wish girl. Touch you once and you turn to ice. Twice and you might disappear.

“Did you check to make sure before you threw him away?” Renny asked.

After all I’d done for him tonight Renny seemed to be ac­cusing me of murder, or, if not that, thoughtlessness. Same difference. I had glue on my hands and my numb fingertips were raw from attaching those damned bamboo sticks. It was never going to work, not my life or his. I was annoyed and I couldn’t hide it.

“Maybe we’d better call it quits on the project,” I said. “If I do everything wrong, how am I going to construct a temple?”

“So, you’re done with me now? Is that it? Why not? Everyone else wants to get rid of me.”

He was so sensitive a single drop of poison could affect him, a word, a look, one sliver of ice. He had his head down. He was checking on the mole. I saw what I didn’t want to see: Renny was brokenhearted. Like and like. I knew how he felt.

“I don’t mean it that way, Renny.” I came up beside him, close. My only friend. I could see that the mole was breath­ing softly. Now I noticed that one of its ears had been torn in half.

I told Renny about Lazarus, not everything, of course, not the way I felt inside, just how I arose from bed at odd hours, compelled to drive out there; I revealed the corners of what was happening. Yet I said too much. Be careful whom you tell your story to. As we sat on my porch, both of us feeling the change in the weather, knees touching knees, I made the mistake of mentioning that Lazarus and I were always to­gether in the dark. I suppose it was something that nagged at me. As soon as I’d said it I knew that I should have kept my mouth shut.

“And that doesn’t worry you? You’re suspicious about everything else, but not that? Clearly, there’s something this Lazarus doesn’t want you to see. Hell, I wish I could do the same with Iris. But even in the dark, I wouldn’t be able to trick her. What’s wrong with me would be even more obvi­ous. The dark makes it worse for me.”

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.

“I’m going to forget about Iris. It was a stupid idea to give her the temple. Or to ever think she would want me. What would she want with a monster?”

“You’re not a monster.”

I could feel something hot behind my eyes. It was compas­sion. Something I didn’t want to feel.