The Voice Under the Voice

He was two men, and neither of them was looking at her.

She saw it as she crossed the whiteness, step by ringing step. It was a thing that the eye could hardly hold. He stood with his back to her, in the middle of the blank, and from moment to moment he was not the same. One instant he was a man in a coat, tall and thin and bowed, with the hair falling over his collar. The next he was a pillar of clear ice, rough-cut, rigid, with no face at all. Then the man again, flickering, translucent, and then the ice. It came and went like a candle in a draft. Each time it came, the ice stayed a little longer.

"Casimir," she said again.

He was humming still. But the hum had split. Two notes rose from him, a hair's breadth apart, grinding against each other like a cracked bell. One was the boy's voice, thin and clear and trembling, the hum of someone who is frightened and trying not to be. The other was deeper. It was a woman's. It was warm and sweet and slow, and it sang the same tune, a half-beat behind, in a hill accent she had heard in a hundred kitchens.

Ember, ember, keep the night.

"Stop it," said Elowen.

Hold it small and hold it bright.

"Casimir. Turn around."

The humming stopped.

The silence fell into the white room like a stone into snow. The man who was a pillar stood quite still. Then, very slowly, the head turned, a half-inch, and the ice-gray profile caught the dim light. She saw an eye. It was fixed on the white wall, and it was full of tears, and it was not his.

"Go home, my heart," said the voice.

It came from the mouth of the figure, but it was not Casimir's. It was a woman's voice, low and tender, the voice of a mother talking to a sleeping child. It had a crack in it. It had three hundred years of weariness in it, and a love so enormous and so unreasoning that it made the hair on her neck rise.

"You oughtn't to be here," it said. "It's not for you. Go on home."

…

She stopped where she was.

She had thought she was ready. She had rehearsed it on the stair, with her teeth clenched, a dozen different ways. She'd been prepared for a monster. She had expected a cold voice, a hungry one, the sort that sneered from the dark in stories. She had armed herself with fury.

She had not been ready for kindness.

"Please," said the woman. "I don't mean to be cruel. But it's late, and you're cold, and there's nothing for you here. You've a mother, haven't you? A father? You ought to be with them. Go on. Go home and be warm."

"I know who you are," said Elowen.

"Do you?"

"You're the one who sang." She heard her own voice shake, and did not care. "You made the house. You put him in it. You held on."

A pause. A long one.

"I never stopped," said the voice, very softly. "That's the thing. I tried. I did try. But every time I went to put him down, he was so small. He was so cold, and so far away, and I'd think, I'll just keep him a moment longer. And then it was a year. And then a hundred." The ice shuddered. "I'm so tired, my heart. I'm so very tired."

"I know you are."

"You don't."

"I do." She took a step nearer. "My sister's been doing it for four months. She told me what it's like. You hear everything, and nobody hears you. And you can't stop, because if you stop, he's gone." Her throat closed. "Mam. Is it all right if I call you that? I don't know your name."

"I haven't one," said the voice, wonderingly. "I gave it away."

"Then Mam."

There was a sound from the figure, a sort of long, ragged, shuddering breath, as of someone who has been struck by something very gentle.

"He's so good," said the woman. "Isn't he? He's so good. He sat with the girls, and the lute-player, and the old men with their chess. He gave them a place to rest. He gave them peace." She began to cry. "I didn't know how else to love him. I only knew how to keep."

"I know."

"If I let go, I'll lose him."

"You lost him a long time ago."

The silence in the white room was absolute.

"I'm sorry," said Elowen. She meant it. She had never meant anything more. "I'm so sorry. I'd give anything not to say it. But you did, Mam. You lost him in that room. And you didn't want it to be true, and you made a house so that it wouldn't be." She wiped her face. "And it worked. It worked so well. It kept every bit of him. It kept his memories, and his voice, and his fear of the dark. It kept all of it. And it grew."

"Yes."

"He's not the boy, Mam. He's the wish. He's what you made out of your love." She swallowed. "And I think he's the best thing you ever did."

…

The figure shook.

It was like watching a tree struck by lightning. The ice cracked from crown to heel, with a sound like a bell, and the man came through it. He flickered back into the light, translucent and gasping. His hands were pressed to his face. And he was speaking, in his own voice, the low cracked baritone she knew, but there was another voice laid under it, like a rope under a stretched sail.

"Elowen," said Casimir, and the other voice said, in the same breath, "No, my heart, no, don't."

"I'm here."

"You should not be. I told you. I wrote—"

"I know what you wrote. I read it." She came to within an arm's length of him. "It melted. The whole thing ran down the window. I watched it go."

"I did not want you to see me like this."

"I don't care."

"I do not want you to—" His voice split. "She's frightened. She doesn't want to be left. She's holding me, Elowen, I can't—" And the voice under his said, gently, inexorably, "Stay with me. Stay. I'll keep you safe." And he cried out, a raw broken sound, and doubled over, and the ice rose up in him again like a frost across a pane.

She grabbed his sleeve.

She had no glove. She had left it in her pocket. She seized the fabric of his coat in her bare fist, and it was cold and rough and solid as wool, and she felt the flesh beneath it flinch.

"Look at me," said Elowen.

"I can't."

"Casimir. Look at me."

"If I look at you, I shall stay."

"Good."

The ice stopped.

He had gone absolutely still. The coat in her hand trembled. She watched his face turn, slowly, very slowly, half-human and half-frost, with the tears running down it in two bright lines. He was staring past her at the wall.

"You don't have to do it alone," she said. "That's what I came to say. That's all of it. That's the whole of my speech. I'm not going to fix you. I'm not going to save you. I came up a hundred and four steps in my stockings because you made a promise, and I'm not letting you out of it."

"I broke it."

"You tried to break it. I'm not letting you." She tightened her grip. "I said I'd stay. I said I'd tell you to your face. So here it is. I'm not going home. I'm not walking out of the Tunnel with my sister in my arms and a lie in my pocket. I'm staying right here, and I'm going to hold on to you until you're too angry to fall apart."

"Elowen—"

"I want to be here when you're born."

…

She had not meant to say it like that. It came out in a rush, shaky, absurd. She heard the echo of it go up into the white, and her face burned. But she did not take it back.

"I mean it," she said. "I want to be there. I want to see your face. Not the one in the glass. Not the one made of splinters. The real one. The one you'll have. With a nose and a chin and a mouth that gets chapped in the cold."

He made a sound that was almost a laugh.

"I want to see you get hungry. I want to see you sneeze. I want to see you hate porridge. I want to teach you to eat a plum, and watch you get it all down your chin, and say oh, that's what it is." She was crying openly now. "I want to watch you be bad at things. I want you to be so bad at being alive, Casimir. I want you to trip over your own feet. I want you to be cross in the morning. I want to hear you swear."

"I do not swear."

"You will."

"Elowen."

"You've been so careful. For three hundred years. You've been so patient, and so kind, and so good. You've kept everyone safe." Her voice cracked. "And you've never once been allowed to be wrong. I want you to be wrong. I want you to be messy. I want a man who burns the toast."

The woman's voice, under his, whispered, "It will hurt him."

"Yes."

"He will be cold. He will be hungry. He will die."

"Yes," said Elowen. "He will."

She turned her head and looked into the empty place where a face would be, and spoke to the mother in the ice.

"He will. I'm not going to lie to you. He'll get old, and he'll get sick, and one day he'll stop. But he'll have had it, Mam. He'll have all of it. He'll have a winter morning and a bowl of soup. He'll have a hand to hold. He'll have a bed with a quilt on it, and a face across the table." Her chest heaved. "You wanted him to be safe. And he was. For three hundred years. And he's never once been happy. Not till this month. Not really."

"He's happy?"

"Ask him."

…

The room held its breath.

She did not look away. She kept her fist on his sleeve, and her eyes on his face, and she watched the ice and the man fight it out in the lines of his jaw. She saw the two voices war in him. She saw the clear pale gray of his eye go bright, and dull, and bright again. She saw his lips part.

"I was," said Casimir.

He said it like a boy.

"I was happy. In the hall. When you called me a smudge. And in the tower, with the glass. And on the steps, with the dog." His voice was shaking, thin and high. "It is the only thing I have ever been, that I did not have to be taught. It was just there. It was like a window opening."

"Oh, my heart," said the woman, very low.

"Mam," said Casimir.

He said it to the air. He said it to the ice, and the white, and the wall. He said it with his face lifted, like a child at a door. There was a silence in the room so profound that she could hear the tiny crackle of the cold dying out of the walls.

"I am sorry," said Casimir. "I am so sorry. I think I have been very hard to look after."

"You were never—"

"I was. I was terrible. I broke the pantry shelves." His laugh was a sob. "But I should like to try something else, now, if you will let me. I should like to be tired. I should like to lie down in a real bed with a real fever, and have you put your hand on my forehead, and sing. Just once. And then I should like to get up and go out and be wet."

The ice cracked.

It cracked down the whole length of the figure, and this time it did not close. A long bright seam of gold ran through it, and the pale light poured out of the gap, and the voice that came out of the seam was not frightened any more. It was a woman's voice, cracked and old and astonished, and very, very young.

"Oh," it said. "Oh. Is that all?"

…

He turned.

He turned completely, as she had asked, and for the first time since she had come into the room he looked straight at her. Not past her. Not at the wall. His eyes, gray as ice with the sun behind it, met hers, and held, and she felt it go through her like a bell struck in a deep well.

There was no glass between them.

No pane, no mirror, no reflection. Only a yard of white air, and a man in a torn coat, flickering, flesh and frost. The tears were running down his face. He was smiling. It was the crookedest, most unsteady, most uncertain smile she had ever seen, and it spread across his whole face as dawn spreads across a field.

She felt the cost of it. She felt the cold nibble at the edge of her mind, the Land taking its fee for a look unveiled. She let it. She would have paid ten times as much.

"Elowen," said Casimir.

"Hello."

"I find that I am—" He laughed. "I find that I am rather glad you came."

"I thought you might be."

"I thought I should have to say something grand."

"You don't."

"I have nothing." He swallowed. "I have only one word. I have been saving it. It is the only one I never wrote down."

She was shaking so hard that she could hardly stand.

"Say it," she whispered.

"I love you," said Casimir.

It was nothing like what she'd imagined. It was small. It was hoarse and plain and breathless. It was said the way a man says a thing he has only just learned to say, and does not yet trust, and means with his whole body. It rang through the white room like a pebble dropped in a well.

"I love you," he said again, wonderingly. "I do. It is not a keeping. I have looked. I have turned it over. It is not a thing I wish to hold. It is only a thing I wish to give."

"I know."

"You know?"

"I've known since the rug." She was laughing through tears. "I love you too. I love you, you idiot. I love you so much I can't see straight. Now, will you please, please stop going out like a candle and let me do my job?"

He opened his mouth.

And the floor shook.