Beautiful Freaks Read Free Page A

alien sense of superstition entered his thoughts. I t was as if the boy had been placed under a fairytale spell.
    “ Brown , how is this possible?” Steptree asked, his mind whirling.
    “It isn’t, Sir! It isn’t possible.”

 
     
    ALICIA
    THE ICE-QUEEN
     
    There is a beauty to the streets at th at time of night. It is something otherworldly which reminds me of home. The fog is like a white wall of anticipation, or smooth snow – or an innocent heart.
    Each time the killing happens, it is t he same. I am caught in a never-ending cycle of seasons. W ith each spring comes hope and with each winter … death.
    Once upon a winter, the fourteenth after my birth, the snow fell soft and deep and the world turned to ice. The meadows and the forests were covered with a white beauty. It was a hard winter ; a cruel cold. Icicles hung from the branches of the trees and the roof of the house. As a child, Mama had warned me about the dangers of such beauty. If an icicle should fall, it would be as deadly-sharp as a blade.
    And it was.
    A splinter so sharp that it spliced through the fabric of my dress and the shell of my skin , before embedding itself in to the soft tissue of my heart with nothing more than a sharp gasp and a flinch of pain. As if to baptise the moment, a single drop of blood fell onto the snow.
    By rights it should have killed me, but it had other, more magical, plans.
    The cut healed quickly. It was as if the flesh had been keen to swallow the shard of ice. A small silver scar marked the spot , but after a while I thought no more of it.
    The snows melted. The spring flowers grew and the love songs of the birds returned to the forest. With the spring came the gardener’s boy. His name was Rowan. He was sixteen and the apple of his father’s eye.
    M ama was not quite so keen on him, and she was certainly not very pleased about Rowan starting work in our gardens ,, mainly because of the close proximity it would create between the two of us. My mother, it seemed, had the same intuition as a mother hen recognising that a fox had been invited into the hen coop. Rowan was a striking, handsome boy, over-confident and cheeky – just the kind of boy her innocent daughter might fall silly over.
    I’d only seen him once before, whilst in town running errands with Mama. The boy appeared a fool . H andsome, but a fool nevertheless – or so I’d gathered from Mama’s tuts and rolls of the eyes . He’d strolled through town, all six - foot of him, with a blade of field- grass in his mouth, his hat twirling in his hand , and a sparkle of wickedness in his eye. He’d s potted the group of older girls who stood outside the schoolhouse in a small flo ck, the white cotton of their skirts dazzling in the spring sunlight.
    “Morning, pretties ,” he called, reducing them to a heap of blushe s and giggles. Mary, our Sunday School mistress seemed most affected . She stood t wirling the cotton of her skirt in her hand and sway ed on the spot as if hypnotised. Rowan must have spoken to them about their bonnets and dresses, as each took their turn to twirl in front of him whilst he bent down to inspect the intricate needlework on their hems . Mama had also stop ped to watch and offered me a commentary of disapproval.
    “Impertinent boy! If their fathers catch him behaving like that, he’ll get a whipping.”
    “Why?” I asked, “What’s he doing?”
    “Talking out of turn, that’s what. It isn’t polite for a young man to speak to ladies about their skirts.”
    “Oh,” I replied, s till not fully understanding what was quite so wrong about it . The thing I did clearly understand was that the boy made Mama displeased, and at fourteen , I was happy to follow her opinion. I looked on , partly f ascinated, partly disapproving, and th is was how I thought of Rowan until the next time I met him.
     
    *
    I t was a glorious morning, the kind that holds the promise of summer. I’d been sent out to gather primroses for the