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I was so cold.
Even before I dared try to part my frost-crusted eyelashes, before I took an amazed gulp of petrifying, tooth-chilling air, before I drew my numbed limbs closer to the inadequate warmth of my scarcely-clad body, I knew one thing. I had never been so cold in all my life.
My fingers quivered and bumped, senseless, against my eyelids, which opened briefly on a piercing brightness. Some moments passed before I could bring myself to look again.
It was like the simplest of abstract paintings. One long straight line marked the horizon between an endless pale blue sky and an equally endless sheet of grey ice. A little to my right was the flaming circle of the sun. The sky glared and the ice glittered. I scrambled cautiously to my feet, into the chilly puddle I had created, then turned a full, unsteady circle, seeking some distinguishing feature - any feature - in the undifferentiated bleakness. At first I thought the small black dot was a trick of my bleary eyes. Soon, though, it showed recognizable moving limbs, and through the crystalline air came a muted, energetic sound, half-clash, half-hiss. My visitor (for it was now apparent she was heading directly for me) was on skates.
Trembling with some unnamed terror as well as with cold, I crouched and waited. Seconds later, a shower of ice flew up into my face, planed from the surface by her braking blades.
"What a strange animal." The voice was clear and strong, wondering rather than mocking, and the words were accompanied by a graceful upward motion of her fingertips.
I looked up into the simple, glacial beauty of her face, protesting, "I'm not an animal."
A small frown crossed her brow at the sound of my voice, then she looked pointedly at my bare feet. Her puzzlement increased.
"Of course you are," she returned uncertainly.
I was not inclined to argue the point. "I'm a cold one, then," I said. "Can you help me?"
Her response was swift and unexpected. I found myself slung unceremoniously over her shoulders, swaying uncomfortably but not precariously as she moved at great speed towards some destination I could only guess at. My first futile struggles abated, I relaxed in her grip, which (rather to my surprise) was not only firm but warm.
A sudden change in angle made me cry out and dig my fingertips into her tunic. One hand came down to brush my clinging fingers away like insects. The light changed to a sombre grey, and I was deposited on a rough surface which, whatever it was, was not ice. A murmuring crowd gathered round to inspect me. Tall and smooth-limbed they were, and they might all have been of a single family, so alike were their wide-eyed, unlined features and strong, slender bodies. As they discussed me, in phrases I could only partially understand, their gestures grew more expansive, their limbs flailing in the confined indoor space; in any other species it would surely have been ungraceful. Their faces were curiously inexpressive. Only the slightest of frowns or raised eyebrows conveyed their puzzlement. None smiled. My rescuer (or captor) had seemed at first remote to me, but now her face was animated by comparison.
My bare feet were the subject of great interest, handled and examined with gentle curiosity by first one and then another. Eventually one with an air of authority (but male or female I could not tell from the square slim lines of the body) sat down beside me, prodded deliberately for several moments, and then issued a pronouncement, of which I understood about every other word, to the effect that the deformity appeared to be my natural state.
"What do you mean, deformity?" I blurted indignantly. General hubbub ensued, with much waving of arms and gliding around (the floor, I realized then, must be of ice). My rescuer stood to one side, an almost complicitous gleam in her eye as it met mine.
I didn't really understand the joke, though, until the grave one turned and addressed me in clear, careful tones: "You speak?"
"Certainly I speak." More hubbub.
"Who are you?" All but my questioner - a doctor? - had withdrawn a few inches; no-one touched the strange new animal now.
I was suddenly at a loss. A terrible, a frightening loss. I didn't know who I was. The world slipped a little sideways. Fortunately the healer put out an arm to steady me.
"It's all right," she said (I had settled on "she"). "I have known this to happen when the (some incomprehensible word accompanied by a gentle head-patting motion) fall and sleep for a time. Everything will come back. You will see. For now, stay with us and rest."
She shooed the rest of the onlookers away, motioning to one young giant to help her. I looked up at him in awe. Though his features were perfectly regular, to the point of delicacy, the natural slenderness of his people was in his case almost overcome by powerful muscularity. His strength was less quiet, less contained than the others'. He scooped me up expertly, casually, and as we glided through to another, less chilly room, I thought drowsily that these people seemed very used to handling and carrying other beings. But then someone tucked a comforting blanket around me and, warm at last, I drifted off without more questions.
***
I woke to find the young giant studying me with unembarrassed intensity. "You are awake," he pronounced.
"Yes," I responded distractedly, having just discovered that my clothes had been removed and replaced with several layers of the filmy, clinging fabric which adorned all of my hosts. Though it seemed to retain heat very well, it made me feel very light and exposed. Why, then (as I struggled to kick aside my blanket) were my feet so heavy?
The pristine gleam of the blades on my new skates answered that question.
"Do you like them?" He seemed unable to stand still as he spoke. "Our workshop was busy all night. Soon you will be able to gleejan as well as anybody."
"Gleejin?"
"Gleejan," he corrected. "You know. Move. Talk. Feel."
Thoroughly confused, I asked, "Does everybody wear skates all the time here, then?"
The gravity of his face did not alter, but he made a curious snapping sound with his fingers. Then he heaved one solid leg onto the bed so that I could see his foot.
My first revulsion at the monstrosity of it quickly faded to fascination. Extruded from the sole was a structure very similar to a skate blade, long, sharp, and edged. It even had a pseudo- metallic gleam, though it seemed to be growing directly out of his body. I wondered whether it might be some sort of bone or super-hardened cartilage. I touched it hesitantly.
"Go on. You can't hurt it. It is like your fingernails. You feel through, but not in. These," he pointed proudly to some precise, sharp nicks at the front, "I make myself, ever since I became a Speaker."
"What's that?"
"It is ... a high honour." He seemed stuck for words without the use of both feet to glide the accompanying gestures. "You will see." He moved backwards away from the bed a little and invited me to stand on my new skates.
Of course, my ankles promptly gave way, and I floundered into his grasp. Again he snapped his fingers rapidly, saying "I can see you are going to be worse than the youngest natlet!" It was the same word the doctor had used, with the same head-patting motion.
"Children?" I asked. The word seemed to mean nothing to him. "Offspring? Nestlings?"
The last word caused a raised eyebrow. "It is not considered polite here to talk about egg-matters," he said. Changing the subject rather obviously, he went on, "I am to be your teacher. What should I call you?"
"I don't know," I responded slowly. It was a less distressing thought than last time. "Perhaps you should give me a name."
"You will have a naming ceremony," he said. "That is why I am teaching you - so you will be ready. But, for now..."
"Yes?"
"I will call you `Nati', since you are clumsy like a natlet. I am Plactré." The brittle syllables were softened by his deep voice.
"Plactré," I repeated, and leaned a little harder on his arm so that I could glide along at his side and stare less obviously at the awesome beauty of him. He was quite astonishing.
And that is how I found my skates, my name, and my desire.
***
Not that desire easily survived the frustrations of the days that followed. Plactré was an exigent and unforgiving instructor, quick to mock and impatient of fatigue and incomprehension. But he never completely lost his temper, never abandoned the attempt to teach, and never used his considerable physical superiority to intimidate or threaten me.
He did occasionally mock-threaten and drive off small groups of natlets. I had been right; they were the children, but curiously unattached to anything that looked like a parent. Their blades were often only partly formed, hence their relative clumsiness; compared to my first strained efforts, however, they were paragons of grace. I grew to hate the derisive little gangs who followed in my wake, mimicking my stiff unsteadiness.
Many days and many bruises later, however, I had mastered basic locomotion to Plactré's satisfaction. "Now," he said with a gleam in his eye, "we get to serious business." He pushed away backwards with a strength and sureness I could only envy, and on one skate described a series of swoops and curves at angles that made me gasp. I could not hope to imitate him successfully, but I tried. And tried, and tried again, till tears of frustration stood in my eyes. For days upon days, undifferentiated except by the increasing soreness of scrapes, wrenches and bruises, I tried to follow him through two or three patterns. Miraculously, my stupid and intractable limbs began to learn. The frictionless glide under the edges of my blades transmuted gradually from an enemy, making me tense and insecure, to a trusted tool, a freedom.
It has often been said that the sensation is like flying, but the only flying I had known was the boring onward buzz of the commercial intercontinental cylinders. This was the motion of a bird, controlled and whimsical, fully self-aware in three dimensions. The patterns grew progressively more and more complicated, but I soon proudly discovered a talent for physical mimicry and a good kinetic memory. I repeated Plactré's patterns back to him with increasing proficiency and self-satisfaction.
He responded with irritation, not praise. I could not understand it: over and over he made me repeat the same exercises, seeking some refinement, some quality I could not seem to give him. The more I tried to analyze it, the more annoyed he became. I asked him questions about the meaning of the various movements and gestures, and he simply threw up his hands and refused to answer. In my turn, I grew perplexed and angry. I understood that movement was a form of communication for his people. I knew that I had the mechanics of this form of movement more or less right. But how could I give it sense, far less nuance, if he refused to tell me what it all signified?
Eventually, upon the fifteenth repetition of a short, choppy sequence, and Plactré's slow shake of the head, I lost my temper completely. I swung round on him, face contorted in fury, but he simply pushed me gently to arm's length, and demonstrated slowly, deliberately, once again. I flung myself into a furious parody, arms flailing, blade edges scraping the protesting ice. It ended, of course, in an ungainly sprawl.
Suddenly Plactré was there beside me on the ice, his hand softly thumping my shoulder, his whole frame quivering. I realized, bemused, that the big man was laughing, laughing so hard he could barely speak.
"Better, Nati!" he choked out at last. "Much, much better! Only next time, perhaps you could be a little less rude about it!"
He hauled me to my feet. Enlightenment dawned, very belatedly. It was not semantic content that directed the motion of these people's limbs; it was emotion. I sighed. This was about to become even more exhausting.
***
I do not know whether the period of my instruction was weeks or years. Day blurred into day, Plactré and I ever more wrapped up in each other's company. We ate together, but I have no memory of the food. We spoke once in a while to some other member of his band, but I learned little more about their ways, their customs, their relationships. Everything was the ice beneath my skates - or Plactré. He was there, waiting patiently, every morning when I awoke. He was my last sight in the evening, retreating to his sleeping-room next door. Only in the middle of the night, sometimes, I would wake in the blackness and feel a terrible oppression, a suffocating sense that something was not quite right. My breath would catch in my throat; my fingers and toes would go frigid in fear. From that horror, who could blame me for fleeing back to dreams of Plactré's face, Plactré's arms, the strength and the warmth and the drive of him?
The sun seemed to be glittering even more brightly the day he first grabbed my hand with an urgent "Come on!" and started out for some distant point with all the speed of his long powerful legs. At first I struggled to keep up, but eventually my strides evened out and started to match his, aided by his tight clasp across my shoulders. We stroked on in wordless, exhilarated companionship, ever onwards towards the departing horizon, until the full day's sun reduced our shadows to mere dots beneath our feet.
A few minutes' respite for food and drink, and we were off again, this time swinging backwards and forwards at Plactré's whim. He needed no words to communicate his intentions, only a firming or shifting of his touch at my back, a language my instincts readily learned to read. Still, I was far from infallible, and now and again stumbled or bumped awkwardly against him. Plactré merely smiled indulgently.
Past the swish of the blades, the whistle of the wind, and the roaring of the blood in my ears, I became aware of a strange rhythmic buzzing sound beside me. I looked at my teacher with amazement, unable to believe he was humming aloud in this desolate place, far less that he could know one of the simple, cheerful tunes of my childhood. Catching my surprise, he glanced down with a broad grin. It occurred to me that those smiles were becoming ever less rare; my facial demonstrativeness was beginning to infect him, just as I was growing less and less self-consciousness about using large gestures like his.
"You like that, Nati?"
"It helps me keep time with you."
"Oh." My rather obvious comment apparently took him by surprise. "We will have music at your naming ceremony, then."
"Thank you," I replied uncertainly. The significance and protocol of this naming ceremony were still only hazily known to me. Lengthy explanations were never Plactré's strong suit.
"That is fine. I like music too." Plactré started his buzzing again, and as we moved together, I joined in, tentatively at first and then as enthusiastically as our vigorous maneuvers would permit. Now the mutual understanding was complete; we stroked, shifted, crossed as if guided by a single mind. I knew without looking that with each passing minute our motions mirrored each other with more exactitude and with less conscious effort. The cold sun shone in my face; I sang and I danced in the arms of my friend and was unspeakably happy.
That evening, Plactré lingered a little in my room before retiring. He had made a habit of this lately, on the pretext that he could be of use to my poor cramped feet. As usual he pushed me, tired and grateful, back into the corner of the cushioned platform that served as both couch and bed, and unlaced the skates himself. As usual he settled comfortably cross-legged amidst the unaccustomed luxury (his own room was Spartan), lifted my weary feet into his lap, and disguised the gentleness of his touch with a string of progressively sillier insults about the shape and general uselessness of my feet. And, as usual, he watched me constantly, with an intensity that would have made me very uncomfortable had I not long since concluded that he brought this same unblinking curiosity to all his dealings with the world around him.
Impulsively I leaned forward and placed a hand over his.
"Yes," he said slowly, surprisingly. "I know. But how is it possible until you have a name?"
He pushed my hand away, but not in haste, pulled himself to his feet and retired to his room.
***
At long last it arrived, the ceremony. Oh, I could describe for you the heady, difficult lessons in between: flying above him, my braced body in his iron grip, or learning to trust him to take my weight as my edges grew extreme and my body dipped to the ice. I could tell you of the day when I discovered what it meant to be a Speaker: when I watched in awe as he spun and leapt and twisted and glided a message of passion and power which moved even me, half-comprehending stranger that I was, to an urgent renewal of effort and commitment in all that I did. (Did he explain to me who had taught him this lesson, or how he knew the seasons when the community needed to see and hear it again? My memory is treacherous). I could tell you of days when the strenuous work of learning our ceremony leached from me even the tenuous, frustrated joy of his physical closeness, and of the nights when, hearing me start awake and cry out, he would suddenly be there in the darkness, not touching, but banishing with his warm solid presence the phantoms that robbed me of sleep.
In any case, the days crawled towards the ceremony - and then suddenly they were gone. I was standing across from him, looking across a great lighted square of ice in the much greater night. All around us his people stood soundless, the torches in their hands flickering shadows across their still, beautiful faces. A hundred feet away stood the one I wanted more than I had ever wanted anything in my life, his face just as dispassionate, his gaze locked on me as it seemed it had always been. A desperate fear of failing this test, of failing him, closed my throat and rattled my limbs. As if he knew, he smiled at me slightly - our own private signal - across the glittering expanse. The singer began.
It was a lone voice at first, singing a plaintive melody and words of longing. As if drawn to each other by magnets, Plactré and I glided towards the centre, towards each other, our motions mirrored. Just as the singer sang of touching, our hands met, and sparked by that connection, I swung briefly up to his shoulder, my downstretched arms circling his head protectively. I heard a murmur of approval from the surrounding darkness as I descended to Plactré's side again. We began a steady buildup of speed, always in unison, but disguising the repetitiveness of the motion in changes of position, now drawing in close with cross-linked arms, now pushing each other along our intended path, now he in front, now I, leaning briefly back into his clasp. The first verse of the song drew to its poignant climax; putting a single hand behind my back, and the other in the air to emphasize the ease of the move, Plactré dipped me to the ice, my crossed legs sliding easily between his, one of my blades still holding its edge. Round a tight corner we glided, my leg braced secure against the hard warmth of his inner thigh, my head falling backwards as I entrusted myself to his strength. Slowly and with obvious ease he pulled me upright again into his arms, wrapped mine around his neck, and swayed us into a few steps of a slow dance on the spot. Then, with another of those little smiles only I could see, he pushed me gently away, knowing that the lean of my skates would bring me in a circle right back to him. For a few more phrases we played this game of advance and retreat, all carefully set by Plactré to echo the ebb and flow of the music.
A drum sounded, and the first singer's voice was joined by many others. The music was no longer pleading, but passionate; no longer merely yearning but hungry. As Plactré and I skated powerfully forward, he immediately behind me with both my hands prisoner, I sensed that his quickening breaths, like mine, owed as much to urgency of feeling as to exertion. A mighty thrust against my stiffened wrists and elbows, and I sat in mid-air, at the full extent of his long arms, enjoying the straining and strength of my own body as I stretched to a carefully balanced horizontal, then levered myself strenuously back to sitting again. Plactré swung me deftly round his broad shoulders and we found ourselves once again staring into each other's eyes for a long moment before he set me on my skates. These lifts were a wilder, more athletic, version of our retreat and return games of before. I barely had time to think it, though, before I was aloft again, this time flying like a bird, canted precariously forward but with head up and arms spread to the cold wind, Plactré nowhere in sight but still very much present in his steely clasp at my hipbones. Audaciously I shifted sideways, trusting in the timing of weeks of practice, and I ended face-up across an extended knee, my outflung fingertips trailing the ice surface. I reached up almost lazily, caressing the silky dark hair at the back of his head as we drew together for yet another moment of closeness. The voice of the lead singer rose in anguished falsetto. Taking the game to its logical conclusion, Plactré lifted me and flung me away at full speed. Even as I landed with a long, secure swish - practice had taught me trust in myself too - he was speeding towards me, arms outstretched, desire contorting the serenity of his features. He swept me off the ice as we came together again. My breath caught in my throat. We were nearly there.
As the song rose to its exulting climax, Plactré thrust me bodily in the air, balanced on one broad hand. My new clan shouted their welcome, and I flung my arms high, acknowledging them. Then, twisting, I slid joyfully off Plactré's supporting hand and into his solid catch. A split second later he lowered us both to our knees, face to face, body locked to body, and the music stopped amidst the ringing cheers of our audience.
I was only vaguely aware of the noise, wrapped as I was in Plactré's embrace. He lowered his face to mine, his visible breath warm against my lips. "At last," he murmured. "Your name, my love, is..."
***
"Mr. Smith! Nathaniel Smith! Wake up, Mr. Smith!"
I was cold. Dear God, I was cold. My lungs strove anxiously for shallow breath. My pain-ridden mind sought blackness again, but the harsh female voice would not let me go. I reluctantly opened my eyes.
She was middle-aged, bored, and in a uniform I could not yet see well enough to recognize. The agony of my reviving limbs monopolized my attention, but I managed to gasp out a question: "Where...?"
"Cryodetention Center Six," she snapped impatiently, then added, since I was obviously bewildered, "Cryogenic suspended animation. You've completed your sentence. Seven years for..." She consulted a chart, her lip curled, and she did not continue. She had no need. I remembered now. Remembered him. Remembered his treachery. She withdrew herself fastidiously to the other side of the room, pointedly ignoring me as I forced my protesting limbs into the cheap grey clothes that were laid out for me.
Behind me, as in a mortuary, were row upon row of doors, behind which lay the living dead on their cryogenic slabs. Above the warden's desk, and again over the door, was the all too familiar symbol of the Ecclesiastical State Courts, the scales of justice suspended ludicrously, painfully, from the hands of the crucified Christ. It was a bleak and awful place. I tried to find some gratitude for the return of life, for the ability to leave. I could feel no such gratitude.
I received in silence the statutory food voucher and the address of nearest Employment Center. The woman dipped a few fingers in the font, and the holy water splashed like spittle against my face. With marked lack of interest she intoned, "Your punishment is over. Go and sin no more."
But as I stepped out into my hot, dry and dusty world, I knew my punishment had only just begun.