By Chris Haven
One day he awoke to a skin of ice covering his wife’s body. Her lips were blue and her eyes were still burdened with warmth underneath. He was not alarmed.
He reached for her hand and it was encased in transparent ice, a covering thicker than it first appeared. He removed his hand and considered his options.
He could not hammer or hack her out—too dangerous. The temperature in the room was normal. All of this was coming from her. She lay atop the bedsheets, cold vapors rising, forming another body above her.
This magic, he knew, had been within her all along. Why should it appear now? Now that their children were grown and their debts paid, the time in their life they’d talked about enjoying, the times of trouble and scarcity past, this time they’d so looked forward to.
Of course now was the time.
With his knuckle, gently, he tried to crack the ice on her smallest finger. Tap, tap, tap. It was no use. He breathed warm air over her face. No effect. Finally he noticed a small depression where he’d touched her hand—the thinnest film of water.
He knew what he must do.
He removed his robe, lay down next to her. The vapor body above them kept watch. Was it encouraging him? He held his love’s icy form, his hand on her belly, then arm, cheek, until he could no longer move his own body. He felt his heat abandon him, slowing toward ice.
After a very long time he believed he could feel her arm, her skin. Cool, tender. The vapor body kept watch.
It’s impossible to say how long this went on, him lying there, holding her, the two of them frozen in place, before she warmed, stood, breathed again. And how long it took for her to see him, cold as a stone, the chill of her thoughts gathering, to understand what she would now do. And how long it took for her to trade places with him again, how many times they froze and refroze, so often that it seemed like this was their life now. One always frozen, one warm, with decisions to make. Until one day he looked at the vapor’s movement, and he no longer trusted.
He had to break the cycle.
He placed a fan in the room, but the vapor didn’t disperse. He swallowed pills in hopes of persuading himself that the vapor wasn’t there, but those soon lost their effectiveness. He sketched the vapor, wrote songs about it, photographed it, tried to take the life out of it. Finally he coaxed it into a glass and drank it.
The ice thawed from his wife’s skin. Crystals flaked from her lashes. It was the first time they’d been awake together in years. What have you done? she asked him.
He reached a tender hand to her face.
You had no right! she said.
A word of triumph formed in his mouth, pushed its way down his throat, lodged. These words would keep coming, he knew, but they would never be spoken. They would force themselves deeper inside of him until they formed a body much like his so that he would walk not as one but as two—one inside, one out; one visible, one not—neither of which would ever try to alter the properties of ice, or bodies, or transparency again.
Later, she will bring him soup, build him a shelf for his books. His eyes will cloud over first, then hers. He will think this is the end, but they will learn to read with their fingers. She will hold his in her hand, run them over the pages. They will reach the end at different times, but before that they will leave off in the middle of the story. When night comes, they will trust in their touch and the story that never ends.
Chris Haven has published a collection of short stories, Nesting Habits of Flightless Birds, and Bone Seeker, a collection of poems. He teaches writing at Grand Valley State University in Michigan.
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