snow blind

QUEEN GERTRUDE
     One woe doth tread upon another's heel,
So fast they follow. Your sister's drowned, Laertes.

LAERTES
     Drowned! O, where?

QUEEN GERTRUDE
     There is a willow grows aslant a brook,
That shows his hoar leaves in the glassy stream;
There with fantastic garlands did she come
Of crow-flowers, nettles, daisies, and long purples
That liberal shepherds give a grosser name,
But our cold maids do dead men's fingers call them:
There, on the pendent boughs her coronet weeds
Clambering to hang, an envious sliver broke;
When down her weedy trophies and herself
Fell in the weeping brook. Her clothes spread wide;
And, mermaid-like, awhile they bore her up:
Which time she chanted snatches of old tunes;
As one incapable of her own distress,
Or like a creature native and indued
Unto that element: but long it could not be
Till that her garments, heavy with their drink,
Pull'd the poor wretch from her melodious lay
To muddy death.
     --Hamlet 4.7

A snow-globe. It's a simple contraption. A sphere of blown glass, filled with clear liquid in which float tiny white grains of plastic or some equally harmless substance, and usually with some picturesque winter scene built into its center, a snowman or a farmhouse or sledding children. If you shake the globe, it appears to the outside observer that snow is falling inside. And perhaps to the inside observer; if those children were to look overhead, they would surely see a blizzard, as would anyone who happened to look out the window of the farmhouse. The illusion is only spoiled by the hands that shake.

The hands are dark and graceful, and they seize the sphere and raise it. First the world shudders, and then a dazzling, pure white fall...

*

The storm had begun that morning. Around mid-afternoon it had tapered down to only the occasional flurry of drifting flakes, and luckily enough, as otherwise even Mamiya's hopeful looks wouldn't have been enough to convince his sister to let him go out and play in still-falling snow. Even as it was, it took layer upon layer of warm clothing and bundling to let Tokiko feel safe, enough that it almost defeated the purpose of the outing -- not that Mamiya was prepared to run and play like any ordinary child, but even so, it was almost an effort for him to move. But they had stood in the snow, watching over him like parents instead of sister and friend, Nemuro with his wan but wistful smile and Tokiko laughing to keep back the worried frown; and when the wind blew the thick flakes into her hair he had brushed them aside and told her, as though it were a phenomenon he alone had discovered, that she was beautiful...

But now the snowstorm was a howling, murderous thing, prowling outside the windows and pawing at the doors and roaring its wrath down on the power lines, and the small house was dark and cold. Tokiko had dragged out a small wood-burning stove, squat and rusty-bellied, and put it in Mamiya's bedroom, stoking it with logs from the mostly ornamental fireplace in the main foyer; laughing, they had all lit candles from the belching flame and set them up all around the house, and Tokiko had joked that they should have waited on dinner so they could cook it out on sticks. Nemuro had done his part, and smiled and said good night to Mamiya when the boy had begun to have to struggle to keep up, and then he had retreated to the hall where he stood in the dim candlelight, looking at the mirror over the fireplace and listening to the murmuring voices of brother and sister.

"...sleep..."

"...tomorrow? I want..."

"You know you... if..."

And the clink of a fingernail on a the tip of a syringe.

It seemed like she had carried in every blanket in the house and settled each over the reclining boy, one on top of another, like the bed of the fairy-tale pauper who proved herself a princess with her discomfort. Bundling him under the covers like she had bundled him to go outside the house that was his prison. It seemed to Nemuro, as he watched the twinned dancing candleflames along the mantel, that one would have to love someone very much to smother them so completely.

He reached out and cupped his hand around a flame. It was warm, and stained the palm of his hand with light. It seemed for a moment like none of the candles were blowing in the same direction, but that must have been only the uncertain light. And anyway, all the windows were closed, so they couldn't be blowing at all.

And sure enough, as soon as he realized this, he saw that they were not.

That sort of thing should have unnerved him, he supposed, but when you had been hired to map out the stars, things often began to make sense where they shouldn't. He pulled back his hand; the candles flickered, and then were still.

The sound of a door closing reached him, and when he looked up Tokiko was standing at the far wall, haloed in light from the thick candle she carried in her hand. They regarded each other, solemnly, and then he stood back and she came to the mantel as though it were an altar; the candle flared and sputtered as she walked. He watched her reflection in the mirror, the half-curve of her pale skin.

"He's asleep," she said, quietly. "He was tired. I shouldn't have let him stay up so long."

Nemuro nodded. There was little else to say, or at least little else that he was expected to. She looked down the line of candles, doubled by their reflections, at the empty space that waited for the one she held. Light danced across her face.

"The roads must be very dangerous," she said, not looking at him. "It's been snowing all day. You mustn't go out in this weather; it would be my fault if you were hurt."

He nodded again. A trickle of wax traced down the side of the column, sliding down her finger when it reached her hand. She winced, but did not put the candle down.

His footfall was soft as he stepped closer. She found his reflection in the mirror, spoke to it instead. "The couch folds out to a bed." Her voice was almost a whisper. "There are a few extra blankets. We could build another fire, if you like."

"That sounds just fine." His palm brushed her fingers as he took the candle from them, setting it in the empty place on the mantel. Now the row was perfect, more perfect than it had any right to be. Warmed, his hand found her cheek. "I appreciate your hospitality."

Mouthing words without meaning, like actors onstage speaking the wrong lines in the wrong scene, and no one watching the wiser. Like prisoners in a concentration camp, their voices telling one safe script while their hands perform the truth.

"I'll set it up now," she said, eyes downturned, and then their lips closed the distance and he was tasting roses and dry land. Her skin was cool like wax, like glass, and he was sliding.

One way or another, her bedroom came next, and she held his head to her throat and sighed as his fingers found their way down buttons and fabric. There were candles here too, although Nemuro was certain no one had been in here tonight. He had never seen the room before. He couldn't see it very well now, in all truth. The world had retreated behind thin smoke and silk and snow, pure white snow.

He pulled back and cradled her head, touching her hair. Her eyes were wide, and fixed elsewhere; together with the sweater sliding off her shoulders, they made her resemble the victim of a rape.

"My brother is the most important thing in the world to me," she told him. Her voice was matter-of-fact and far-off. He felt like he could barely hear her.

"I understand." His lips brushed her forehead as his hand slipped under the loose fold of her sweater. When his fingers caressed the bud of her nipple, she sighed again, and covered the hand with her own. She was looking out the window. Snow lightning scuttled over the clouds, purple and brilliant.

"I wonder if it'll snow until morning."

"It's hard to say."

Actors; prisoners; conspirators; the new dead.

Here their memories diverge. She, when she does remember, remembers dark and snow, and a window larger than the room could have held, letting the blizzard fall past them. She remembers him above her, and his breath warming her shoulder, and little else beyond that. It was, she will say, a long time ago. He remembers stars; at some point in the night, with her nails digging furrows down his back that would bleed if this were real, he remembers looking up and seeing the stars, millions of them, wheeling overhead. And that it was then he realized that they were wrong, he had gotten them wrong.

And whenever morning came they spoke and acted as if nothing had happened, because nothing had.

*

In order to bear fruit, flowers have to cast off their petals.

She lies on his couch, under the false cosmos, her hair spread out around her shoulders, arranged there like a corpse. He is down at the other end, doing something, probably something to her, but she can't see what. And she doesn't want to lift her head.

Somehow the time got away; time does that, it always does, and it never returns no matter where you call it from. Only this time has simply vanished, instead of only creeping away like water. She wonders how she knows how water moves. She doesn't remember ever seeing it; only snow. Her hand stretches out to the side, and flexes, and she watches it, and that is real, isn't it? Its solidity and its age. The stars are the liars, and she thinks maybe her head aches.

She came to see Mamiya's grave, but somehow she came here, and she doesn't remember the walk or even the grave. She only remembers the flowers, these days, eats and drinks them and speaks them. Can an hourglass run slow? Can water flow uphill? Can a building burn down and still be standing after decades pass? He is doing something, but she doesn't know what. She wishes he would stop so she could leave. Probably, there is somewhere to go. Ants always seem to have somewhere to go, though you can never tell where it is; they run in circles and circles and circles and home, but they're always home...

The man she passed in the hallway; she is older than him now. Older than all of them. Time turns its tricks. Did you ever wonder why you can never be older than your older sister? You both keep moving, but someone has not been moving. She thought he was dead, but maybe he is. Her brother is dead, but she knows that. Her brother was always dead. That was the point, really. She can't see his hands. The man in the hallway. Is he dead too? It seems like they buried him with her brother, or maybe they buried him alone and someone else was her brother. Where would they bury a man who walks in hallways? Probably they are all at least halfway buried, him and Mamiya and this man at the end of the sofa and those stars above and her, and she is only spread out on this couch because all the graves in this world are filled and he is sitting there doing something to her because he is the one who filled them. And it has been this way forever, but had it been this way forever ten minutes ago? Or a day, or a week? Or thirty years?

It hurts. What is between here and Mamiya's grave? When did her hair grow long? Wasn't her face different, her beauty mark? She hasn't looked in a mirror in centuries, or since she came here. There are no mirrors. When did she have time to grow old? It hurts. Why did she bring roses? Why can't she think of any other flower now that she thinks it; why are there only roses and roses and roses? Where are his hands? Something is dying, but it isn't Mamiya, and it isn't the stars. The stars. Is there such a thing as snow lightning? Maybe she made that up because she thought it would be beautiful. It was beautiful, except it never happened. It hurts. Candles and stars and the beginning of something with no place for a store-mannequin, smiling and immobile, swords but no blood and a coffin built for a thousand and oh, God, it hurts...

She rests her head and watches the stars. They wheel and turn overhead, pirouetting and interweaving, and they are just a little bit wrong.

*

(Akio stands alone in his observatory, and there is probably not blood on his hands. He is stone-solemn as he looks up at the false stars. His eyes are the eyes of forever.)

*

Mikage wakes up to find himself still in the real world, or what passes for it, and -- for some reason -- thinking of the names of flowers.

It's the middle of the night, or at least for those to whom night is night instead of day. His housemate is still at work, if that's any indication. He is the lone remaining member of this house of survivors.

Carnation, he thinks. Forget-me-not. Hyacinth. Cyclamen.

When it finally seems for certain that sleep will not return, he sits up. Out the window, the stars are the same as they ever were. He never finds any of the flaws in them that he fears he will; but he feels compelled to watch them, all the same. And only half-satisfied with the narrow slice of night, he dresses and leaves the room.

It is hard, very hard, to forget things that never happened. Harder than it is to forget things that did. This is a fact every human being is, on some level, aware of, although he knows it better than most.

Zinnia. Pansy. Marigold.

Why is he doing this?

Never mind. There must be a reason. There's always a reason. Sometimes, it's better not to ask.

Violet. Begonia.

He pauses for a moment, looking at the door, and then pulls on his coat and goes outside. There is still snow on the ground, and the winter is bitter cold, but it doesn't seem to matter. He doesn't mind the cold.

Geranium. Fleur de lis.

He stays out for a long time.

*

In a dusk-dimmed hallway, a woman passes a man, as they are both on their separate ways, each heading toward something else. A few more steps down, something seems to occur to her, and she pauses, turning to look back over her shoulder; and she stands for a moment, and watches him retreating, his shadow bobbing along as he disappears down the far end of this crossways in her life.

Her curiosity, however, is merely academic. She does not know him, and she never will.

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