Week 5

 August 1

I’m still feeling the after affects of the heatstroke from the other day. It’s the only excuse I can think of for being so stupid as to run around in servant garb and not expect to get caught. Adora now has all of the power that comes from knowing my secrets. She’s seen my face without its make-up or piercing.

She refuses to take advantage of the situation, like any normal person would. Even the sweetest Winterian would use the knowledge for personal gain. Higher status, nicer clothes, etc. Adora doesn’t want anything. This makes me very nervous.

I may have to kill her.

August 2

I was thinking poison, but then I realized that with no real family, I could probably just kill her in front of the entire court and nobody would say a thing. I am the Queen of Summer. If I decide that someone should die, they die. Of course, doing something like that leads to repercussions, but at least then my secret would be safe, and I’d have solidified my position as a merciless monster.

Then again, if I go around just killing Summerfolk, that just racks up another point in favor of me getting murdered. 

And, much as I hate to admit it -- I don’t want to lose the closest thing I have to a friend. It must be so nice to be able to trust someone with a secret. It’s been so long, I think I’ve forgotten what it feels like.

And, also, if I were to trust anyone with the secret, Adora is the least likely person to talk. She has no friends, no family. No ambition that I can see, aside from a dogged determination to annoy others by living through another day. That’s something else we have in common.

Besides, if I was stupid enough to let Adora catch me with my real face on, chances are, whoever replaced her would find out as well.

August 3

So I’ve been here for over a month and I haven’t killed anyone yet. Of course, I’ve never killed anyone in real life, although I have multiple fictional kills to my undeserved credit. 

I showed Adora my secret room. I know, I know -- the one safe place I had to hide, and I showed it to her. But she get harassed so much by the other ladies’ maids, and the other ladies -- not the ones with real class, but the ones who married or bought into it.

I thought it would be nice for her to have somewhere safe to go, too.

I know. Stupid.

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I’ve been going about this all wrong. I don’t need to hide Adora, in order to protect her. I need to make certain that everyone knows that messing with Adora is tantamount to messing with me. And that it won’t be tolerated….

August 4

I slapped a maid today. Not a nice one. I feel bad about it. 

…I think I’m going to have to come from a different direction. One that makes me look like a total creep, without feeling like one.

August 5

Didn’t slap, kill, or maim anyone today. Victory? Sometimes I wonder….

August 6

One of the weird things about Summer people is how far away they stand from each other. You could fit a glacier between the bestest of friends.  In Winter, due to the fact that our houses are made of ice, and everything, we stand much closer together and usually fit about five-to-ten people in a smallish house. In Summer, even the poorest people have these rambling estates.

Ranch houses, they call them. They’re all one floor, but they spread out over about a million miles and there are only two-to-three people per house. Nobody shares a room. Even husbands and wives often live in separate bedrooms.

It’s funny, when I was imagining my life with my husband, I didn’t know how I’d keep my true self a secret -- I had these fantasies about him walking in and catching me with my hair down, no make-up, and no piercing, and fall instantly in love. Of course, in my fantasies, I’m always much better looking than in reality.

In reality, without make-up and piercing, I look merely plain. My bone structure is okay, but there is nothing memorable about my face.

Adora says she wants to take me out to a pub with my real face….

Anyway, when I stand close to people, in Summer, I see this confusion on their faces. They’re not certain if I’m trying to intimidate them or seduce them. It just makes me feel more alone.

For all the independence that Winterfolk pride themselves on, there is a pretty strong communal mind in regard to physical proximity. When I walk through a room, you could fit two glacier between me and anyone else. It just makes me realize, again, how alone I stand here.

August 7: My Husband’s Face

My husband isn’t bad looking. He is slim with more of a hunter’s build (muscled) than a swimmer’s (chunky), and moves with the clumsy grace of a man with the combination of shortish limbs and an overabundance of confidence. His eyes are smallish. They sparkle with an irritating mixture of knowingness and amusement, and would seem to belong to a young boy if it weren’t for the puffs of skin under his eyes and the dark slant of his brow above, lending an illusion of maturity. He smirks more than smiles, with one end of his mouth curving independently of the other.

Because he is spare of fat, his level of body heat is surprising. Summer folk don’t stand near each other as a rule, but since it is such a social culture, they do tend to sit rather close together at social functions. Sometimes, at dinner I feel like I’m sitting next to a furnace. Even in Summer’s heat, from a lifetime of Winter habit, if I find a heat source, I  move closer. To his eternal amusement, of course.

He seems to find everything funny, from my clothes to my hair, my accent, my inapproachability. And not just me. He finds everything about everyone amusing, and never passes up a chance to laugh. His voice vibrates warmth and energy from him, until everyone near him is at the very least, smiling. And only part of this is because he is this country’s supreme dictator. There’s something magnetic and charming about him that is difficult to resist.

When I was a child imagining her future husband, I don’t know if I ever pictured him directly. Probably, I just imagined an amalgamation of all the best things about my father, brothers, and neighborhood boys. If I had imagined him (as an inside persona of course, because he would never pass as an outside one) I don’t think I would have objected.

When I realized that no matter how much I came to love my husband, I would never be able to be with him, he is exactly the man I didn’t want to marry. I hoped that the man I married were cold on the inside, warm on the outside, just like Summer people are reputed to be. I am dismayed to find that I am actually attracted to my husband. I must find things that I don’t like about him and focus on those. Before I meet his mistress tomorrow.

There. I have one already.