writing_shadows

The music crackles like broken glass, coming from somewhere a long way away. It is as bright and as cold as the snow that is falling, and touches your ears like snowflakes.

At first the music feels as soft as kisses, but it's cold.

Rosie woke up with a start. The house was dark and totally silent. She was tucked up in bed, beneath a pile of blankets, but her skin felt as cold as ice, and her heart was pounding.

She didn't move for a moment, but lay there motionless. She didn't want to move. It wasn't good to move. She was quite sure of that. She couldn't have told anyone why it wasn't bad to move. She just knew she couldn't.

Outside the snow was falling, soft and thick. Rosie could see it, gleaming in the orange glow from the street lights. A thick blanket lay all the way across London, making it seem almost otherworldly. All the grey, the dirt, and the normality of the city was being washed away.

As the last of the bar staff had left at 11 pm, one of them had commented that Hampstead looked 'like fairyland'. Carin had raised an icy eyebrow at them, but said nothing. Aidan had said cheerfully "it looks like fun out there," and then frowned slightly when Rosie didn't say anything, but wrapped her arms around her chest defensively.

No one had said much more, and Rosie had gone to bed early. She hadn't been able to sleep at first, and had instead sat on her windowsil, staring out at the floating snowflakes.

There's a girl lying in the snow. She has green eyes, and a tangle of brown hair, that was tied in plaits but seems to be coming undone now, and is slowly turning white with snow. She is naked, and her skin has already taken on a nasty mottled shade. Still, even with all that, she is beautiful. Beautiful enough that it takes your breath away.

The girl isn't moving. She was shivering, but now her limbs are too stiff to shiver. She's been frozen by the cold, twisted and stretched out with her hand up raised.

She should be dead. She really should be dead.

So why does she keep making that strange keening noise?

Rosie didn't like the snow. She realized that, with a kind of mild surprise. She should like the snow. She was sure of it. She'd seen the films and read the books. Snow was Romantic and Exciting and All Kinds of Fun. Everyone liked snow, she thought. She should like it.

She didn't.

She had finally gone to bed at around 3 am, wrapping herself up in bright red flannel pajamas, and a bundle of blankets. She had fed her one remaining goldfish, and then added a pair of grey woolly socks to her outfit. She was cold - terribly terribly cold - and Rosie hated the cold.

Before she went to bed, she looked out of the window one last time. The snow had transformed London, and still hung in the air, lazy and malevolent.

Rosie shivered.

No one knows who that girl is, or why she is there. She's been there for a long time now, just lying naked in the snow. But now she is frozen solid. Now she is stiff, and now the one who keeps her - the lady with the long and spindly fingers - now she can get to work.

She'll lift the girl up, and begin to break and twist those mottled limbs into the shape she wants her to be. She'll brush out her ice coated hair, and tear away those cold stiffened nipples until the girl's body is just smooth and pale.

She'll make the beautiful little girl a thousand times more beautiful. And, because the girl is beautiful and the lady with the spindled fingers is not, she will hurt her while she does it.

When Rosie woke again, with her chest tight and her heart pounding, it was nearly 5 am.

She wasn't sure who she was at first. Nothing quite made sense. Fragmented memories floated through her brain, and for a moment the last seventy years fell away. She didn't remember her Motley, her new life, her new name. She didn't remember the years with her Lord, the one who had rescued her, rebuilt her, broken her but cared for her. She couldn't remember anything.

She knew that she was far from home. She knew that nothing was familiar. And she knew that she was cold and that she hated the cold.

She wanted to move, but she didn't think she could. She remembered that her limbs had frozen, and now she couldn't move.

So she lay there, stiff as a board, sick with fear.

Outside the snow continued to fall, dancing in spirals on the midnight air.

Slowly, a bit at a time, her memories came floating back. They felt unreal somehow. Carin, Doug, Aidan, Aria...they felt like characters she had read about in a book once. Nothing was quite right. Other people, like Satrap Sam felt even more unreal. Drago was the least real of the lot. She couldn't conceive of herself as someone's lover. It didn't seem right. No one could possibly want to do that to the twisted and frozen body she remembered. And how could she want to touch someone who could feel as cold as he sometimes did?

The music begins to play again. It dances over the notes, as delicate as a fairy's touch, and the one with the long and spindled fingers sways gently in time. She lifts up the white and frozen form, and smiles a jagged toothed smile.

The girl is set on a frosted silver pedestal, with one arm stretched up as if she is still reaching for the sky. Her head is tilted back and her face gazes upwards. Her skin is white as snow now, and her hair is bleached fair with the frost.

The one who has made her smiles and takes a step away. Soon the pedestal will begin to turn, and the girl will dance to the music, whilst never moving. She will be something new and beautiful for the great icy hall within which she will be set.

Up above, the snow continues to fall.

In the morning, Rosie went and stood in the doorway, staring out at the snow.

She still felt wrong, somehow. Something was not quite right. She tried to think of other things - she found Carin's computer and wrote badly worded missives to the Spring Court that seemed to offend and irritate, and spent a while trying to write a letter to Crystal, who used to be Opal.

Nothing felt quite right.

In the evening, Jack in the Smoke and Aidan came home, cheerful and alive. Rosie fled and hid in her room. She didn't like the noise. She didn't know what to say. She didn't want to say anything. It felt wrong, for reasons which made no sense.

She just wanted to sit in the window, shivering with cold, and watch the horrible cold snow fall.