I screamed. Not that it did me any good. I barreled headfirst and at breakneck speed, a velocity one never really ponders until it’s one’s own neck about to snap. Moments later, I found myself somersaulting across a pile of — ugh — garbage. I lifted my hands, and from between my fingers oozed a slimy brown goop. I eased my aching buttocks from something sharp and pointy. Dear God — bones of some poor creature. My toes were buried in a pulp of potato peels, cabbage leaves, and who knew what. Eeew. An otherwordly garbage heap. Definitely not cool. I gagged from the smell of offal, which so deserves its homonym link to awful.

I sat there bodily bruised and mentally smarting from the humiliation of the situation when, like a punch line, I was struck in the head by one flying work boot, and then another.

What the heck? I picked up the second of the boots with the intention of throwing it back at the fates themselves, when it hit me like . . . well, a kick in the head. The boots weren’t half bad. Secondhand for sure, but still usable. Now why would someone throw away decent boots? Boots that I could use. Boots that looked about my size.

I stood, not easy atop a mound of shifting muck, stowed the boots under my arms, and picked my way out of the heap. I was outside the castle and deep in the bowels of whatever Niflheim’s mountain troglodytes called their kingdom. I found a low stone wall and crouched down behind it. I felt exhausted. With my cape as a blanket, I curled up. I worried about my mom; what was she going through? And my dad and Afi — where were they? What kind of panic had my disappearance caused? Tears, at the very least, washed some of the dirt from my face. And the wracking spasms my convulsive sobbing induced probably generated a little body heat. Doubts haunted me. How would I ever get out of here? What was wrong with Jack? What exactly were Brigid’s evil intentions? How much time did we have? No idea, no idea, no idea, and not much were the unfortunate replies to those tormenting questions. The resolution I made was to somehow rouse Jack, to cut through whatever it was that stood between us. But how? At that moment, I had nothing. No plan, no clue, no idea. As the saying goes: I didn’t know jack about nothing. I didn’t know Jack. That thought brought on fresh tears.

I woke to the distant sound of trickling water. I staggered through the dark catacombs of the crazy cavelike city, until I found the source: a collection pool or cistern. Though the water was cold enough to make popsicles out of penguins, it was crystal clear and fresh. I washed myself thoroughly, even my hair. From my pocket, I ate the remaining nuts and rinsed them down with the chilly, sweet-tasting water. I didn’t feel like much of a champion, but it was better than nothing. With my compactible silver cape and booties stashed in the deep recess of my pocket and my worker boots laced tightly, I roamed until I came across upward-spiraling stone stairs. They gradually took me to street level, and I started pounding the pavement. Eventually, I gave up on trying to make sense of the interweaving fretwork of streets and just started following clumps of blue-clad workers. Though dread coursed through me, I steeled myself and tried to think things through. Brigid had congratulated Jack on his progress: the day’s storms. I remembered, too, the way the mountaintop had churned with activity. My goal became clear; I had to get atop that peak.

As I noticed a large group assembled in a particularly gloomy passageway, its girth shifted and shrank before me. Bingo. I joined their ranks and was the last in line to melt through the mountain. This time, without the same level of fear, I was able to process the whooshing in my ears and sliding sensation.

I found myself back on the frigid mountain pass. Already quaking with the cold, I quickly pulled on my cape. It made an immediate difference. The air was even more glacial than it had been the day before. Not a good sign. My breath hung before me like whiskers. From this vista, I had a clear view down to the valley. Looking out, I felt my spirits drop. What had been, upon my arrival, an arctic sea, was now log-jammed with pitching icebergs.
What had Brigid said about the ice thickening by the hour?
Solid enough, very soon, for the Frost Giants to return. And with the portal vulnerable. Had my arrival compromised it further? Time, I knew, was crucial. Remarkably, Poro was just a few yards away grazing tranquilly on whatever he had managed to find under the covering of snow. OK, so as trusty sidekicks went, he was a little tight-lipped for my taste, but his dedication — I had no complaints on that score. I scrambled over his broad back.

I soon discovered that Poro was no novice mountain climber. And never again would I wonder about the origins of Santa’s flying reindeer. While technically Poro didn’t fly, he jumped like some kind of rocket-heeled mountain goat. His size, warp speed, and agility were way more than I had bargained for. And we were going up; gravity should have been against us. It was all I could do to hold on and avoid looking down, which was saying something given my bird-girl comfort with heights.

From almost the minute we started ascending the mountain trail, the ground below us became packed with snow. It crunched and groaned under Poro’s hooves like the creaking timbers of an old ship. Or a haunted house. And I was nervous enough without spooky thoughts. My heart was pounding in erratic, nonrhythmic beats. A rushing sound buzzed my ears. And my courage and conviction failed. Everything felt wrong. I was sure I was lost, late, and unequal to the task.

As if compounding my gloom, the weather grew worse. I took it as a sign: Jack was clearly in the house — or, better put, on the house. A freezing gale drove wet snow down my collar, and the cape billowed around me like a sail. I put my head down, drew in like a turtle, and let Poro find the way. The closer we got to the summit, the more the blizzard thrashed like something caged. Even Poro was unprepared for the onslaught; he brayed and stonewalled. I knew we were getting close when the flurries no longer pounded us from above. A driving horizontal onslaught meant the source of the storm was nearby.

My last push up the trail was like meeting a bullet train head-on. The icy wind whipped my hood back, pressing it against my hunched shoulders, and huffed the full skirt of my cape into a bell-shaped parachute. The snow flew so thick it choked out the air itself. I feared asphyxiation as much as hypothermia or being blown to Oz, and where in the Norse cosmology would Oz fit? Though my vision was obscured by the blinding flurries, I found myself on a snow-covered plateau. It was as if the mountaintop had been leveled off with a long, narrow frosting spatula by some giant cake maker. The all-encompassing whiteout was disorienting. There had to be a drop-off somewhere, and I was no longer sure of forward or back — or up or down, for that matter.

During a momentary lull in the storm, I left Poro near a small bush. He quickly started digging with his hoofs into the snow. The flurries started up again. Making slow progress, I trudged ahead on foot across what I sensed to be a huge expanse. The snow continued to shift underfoot. Over the howl of the winds, I could hear the squeak of compression. I trekked across this barren snow-capped field until I could finally make out a distant blue figure. It gave me a goal, and a shot of hope. Trying to pass myself off as a coworker, at least initially, I pulled off my cape and stored it in my pocket. As I trudged slowly forward, fear squeezed the air from my lungs. When I finally reached the lone figure — as if by a flip of a switch — the blizzard stopped, and I found myself standing upon this snowy ridgetop and staring at none other than Jack. Jack. Jack!

I hurried toward him, but already internal alarms were blaring. Though I’d recognize his sapphire blue eyes, shaggy dark hair, and lean frame anywhere, something about him was unfamiliar. He stood with his hands lifted in the air as if conducting an orchestra. He’d obviously halted in his storm throwing because he’d seen me, but the look he cast my way was more chilling than the tempest I’d just witnessed.

There had to be some mistake. Jack would never look at me with such a hard glint. He didn’t recognize me. He didn’t expect me here, of all places. I ran to him, tears of relief spilling down my cheeks. I had found him. Against the odds and into a separate dimension, I had found him. I threw my arms around his neck, and it was like embracing a marble statue. He didn’t even lower his arms; they remained thrown up to the sky as if holding it in place. His skin was ice-cold, and now, up close, I could see it had a bluish tint. He looked thinner, older, as if more than just a handful of days had passed since that fateful good-bye party. And the look he still jabbed at me could skewer a marshmallow the size of a parade float.

“Jack, it’s me,” I said, dropping my arms and stepping back.

“I know who you are.” He lowered his arms from his Atlas-like, holding-up-the-heavens pose, but his shoulders were still thrown back defiantly. “What do you want, Kat?” He backpedaled away from me. Ouch.

I was stunned. I had suspected that Brigid’s mindfog would keep him from recognizing me. I had hoped that the warmth of my touch and heartfelt affection would rouse him. To know who I was and still stab me with such a hard, cold glare was a crippling blow.

“I want . . . you.” Even as I said it, I could hear how pitiful I sounded. My voice wobbled and cracked. “I’ve come for you.”

He laughed, though there was no joy or mirth in its sound. “Look, I don’t know what you’re doing here, and I really don’t care, but do me a favor: stay away from me, far, far away from me.”

I walked toward him. He held up his arm.

“I told you to stay away,” he said.

I didn’t. I took two more steps in his direction. Though I wanted to appear calm, I teetered on my twitching-with-fear legs.

I knew by the lines scoring his brow that I wasn’t getting through to him. “I was in the neighborhood,” I said, trying a new approach. “I thought maybe you could use some help.”

“Help?” He laughed, but it was scoffing in nature.

“That’s what friends do. They help each other.”

I was trying to jog his memory. If he had a flashback, even just briefly, of our relationship, of what we shared, maybe I could reason with him.

“We’re not friends,” he said.

“Sure we are. Don’t you remember?”

He looked at me with such hatred I flinched.

“We were never friends,” he said in a voice I didn’t recognize.

So, the friends angle hadn’t worked; I tried another avenue.

“You say that because we were more than friends.” I walked the remaining steps that separated us and placed a hand on his arm. It was icy cold and, again, I noticed its bluish tint. I saw, too, the lines in his face and bags under his eyes. “We could be more than friends again, if you’d like.”

I didn’t have much experience in the seduction department. I had hoped, with Jack at least, to tap an emotion or awaken a part of him that was frozen.

“Don’t touch me,” he said, swatting my hand away.

Ouch again. Not that I thought I was some kind of irresistible temptress. But Jack? He had once confessed to being drawn to me. I had held on to some sort of naive belief that I could get through to him — that I just needed to be close to him, to touch him, to look into his eyes. I was hurt — and more than a little angry.

“Go,” he said. “I have to get back to work.”

Figures. Even doing someone else’s evil bidding, the guy had a work ethic. Set him to a chore — even triggering a modern ice age and wiping out most of life as we know it, for instance — and he was good at it. I remembered how Penny had once said he was good at everything he tried. Except . . . My mind scurried back to an image of Jack awkwardly cradling a lacrosse stick.

“I was watching you just now,” I said. “Seems you don’t quite have that flick of the wrist down, do you?”

Jack whipped around to face me. “What?”

“You’re too stiff-armed. There’s no fluidity, no form.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said. Suck much? Fail ever? Jeez, the guy really couldn’t handle criticism.

“True. I’m no expert, but if even I can see your mistake, doesn’t that mean it’s all the more glaring?”

He flexed his fingers in and out. “That’s a load of bull.”

“Maybe.” I tried to sound casual, but in reality I’d never been so unstrung. “Except, Brigid’s not all that happy with you, is she? She thinks you can do better, right?”

Doubts rolled across Jack’s face. I saw them snowball like . . . Hold everything! Snowball, as in gather mass, speed, and destructive force. OMG. This mountaintop of snow was a big stockpile, a snow warehouse. Until it was needed, anyway. And snjoflóð, the way it was pronounced in Icelandic, obscured the last letter. It sounded like snow float, but if it was spelled with a d — the way brauð was — it didn’t mean snow float; it meant snow flood. As in avalanche! And if one snowflake in Niflheim was like one hundred million on Midgard — Dear God, I had to stop this.

“When will it be enough, anyway?” I asked, starting to panic. “She seems like the type who’ll never be satisfied. And if you don’t have it right yet”— I opened my arms wide —“when will you?”

“She won’t like that I’ve stopped.”

“So?”

“So, she won’t be happy.”

“And?”

“And there will be hell to pay when she gets here.”

Here? Crud. A consequence I hadn’t considered. I looked up at the suddenly clear blue sky. No blowing snow, no gray clouds, and no hiding the current work stoppage.

“Maybe you should start back up again. At least a little. We wouldn’t want to anger her.” My mind was sputtering like a dud firecracker. So I had a pretty good idea of what she was up to; it didn’t mean I had a plan. Or any desire to cross paths with her right here and right now.

Jack lifted his arms and flicked his wrist with some serious ’tude. Nothing.

Uh-oh.

“Try again,” I said, panic burning my throat.

He did. Still nothing.

“Like this.” I charaded the movement, because that’s all he needed: a top-of-the-world show-off.

“That’s not right,” he said, attempting again, but spraying only a very small circle of rain over us.

Yep, I’d pissed him off, frustrating him further. He never had been able to control his abilities around me.

“Well, go back to what you were doing before,” I said.

“It’s not working.” There were more clouds gathering in his flinty eyes than there were in the sky.

“I think we should go,” I said.

“I’m not going anywhere with you.”

Oh, for the love of . . . He was still under her spell. All I’d done is disarm and disable him; he sure didn’t trust me yet. It was like dealing with a petulant, contrary child. It reminded me of Jacob, which gave me an idea.

“You’re too slow, anyway,” I said. “You couldn’t keep up. You’d be a liability to me at this point.”

“You couldn’t keep up.” And for all the urgency and craziness of the moment, I could actually visualize the four-year-old Jack goading his parents or a friend. I almost wanted to cry, he was so cute.

I ran. He followed me; I could hear him panting behind me. I sprinted until my legs cramped and ribbons of shooting pains snaked up and down my thighs. He was on my heels the whole way. Had this been a healthy Jack, during football season, I wouldn’t have stood a chance in a footrace against him. In his weakened condition, he couldn’t quite pass me. I soon spied Poro in the distance. He had cratered a fairly big hole around the scraggly bush. I stumbled into the depression made by his digging and had to brace myself against the bush. What the —? This was no bush. I’d never seen a bush with a flat leaf four times the size of my hand. So if it wasn’t a bush, and its foliage was so large, then it was a tree. The top of a tree, a tree buried under a lot of snow.

“Poro!” I screamed, startling the poor creature. “Let’s go.”

I grabbed Poro by the reins and clambered up over his back. It wasn’t my most graceful move ever, but I’d never claimed to be no cowgirl. Jack was still behind me. I turned and snapped at him, “Don’t even think about catching a ride.” I could see a defiant glint in his eye. Coldhearted Jack was not going to let me tell him what to do — or let me leave him behind. With a rather nimble move, he jammed one foot into the stirrup and swung up behind me. Gotta love that Y chromosome. What a handy little play toy.

He reached around me and grabbed the reins. His family kept horses, after all. Having him behind me like that, his thighs clutching mine with every jarring bound of Poro’s full-out canter and his face pressed against the back of my right ear, I was a tangle of emotions. A part of me remembered our long, lingering kisses and the way the mention of his name sent a barrage of neurons firing like pop rockets; that part wanted to turn and bury my face in his chest. Its counterpart, the now-is-not-the-time voice of reason, had me staring straight ahead — but still totally undone by Jack’s labored breath in my ear. It was the best I had felt in days, even though he never once spoke to me or acknowledged me in any way.

Though the skies had cleared, it was bitter cold. I longed for my pocket-stashed cape. It hurt to breathe, as if with each frigid gasp of air I was freezing from the inside out. The plunging temperatures only meant that Brigid’s plan was working.

For a long time, Poro ran full out. In my head, our destination was the skyscraper tree at the bottom of the mountain, which I had worked out was another power place. How many had I been to at this point? So many I could write a dang travel blog. Despite the subzero temp, an intensity fueled me. Adrenaline is one wicked-cool fifth gear that nature keeps in reserve. I thought we were home free after the spiraling mountain pass leveled out and I could see the outline of the stand of evergreens in front of us.

I gloated internally that we’d evaded Brigid’s notice, that we actually stood a chance of getting out of the Snow Queen’s frigid land of ice, when — from behind the first line of trees — Brigid stepped forward. And, unfortunately, she had company. Grýla, snapping and snarling, pulled at a thick leash Brigid held in her hand. I saw, too, an ornate sled, harnessed to a team of huge dogs, just inside the line of trees.

Shit. So much for a clean escape.

Jack pulled on the reins, and Poro reared at the sight of the huge, growling cat.

“Going somewhere?” Brigid called out in a voice so cold it hung in the air like icicles.

Jack scrambled down, and I followed suit, not wanting to desert him. Something about Brigid’s presence compressed the air around us. Whereas Jack could throw storms, Brigid, it seemed, could vacuum the wind out of the atmosphere in an abyss-like gravitational pull. Even my heartbeat reversed; it went boom-ba.

“I wouldn’t advise a departure,” Brigid continued. Grýla strained at the leash, her huge forepaws lifting off the ground and swiping angrily at the air. “See? Grýla wants you to stay.”

“Let us go!” I yelled across the span that separated us. “Haven’t you abused Jack enough? Can’t you see you’re killing him?” I gestured to him, expecting him to cower or shrink from her. Instead, his eyes were wide and shining and fixated on Brigid.

Brigid threw up a laugh that traveled like smoke up and away, mocking as it receded with an echo trail. “My kingdom has been reduced to a mere vestige of its ancient grandeur, and you think I care about his life, or yours, for that matter.”

Grýla roared, a snarly release of frustration and anticipation. Her gaze never wandered from me. No mistaking who she had in mind as the first course.

“Yes, yes, my pet,” Brigid said, running her hand over the onyx cat’s sleek fur. “She is my gift to you. The boy, however, is still mine. A day or two of work left in him, I hope.”

Grýla, frenzied by the offering, raised up onto her hindquarters and took a practice swipe at some imaginary target — my head, for instance, and dropped back down to all fours. The impact shook the trees behind them, dusting snow over Grýla’s charcoal fur and Brigid’s dark hair. The confined snowfall reminded me, crazily, of my Christmas gift, the snow globe that had belonged to Jack’s grandmother.

Brigid lowered her hand to the base of Grýla’s collar and fiddled with the clasp. Not that I’d ever given it much thought, but as I stared it down, death by mauling seemed one really awful way to go. Grýla was easily over eight feet long and three hundred pounds. Her huge round head housed canines that looked like ice picks, and her muscles rippled under her sleek fur. And I was her gift. What kind of sick, twisted mind makes a gift of . . . Gift? Wasn’t that the word Marik had used for my —

“Attack!” Brigid yelled.

It was a crazy, desperate measure, but it wasn’t like I had other options. From my pocket, I yanked out and snapped open the cape. Throwing it across my shoulder, I planted my feet in a boxer’s ready-set and held my arms out defensively. If the Snow Queen was real, why not the Yule Cat? Grýla, once released, arrowed through the snow, pushing off with long vaults of her lean muscles. She landed just a foot or two from me, and I threw my arm over my face and braced myself for the pounce. Nothing. I heard a growl and opened my eyes to the riled cat circling me and Jack.

I lowered my hands, surprised and emboldened by the success of my idea. “A gift from Queen Safira,” I called out, straightening the cape over my shoulders.

Again, Brigid’s shrill cackle pealed through the air. This was no joyous laughter; it was part shriek, part war cry. “You think you can outwit me?” she screamed, advancing toward us in a rage. “Jack is still mine. Mine to command. Mine to do with as I please. To prove it, I’ll drain the life out of him and make you watch. Come, Jack.” She clapped her hands.

Man, did I hate it when she clapped her hands. And I especially didn’t like the way she said Jack was hers. He wasn’t: he was mine. And if anyone was going to do any draining or proving, it was going to be me.

At her command, a slump-shouldered Jack trudged forward like some sort of scolded dog. A barrage of emotions hit me. I was scared out of my friggin’ wits. I was also so enraged by Brigid that I had to hold myself back from going at her like some kind of feral animal. And, on top of all that, zombie Jack was really starting to piss me off. As he passed, I grabbed him with my left hand, trying to hold him back. I looked up and saw Brigid flourish her crystalline blue dress and I remembered Hulda pointing out an ice-blue fabric that was perfect for the Snow Queen costume. All at once I was struck by the lack of vibrant colors in this world. Enough blues, sure, to fill the ocean and the occasional spruce or evergreen, but — other than that — nothing but grays, blacks, browns, and the endless panorama of white. Where was the marigold orange from the dreams I’d had of my unborn sister? Where was the chartreuse my pregnant mom was unwittingly drawn to? Where was the robin’s-breast, color-of-the-heart red of my amma’s dress that I wore to Homecoming? I was seized with a furious desire to enliven the anemic landscape. Fiery orange. Earthy chartreuse. Blood red. Blood red! I grasped the shelling knife from my pocket and, with a swift and wild movement, plunged it into Jack’s thumb, slicing from the tip to clear across the base of his palm. Ruby-red blood poured out like paint, splattering my cape and the milk-white snow. Jack gave me a withering, shocked look and fell to his knees, clutching the gushing wound to his chest. The skies opened up with a bolt of lightning as if the gods themselves had been summoned. Grýla bounded away with a yowl. And Brigid screamed like it had been her I’d slashed.