Hellsing was interminably cold. Even with the first sun of spring the air was rigid, and in the wintry heat of summer every indoor activity was exhausted eight times over. No one in Hellsing could quite explain it: the constant frigidity evaded all essential logic of climate and meteorology. The people had simply learned to live with it, warding off the chill with layers of woolen clothes and warm soup.
No one knew either when the Cold had first set in. It had descended like a fine mist one day over Hellsing, taking its citizens with elven swiftness. Men, women, crones, and orphans had fallen victim to the Cold, their lives abruptly shortened before Death could take its toll. The Cold’s influence was so total, so absolute, that it was almost impossible to reverse the process once it had begun.
The people of Hellsing had discovered only one remedy to obstruct the onslaught of the Cold. Like the rest of mankind, they could confide in only one thing: love. Never could a man lose sight of his passions, for it was his passions that connected him to life. Once his whims had run dry, his fate was from that point sealed. His lips would turn ghastly blue, his skin stiffening with sheets of ice. His eyes would tremble for a moment before remaining fixed, his last breath hissing as it curled up into the warm air. A last futile cry for life would cut short as his soul fell mute within a frozen corpse.
Calista quite liked the Cold.
The feeling of cold perpetually nipped at her fingertips. It ate at her hands and stung her skin all over; but she did not so much mind the pain, as long as she remembered to moisturize with her favorite peppermint-scented creams. She walked into winter without gloves or a cap and so often confused her elders that, by her twenty-second year in Hellsing, her eccentricities were no longer of notice.
Calista considered herself friends with the Cold. It had taken her mother ten years before, a decent mother in most respects, all except in memory, for memory ushered in too seriously the question of a mother’s love. In that regard, Calista was thankful for the Cold. The Cold caused her not to question.
She had been well-acquainted with the Cold even before her mother’s passing. Foreboding stories had put her to sleep at night, and during the day she had danced with the children in the square to the tune of cheerful elegies. In secret, when she could, she had stolen into the woods, where the people of Hellsing most commonly disposed of those taken to the Cold, and foraged for bits of frost that had fallen onto the forest floor. If she were lucky, she might find a whole toe or a finger, which she would sneak home under her undercoat and deposit in a jar of warm water upon her shelf. It would disintegrate instantly, leaving only the illusion of water behind. Calista’s mother had never challenged her daughter’s choice of bedroom decoration—she assumed the water was for painting, as Calista in her youth had taken up an interest in art—and thus she allowed the jars to stay. That was one thing Calista liked to remember about her mother: she never ached to understand.
Since Calista was young, she had known where she belonged; and if she was not where she needed to be, she intended with every inch of her being to get there. She had drawn her life with Machiavellian precision, keeping a record of every connection she had made. Attachments were her stock; time was her capital. When she had no use of a relationship or hobby, she severed ties with it, never flinching from orthodox remorse. She was forever heading forward, tethering herself to life upon the thinnest string she could find. It was a bit exhilarating, she had to admit. Soon, though, she knew: she must put an end to it. It was not her destiny to die of natural causes, as those content in Hellsing sometimes did. Calista had had a plan since she was little to resign herself to the Cold, and she intended with all her being to consummate her resolve.
Calista did not hesitate to share her good ideas with the people of Hellsing. There was no danger of emulation: she talked so strangely, so smartly, that most opted not to hear. They understood the basics and deemed her insane. On the other hand, the intelligent that did hear her allowed the conveyance of her innermost emotions to go entirely unchecked. In the case of Calista’s good friend, Mrs. Antony, the reason for such little attention was most certainly indifference. Despite managing to elude the Cold into the upright age of eighty, Mrs. Antony had very few passions left. A passion for human life besides her own was certainly not one of them.
“I am going to the Cold,” Calista had announced one day while the two were knitting.
“That’s nice, dear,” Mrs. Antony croaked, her throat a tad dry.
“I’m not being facetious,” Calista protested.
Mrs. Antony looked up from her knitting. “I know,” she had said—and spoke no more.
A lack of interest towards Calista’s resolution had not spurned her motivations; rather, it had fueled them. How smart she would seem when this chapter was concluded! How decisively would everyone come to believe that true bliss was not in life but in the Cold! Calista’s fingers twitched with the aborning grasp of her acclaim.
Calista had set her eyes on a young man in town whose bounty was in his attachments. She vaguely remembered sitting behind him in the schoolhouse as kids, recounted having to crane her neck to see the board past his hay-colored head. He had been tall for his age, and he had always been leaning this way and that to catch a word from a garrulous friend, who could never wait more than an hour until lunchtime to refrain from some contemptible chatter. Calista’s grades that year had been reprehensible.
In spite of his adverse effects on her schooling, Calista quite liked Vito. Everyone “quite liked” Vito, really. He was a bright young boy descended from a line of farmers, whose father owned a considerable deal of property on the more rural side of town. In the summer as a child he had tossed rocks along the river with the other boys his age; in the autumn he had escorted his younger sisters along the scenic route to school; in the winter he had helped his mother cook breakfast, lunch, and dinner; and in the spring he had helped his father plant seed for the next growing season. He spoke with genteel clarity and, despite his humble roots, took pride in dressing properly whenever the situation allowed. He smiled like enamored sunshine and had a laugh like the sound of falling pebbles. He was a few years older than Calista and had eventually moved out of the shared schoolroom in Hellsing to pursue a course of study for more accelerated scholars, receiving his own personal tutor at home. Calista had never been allowed to do the same—because she was so smart as it was.
Calista had no fears with him. Attachment was his second nature, not some pawn like it was to her. He was admired: thus must he admire others. In carrying out her scheme to turn over to the Cold, Calista was assured his life would not come as collateral. While she had only objective in mind, she still wished to keep her decency.
Vito had raised his eyebrows when she first approached him. Though unabashed about her desire to be taken with the Cold, she was keen to conceal his pivotal part in her plot. Missing an essential piece of the puzzle, Vito found her attempts to recommend herself to him unnatural.
“What are you doing?” he had asked, cowering a little under Calista’s stare.
They were sitting on opposite ends of the fountain in Hellsing Square, Calista peeking at him through the water as she attempted to eat an apple with some look of seduction.
“I am eating an apple,” she explained.
Vito scratched his head sheepishly. “But what are you looking at me for?”
Calista frowned. “Because I like you.”
“Oh.”
Calista frowned further and took a bite of her apple. “Don’t boys like to know a girl eats well?”
Vito blinked. “Well, I suppose—” He pondered over it. “It’s important to eat well, but I suppose if I liked a girl and wanted her to eat well, I would trust her with it unless there was some indication otherwise.”
Calista blinked back. “That’s very prudent of you.”
Turning her back to him for a moment, Calista got up from her side of the fountain and circled its perimeter until she stood in front of him.
Vito looked at her. She looked at him. They said nothing.
After a second, Calista extended her hand. “Would you like to form a partnership?”
Already Vito had meant to meet her, absentmindedly holding his hand halfway out to her. “What—kind of partnership?”
Calista dropped her hand. “No, that’s not the manner,” she muttered to herself.
Her offer rescinded, Vito drew back his hand.
“May I kiss you?”
Vito’s eyes widened. He blushed bright red, stuttering a response.
Calista did not plan before she acted.
If he had not caught her, Calista would have fallen into the fountain. Her entry had been ill-conceived, but her target remained true. As she fell, her hair cascaded about their heads, ensconcing everything but the two of them from each other’s sight. Her hands framed either side of his face as she dipped her chin below his. Time froze for a moment, and Calista closed her eyes.
Calista liked kissing him. He was cold.
She pulled away the second she had regained her balance. Shivering, she wiped her hands down the sides of her apron and moved to turn back home. She had completed her agenda for today. Parting would now bring sweet sorrow.
A word from Vito stopped her. His eyes were shaking, his fingers tracing about his lips in childlike wonder. He had a look of catatonia about him that rendered him utterly foolish.
“Aren’t you,” he began, “the girl who wants to go to the Cold?”
Calista felt a pang deep in her chest. “Yes, I am,” she told him. She did not mention the discontentment she had felt that he had not remembered her name.
He marveled at her for a second. “You are doing an admirable thing,” he seemed to whisper.
Calista forgot her hurt in a moment’s notice.
Calista was startled by the progress she made in the coming months. The attention Vito gave her from that point onward was more than she had projected. After their initial meeting, he had hastened to find her. He kept her company sometimes at home while she worked or read or painted, stretching out across the length of her bed and dangling his head off the side. He had even knocked on her door one day to hand her a flower he had picked while on his morning walk. Curiously he asked her questions about her likes and dislikes, the types of paints she preferred to use, her thoughts on books and songs. She told him of the Cold, its enchanting call, and mused over death with a wistful sigh. Silent, he nodded fondly and, not wanting to distract her from her storytelling, retreated into a realm of grim contemplation.
Calista had underestimated her own prowess. In the span of a few months, she had completely captured his most heartfelt devotion. Never before had she met someone who so yearned to know: his arsenal of questions was never bottomed, his novelty with her never abated. It was the opposite of what she was accustomed—at times it made her shiver—but for once, Calista did not mind. Being with him as she was—being—was one thing she learned to love.
What truly humbled Calista was Vito’s agreement to be her muse for a day. At first, he was hesitant, unsure of how his visage would appear on canvas, but she subdued him, assuring him of her astuteness in the arts. True, she had only ever painted interpretations of the Cold, but she possessed an adept understanding of color, an appreciation for lines and spacing. Surely she could capture the entirety of his beauty within a mere pittance of paint.
The portrait came out well, so well in fact that Calista begged Vito to model for another one. He smiled then and obliged her gratefully. She made painting after painting after painting of him, until she had to wait personally for Hellsing to import more yellow ink.
When the number of portraits she had painted of him became equal to that of all her others, Calista invited him to admire them with her. She arranged his portraits around her room with the method of a professional curator and flanked the display with her numerous paintings of the Cold. The organization pleased her.
The arrangement displeased Vito. He would not elaborate, but his eyes remained fixed on the outside of the display, focused on the various renditions of the Cold. He would turn back to his own portraits, paintings bathed in light, his grin plastered in eternity, and he would frown.
By winter, Calista concluded she was ready. She could feel it in her chest, the way her heart leapt to think of Vito. She had denied herself every happiness except happiness with him, and now she was prepared to discard it.
“You’re what?” Vito had repeated with confusion when she related to him the news.
“I am in love with you!” Calista cried. “Isn’t that wonderful?”
“Yes, but—” Vito sat back. “What does that have to do with you leaving?”
“I am in love with you,” Calista sighed whimsically, taking his hand in hers, “which means I can finally rip myself to pieces! I’ll only have to sit in a room with food, drink, and a bit of paint until I completely forget the idea of you!”
“W—” Vito was appalled. “Why would you do that?”
Calista gave him an exasperated look. “To go to the Cold, of course!”
Vito blanched. “You’re still—going to the Cold?”
Calista frowned. “Why wouldn’t I?”
Vito was quiet. After a moment, he stood up. “No, no, you can’t.”
“I can’t what?”
“You can’t—I love you!”
“Yes?”
Vito paused. “But you love the Cold.”
Calista froze, sensing his quiet scorn. “Yes.”
Vito looked at her, distraught.
“But you don’t love the Cold,” he seemed to realize, a pebble sticking in his throat.
Calista’s heart hurt. She wished desperately to comfort him. “Vito.” She reached out to touch his hand. “You know I love you, don’t you? But there’s no other way for me. I was meant for the Cold. I was planning this from the beginning, you see, because I knew I wouldn’t break your heart for long. There’s nothing in Hellsing left for me like there is for you. I’m meant to be with the Cold. I’ve known nothing else in life besides the Cold. I l—” She was shivering and could not finish.
When Vito’s eyes met hers, they did not wander. “I know,” he said.
Vito fell to the ground.
Calista screamed as his weight instantly went slack. She fell with him, crushed under one of his legs as they toppled sideways. Panicked, she reached for him to ask if he was all right. Instantly, she jumped back, feeling the sensation of ice across his skin.
“Vito?” Fear laced Calista’s tone.
Vito let out the tortured pebble from his throat.
Calista felt at his calves and gasped feverishly. The loss of feeling, the glacial rigor, was evident and irreversible.
“Vito, Vito, you’re going to the Cold.” Calista’s own voice felt far away. She tried to grasp it, but it was too muddled with sobs. “Vito, Vito, why are you going? You’re not supposed to go.”
Vito hushed her, his arm issuing a pronounced crack as he reached up to tuck back a piece of her hair.
“Vito, Vito—” Calista ripped at the sides of her apron. She slammed her first into the side of his knee, the knee that trapped her beneath him.
Vito hushed her again. His touch was brittle as he attempted to comfort her. Calista wept.
“I know your secret now, Calista.” His smile was sorrowful, fading into ice. “I just wish I could love you for it.”
Later that day, Calista brought his body into the woods. His right pinky fell off as she walked away; and, picking it up, she kissed it and put it in a place where it would keep.
Mourning had been more difficult than usual. Calista’s only source of motivation was that she would soon join Vito: without him, nothing on Earth could possibly hold her, an Earth without her Vito. She grew more aggravated the longer she was alive.
“Oh, don’t you see?” Mrs. Antony exclaimed one day as they were knitting.
“What?” Calista rang out plaintively, her words doused in pitiful remorse. “What don’t I see?”
“It’s always you who say one thing and mean another.” Mrs. Antony let out an incensed hiss. “Oh, you’ll live yet! You might outlast even me in years!”
Calista did outlive Mrs. Antony, who died soon after; in fact she lived longer than she had ever planned. She lived until she was ninety-nine, never marrying or bearing children, slave to the invisible string that for some reason tied her so steadfastly to life. Only when she was ninety-nine did she manage to force herself into the arms of Death; and even then, when she asked, he would not tell her why he had taken so long to collect her.