Ice and the Butterfly By Aine Comments /very/ welcome! He was so confident that he would win. Now that he had won, he wasn't so sure of himself anymore. He had always held himself apart from the others- as cold and aloof as the ice that he lived by. It was necessary. It had been vital to his concentration, to his commitment to his training. Best Skater in the World. That had always been what Niang wanted him to achieve. "Deng, you must always concentrate on your training. Nothing must stand in the way of our lofty goal!" She had always supported him. Nothing had been more important to her than his skating. He had watched her work herself to death, slaving over the archaic sewing machine, so that he could have the skates, the money to train. So that he could catch the eyes of the coaches who thronged the training centres, looking for talent to bring into the state training program. Ice skating was an expensive sport- at least in a city of three million with only one ice-skating rink. He had left that all behind, when finally he had entered that program. He remembered how. Niang's voice, pleading with the head of the coaches. "Please, take my son with you. He's a good boy, he's talented, and he won't cause you any trouble at all, I promise-" "Are you crazy, woman? Deshan's a football city, not an ice-skating town. If we send him to the training centres in the mainland, your precious son'll be eaten alive by all the candidates from the other towns." "Please? I'll pay anything, anything at all that you ask-" Rustling, the sound of paper currency changing hands, like the sound of dry flesh, as it is torn apart from the body, as payment. "Don't forget you owe me, woman." Then they came. The uniformed men, who came only as harbingers of the State. They came, to take him away from Niang. Cold, hard-faced, colder than the ice, even. Niang's eyes had been red when they had come to take him away. "Be good, Deng. Be the best skater in the world!" That had been years ago. He had grown up, now. Things had changed, both himself and his relationship with the world. But Deshan didn't look as if it had changed, at all. Still the old black factory, spewing out fumes of black smoke from bleak gray walls. Still the cramped rows of houses, the people walking in their own worlds on the dirty streets. His eyes roamed the streets, searching for the one thing that he had held dear in this entire town. The old willow tree still stood, as it had, by the lampost. Age and weather had caused it to sag, and its leaves drooped, no longer a brilliant green. The Best Skater in the World spoke. "Ming, park the car there, by the old tree." The limousine moved, guided silently by his faceless driver, yet attracting a large crowd of people who gawked at the rich car, and whispered rumors of the handsome, remote man, who sat within it. It was their champion, returned home in embroidered silks, like a mandarin of old- He smiled, thinly. Things hadn't changed, after all the time that had passed. Getting out of the car, he walked up the broken path to the old cemetary. It was a poor place, a pauper's graveyard, but the uniformed men were there all the same, guarding it. Their faces were no less stony and cold than they had been years ago. He walked around the cemetary, dispassionately gazing at the untidy rows of crude wooden markers. Some mounds were without, the final resting places of those who had been too poor to be buried with a name. Someone had told him, a lifetime before, that those who were buried without names were forever doomed to haunt their graves, calling for salvation. Then he stopped, at the poorest grave of all. It was overgrown by weeds and wildflowers, without a marker. He knelt, briefly pressing his forehead to the green grass of the grave. "I'm home, Niang. I'm the best skater in the world." Almost in response, an exquisite butterfly landed briefly before his eyes, before flying away to vanish from sight. The handsome, remote, man's lips stretched into a smile, a real smile. Suddenly, he was not so uncertain of himself anymore.