The Ice-dance
 by Eli Dupree

When I was young, there was the fire-dance. People of my village - men, women, and children - would build a great fire in the center and dance around it, dancing and dancing until the fire burnt out. In the winter it became an ice-dance, and when the fire went out we danced in the cold until we were chilled to the bone and could dance no more.
My one love was for the fire-dance; the one reason for living was to return week after week to the fire and then dance and dance until it came to a close. Even in the winter I danced, judging the cold little more than a painful annoyance attached to the end of my greatest joy.
But one day I returned from the ice-dance unconscious, carried by my fellow villagers, having collapsed with its end. They sat me in front of my family's hearth-fire and warmed me there for three days until my health was restored. Perhaps I would have come to avoid the ice-dance, to shun it as some of the villagers did, but that was not to be.
Thereafter my parents barred me from the ice-dance, and perversely, it became the object of my greatest desire. For a while I could enjoy nothing more than to sneak out of the house and join the ice-dance, reveling in even its freezing end, but soon, my parents discovered me, and my hidden goings were ended also.
So much I hated my parents, my hate waxing with every first snow when the fire-dance became the ice-dance and was denied me. They were not stupid, they saw this, and in a vain hope to keep me they denied me the fire-dance as well. So much I hated them when they did this that it cannot be described; it was my only love and they had taken it away.
Despite my hatred, the fire-dance slowly left my life. I came to grow up and leave the village, but even when I could have defied my parents and danced the fire-dance, I felt little desire to do so. They had broken me from it, and I could not go back; even when the ice-dance came, I was not moved enough to dance, and I could not even muster much hatred at that time for its absence.

The unfulfilled desire and the hatred of my youth made me into an unscrupulous and manipulative man. I found myself in a world where kings and generals controlled much of the power, so I cast myself as a populist rebel. I gained widespread support, and in a few years, I had become a powerful general in my own right, trading and conquering territories like any other.
It was like the fire-dance. The battle-rage in personal combat, the excitement of risk, and the simple exhilaration of putting the lives of so many men on the line, not knowing whether or not they would survive. I found myself an excellent general, and over the years, conquered more than what of mine was conquered, and built my own power, seizing more and more lands; then, in the dead of winter, in an ironic twist of fate, I found myself conquering my own village.
I spared the villagers, but on seeing my parents, I remembered the hatred of a small child when they had taken his one passion from him. I thought how I would feel, if I lost what I now cared about most. I thought about who I could be now, if not for their rule over me, and for a moment, the old spark of desire was kindled, but dancing was not what I did.
I made them dance. I made my parents dance the ice-dance, faster and faster until their breath caught and their legs numbed with weariness. When the fire went out I kept them dancing until the cold and the strain consumed them and ended their lives. They collapsed, and I let their corpses lie where they fell and rot there.

The kings with which I dealt, and the other generals, would have taken a wife by force, or for political alliance, but that was not my way. They were straightforward and wished for control over the actions of other men and women, but I so devious that I wished for control over their feelings and inner thoughts.
When I, now middle-aged, saw the one I could love, I vowed that I would make her love me in return. I sent spies after her to discover what her interests and passions were; because I knew, and because she did not know that I knew, I used this knowledge to win her over. When she needed a friend, I was a friend to her; when all she wished for was someone to comfort her, I came to her and comforted her; when she finally came looking for love, I gave her my love in return. It was, for her, like the fire-dance, not knowing precisely what was happening, but caught up and enjoying it fiercely; I let it be no other way.
I knew all there was to know about her, but I let her see only a few sides of myself, even creating new sides for myself to win her love. With my power, when the time was right, I gave her the things she had always wanted. First they were material things, gradually more valuable; finally I gave her love and marriage.
Being together was enjoyable enough, but for us, it was to become the ice-dance, the dance which I had loved most, and which she, weak as she finally was, had never experienced. When she died, it rang true with my existence more than anything else; it was the most curiously satisfying event of my life.
Feigning irreparable sorrow, but feeling the fulfillment of my life, I gradually gave up my political power and my military might, passing them on to other men as ambitious as I had been. Let them dance the fire-dance; as for me, I will finish my own in solitude.
I grow old, and my winter comes; now, as ever, I await only the collapse.

~(December 2006)