Part 6

As they got into it, he marvelled at how her body had maintained its tone, unyielding to age and wrinkles. He did notice that she wore no shoes, or perhaps he fantasized removing them with his teeth, the way he fantasized her soft moaning, mistaking the dog’s whining for her pleasured feedback. 

Now, in the past, a good round of sex had only ever ended up with him snoring. But after they were done, and despite feeling exhausted, he ran about the house fetching her drinks and snacks and performing chores.  

“I drew you a bath,” he told her. 

“I draw my own baths,” she snapped back. 

He was smitten and told himself it had always been this way, ever since the first day he met her. 

“Come, we’re visiting the neighbours,” he’d say. “Now that you’re back from your sister’s, they’re dying to meet up.” 

“No.” She rejected him flatly. “You are all I need.” 

This pleased him more than it should have. He hated his neighbours: busybodies who asked too many questions. 

Whatever she said went. There was nothing he wouldn’t do to please his wife. That said, his memory was weaker than his will, so he was bound to spoil things – catastrophically so – all of which I’m coming to presently. 

By and by, the Snow Maiden bore the feller a child, a young boy. And they lived happily, but not ever after. 

One day, his eagerness for sex ran ahead of his memory of her commands.  

That day he was as randy as he’d been every day since the snow brought her back to him. But his wife insisted – and for the umpteenth time – they had a child now, and with that came responsibilities. Even as she spoke, complaining as she always had, his attention drifted. It was the Snow Maiden he was enraptured by, and the pull of his lust was becoming harder to deny. 

He was torn between one thing and the other, between obeying her commands and obeying her allure. And before he could think clear-headedly, he had already acted.  

He snatched her from where she lay slouched over the sofa and carried her, wriggling and squealing, up the stairs, arms thrashing against the banister rail in protest. He crossed the threshold to the bathroom, and brought her to the bath of water he’d drawn, imagining what it might be to share it with her… how hot, as it were. 

“Put me down now,” she commanded. 

So, he did, plonk into the water. 

And he was about to join her, to continue their amorous adventure, when her skin began to sizzle. The water drained the white from her features, she turned sickly and sallow, then shot up stiffly from the bath, hissing at him. 

“You. Look. After. My. Boy,” she screaked at him. “Else I’ll come back for you.” 

And with that she disappeared from the bath, leaving a flotilla of icicles whirling around with the turbulence of white water.  

Outside, the dog had finally quietened, curling itself nose-to-tail. Its eyes were closed. It was snoring contentedly. 

Well, the boy grew up to be a sea merchant, the very one who passed this story on to me. And he told me his father was the finest any child could hope for, kind and encouraging. 

When the neighbours brought up his wife’s absence, he explained how the boy’s mother had done him over twice, and gone back to live with her sister again. Women, eh? And they all rallied and cooed after the boy. 

Nevertheless, on his eighteenth birthday, his kindly father took hold of him by the collar and spat out the truth. He told him that, since he was no longer a boy, he was no longer his father’s responsibility.