snowfall

i don't know what takes hold
out there in the desert cold
--tori amos

Bartholomei Fatima had gone from prince to pirate to King of Aveh before he saw snow for the first time. And, no matter how many times he encountered it after, he was never quite ready for it.

It unsettled him, though he certainly would not have admitted that to anyone. Not for the cold; well, not really. It could get cold in the desert at night, or on the ocean: nothing between the submarine and the stars. If he paled a bit beneath his suntan and hiked his jacket collar around his ears, then all right, he could deal with that. He'd been in damper subterranean caverns and darker depths beneath the sea.

And the snow itself, he had to admit, could be unexpectedly lovely. Swirling like fairies of frost, silvering windowsills and whitening shadowed alcoves, an afternoon of snow could turn all the world the same bright shade.

But all the same, he found he didn't much care for it. A different sort of desert, dry and water-less, something impossible to prepare for. It stayed in ways he wasn't used to, fallen snow gathering in corners and crevices until doorways were blocked and windows were darkened. Something that could pile up at your front door until, when you went to sleep at night, you were never sure that you'd even be able to leave your house the next morning. Bart disliked feeling trapped.

Queen Zephyr had told him that Roni Fatima had felt the same way. It was Zephyr who explained the six-pointed star and the science of it, no two the same, after she found Bart in her fallen city, up to his ankles in a snowdrift and watching mesmerized as a snowflake melted against his hand. She was always surprising him, this tiny ancient queen and the way she seemed to know what he was thinking.

Tonight, on the way back to Ignas, it was snowing over the ocean, and Bart was standing on the deck of the Yggdrasil, trying to count the points on the falling snowflakes, and failing.

"What's on your mind?"

He'd have to remember that, another thing he didn't like about snow: the way it muffled approaching footsteps. Bart tried to twist around, but halfway through he became preoccupied with not losing his footing on the slick deck, his braid whipping around his shoulders. By the time he realized it was just Billy, he was clinging to the guard rail and trying to convince his boots not to slide out from under him. "The weather," he said, through gritted teeth.

"Ah." Billy made a noncommital noise, like maybe he'd been thinking the same thing, his eyes following the drifting downward path of the snow.

With a relieved laugh, Bart thought he'd actually managed not to make a fool of himself. "You out for a walk, too?"

"Yeah. Watch your step," Billy added blithely, tiniest of smiles tugging at the corners of his mouth.

Bart made a face. "Yeah, thanks." Dusting his hands on his pants, he blinked up at the sky, feeling the small pinpricks of snow landing on his cheeks, bright and cold. "'S really something, isn't it?" Bart commented, trying to catch a snowflake on his half-glove that wouldn't melt instantly, sitting like dewdrops on the black leather. "All this snow."

Billy shrugged casually, trying to look warm enough, in his cape and scarf. "Got a few feet of snow every year, at the orphanage." He leaned against the rail, out over the water; reckless, Bart thought, for a kid who'd never been on a submarine less than a year ago. "More, if the winter was a bad one."

Bart was shaking his head. He still hadn't managed to wrap his mind around weather that could be measured in feet; rainfall in Bledavik was barely measured in inches. It must have been something, Billy and his dozen kids, insulated under that blanket of snow, scraping for the food supply to hold out and praying for spring. He opened his mouth to ask how Billy managed-- but it occurred to him that Billy probably wanted him to. Instead, he opted to ask the obvious. "Aren't you cold?"

Billy narrowed his eyes. "Not all of us are from Aveh," he said snippishly, as though he weren't crossing his arms over his chest and stomping the snow from his boots. "It's not that cold."

"It's snowing."

"I'm used to it." Blue eyes met blue, like frost and fire, neither withdrawing.

"You're just certifiable, you mean," Bart said with a wink, putting an arm around Billy's shoulders-- to draw him back from the edge, he told himself; to keep him from slipping in the slush and going headfirst into the drink.

He should have guessed that something wasn't quite right when Billy didn't fuss, coming away from the guardrail with a strange little sigh. "Yeah, maybe," he said softly, and Bart could tell abruptly that he wasn't talking about the weather anymore.

The tone of his voice was shivery, colder than snow, and Bart had tightened his grip before realizing he was doing it. Knowing he had Billy's full attention seemed to make his tongue stick in his throat, as if the look on Billy's face wasn't enough to freeze any useful words in their tracks. "Hey," he said, rather uselessly. He tried again, clearing his throat. "You wanna-- talk about it?"

Billy lowered his eyes, and Bart wondered if it was more than the chill wind that was turning his ears pink. "No, not really."

"Billy..." Glad as he was to hear that, as he wasn't sure he really had anything helpful to say, Bart frowned. "C'mon, you can't fool me. What's bugging you?"

"Nothing," he said, but his voice was unsteady.

Bart decided to take a wild guess. "You worried about your kids back in Aphel Aura? They'll be fine, you know; Zephyr won't let anything happen to them." A short little laugh told him his guess had been wrong, but not entirely inaccurate. Grinning, he thought he might as well really put his foot in it. "And you already told me that people from Aquvy don't have any trouble with snow. So they'll be running circles 'round the rest of the Shevites."

That earned him an actual laugh, and he watched something thaw in the corners of Billy's eyes. "You're probably right about that," he said, his pride evident in his voice. "They're tough." And Billy reached out, touching Bart's hand. His fingers were cold like ice.

All involuntarily, Bart imagined a dim winter morning at the orphanage, isolated on that Aquvy island-- and a young Billy, his small hand pressed to the cold fogged glass of the window, trying to gauge the temperature, to guess if the snow had frozen overnight. He wanted to say something, to convey that he understood, that Billy really didn't have anything to worry about; that here the snow couldn't pile in front of his door and trap him inside. But then he thought maybe it already had, and all this time Bart had been standing outside, shovelling.

Billy's fingers had gone still, a curious expression in his eyes. "You're warm," he said, sounding startled.

"Because I'm wearing more clothes than you are, kid," Bart tried to sound teasing, but his voice caught a little, and he laughed at himself. "Didn't I tell you it was cold out here?"

"Maybe you did." Billy smiled a quiet, inward smile, though the set of his mouth was still stubborn. "I mean-- thanks," he said, and bit his lip to keep from saying more.

The Ygg rolled in the waves, and for half a second, they hovered together in that familiar weightlessness. It might only have been for balance that Bart's arm slipped around Billy's waist-- but then, to Bart's great surprise, Billy rested his head in the hollow of Bart's neck, curling against him, his breath a slight warmth against his skin.

"You're welcome," Bart heard himself saying. "You're very welcome, Billy Lee."