Ice and Ember – Part 1: Testing

She tested everything on herself first.

That was the rule, and Dorothea had never broken it. On the little tray beside the bed, under the lamp, stood a bowl of ice, a flask of warm oil, a thin white candle in a heavy glass holder and a folded towel. She dipped a finger in the oil and tested it against the inside of her wrist. Warm, not hot. She dripped a drop of melted candle wax onto the same place and counted to three. Gentle. Low-melt, the kind made for the purpose.

Anselm watched from the armchair. He was thirty-eight, a restoration architect, a man who spent his days feeling for the grain of old stone, and who had told her one grey Sunday that he longed for the kind of sensation that was so complete it silenced the rest of his head. She was forty-two, an emergency-department doctor, who knew a great deal about skin and burns and who had spent three weeks reading everything she could about how to do this safely.

"The terms," said Dorothea.

"No marks. No burns. Nothing above the temperature we tested. No heat anywhere near my face. If I say Thermostat, it all stops, immediately."

"And what do I do?"

"You put down whatever is in your hand, and you hold my hand."

"And what do we do about the candle?"

"It stays on the tray, in the glass, until you move it. It is never left unattended."

"Exactly." She took off her glasses and set them on the nightstand. "And what is the other rule?"

"I tell you the truth, always, about how it feels."

"Good." She crossed the room and held out her hand. "Then lie back."

He lay on the bed, in a loose cotton shirt, with a towel under his shoulders. She sat beside him with the bowl of ice, picked up a single cube between two fingers and held it in the lamplight so that it gleamed.

"Are you content?" she asked.

"Content, Mistress."

"Then we begin with cold."

She laid the ice very lightly on the inside of his forearm and let it rest. He drew a sharp breath. A bright, clean, startling line of cold spread across his skin, and it was the most vivid thing he had ever felt.

"How is that?"

"Good. Very good."

"Stay with it."

She moved the ice slowly, a few inches at a time, along his arm, his shoulder, the hollow of his collarbone, and every time his breath caught, she paused, and waited, and asked how he was, and listened to the answer.

Continue the story: Part 2 – Thermostat.