Winter's Child (7 page)

“Excellent question,” my father replied. “All I can tell you is that you will know when the time comes. In the meantime ...”

My father’s eyes began to sparkle with laughter, which always made my heart sing with joy.

“We could start to compile a list of possibilities,” he said. Making lists was something my father did a lot. It could be because he was a king or just because that’s who he was. I’ve never quite been able to sort this out.

“Ermyntrude, for instance. Now
there’s
a name to be reckoned with,” my father went on. “Three syllables, a nice round name. And I’ll bet you wouldn’t have to share it with too many other girls.”

My father paused and raised his eyebrows. If the game were to continue, it was now up to me.

“What about Hortensia?” I proposed. “That has four syllables.”

My father nodded, as if I’d made a very astute
point. “Esmerelda,” he said. “Also four. Or what about Gudrun? Only two, but when I was a lad it was very popular. Gudrun is a name with staying power.”

“Penelope is nice,” I said.

“Zahalia,” my father countered.

“Oh, Papa, I know,” I suddenly exclaimed. “Brunhilde. I should have thought of it before. ‘Brunhilde’ is a name that always gets a reaction.”

To my surprise and dismay, it got a reaction from my father I hadn’t anticipated. He made a face, as if he’d tasted something sour. I watched as the laughter faded from his face, and the sadness moved to the front of his green eyes once more.

“Your mother had a cousin named Brunhilde,” he said. “She was the maid of honor at our wedding.”

And just like that, the game was done.

“I’m sorry, Papa,” I said quietly. “I didn’t know.”

My father reached out to twist the end of one of my pale locks around his finger, and then he gave it a tug.

“Of course you didn’t, Little One,” he said. “So you’ve nothing to be sorry for.” He lifted me from his lap, set me on my feet, and then stood up.

For a moment, I thought he would say something more. That at last he would speak of her, my mother, his wife, the woman who had changed the course of both our lives. But he did not. Mine was the heart with ice inside it, but even as a child I knew my father’s heart carried a wound far greater than mine. A wound that was beyond even my power to heal, a wound he would carry into the grave itself.

“I should get back to my study,” my father announced. He bent to give me a kiss, then turned to go. “Speaking of names, I need to review the list of all the foreign ambassadors I’m going to meet tomorrow, and then I’ll have to remember to ask Dominic to ...”

Dominic was my father’s steward, his right-hand man. I could tell from the sound of Papa’s voice that his thoughts had already traveled far ahead of his body. I could only hope he would forgive me for calling them back.

“Papa,” I burst out, after he’d gone no more than a dozen steps. “Come back. I have to ask you something.”

“Gracious, Deirdre,” my father said, snapping back to the present and turning around quickly at the fierceness of my tone. “What on earth is the matter, Little One?”

“It’s her name, my mother’s name,” I said, and with that, I suddenly discovered I was crying. “I have to know it, don’t you see? So I don’t add it to the list by accident. I don’t want her name. I don’t want to be like she was.”

“Deirdre,” my father said.

I think that was the moment when I grew up, for in the two syllables of my own name I suddenly heard and understood something I previously had not. My father hadn’t just bestowed the name of Sorrow on me. He’d also bestowed it on himself.

“Joy,” my father said. “Your mother’s name was Joy.”

Then he turned and walked away. This was the last time we spoke about her.

S
IX

Though my father and I never discussed names again, that afternoon marked the beginning of my fascination with them. I began to make a study of names, collecting them much like other children collected coins or stamps or dolls.

It wasn’t simply the sound of a name that appealed to me, though I did enjoy this: the way a name felt inside your mouth as you formed its syllables, the space it occupied in the air when you pronounced it. But there was also the way a name and the person who bore it got along together. For this, or so it always seemed to me, was the heart of what a name is all about.

Was the fit between a name and its bearer seamless and comfortable? The castle baker was called Amelia, for instance, a name that seemed to suit her quite well. It sounded soft coming and going, like a flourish of icing on a fancy cake, but in the center
there was a core of strength, the press of bread being kneaded against its board. A
me
lia.

Or did the name sit uncomfortably upon its wearer, did it chafe and rub? My father’s steward could enter a room so soundlessly you’d never know he was there until he cleared his throat. Yet he was called Dominic, a name that always sounded to me like the sharp clatter of heels along a hall of flagstones.

Had Dominic known his name did not suit him and deliberately set out to cultivate a set of traits to counterbalance this? Did his name cause him discomfort? Did moving silently help to ease this pain? Did we grow into our names, and if so, could we grow out of them? Did we shape them, or did they shape us?

The names that interested me the most were the ones that belonged to people who paid them no attention at all. The people who carried their names around like sacks on their backs, never really recognizing the power of the name they bore. Such an interest was hardly surprising, I suppose. Did I not carry the name Sorrow all because my mother had overlooked the power of her own name and forgotten that she was named Joy?

And so I quietly continued my pursuit of names as the years pursued me, until at last, the day of my sixteenth birthday arrived.

You know what happened already, of course. How I dressed myself in a gown of finest linen, sheer as gossamer. Upon my feet I wore a pair of crystal boots.
But what the stories never remember is that it was my father who put the staff of ash wood into my hand. It was he who threw the snow-white cloak around my shoulders.

The stories also fail to share that Amelia baked me the largest cake anyone had ever seen, the inside as dark and rich as fertile earth with an outside covered in snow-white icing. It was so large there was enough for every single person in the kingdom to have a piece, so sweet it brought a tear to each and every eye.

The stories fail to tell how, after eating their pieces of cake in celebration of my birth, the people of my father’s kingdom faded away, like snow upon warm ground, until only my father and I were left— the king and his daughter, the princess, the Winter Child, standing outside the gates of our ice palace. My father fussed a little with the lacings of my cloak, tying the strings so that they lay tight against the base of my throat.

“Papa,” I said, astonished I could speak with the lump that filled my throat, a lump made up of all the things I feared I had forgotten to say but would never have the chance to now.

“I don’t even need a cloak. I’m never cold. Please, stop fussing.”

“I’d like you to wear one anyway,” my father answered. He tweaked the cloak, adjusting it so that it hung perfectly straight from my shoulders. “Neither of us knows how long a road you must travel, Little One. A cloak may be useful along the way.”

After all these years, he still called me Little One, the nickname he’d given me as a child so that neither of us would have to spend our days listening to him call me Sorrow.

“There may be days when your heart feels cold, though your body does not. On those days, it will be good to have something to draw in close around you.”

“And this?” I asked, gesturing to the staff of ash wood he’d placed into my hand.

“So that you can imagine I am with you on your journey,” my father said at once. “And when you need to, you can lean upon me.”

Suddenly, I found it almost impossible to breathe.

“I don’t want to,” I choked out. “I don’t want any of this. I don’t want to leave you, Papa.”

“Ah, Deirdre,” my father said, drawing me into his arms.

For sixteen years I had been so careful never to speak those words. I might have asked a thousand questions about it, but not once had I truly railed against the fate my father and I both knew could not be avoided. But standing with my father before the gates of the palace on my sixteenth birthday, I could hold in my true feelings no longer.

I did not want to leave. I did not want to be a Winter Child.

The thought of mending all those hearts was daunting enough, but there was something more, a sorrow that would come to my father and me alone. I
would not change. From the moment I set out to fulfill my Winter Child’s destiny, I would not grow one day older until my task was done.

But my father was as mortal as the rest of the world was. He would continue to age, to feel the passage of time. Once I left him to set out on my journey, I would never see him again, not in any way that felt familiar to me now. His mortal life would be over before my task was complete.

“If I could have spared us the pain of this parting, I would have,” my father said. “But there’s no way to do it. There hasn’t been since the day the North Wind first snatched you up in its arms. A parting of this nature would have come upon us even if you had not been called to be a Winter Child, Deirdre. It comes to all parents and children, to all who truly love.”

“If you’re trying to make me feel better, it isn’t working,” I managed to say.

And suddenly, my father laughed, a bright, clear sound. It seemed to carry on the cold air, as if setting out ahead of me. And I knew that, somewhere along my journey, I would remember that even in our moment of greatest sadness, I had made my father laugh.

“I want you to listen to me now,” my father went on. “This is going to be a lecture, so pay close attention.”

I couldn’t quite manage a laugh, but I attempted a smile.

“I’m listening,” I promised.

“The world is full of change, Deirdre,” he told me. “That is its nature, for the very globe itself spins around. It is never still—always moving, therefore always changing. Today is the day that the curve of the earth will catch us in its spin and whirl us apart. But I will never truly leave you, just as you will never leave me.”

My father placed a hand on the center of his chest. Suddenly understanding, I reached to cover his hand with one of mine. And so we stood together with our hands pressed against his heart.

“You will be inside my heart,” my father said, “just as I will be in yours. Even when my heart ceases to beat, I will be with you. You will never be alone and neither will I.”

How I wanted to be brave!

“But it won’t be the same,” I whispered.

“No,” my father answered simply. “It will not. Nothing stays the same, Deirdre. That, too, is part of life. Sometimes, pushing against change only makes it push back twice as hard. But even the most bitter fruit may contain something sweet at its core. A taste you would never have encountered if you had not been willing to endure the bitter first.”

He looked at me, his green eyes steady. I held my breath, waiting for him to say more. But it had never been my father’s way to offer more words than were needed, just as it was not his way to offer false comfort. And so I knew that the next words spoken would not be his; they would be mine.

“I can do it, Papa,” I promised.

And then, finally, I saw the bright sheen of tears in my father’s eyes.

“I know you can,” he said. “I have never doubted that.”

“That doesn’t mean I’m going to like it,” I went on.

“I’ll tell you a secret,” my father said. “I’ve never cared for it very much myself.”

The sound of my heart beating was loud in my ears. I could feel the winter sun on my back, even as the cold air stung my nostrils. A bird called in the sky overhead, and another answered from far off. A small wind, a curious wind, suddenly arrived to investigate the hem of my cloak. My father and I did not move. But I felt the world begin to shift and turn around me. The path that I must follow was unfurling at my back.

“So,” I said.

“So,” my father echoed.

And with that, I took a single step back. I felt a quick, hard pain spear my heart. I saw a spasm shoot across my father’s face, and I knew he felt the same pain.

“I love you, Papa,” I said.

“And I love you,” my father replied. “I have loved you every day of your life. I will love you for every day of mine and more. My love will never diminish, no matter how many steps you take throughout the world, no matter how many years you wander until your task is done.”

“I will love you as long as I draw breath,” I replied. “And the moment I stop breathing, I will find you. Wherever you are.”

“I will be waiting for you with open arms,” my father said.

I took a second step back, and then a third and a fourth. With each and every step I took, I felt my heart give a painful tug. It seemed to me that I could almost see what caused it: the invisible line that connected my father’s heart to mine. Thin as spider’s silk, incredibly strong. It would stretch between us always, winding around the earth like a map of my wanderings. Never breaking, never releasing its hold.