The Ice King – 1: The Chamber
Deep inside the glacier lives The Ice King, supple and smooth. His skin is aglow with the cold and unbelievably soft. He should be milky white but there’s an olive tint to his hue and no sooner do I see it than I want to touch it. Without gesture or words, he demurs.
He is wearing no clothes but it’s clear that he’s warm; he’s in his element: he is The Ice King, and he doesn’t beckon or smile: he stands at the end of the hall that is lined with blue-sheened green walls of ice. They look soft, insubstantial, but they are hard as stone, centuries of gravity have worked them into solid rock. I close my eyes for a moment, the smell of the ice is clean and pure.
I slowly move towards him and as each step feels heavier with uncertain awe, my head gets lighter. I realise for him I'll have to be all or nothing. Already I’m feeling the heat and I’m twenty, thirty feet from him yet. There, at the end of the hall, tall with ice and nothing else, is a passage, a gateway, in which he stands; he has no need for me, but I am now beholden to him. I slowly advance and as I do so I have to let go, I have to, have to let go.
I half expect servants to take off my coat and my woolly hat, but there are no servants and no attendants, there is only he and he looks at me unsmiling but kind. He is ageless, of course, he is dark-eyed and strong. The Ice King waits for me to come to him, he knows that I must, now. For a moment I’m tempted to look back to see what’s behind me, to confirm that this is the path I have chosen, but something tells me that for that it's too late; now there is only forward, and so the snowfield, the mountain, the moon, the cavernous void of the night, the narrow, low gap that I happened upon and through which, more curious ever than brave, I had entered, fall away and become immaterial. There is no echo in the glacier and no breeze. There is no fire and so there's no smoke. There is air and the air is still. Cold as it is, it doesn’t move; it envelops me and so it feels warm. The Ice King knows that I am now in his power, and he turns and walks ahead, I follow.
The gateway, the passage, the transition. A corridor of light and dark, of shapes and patterns. It neither narrows nor widens, it extends. The Ice King, naked, not tall, not short, of a human-scale build, moves ahead and each step he takes on the ice, the ice seems to light just a little under his feet: it may be in my imagination. It may be just a reflection. There is no other life in here, only he and I. And there's the light that plays on us. Deeper into the glacier we go and the deeper we go, the narrower the corridor through which we pass must become now, but it doesn’t get lower, only less wide, until it is possible, just, to walk in a dead straight line, just about, without your arms or your shoulders touching the walls. He walks ahead of me, and I now follow closely; I sense the warmth off his body, and the icy walls look as though they glow just a little as he passes. It may be just my imagination. Maybe a reflection. Every surface is smooth but not flat: the curvatures of natural ice.
We arrive in the chamber: the chamber is empty and neither dark nor bright, there is a greenish whitish blueish light that comes from all directions at once, and in the middle of the chamber there is a large elevation where the ice rises to knee level, just: is this our bed? There is no fire but I am not cold and while the Ice King reclines, I loosen my scarf, I take off my gloves. I want to touch the ice but his eyes are on me, and I take off my coat and my jumper, my shirt...
from EDEN by FREI at www.EDENbyFREI.net
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The Ice King is one of several self-contained short stories, connected story strands and random (or nearly random) vignettes that feature or will feature in EDEN.
EDEN sets out from the simple, oft-posed, question: what do you say or do if, halfway through your life, you happen to bump into your younger self? It then goes off on wildly tangential meanders of observation and ponderages on meaning before reaching any sort of conclusion. (Though it does reach some sort of conclusion...)
Also on here in the Short Story Sharing Forum are The Snowflake Collector and Pyromania.
Thanks for lending your eyes and mind and:
Enjoy.
The Ice King – 2: The Kiss
The Ice King doesn’t speak and I don’t ask; the questions are too many, too small; too trivial by comparison. I feel my body tremble, not with fear, not with cold; with unfamiliarity? I look him in the eyes and their glint reassures me: I want his power to be benign, if absolute. As I take off my heavy boots and both pairs of socks, I expect the ice under my feet to sting or to burn me, but with my eyes on him still and his gaze still steady on me there is only the glow that expands from inside my spine.
I take a step towards him and his presence feels no longer silent, it hums, or so my mind makes me believe, in truth he lies still and alert and my breathing is no longer shallow: I want to melt into him, meld with him, and as I step closer he sits up just enough to extend his hand and bring me into his orbit.
Now the colours, the touch, the sensations, the heat from within the cold from without: this surface I lie on is as hard as polished marble, this skin that I breathe is softer than ermine but his grip and his hold and his motion are firm, no longer can I tell what am I and what he, my focus is gone, the ice and The Ice King, the light and the scent are all one; I dissolve into it into him into the fire of him in me, into the ice that is no longer chill but a mould of clean edges that envelop us like multiple layers of soothing gauze, like everything ever imagined but more, and more real, like losing myself, my thought and my fear, like everything ever felt but not known, like owning the universe through being owned, desiring only being desired, like being The Ice King through being his, not wanting not pining not longing not hoping not dreading not doing not acting not willing not giving not taking not talking not buying not selling not looking forward not thinking back not imagining and not dreaming. Being and ceasing to be all at once in the now and forever.
The Now. The Forever. We breathe. We hold on to each other. I think I smile but I can’t be sure. He tilts his head back and exhales. I feel his breath on my neck and bury my face in his shoulder. The light is orange and blue and a little bit purple too, and we are embedded in the ice that feels now as if it has melted and made a pool of clear water that seems to flow warm, although this may just be the pulse in my temple and the beat of his heart and the tender embrace of his arms and the comfort, the comfort of him.
We lie thus for hours or so it seems as I drift in and out of awareness and The Ice King is deep in my mind, quiet and quite majestic. I know I can’t stay here but nor can I leave. I bathe in the silence but words are bubbling inside me. I want for nothing now, but I wonder how deep, how old, how immaterial the ice is. I lift my head to look at his face, in repose. His lips are not of this world. I hesitate. I pause. I cannot ask permission. I cannot resist. I kiss him.
from EDEN by FREI at www.EDENbyFREI.net
The Ice King – 3: The Thought
I feel the ice melt under my skin, I sense us slip away in the rush of torrents, surging up, then drowning into the depths; my eyes closed, I heave into his brain; where there were colours there is now only green and blue and that purple and the white in the flashes between: I bounce and dissolve, the water rushes through me, the glacier crashes all about us as we tumble down the mountain, turn into a stream – the quicks, the pools, the depths, the shallows and the waterfalls – into the valley, then the river, then the calm. Then the meadows passing and the flowers and the cows on the hill. The trees. Is that a sun in the sky? I haven’t seen one in years. The Ice is gone, the King is no more. What have I done?
I float on the easy current along the stately swans and the comical ducks and I wonder. Was that necessary? Was that emotion? Was that too much? The cloudlets above sing a round that lulls me into a new kind of sleep and I dream that I am already restored to my senses, but senseless in love. I know not what that means; it's a feeling I have.
As we reach the towns and beyond these the cities, it is more a case of becoming a boat, or a ship, from which to salute the other farers of waterways and nod at them gravely: the river has turned so regal, so slow. I’m not sure I want this. I’m not sure I’m ready to leave him behind or see him head off, onto land, into the streets, the multitudes, to be what, a citizen? Like the others. I cling on to him, but he is no longer there, has he never existed at all?
I refuse to panic and say to myself it's only a phase, it will pass, it’s all in my imagination, soon I’ll wake up in the glacier, gazing at him by my side, and I’ll marvel at the tone of his skin and the glint in his eye and the nearly smile that says, I nearly get you, you’re not quite alone.
I dream that I’m not alone and for a moment feel warm and the glow that encompasses me is enough for a while to soothe, to restore. We yield into the wide, and buoyed by the salt and cheered by the seagulls we stretch our limbs and with strong strokes make for the open, the free. I half expect a dolphin to greet us but it seems we are heading north, which is just as well. At least we are now at sea.
Soon the seals and the icebergs. I’m not at home here, although the shades are familiar. I feel I have lost myself and I want not to mind. He’s in my head now, I in his body, and against all odds we're afloat, but are we together? I don’t even know who he is. He is the Ice King, but I’ve turned him into a fish. That is not true, of course, I have turned him into a captain. I have not turned him into anything he’s still the Ice King, but like me he is out of his element now and so he may just be a prawn. He may be a wave or a plastic bottle discarded in Old Amsterdam. He may be a thought or a lover. He may be my nemesis. Can he be my salvation?
I want to say, ‘polar bear, be not afraid’ and mean it. We’re here to help. The Ice King looks at me with compassion now, maybe for the very first time, and thinks a thought of astonishing beauty. This, I know, is the noble mind. And the thought alone that a thought can be beautiful and merely to know that a mind may be noble, that fills me with joy.
from EDEN by FREI at www.EDENbyFREI.net
The Ice King – 4: The Word
Hand in hand we walk north in the night now upon the ice that stretches ahead to the pole and beyond. Can there be a Beyond, beyond the pole? The penguins are asleep. They know not of The Ice King, they care not for me, their dreams are of flying turtles and jellyfish in repose. Above us the sky is a fantasy of too many colours, those yellows, those greens, those purples again, I have seen them before, I saw them, I'm sure, in the chamber, before, but here in the open we are naked and free.
Naked we walk hand in hand on the ice that has no horizon, it just melds with the sky. It extends so far that the eye wants to rest but the light and the ions and the glow of the heart have emboldened us to go on. After the water, the land, and now the ice once again, only this is no glacier. This is the home of The Ice King, it is where he belongs. I'm not sure I should be here at all, but with his palm in mine and the steady sound of his breathing beside me I feel safe and assured. His step too is steady and strong, his eyes are determined now and his hair which I hadn't noticed before here in the open waves in the wind. The wind cuts our cheeks and our chests and our thighs and the ice is so cold that it burns the soles of our feet but we are not afraid and we are not tired and we are not alone: we have each other.
I don't know what having The Ice King means or he having me. Are we one? I glance across to him as we stride and we are so far gone now the aurora has left us behind and all about are the stars: magnificent molecules in the sky. Never have I seen them so clear, nor so many. Numbers no-one can name. In the light of the night that is moonless and large The Ice King looks like an invisible force, a presence that cannot be known, that can only be sensed, that cannot be fathomed, it can only be lived. Am I living The Ice King?
The Ice King inwardly laughs and his mirth appears on his lips as the memory of a trace of a smile. I love these lips and I have no regrets. I regret not kissing them, nor sailing on them to the pole nor listening to them now as he speaks. I do not hear what he says, the wind is too fierce, the snowy crystals it blasts our skin with too sharp, the tremor of thrill of being exposed to his world too intense for me to actually understand but the melody that emanates from his body and the idea that shines in his temple and the soul that has taken me on make me trust in his language, his word.
His word that I do not now nor ever think I may comprehend grows in my brain a new constellation of axons and I tingle at the realisation that this is a new beginning, a whole new creation. I do not know what this is but I know it is good.
from EDEN by FREI at www.EDENbyFREI.net
The Ice King – 5: The Pole
At the pole the world finally stops. Respite at last. The world doesn’t end, it ceases to turn. At the core of the axis there is no motion, there is only the centre, and the centre is both still and alive. Everything spins around us and we are the point that extends in no dimensions and all dimensions at once. Here in this space that has no expansion and no description and no volume and no coordinates we are at home and The Ice King rules: I am his. His court. His jester, his courtier. His subject. His servant. His chosen. His man. I do not want to be what The Ice King is and nor can I. Here the Ice is eternal for as long as Eternal exists and here it is ever in motion and here it is still absolutely, and here the snowflakes are effervescent sparkles in our mind which now is conjoined as one but not one alone but one that has in it the snowflakes like gossamer dust and the depths and the infinities of the sky in which there are stars that do not make sense any more than the snowflakes which they outnumber by magnitudes of improbable potentialities.
I lie on the ice bed The Ice King has bid me repose on, as he stands on the edge of his universe overlooking everything with the eye of his mind which is my mind which is the mind of the snowflakes and the mind of the stars, which is the mind of the glacier, the river, the sea, which is the mind of the water, the air and the ions, which is the mind of the magnetic force of his presence and the electricity of my spirit, which is the mind of the other side and the this side and the mind of the shadow he casts not on the ice but into the core that has no expansion and no dimension and no rotation, and I know that soon I must leave him, but not now.
Now The Ice King turns around to me and I see that he is made of ice as I thought. And the ice as I thought and as everyone knows before they are told is like fire and the fire is just the energy dying and the energy dying is the source of all life and life is preserved in the ice and the ice is nothing but water and water is living and living is knowing and knowing is forgiving and forgiving is patience and patience is growth and growth is taking the energy on and becoming the other and the other is just the extension and the extension is continuation and continuation is the reflection and the reflection is the same and the same is the all and the all is the now.
I welcome The Ice King onto me with my eyes, and as he melts into my open armed, open ribbed, open mind being, I feel we are no longer one I feel we now simply are and having him having me makes the ice disappear and the fire burn out and the water rise up and the energy surge and the stillness the stillness prevail.
I look down on the pole, spinning on my own axis as I lift up above, I see myself writhing and being consumed, I see The Ice King drowning me out and myself burn up in blue and greenpurple flames that dance on the water and I know now I know now I am.
from EDEN by FREI at www.EDENbyFREI.net
The Ice King – 6: The Core
Into the core I dissolve. I remember The Ice King, he lingers. In my body. In my senses. In my mind. In my nature. In my idiom. In my eyes. In my aptitudes. I was never like The Ice King at all yet I am he he is me, was that unavoidable? Down at the core of the centre of the stem of the flow of the pulse there is no movement, no stillness, no anger no pain. No cold and no ice and no view and no argument, no perspective. There is liquid lava only. The core is the place at which everything starts and everything comes together and everything ceases to be, and everything is alive but the heat melts molecules and causes nuclear fusions: it’s as close as we get to the sun. The source. The energy.
As I come up for air I realise to my joy I’m still breathing. In, breathing out. Im Atemholen sind zweierlei Gnaden. I remember things I never knew were instilled in me, but they, like The Ice King, remain, they are rooted, they grow. I grow. I grow out of the core and through the pole, and I form into something almost human. I laugh inside. Not happy, relieved. The fact alone that there is a core. That there is a pole. That there is a word. That there is a thought. That there is a kiss. That there is a chamber. That there is ice, that there is a king. That the king rules me because I want him to only. He has my permission. I am his subject, he is my servant. We get on swimmingly. Like happy spermatozoa we float in the semen of our need towards the egg of our imagination, flagella wagging, willing us on to imminent fertilisation. Often we fail. But we are not unique, we are two among millions and the consciousness from which we have squirted is generous, patient. There is more. There is plenty. We are not alone. We are not lost. We are not meaningless. We are not wasted.
Up through the saltwater I burst, slithery wet and elated. If this is living I’ll have me some more of it, yes. The Ice King, serene now, regal, mischievous, hot, smiles at me knowingly. He knows me better than I care to admit, but I care not. I have him in my mind and he has me in his gonads. Together we’re strong. Let this be our universe. The force that holds us together may yet tear us apart, but for now there is only potential.
Strengthened, revived, I emerge. The Ice King walks with me now, as I glide. I am The Ice King, I am the snowflake, I am The Snowflake Collector, the wonder and George. The innocence lost and found. The anguish, the great satisfaction. The invention. The story. I walk on an empty plane that extends into all directions without end. Absence of colour surrounds me. I have conquered my fear. Not lost it, not abandoned it, no: embraced it, loved it, wrestled it, made it my own. I am the master of that I create. I am god.
I breathe in, I breathe out. I breathe in, I breathe out. The swirls of air from my mouth form undulations of flowers whose pollen disperse and populate the void. It is a paradise. It is rich. It is the land of beauty, abundance. This is where I belong; this is home.
from EDEN by FREI at www.EDENbyFREI.net
The Ice King – 7: The Beginning
The End. Stillness. Like Neptune viewed from a distance: all turmoil at bay. The Ice King and I are no more, we have surrendered our identity to being. We are both the particle and the wave. We float, directionless, emotionless in the cell that is our universe that in turn bobs like the tiniest bubble in amongst infinitudes of other universes. We are everything we can imagine and everything that we can’t, nor can imagine could be imagined. There is no fear and no joy, no pain and no longing, no aching desire for love, for compassion, for that which is and remains unattainable, or what we already have, there is a bliss only that simply pervades.
Out of the nothing that is everything that is the blue that is the colourless white darkness that is the presence of invisible energy comes the spark of an idea and the idea is a signal that we're alive. We are animated, willing. I had forgotten the idea as I had forgotten the toenail as I had forgotten the mole on my chest and my glasses. The Ice King sits facing me in the open space, we seem to be circling, swirling away from our sun. His smile now is knowing and satisfied. I see myself reflected in him though I know I look nothing like him and with this recognition comes a new kind of want, a new kind of need, a new kind of desire. I stand up and as I do so so does he and I look him in the eyes – wherein lie worlds and histories, characters and motions, achievements and hours of unspeakable pleasure – and I offer him my hand. He takes it. We acknowledge each other, I him, he me. The grip of his hand is soft and firm like his skin like his heart like his glans like his lips like his medial plantar and I inhale him once more ere go.
I leave rich, filled with power. As I walk through space past the planets that are merely pebbles I pick up the garments his tailors have woven throughout the centuries and I put on those that take my fancy, those of my choosing, those I accept as my attire. I leave all the rest. I leave him behind not with disregard or as obsolescence but in love. The love I bear him I now bear myself and I bear it out into the nerve ends of Laniakea and beyond. I fill my universe with this love, I pervade the dark matter and the light, I become that I am that I am.
I don’t stride, I don’t float, don’t proceed: I expand, I infuse. Somebody walking by says to me, in the casual, friendly manner that raises no eyebrow, ‘all right?’ and I know this is not a question, nor is it an observation, it is an invitation. I smile at him with kindness and wisdom. With love. Not of my doing but of my being, not my desert but my gift. Not my accomplishment not my credit and not my reward. My absorption, my purpose, my meaning. And I answer his invitation, ‘all right?’…
from EDEN by FREI at www.EDENbyFREI.net
1 Attachment(s)
The Ice King as an 'EDEN miniatures' Paperback
Hello Friends
If you've enjoyed reading The Ice King, it may interest you to know that I've now published it as a handsome little paperback in what will be the EDEN miniatures series: several short stories and texts from EDEN by FREI, which this also originated from. The idea is to make them available for people who enjoy a physical book as much as the words, so they're a compact six by four inch format, generously laid out for a comfortable read, and this one's less than five dollars.
You'll find it on Amazon here, or if you want to support your local bookstore, you can also order it through them with ISBN 978-1-64255-445-8.
Attachment 9874
And of course if you just want to read the story you can continue to do so here or over at EDEN by FREI.
Thanks & Enjoy
FREI
The Ice King Now Also on Kindle and as ePub
Hello Friends
For those of you who like to have your short stories in a neat tablet reader format, The Ice King is now also available on Kindle and as ePub (for iPad, Kobo, Nook, among others), and of course if you'd like to own it as a handsome paperback, you'll find it here, or, if you want to avoid Amazon, you can easily order it through your local bookstore (ISBN 978-1-64255-445-8) or find an alternative online provider here.
Obviously, you can continue reading it here, though the text has since been polished up a bit and corrected in places, and as I can't edit old entries on this forum you'd have to head over to EDENbyFREI for the latest and (I hope, if not last) currently best version.
Thanks for your continued support & interest and
Enjoy!
FREI
The Ice King as Audio Book
Hello Friends
For those of you who enjoyed The Ice King – this is now also available as an audio book, and if you happen to be trialling Amazon's Audible (or would like to give it a go), you can currently get it for free.
Thanks for your immensely valuable support for this and other stories of mine here, this has really made a difference!
Have a wonderful Festive Season everyone, irrespective of what, if anything, you celebrate, and happy writing, reading and/or listening!
FREI
