water
I think violence is a horrible thing, and yet it is still portrayed in the stories of our culture as the only way to fight evil. If we are to rise above this, perhaps it will be to supplant pain, with pleasure. I hope you like the story—it was great fun to write!
The white forest stretched from the mountain-sides, where its first scattered timber clung like the rag-torn edge of a vast ancient blanket, over precipitous foothills which slashed at it with precipices of naked rock, and then to the suddenly-diminishing undulations of the plain.
Here, its immensity and grandeur brooked no interruption. Even the rivers that had once brought glistening tumult from the mountains were now mere lines of purer whiteness among the tree-tips that gasped into the light from among snow-engulfed branches beneath. The low pinprick of the sun had not the power to mar or melt, and so, on and on spread the forest-roof, its silence broken only by the flurrying wind that whistled broken fragments of an endless dirge.
In places, the bristling skin of drift and needle admitted irregular gaps and hollows, some shallow, some plunging deeply down into a dim, spotlit world of snow-chambers: a random, demented architecture spanning countless leagues. Nothing lived here; perhaps nothing had lived in this forest for centuries. In all likelihood even the trees themselves were dead, or they slept so deep that not even the merest flicker of growth betrayed their long wait for a spring that would never come.
But while the denizens of this forest were long-gone, something had passed through: a winding trail of claw-marks, here and there resolving into prints where snow had dusted down from the patches of sky above, or collapsed from the walls as branches succumbed to their load. Two sets of tracks: one, the larger, confidently navigating the unnavigable; the other stumbling behind.
Winding many miles more than a straight course, nevertheless, the tracks progressed relentlessly Southward. League upon league they ran, beyond the endurance of the most patient predator, or the most desperate prey. Where the way was impeded, heavy prints betrayed the launch-points of spectacular leaps; where it had been impossible, teeth and claws had made tunnels.
And somehow, these two travellers had conquered the forest. Even in their insignificance and solitude, their tracks did not slow with exhaustion, or hunger; or end with the frozen huddle of a lifeless body. Days, weeks, months; night and day, never slowing, rarely stopping, they had scratched the tale of their journey into the snow. And now the marks were sometimes lost in the detritus of the bare forest floor; now and again the sun peered through branches shaken naked by the wind; and finally: finally the trees thinned, and suddenly, the forest came to an end.
There, hesitating in the shadows of the last trees, was a wolf.
Small, somewhat bedraggled, but admitting of a lean fettle that belied its impossible journey, it gazed out: down a slope of grass and low bracken to where a figure stood upright, surveying the land beyond.
This figure was a woman. She was clad in a tight-fitting gown of smooth, silver fur; simple, but adorned at neck and shoulder with clear, many-faceted crystals. Her hair was short, harshly spiked and purest white; the skin of her neck barely a shade darker; though blurred by a thin layer of rising vapour. When she spoke, her voice was like to her appearance: regal, and cold.
‘Disappointing,’ she said, quietly, seemingly to herself. Then, she turned her head: her eyes shards of blue among the crystalline spears of her lashes.
‘Come, Evangeline,’ she said. The wolf in the trees emitted the beginning of a whine; but then the woman negligently twisted and raised her hand, and the wolf suddenly went rigid, as if frozen solid. Indeed, ice began to form around its muzzle, spreading rapidly over its body, growing fractal structure like the formation of an enormous flake of snow, outward into the air, expanding until the wolf-shape was lost in a creaking, glittering, expanding cocoon. The crystal grew upward more than outward; and finally, with an ear-splitting crash it shattered, spraying tinkling fragments of ice in every direction.
Another woman now stood where the wolf had been: clad in the same form of silvery gown, but entirely lacking in adornment. Her face was pale too, but only such as a life in the uttermost North would allow; her hair and lashes a simple brown. And despite the command of the other, she still seemed to hesitate.
‘My Queen,’ she protested fearfully. ‘Your power.’
The Queen briefly closed her eyes in annoyance, then turned her gaze ahead and stepped down the slope. Some distance away was a river, its nearer bank festooned with ice but its main body wide, deep and rushing.
As the Queen approached she focussed on the water. Her palms turned downward at her sides, and the fine mist that had caressed her skin seemed to spread about her: and the bracken no longer bent aside at her passing, but shattered and tinkled down in shards. Behind her, Evangeline stepped from the trees and scurried after, craning her neck nervously to see.
The vapour now entirely hid the Queen’s lower half, roiling away from her among the vegetation, which stiffened and crackled at its touch. She walked on, gliding regally down the low embankment, and on, without sign of hesitation at the furious, glistening tumult before her feet.
The crackle returned, growing quickly in volume as the water immediately upstream of the Queen churned and splashed. A mound of ice began to emerge from the mist there, growing with the roaring of the water thrusting against it.
But as the Queen stepped further beyond the bank she suddenly rocked on her feet, as though whatever she stood upon had shifted. She stopped; then turned her head to glare at the water. Evangeline too, came to a halt, her hand over her mouth. But the Queen simply tutted disdainfully and raised her hand a little: the roar grew thunderous as the ice barricade expanded explosively upstream, instantly freezing the frenzied shapes of the water raging against it. Then, she resumed her march.
She was furious. She had not even reached the centre-line of the river, where lay the absolute boundary of her power; and already she had betrayed her weakness. In fact, she had been weakening for days, and even the force required to prevent herself from being swept away was almost more than she could muster.
But her determination did not falter. As she reached the middle of the stream she could see the water carving slush from the ice ever nearer to her feet. With a last, gritted exertion, she poured billowing energy downward. The ice pier on which she stood expanded up- and down-stream, crackling and exploding with elemental conflict, writhing and bucking into tormented razor-edged shapes. Behind her, she heard Evangeline gasp and cry out as the section nearest the bank, shorn of the Queen’s focus, broke up and was swept away, leaving them separated by the torrent.
A tiny smile played on the corners of the Queen’s mouth. At least now her servant was safe. She raised her eyes, to the South. To the land of her nemesis.
The hard sandstone of the further bank was interlaced with the roots of stunted trees, which mounted quickly in low ranks up the hillside beyond. But only those nearest the water still showed some green among the yellow-black blotches of their desperation. Further away, death had long taken the twisted forms of a once lush and beautiful forest. Further again and even these skeletons had fallen into ash, mingling with the mounting sand; until the wind-sharpened edges of the first dunes shimmered their heat into the powder-blue sky.
The Queen knew she would not have long to wait; but her eyes still widened in surprise when the very top of the nearest dune was blasted into spiralling dust by the suddenly roaring passage of something huge.
A dragon.
It wasted no time with threats or display. Down it swept, already belching fire into the tinder beneath it so that a roiling plume of smoke followed in its wake. As it approached, its flame focussed into a long wand of pure heat, flickering red at the edges but pale blue within, fading into empty plasma.
It touched the water, and the shape and sound of the dragon behind was lost in a detonation of steam. Then in the blink of an eye the flame had traversed the current, and the Ice Queen welcomed it, with arms raised, upon her body.
She gasped with elation. It hurt.
Nothing had hurt her, for aeons. Not since the Guardians had put an end to the wars of her kind, and offered her the choice: mortality; or marooning. Being proud, she had chosen the latter. It could only have been a mistake of the Guardians, that the world where she was cast was populated. To subjugate the native bipeds had been laughably easy, and eased her innate and insatiable need for power, but she had long missed any true test of her mettle.
So now, as the dragon swept gracefully upward and aside from the border of her domain, she raised her arms to each side of her naked body—of her gown, not even dust remained—and laughed: a clear, resonant laugh, a outburst of pure joy at the resumption of glorious battle.
‘Too long have we delayed!’ she called, as the dragon pounded the air, trails of condensation swirling from the claws at its wing-tips as they tasted the cold of her power. ‘Too long!’
She watched the beast as it completed its turn, its wings stretching wide into silence, to glide and fade into the smoke on the further bank. She drew herself up to welcome another pass.
But it was long in coming; and then, the smoke churned to reveal the great dragon returning indeed, but slowing, first to hover, then to land on the riverbank. Each beat of its wide wings sent a concussion across the water, each mighty breath shimmered in the tortured air. Then, the Queen saw for the first time that it carried upon its shoulders a tiny figure: clad sparingly in shining armour, and crowned with gold.
The dragon bowed its many-horned head, and the figure dismounted with the agility of long practice. It was a woman; and then, a woman’s voice came clearly across the water: but it was not the human figure that spoke.
‘You know that if we fight, we shall both be destroyed.’
‘Yes,’ replied the Queen, simply. ‘We are warriors. It is fitting.’ In her mind, she finished, so that this world may live.
The dragon inclined its head pensively, and looked aside. It did not seem to be addressing the Queen as it muttered: ‘Perhaps.’
The woman on the bank had reached out to the dragon’s scaly snout; and it closed its eyes as it received a brief caress. The Queen watched with outward scorn, but inward disquiet. The creature taking the temporary form of this crude beast, had also adopted a ridiculous local legend in order to impress its subjects. And it, too, had taken one of them as a servant.
Unbidden, her mind cast itself to the bank behind her, where she knew Evangeline cowered; perhaps hurt, scorched by the dragon’s fire, though it must have been much diminished by the Queen’s power upon that side of the river. The thought was painful; and it stirred also something deeper: a dull, chronic ache, which, though she had not yet admitted it to herself, had perhaps driven the Queen to this very moment.
And the dragon was rising into the air once more, its head low and threatening, its wings thundering to lift its long, writhing, armoured body. The battle-lust returned to the Queen, and she rejoiced in it; all else was forgotten. She lifted her arms once more, and prepared to meet the fire, with ice.
Closer ranged the beast, so that the shocks of its wing-beats lifted spray from the water, to freeze into dust before the Queen’s presence. Even her diminished power could have easily brought quick, frigid death to such a creature at this range, were it not hiding a symmetrically opposed elemental power of its own, that even now must be readying to be unleashed. Only pride stayed the Queen’s hand: with the dragon still in its own dominion, its first strike would be greater than hers.
But something also made her wary. Why did her enemy approach so slowly, so deliberately? It was so close now, she could feel and smell the cinders of its breath. And still it regarded her, wary in its turn, but with some hidden intent, some dishonourable subterfuge, beyond the simplicity and joy of destruction.
The air about the Queen crackled with mounting energy, in readiness for the end. And then indeed, the dragon roared and convulsed its wings, so that it bore itself to one side. The Queen tutted with disappointment and released her strike: an angry, colourless emptiness coalesced above her, and drove into the sky to meet the beast, easily anticipating the path of its feint.
But even before it struck, a paroxysm seemed to claim the dragon; its body contorted; and then its roar turned into the thunder of an explosion of flame that engulfed it, even to its wing-tips. The Queen’s blast passed entirely through the conflagration, scattering fire but meeting nothing solid.
One fireball fell only metres from her feet, hissing and billowing steam as it met the ice.
The first sign the Queen saw of her nemesis, was the eyes. Utterly black and empty they appeared among the flames, holding her own unblinking gaze. Then as the fire waned, other shapes emerged: nose, jaw, shoulders. An arm, braced downward beside one acutely bent leg, the other kneeling.
Beautiful shapes, noticed a part of the Queen’s mind.
The creature slowly came to its feet, its hair still aflame, traces of ember making jagged or swirling patterns among dark tattoos all over its skin. It, too, was a woman; though more extravagantly feminine than the Queen: full and lavish were her breasts and hips, to the Queen’s more stately grandeur.
This woman, this fire demon, raised a hand.
‘There is… another way,’ she said. Fire from within licked at the corners of her mouth. ‘We can put an end to destruction, without destruction.’
The Queen looked on, uncomprehending. In all the countless ages of their co-evolution among the stars, her race and the demon’s had never found a way that was not simple, glorious conflict, not had they sought to. In their attunement to one another they had created perfection, such a concentration of elemental power that no other biological entity could withstand them. It had taken the Guardians, a peacekeeping force left behind by a long-dead civilisation, to finally halt their advance across the galaxy—and even then, their nature could not be altered; only their power imprisoned, or permanently maimed.
The demon had advanced closer; wisps of steam from its feet upon the ice darted this way and that between them in the turbulence of their discord.
‘You have taken human form; taken a human servant,’ she went on. ‘I know why. I know what you desire.’
The Queen’s eyes widened. The ache within her had come, suddenly, to a point of agony. She watched, paralysed, as the demon raised a finger, so slowly, and rested its tip on her chest.
It crackled. The Queen could feel its searing heat, but there was no pain.
‘You cannot touch her,’ said the demon, softly. ‘But you can touch me. We are balanced.’
The empty eyes that held the Queen’s carried the same message, amplified may times over: for in them, the Queen could see her own desperation, reflected in blackness. She knew it as the despair of lesser beings like the humans they had subjugated; despair for companionship, for affection. Seeing it so plainly in the eyes of another such as herself seemed to release it within her, allow it to grow, freed of her haughty prejudice.
For it could no longer be denied. With the passing of ages uncounted, in which her rule outlived and subsumed even the most ancient legends of her subjects, she had found herself… changed. And now, that change manifested, in one, simple, impulsive act.
She stepped forward.
The fire in the mouth of the demon dimmed with an indrawn breath; the sparks that were her lashes dipped downwards; the touch of her finger resolved into a whole palm, resting between the Queen’s breasts, its heat opening a swirling void in the film of mist over the Queen’s skin.
The Queen watched her own hand rising, so slowly, to the demon’s. When her fingertips touched, it was the first skin she had ever touched that was not her own; and though the air seethed with the meeting of their energies, the sensation was so simple, so pure, it smote her heart and broke it.
She could no longer gaze at the demon before her, lest its beauty utterly defeat her, so she raised her eyes to the sky and strove to contain her overflowing lust for that pathetic, alien, incredible feeling.
Her fingers traced over the demon’s tendons and knuckles, revelling in their delicate intricacy, that was no more—and yet so much more—than crude, human flesh. She knew, of course, that it was as much a simulacrum as her own adopted form; and yet she could feel the same exquisite perfection, honed and purified over millennia of silent desire and jealousy.
She knew the composition of human love; had watched it enacted, even demanded to have it demonstrated before her, hiding her longing with disgust, dismissing her secret arousal as an incidental artefact of her human form. But perfect though it was, down to the last detail, her own body was sustained only by her will and power, and could not perform its normal functions. Food and drink froze to sparkling sculptures at her touch. Once, in blind desperation, she had imposed herself upon one of her servants; and somehow, though her power had caused slow extinction of their entire race, she could not purge the razor-sharp memory of that one death.
But the hand that she held now was preserved by an equal power, and nothing could have prepared the Queen for the force of its touch. More exhilarating than battle; more pure than the emptiness of space; more overwhelming than the stars she had once bathed in, watching the streaming flares of their agony writhing over her.
So it was with a kind of terror that the Queen merely held that hand on her chest; knowing what other acts it could perform, but unable to conceive that she could suffer them, and survive.
But the presence of the demon was growing, inexorably. She could hear the snap and hiss of tortured air between them, could see the heat-haze rising into the sky, ever closer. Breath like opening of a furnace licked on her shoulder, and she gasped, and bit her lip.
And now the incandescence was resolving, finding form against her skin: her shoulder, the back of her hand, her breasts, her abdomen. Each contact became real with a shock that was not the scalding anticipated by her anthropoid brain, but the collapse of their primordial conflict into something so pure, its power was beyond conflict, beyond violence.
Warmth, affection, arousal. She knew these names, these labels. But not even in her deepest longings had they admitted their true power. And when the gentle touch of a nose against her shoulder was suddenly joined by the unmistakable caress of lips, she cried out. A wave of weakness and a paralysis poured down her weak, human spine; her legs could no longer support her; and she fell to her knees between the legs of her conqueror.
Her cry had become the keening of a wounded wolf; but now her raised eyes met and locked with the lowered eyes of her enemy, and their bond was not of victor and vanquished, but an exchange of joyous awe; as though the demon herself had not anticipated the mighty potential of her designs.
And now the Queen laughed, for she was overwhelmed by the sight of beauty, and her own acceptance of it. The demon was beautiful: extravagant and unreal were the tracings of glowing fire and dark ink upon her skin, but her shape was pure, viscerally soft, exquisite.
The abdomen before her tilted forward; breasts came away from ribs to reveal their wondrous shapes; and suddenly, the Queen’s laugh was smothered by blazing lips. Hunger consumed her; her hands grappled with the shoulders of her enemy from beneath, while her own shoulders and neck thrilled to scorching, grasping fingers and palms. Their lips opened; their tongues touched; crackling ice and steam danced together in their mouths.
And still, at the very epicentre of every touch was a perfect balance; so the Queen felt, for the first time, the slickness of her own saliva, melted by the raging flame within the demon’s mouth; it was a balm and a thrill to her tortured human mind, and she revelled in it.
Soon, perhaps too soon, their lips came apart; but now the ancient bonds of their lust had been broken open, and there could be no end to its outpouring. The Queen’s hands had dropped behind the demon’s shoulders, and now they rounded the delicacy of her ribs to brush onto the sides of her breasts. Such softness, such ethereal power. Her mouth gaped as she watched the impressions of her fingers move over their surface; she touched her lips to the shining aureole of a nipple; her tongue touched upon its nub, and she felt the demon’s body shiver.
On sudden whim she dropped one hand to her own breast; it was smaller, its shape almost dominated by the lean muscle beneath, but no less perfect than the demon’s; and now, by some transference, invested with a new eroticism beyond the Queen’s comprehension. And so with held breath she explored further, wondering at her own body that had never before felt or exhibited such passion.
But when her fingers reached between her legs, she moaned her disappointment into the nipple that she still held gently in her mouth; for though she felt the shape of her vulva, and its yearning to be touched, it was numb, and dry, like an ice field under a bitter wind.
So slowly, she lowered her face, reluctantly spurning the breasts of the demon, and cast her crystal blue eyes down the taut curves beneath, until they rested on the narrow vertical strip of sparkling flame at their lower extremity. The demon sighed with anticipation and straightened above her; and the Queen rested the side of her head on her abdomen, watching her own fingers rise to gently meet the inside of the demon’s thigh.
There was a hand on the back of her head; another on her shoulder; holding her, pushing slightly with unrestrained lust. But still the Queen moved so, so slowly, allowing her fingers to quest upward, white-nailed tips raised away from soft but scorching skin, her anticipation like a foil to the incredible heat between the demon’s legs.
There was a hiss—from above or below, she could not tell—and the pressure on the Queen’s shoulder grew more insistent; she ignored it. Her fingers pushed further, tasting; at first, the skin they touched was desert-dry, though frictionless, like silk. But as her palm came upward and her fingers bent to caress deeper, she felt a liquid warmth coalesce on them; as they passed, it burst away in steam, but where it slid onto her skin it froze into tight beads and crackling tracery.
From above were gasps; and her own breath sucked heavily over the demon’s skin pressed against her cheek. The side of her index finger was sliding back and forth now, the wetness trapped from escape in vapour or ice. The demon shuddered, her body flexing forward, her breasts brushing the tips of the Queen’s hair. Her heels had risen from the smoking ice; almost her full weight pressed down onto the Queen’s shoulder and neck.
But still the Queen paid no heed, absorbed as she was in her final release from the lonely torpor of aeons. Only when the demon twisted away with a conflicted cry did she look up in surprise: and saw those coal-black eyes incandescent with both ecstasy and ire.
For a moment they regarded each other, both of their bodies heaving with the wild passion of their breath; but then, the demon seemed to lose control. Flames burst from the glowing lines upon her skin. She stepped forward, her hand striking out to the Ice Queen’s neck; and the thought flashed into the Queen’s mind that she had somehow been duped, lured into a position of defenceless weakness.
But the hand did not grasp, it pushed. The demon was shouting: ‘Balance!’
The Queen rocked backward, partly in shock, but partly in compliance with the insistent hand upon her neck. A part of her noticed that she felt its blazing heat, not merely as an acknowledgement of fact, but also as pain; as though her own power was no longer a match of the demon’s.
‘There must be balance,’ said the demon, her voice regaining control; but still she pushed, stooping, until the Queen was forced fully back onto the surface of the ice island. She was tense, aggravated by the demon’s mysterious admonishment; but still overwhelmed by the sight of her beauty, and the memory of her touch. She wondered if she had any power left to defend herself, should her enemy choose battle.
It did not seem so. The demon kneeled by her side; touched her lips once, with scalding fingers, then looked languidly down the length of the Queen’s outstretched torso, until her eyes came to rest on short, sparkling white pubic hair. Her hand wavered for a moment, as though undecided; perhaps knowing that it could now incur more hurt than pleasure.
Then, the arm splayed out to the other side of the Queen, the demon’s body twisting sinuously, breasts lowering dangerously close. The Queen bit her lip once more at the sight, not knowing what ecstasy or agony was to come, but accepting it, resigned to it, in a way that would have been wholly alien scant moments before.
The demon leaned closer; even gathering her own breasts up against her forearm to prevent them from touching the Queen’s vulnerable body.
And then, she breathed.
The Queen screamed, a short, spasmodic cry to release the incredible, uncontainable sensation as invisible flames licked over her vulva. More excruciating than the most potent blast of heat in her duels of old; and yet more joyous than any victory; and more intoxicating.
The demon breathed on her again, but this time its power was slightly diminished, so that the Queen groaned with desire, and reached out to pull her closer. The demon’s body was still hot, but not hurtfully so; the Queen’s hand pushed into flaming hair, lines of bitter heat tracing over her fingers. She could feel wetness come into being with the arrival of each demon breath; feel it crackle and freeze on its departure. How she yearned for that fragile balance, that tiny range of temperature in which ice became water, that allowed her human body to express its reptile hunger!
But now the demon seemed to be satisfied of the ‘balance’ she had demanded. She lifted slightly, her spine snaking as she glanced over her shoulder. ‘Now,’ she said simply, ‘our wars are at an end.’
And with that, she moved: she lowered her head once more, releasing her breasts to rest softly upon the Queen’s stomach; and her nearer leg lifted over, so that the Queen saw the length of her torso: at the further extremity the rounded pillars of her breasts; at the nearer… tattoos and filigree flames danced over the twin ridges of her labia, and between, a narrow river of glowing red, as of boiling lava.
Still lower the demon came; still faster beat the human heart of the Ice Queen; her frozen lips opened, to greet their destiny; her hips lifted to accept theirs.
The moment came: with a concussion that rocked the ice island and blasted out over the water. Energy crackled as, with working lips and tongues, and roaming, clutching hands, the powers of the two unearthly beings began to annihilate in earthly ecstasy.
It would not be long, now. The escalation of their passion was unstoppable, the end, inevitable. They had tasted eternity, these two creatures, and found it wanting: for life, for love.
The clitoris of the demon was no longer white-hot, only warm, to match the desperate arrhythmic flicking of the Queen’s tongue; and the wetness above traced about her lips unfrozen, and below, her own vulva slickly welcomed the last affections of the demon; but this awareness was only a tinge of joy upon the rapture that grew beyond all containment to claim her.
Neither creature was willing to delay, or prolong the moment. When it came, the Queen’s hands and lips lifted free of her demon lover, to beseech the sky. A second, lesser explosion rocked the ice island, as the power that maintained it was finally, irretrievably lost; already its integrity had suffered greatly from the raging of the river, and now it simply crumbled.
The Queen was tumbling, naked, in the torrent. Her lover was lost to her. The cold of the water bit deep into her. But she did not struggle to swim, to survive. This was her end, and she accepted it, the final rebellion of her departed elemental power against the instincts of the feeble animal that she now was.
But life, and love, could not be cheated with such impunity.
As the Queen’s consciousness began to slip away, she felt a tugging on her arm, felt herself moving against the implacable current. Her face lifted into sweet air, and she breathed; then, later, she felt her body dragging against silt and weeds at the water’s edge. And when finally she found herself at rest and alive, she opened her eyes.
Framed by the warm endless blue of the sky, there was a face; a pretty, tearful, but joyful face.
Evangeline.
And as, with the last of her strength, the Queen reached out, to receive the true love that she had so long denied, she heard the distant rush and report of melting snow. She, the forest, and the world, had been released.
Not by conflict. By love.
