Pinwheel

Once upon a time… there was a land where everything, from the ground to the hearts of men, was made of ice. There was a child born from the snow and the shadow and the glass-like earth. The babe had Mazarin eyes and a complexion like virgin snow.

And in the same time, at another ‘once’, in another place, there was a child born with eyes like summer heat, and a crooning voice as devastating as the darkness of midnight on the high sea.

One might wonder what the sexes of the children were, and each child could be either sex, but for now we will say that the child of winter was a girl, and the summer child was a boy.

The girl lived where everything was frozen, including time. There was an endlessly in-between sky, and no thing on the landscape grew.

If she did not have a heart, she would not have grown. But she did, and it was a heart as pristine as ice, waiting for its first crack.

The summer boy grew up with the smell of apples and the spectrum of the shades of honey made at different times in the summer. He grew up slowly, listening to the lazy buzz of cicadas and dragonflies, watching ribbons of grass sway, rocking back and forth in a bower cradle made by trees.

One day, they were the same age. It did not matter that she grew in a frozen land or that he grew quickly. Whatever speeds at which they aged, there came a day when they were both young, both untouched, and both desperate to see the rest of the world.

She wanted to see the colours of a fire. Feel the heat of an ember or burning coal. She wanted to smell smoke. She wanted to feel time pass at steady intervals, instead of growing to the rate of her erratic heartbeat.

He wanted to feel the shock of ice on his skin. He wanted to skate across a frozen river, testing the surface, taunting it until it lost its patience and he tumbled down, down, down. He wanted to see snow, and the northern countries where the people’s breath was a constant ghostly companion.

And to the fanfare of their parents’ tears and sobs and their heartfelt encouragements and lamentations, she and he left walked past their gates and past the point where her frozen world melted into the world of spring and fall and summer and where his world withered into the world of fall and winter and budded into spring.

Where he went, like a wingless angel, made of fire and earth, people avoided his eyes. They could not avoid his skin – his  presence was like the pull of a magnet and he reminded them of childhood summers and long days eating peaches and short days with lovers in the shadows of magnolia trees – but his eyes were as bottomless as the ocean, and ringed with fire.

Wherever she went people shied away from her. She had an air that made mothers yearn to lock their arms around her and take her to their chests, a lostness they feared for their own children when they finally let them go. But she was chilly and the air around her was like a constant frost. Her gaze was like looking at yourself, seeing your reflection and yet not, seeing what others saw, and knowing what others knew. She made them feel as though she knew them more than they knew themselves. So they avoided her eyes and gazed at her perfect, frozen skin.

In his journey, summer faded to fall, and he recognized the colours of red and brown and purple, like berry juice and rust and dirt from the summer, but he did not recognize the chill wind. He took comfort in fireplaces, but touched windowpanes to see how long he could, before the decreasing temperature burned his palm.

Around her the winter became spring. She watched buds grow on trees and flowers push through the earth. She though how painful it must be, to have shoots and roots and new leaves unfurl from your skin, and she felt sorrow for the earth. But she delighted in the smells of crocuses and daffodils and wishes she had a garden in which to keep them and always return.

In some stories they never meet; they pass one another, close enough to touch, yet never seeing, too distracted with the seasons around them. So winter and summer come close, but never meet.

In our story, they do meet. On a day in fall, or in spring. It does not matter. But it was an in-between time, and he was emerging from a forest, like a soldier from the chaotic fray of battle, and she was weaving through grass, away from a town, pushing aside weeds like a rock parting water.

When he saw her, he saw emptiness. Death. A time frozen, and endings.

When she saw him, she saw fire. Inferno. A cycle of mortality.

When he saw her, he saw timelessness. An untouched quality. Beginnings.

When she saw him, she saw vitality. Endless lives intertwined. A world without beginning or end.

He led her, or she led him, in silence to a place in darkness. The darkness of his night, the darkness of her childhood, where he felt her snow-soft skin and she felt his flushed skin.

He told her stories. About apples and honey.

She told him stories. About heartbeat-time and icicles.

He kissed her first. Or she kissed him. But then he drew her down and she drew him close and the earth clashed in the colours of seasons, in tempests and storms. There was a forest fire, an earthquake, a drought, a flood. She breathed his breath. Lightning struck the ocean. He shuddered above her. Mountains crumbled.

In the morning, they emerged from their darkness like a mole from its hole, and saw the earth, devastated and ending. But already beginning again.

They were not prepared to let one another go.

They had to.

Their parting was the sigh of the earth in peace.

His skin was white with freeze-burns. Frost melted on his collar, dew-cold.

She was black with burns in the shapes of his fingers. Her lips were blistered and red.

He walked into summer. She walked into winter.

He kept the bees for honey. She froze the surfaces of ponds.

He touched his still-cold collarbone. She touched her lips.

On one half of the world, everything was living.

On the other half, everything, everyone, was waiting.

Art by Barbara Florcyzk

Text by Lucie MacAulay