As White as Snow Page 4

  Don’t believe anything you haven’t verified yourself.

  The dirty windows of the house stared at Lumikki like bleary eyes. She touched the iron gate, which the sun had heated to an almost uncomfortable temperature. Lumikki felt like she was closer to discovering her own family’s secret than ever before. If she said she didn’t believe she was Lenka’s sister now, would she miss her only chance to uncover the truth?

  “I . . . ,” Lumikki began, but pulled up short when she saw a man had appeared at a second-story window and was looking down at her and Lenka. The man was in his fifties, small with narrow shoulders. His forehead bore deep wrinkles, and his dark eyes glared at them in anger. Lumikki flinched. Lenka followed her gaze, and the man quickly retreated. Lenka pulled the gate key out of her bag. She weighed it in her hand, waiting for Lumikki’s answer.

  Just then, the door to the house flew open and a woman in her sixties marched out wearing the same kind of light-colored linen clothing as Lenka. A long, simple skirt and long-sleeved shirt. Her gray hair was wound in a neat bun behind her head. Long before she reached them, she started yelling at Lenka in rapid, agitated Czech. Now and then, she looked at Lumikki, in her eyes the same antagonism as the man who had appeared in the window. Lenka tried to answer, and from her tone, Lumikki could tell she was trying to defend herself and explain. Grabbing Lumikki, she raised their linked hands up as if to show the woman that they were the same flesh and blood. Lumikki wanted to jerk her hand away. She hated being a pawn.

  The older woman did not relent. Her voice rose. Opening the gate, she seized Lenka so hard by the arm that she cried out in pain and released Lumikki’s hand.

  “You can’t come today,” Lenka whispered to Lumikki.

  Lumikki had figured that out. This reception wasn’t cold, it was downright icy.

  The woman dragged Lenka through the gate and slammed it in Lumikki’s face. Then she even made a shooing gesture and hissed something that sounded entirely made up of consonants. Much less would have sufficed. Lumikki knew she wasn’t wanted.

  Lenka’s head hung down in resignation as the woman led her toward the door, keeping her vise grip on Lenka’s arm. Suddenly, Lenka looked like a little girl who had received a scolding and knew she was in for a more severe punishment on top of it. She didn’t look back. Lumikki shuddered. The situation was strange. Why would a grown woman let herself be treated like that without a single word of protest? It had already been crystal clear to Lumikki that Lenka wasn’t a normal twentysomething, but still, such complete submission suggested the woman had an unreasonable degree of power over her.

  Lumikki couldn’t stand seeing people oppressed. Her fight response kicked in instantly.

  Hoping the older woman didn’t happen to be an expert in Nordic languages, she yelled after Lenka, “I morgon klockan sjutton i slottets trädgård!” Tomorrow at five in the castle garden.

  Lenka still didn’t turn, but Lumikki saw her stand just a hair taller. She had heard. After the door slammed with the woman and Lenka inside, Lumikki stood and looked at the building for another few seconds. It looked just as uninviting as it had at first glance. Lumikki decided that, before her time in Prague ended, she would get through that gate and door, and discover the secrets of the house.

  SATURDAY, JUNE 18, EARLY MORNING

  Lumikki felt hands fall on her shoulders from behind. She didn’t move; she didn’t make a sound. This was their game called “be like you aren’t.” The idea of the game was to try to go as long as possible staying silent and passive, without turning around. You could follow the other person’s movements as they guided you, but you couldn’t make any advances yourself—at least until you couldn’t take it anymore and lost the game.

  Warm hands stroked her shoulders. Slowly, they continued down her arms and then back up. Lumikki felt a warmth following the movement of the hands, which now moved to her neck, lightly caressing it. Ripples of cold and hot ran down Lumikki’s spine. She already wanted to turn, but forced herself to stay still. The shivers swelled to a hot, rushing sensation when lips brushed Lumikki’s neck. A longing sigh almost escaped her lips, but she clenched her teeth and kept quiet.

  The hands continued down Lumikki’s sides even as the lips on her neck remained torturously featherlight. Suddenly, the hands dove under the hem of her shirt and stopped for a moment at her belly as if considering which direction to go.

  Keep going, Lumikki felt like begging. Up or down. I don’t care as long as you keep going.

  After a moment’s hesitation, the hands continued upward and reached Lumikki’s bare breasts. At the same time, the lips on her neck began to nibble gently, then more forcefully. Lumikki had to struggle to keep playing the game. She didn’t want to give in yet. She knew the longer she waited, the hotter it would be.

  First, the palms caressed the sides of her breasts and then began massaging vigorously. Fingers found Lumikki’s nipples, whose hardness made her feelings clear. Lips moved from the back of her neck to kissing, sucking, and nibbling the side, making her body feel like pure liquid: steaming, luminous desire.

  When one hand stayed on her breast and the other slid down, across her stomach, under the edge of her panties and between her legs, a moan of pleasure escaped Lumikki’s lips and she knew she had lost.

  And what a blissful defeat it was.

  Lumikki woke up covered in sweat. Wet everywhere. She looked at the clock, which said 3:02 a.m. The sheet on top of her was damp, and Lumikki flung it aside. No improvement. The heat of the sweltering night and the aftereffects of her dream held her tight in their grasp.

  Why didn’t it end? Why wasn’t she over this?

  Lumikki didn’t care about the weather. It was what it was. She couldn’t do anything about it. But why wouldn’t this heartache go away? Why did these dreams torment her? Why did this longing still have her sighing in her sleep even though longing was pointless? It had been a year since then, and the relationship had only lasted one summer. Shouldn’t the memory of a single summer have faded by now? Or at least become less urgent and easier to bear.

  As the spring had warmed and summer crept to the door and then burst through, the feeling had only grown worse. The summer heat awoke memories in her limbs and in her skin. A light breeze on her bare arm was like a caress. The sun warmed her like the gaze of her beloved. Woken by the summer, her body longed for the touch she’d felt every day a year ago.

  Longing was a feeling that was hard to live with. It didn’t ask permission. It didn’t pay attention to time or place. It was overwhelming and demanding, grasping and selfish. It clouded thoughts or made them too bright, too sharp. Longing demanded unconditional surrender. Lumikki tried to fight it and failed. She didn’t want to long and yet she longed. She didn’t want to remember, and yet her dreams and her body remembered, constantly.

  The longing was physical. It was dizziness. It was a seizing in her belly. It was the need to wrap her arms around herself alone in bed when there was no one else to do it for her. She felt the longing in fingertips that yearned to stroke, to touch, to caress. The longing made her fingers restless, fiddling with the zipper of her jacket, the strings of her hoodie, fidgeting with whatever little thing happened into her hand. The longing made her teeth bite into her lower lip, leaving it chapped and almost bleeding. She knew she was being stupid. She knew her longing was pointless.

  I long for the land that is not.

  That’s the way it was. Lumikki longed for something that was not and which she could not reach. She longed for a person who did not want to be hers. Who claimed he couldn’t be hers. A person who had walked out of her life and not looked back. What sense was there in longing for something that wasn’t? Lumikki longed for intimacy and trust and sharing, even though, by now, she should have understood with painful clarity that the person she longed for did not have these things to offer her and maybe never had.

  Lumikki had just assumed so. Imagined so. Wanted it to be so.

  Blaze. That was what
he had said when Lumikki asked his name.

  “Everyone calls me Blaze.”

  “Everyone?”

  “Everyone.”

  So the name issue had been settled. And Blaze did fit him better than his real name. Whatever “real” meant. That wasn’t simple or straightforward either. Blaze was equal to his name. Fiery, burning, always in motion, mercurial, shapeshifting, warming, scorching, beautiful to look at but exuding a vague sense of danger.

  “Now just don’t tell me you have a tattoo of a flame somewhere that no one gets to see,” Lumikki teased on their first date.

  “Worse.”

  “No.”

  “Yep. I have a whole bunch of fireballs.”

  Blaze stared intently at Lumikki over his coffee cup. The gaze of his ice-blue eyes was so intense that Lumikki found herself blushing even though she had no reason to. At least no other reason than that she had just started trying to guess where the fireballs might be tattooed on Blaze’s body since she couldn’t see them anywhere. His sleeveless shirt ruled out his arms. Maybe his back or belly . . .

  Without a word, Blaze started smiling.

  “What now?” Lumikki couldn’t help asking.

  “Your expression.”

  Lumikki felt the blush on her cheeks deepening. She couldn’t help it, no matter how much it irritated her.

  Blaze leaned over the table and bent his neck for her to see them. Lumikki understood instantly.

  “Gemini,” she said.

  Blaze leaned back, looking at her in amazement.

  “How did you know?”

  “It’s my favorite constellation,” Lumikki replied.

  That silenced both of them. It felt as if some strange premonition had lightly brushed by and said that right now, right here, something special was happening. And it wasn’t just that they had both independently taken their large coffees black, that they were both wearing red canvas sneakers, or that they both happened to like the same constellation. In that moment, Lumikki sensed that Blaze might be a person who could understand her from half a word.

  The first person like that in her life.

  Lumikki had been right.

  They had breezed right past all the normal levels of getting to know each other to a deep, intense connection that left Lumikki gasping for air. She probably would have been afraid if there had been time. But there wasn’t. Everything happened so fast. Her walls all crumbled in a moment with Blaze, blasted to smithereens. Lumikki was completely naked and vulnerable before him, and everything he said or did rocketed toward Lumikki like a bullet, penetrating her instantly and exploding into fireworks of joy, warmth, and light. She had never experienced anything like it before. It was confusing, startling, and unsettling.

  They knew things about each other before being told. They knew without knowing. They guessed each other’s favorite foods. They could predict each other’s favorite books. They knew what would make the other cry for joy and what would make them weep in sorrow. They talked over each other, finishing each other’s sentences, thinking the same thoughts at the same time, hearing the same song. They moved so exactly on the same wavelength that Lumikki never would have believed it was possible. It almost felt supernatural. It felt like a miracle.

  But Lumikki didn’t actually think there was anything supernatural about their connection. It was simply that, when they’d first met, they’d sensed an intense sameness in each other that drew them together. They had been able to read things in each other’s expressions, gestures, and postures that they couldn’t necessarily have put into words, but which burned into their consciousness as part of their deeper knowledge of one another. Everything they had experienced, seen, heard, felt, read, tasted, and smelled in their lives had left its mark on them.

  Everything they’d experienced had accumulated in layers of deep knowledge, which allowed them to intuit their similarity. That was their connection. And when something like that came along, there was no holding back. You just had to trust it.

  That was how Lumikki felt. And she didn’t even try to protect herself. She opened herself to Blaze. She let him come to her, to wrap her in his heat. Lumikki sensed that she might get burned, but she took that risk without a moment’s hesitation.

  Before Blaze, Lumikki had thought that physical intimacy would cause her the most problems in dating. Years of bullying had left her fearful of being touched, even repulsed by it. She couldn’t stand having strangers violate her personal space. Or even really people she knew. She wanted to be able to choose when people touched her and how. Only very rarely did she feel any desire to touch anyone else. Lumikki had once thought that she might not ever be able to date or love anyone because the thought of letting someone get close enough even to kiss her was so unpleasant.

  But when the emotional distance between her and Blaze vanished so swiftly, physical distance became unbearable. Her powerful need for closeness, to have her skin pressed against his, astonished Lumikki. On their third date, they were at Lumikki’s apartment, drinking coffee again, as they would so often during their relationship, sitting at her kitchen table talking and laughing. Their drinks always ended up cold long before either of them could finish.

  Lumikki squeezed her coffee cup with both hands to keep herself from reaching out and touching Blaze’s arm, stroking his cheek, running her fingers through his short blond hair. She pressed her lips hard against the rim of the mug even though what she wanted was to press them against his lips. She had never experienced anything like this before. Her pulse raced like crazy. She trembled inside from her head to her toes, trying not to let the trembling show.

  Lumikki tried to continue their banter as if nothing was happening. At some point, she no longer had any clue what Blaze was saying. All she could think about was kissing him. About how she would take his face gently but firmly in her hands, look deep into his glittering, icy eyes, and kiss him. Lumikki had never kissed anyone, but now the desire was so strong that she didn’t even consider things like whether she would know how or what technique she should use.

  Feelings had nothing to do with technique. This feeling was pure burning and fire.

  Suddenly, Blaze blushed. He mussed his hair and smiled in his boyish way. Then Lumikki couldn’t stand it anymore. She set her mug down so hard that the coffee sloshed onto the table. A second later, they were wrapped in each other’s arms, awkwardly perched on his chair, then standing in the kitchen, the chair clattering to the floor. Lumikki pressed herself against Blaze with every part of her body she could. Their mouths were one. They burned with each other’s heat. Their hands searched for new places to caress.

  Everything just happened. Lumikki was simultaneously inside what was happening and somehow outside too. She had no control over her own actions or desires. She couldn’t make herself step back. She couldn’t have stopped kissing him even if the world were exploding around her. It didn’t explode around her, though. It exploded inside of her.

  They were rushed, but they also had all the time in the world. By unspoken agreement, they knew how far they should go. Even though they were greedy for each other, they also knew how to hold back. They could leave part of the experience for next time. And part for the time after that. They were on an expedition without a map or a compass, and neither wanted the discoveries to end too soon. Everything in time.

  When they were lying side by side on Lumikki’s mattress, waiting for their breathing to steady, Lumikki thought that the journey was just beginning. And she loved that she didn’t know where it would end.

  And in retrospect, that felt so unfair to her. That her journey with Blaze had gone unfinished. Lumikki knew that they’d had so much more to show each other, so much more to teach each other, so much to experience together.

  Of course Lumikki had known. From the beginning. At their first meeting, when her gaze locked on Blaze’s light blue eyes for a few seconds too long. Afterward, she could never name any single detail that had given it away. Was it the arc of his jaw? His
shoulders, which weren’t terribly broad despite being so muscular? Was it his voice, which was pleasant and deep, and yet not as deep as it might have been? His fingers, which were so slender and beautiful? The way he walked, which might have been just a little too assured, a little too masculine?

  It wasn’t any single characteristic. Blaze really did look like a boy. He was a boy.

  But not completely. Not yet. His physical self was on a journey toward oneness with his inner self. Lumikki had understood immediately. And it didn’t matter to her at all. To her, Blaze was Blaze from the first moment she saw him, not a boy or someone on the way to being a boy. Not something transitional. He was whole, a perfect individual.

  That’s why it felt strange when Blaze explained it so haltingly. When it was so difficult for him. Lumikki just wanted to ask him to be quiet because there wasn’t anything to tell. He didn’t have to be brave to reveal his secret. For Lumikki, words like “transgender” and “reassignment surgery” felt totally foreign. Not because she was afraid of them. It wasn’t that. It was because they came from somewhere outside, from people’s desire to define and categorize and diagnose, to set boundaries and compartmentalize other people’s lives.

  For Lumikki, Blaze was Blaze. And at the same time, he was also Laura, the seven-year-old girl smiling her unabashed smile in the photographs Lumikki found at his parents’ cabin when they spent an entire week there that summer, just the two of them.

  Seeing the pictures irritated him.

  “Can you put those away? I hated my hair like that. How anyone ever got me to wear pigtails I don’t know.”

  “But you look adorable.”

  “I look about as natural as a pet poodle with a bow on its head. It’s humiliating.”

  Lumikki put the pictures away. But the images stayed with her, and that was why Blaze was also Laura with those wide smiles and pigtails.