In Which Tala Dunks on an Ice Maiden
Her phone was still useless by the time Tala arrived back at Elsmore High. With the game over and most of the students at the bonfire—the ones that hadn’t fled yet, anyway—the school was as silent as a mausoleum. Surprisingly, the doors were open; some intrepid custodian had forgotten to lock up for the night.
She was just in time, spotting the firebird as it entered through one of the windows and, based on what she knew of the school layout, into the boys’ locker room.
She’d hoped that leaving the bonfire would free up any network congestion problems, but the lines were down all over town, and she couldn’t even get a bar. Either her phone was damaged, or whatever was disrupting everything else had also been intelligent enough to cut off access to all communication in Invierno.
It was the Snow Queen. It must be the Snow Queen. Who else could it be, especially after that ice wave that had tried to kill her and the firebird? The thought scared her. She wanted to head back home and find her parents or search for Lola Urduja and the others, but she was also sure she’d only be walking into an empty house. They must have caught wind of the weird things going on by now.
Cool. Supercool.
Tala was still shaking as she traveled down the darkened corridor. She knew coming here alone was a bad idea, and she was tempted to run back to the desert. At least she wouldn’t be alone there.
But Alex. If she turned tail and ran now, what was going to happen to Alex? Sure, he was a dumbass. But it was also partly her fault for being best friends with a dumbass.
A warm glow filled the hallway, followed by a soft, squeaking noise. Tala found herself looking down at the firebird, who stared back up at her and waggled its tail. She breathed easier.
“Great. What are you up to now? Did you find Alex?”
The firebird grinned through its beak and hopped away, skidding to a stop at the end of the corridor and ambling into the boys’ locker room. It poked its head out a few seconds later and chirped at her, impatient.
A loud shuffling sound echoed down the hallway. The firebird ducked back into the room, and Tala spun around, heart pounding.
“Langdon!” she gasped, relieved at the sight of the round-faced boy moving toward her. Langdon Schillings was captain of the school’s chess club, the type who always had a good word to say about everyone. On his heels was Vivi Summers, the editor-in-chief for the Elsmore Gazette.
The smile on her face froze when both drew nearer. The duo moved at a peculiar lurching gait, dragging their legs like they had difficulty controlling them. Their skin was oddly blue-tinted, and the color of their eyes were a strange white, leached of all hues to the point that their irises were nearly transparent.
The Langdon she remembered had green eyes, and behind her rimmed glasses, Vivi’s had been brown.
More students appeared: Kenneth Somerset, her lab partner for one semester; Rhett McGowan, a boy she was in history with; Sophie Alcantara, the student council secretary, and many more. Eerily silent, they moved toward her with the same blank, colorless eyes.
“Guys?” Tala backed away. “Guys?”
There was only silence, and the sounds of dragging feet, as if their own body weight was a sudden and unaccustomed hindrance.
Tala wheeled around and ran, nearly stumbling when another half-dozen students poured in from the other end of the hall, blocking the exit.
“Alex!” she yelled, panicked, but there was no reply.
“Spellbreaker.” The whisper rose from Vivi’s lips, the sibilant hiss a stark opposite to the girl’s normally timid tones.
“Spellbreaker.” The murmur spread, a strange fervent hunger glittering in the otherwise expressionless faces. “Spellbreaker.”
Tala barreled into the boys’ locker room, slamming the door closed behind her.
The firebird nudged at her feet, crinkled its beak up at her, and flew off toward the row of lockers. “Thanks a lot,” Tala snapped after it. “You should be protecting me too, you jerk!”
From behind the lockers came a noise that sounded suspiciously like a raspberry.
Tala dragged a long bench across the doorway to block the entrance, then piled on a few more chairs for good measure.
There was a quiet breeze coming from somewhere, and she shivered. She didn’t remember the locker rooms being this cold.
The wind came again, stronger this time, and Tala felt her teeth chatter. She looked at her hands and saw, to her surprise, small puffs of air leaving her mouth as she exhaled.
“Hello?” The embarrassingly quavering echo of her voice bounced off the walls, so she doubled down and roared the next words out. “If this is some prank, then I swear by every Kardashian you know that I am going to…”
She stopped. There was movement at the other end of a row of lockers, an odd, scraping noise. Cautious, she crept toward the sound.
The air grew colder.
Tala was a practical girl. She got down on her hands and knees, pressing the side of her face against the floor, so she could peer through the gaps between the lockers and floor.
What she saw were a pair of feet, standing roughly three or so rows from where she knelt. The skin was an unhealthy blue. There was a quick, cracking sound every time it jerked forward, one foot twitching over the other in a parody of movement, and small particles were forming on the ground it had trodden on, leaving behind a path of glassy ice.
Tala’s heart felt as if it were threatening to punch its way out of her chest. Her rational mind argued against the existence of ghosts and the undead, but was promptly overridden by the part of her that stopped screaming inside her head long enough to remind her not only was there currently a firebird loose in the area, but she was also probably definitely being hunted down by a malicious Snow Queen, and therefore natural laws need not apply.
The pair of feet stood between her and the exit, which presented a problem. How fast could it run? Could she outrun it? Every ghost in every horror movie she had ever seen seemed to point to no.
The shuffling noises drew closer. She swallowed hard, pressing her back against a locker. For the first time in her life, she contemplated crawling willingly inside one.
The sudden clang of a locker door slamming shut nearly made her scream. But when she gathered enough courage to peek around the corner toward the noise, she only saw Alex, and relief spread through her. He was frowning at one of the lockers, jiggling at a combination lock. Much to her amazement, Lynn was also there, twiddling her thumbs nervously.
“You really don’t know what his combination is?” Alex asked her.
She shook her head. “I know where his locker is, but not that. I’m sorry…”
“That’s all right.” Alex looked around. “Are you there?” he asked aloud.
Tala started, but it was the firebird who moved, trotting out toward him.
“I’m gonna need a little help with this.”
The firebird complied. A sudden tornado of flame made short work of the lock, and the locker door fell open. Lynn screamed, jumping back. “How did you do that?” She quavered.
“I’ll explain everything later.” Alex reached in, wrinkling his nose, and tossed several pieces of dirty clothes out before finding a cell phone.
He thumbed through the screen, paused, and heaved a sigh of relief. “I don’t think he’s uploaded it yet. Must have been waiting to blackmail me first.”
“I don’t understand. What’s going on? Chris said that you were gay…”
“Lynn.” Alex spun, took her in his arms. “Thank you for everything,” he said gently. “And I’m really sorry. I don’t want you involved in any of this. If I were someone else, I would have asked you out.”
“Alex, what—”
He bent down and kissed her, cutting off her response.
Tala gasped. Alex, you asshole.
The poor girl’s mouth opened and closed like a fish who’d realized too late it was flopping on dry land. And then it firmed and expanded, even as her lips thinned and disappeared completely. Lynn’s skin began to take on greenish hues, her body shrinking until her clothes swallowed her up. The whole process lasted no more than a few seconds, until all Tala could see of Lynn Hughes was her tank top, discarded next to her skirt and underwear. From somewhere inside the strewn clothing something moved feebly and croaked.
“I really am sorry,” Alex told the frog sincerely, fishing it out and setting her gently on a nearby bench. “But I can’t have you remembering any of this.”
“What a wonderful curse, Your Highness.”
Tala stilled. So did Alex. A shape had formed at the opposite end of the room, air steaming around it. Before Alex could react, ice sprung up at his feet. Rapidly, it climbed past his ankles and calves, trapping him in place. Alex swore and struggled, fighting hard to break free. The firebird snarled, but a sudden blast of cold air sent it stumbling out of Tala’s vision.
A figure finally materialized. It had the face of a beautiful woman, with long white hair and pale skin. She wore a mantle made of green-tinged ice, whipped about by unseen winds. It was her feet that Tala had seen earlier, still bare, still that odd blue color. Everything about her looked cold and brittle. Her eyes were of the very lightest blue, devoid of all but the barest mazarine color, with irises so contracted, they were nothing more than small black dots. Her features had a grayish cast to them, and her waxy skin stretched tautly over her face, giving the appearance of an elastic, but still lovely skull. Thick tendrils of cold air floated about her as if she were enveloped in her own personal fog. She resembled the ice-like woman that had attacked her at the bonfire; different enough features, but created in much the same way.
“We’ve been looking for you for so long, Your Highness.” Her voice was harsh, cutting sharply through the air. “An unusual spell, your curse. But such an ingenuous one:
In shifting ice a prince you’ll kiss, and the first shall be forgiven;
The sword rises twice from palace stone, and the second shall be forgiven;
Pledge your love to the blackest flag, and the third shall be forgiven;
And then, my dear—and only then,
Shall you lift that which was forbidden.
“Is that not what the old witch told you?”
“That is none of your business, ice hag,” Alex snapped, though his face was pale.
The woman smiled knowingly. “Very little escapes my mistress’s notice. In her magnanimity, she has spared your life all this time, but now she has come to collect.”
She slid closer. “Do not be afraid, Your Highness,” she cooed, though the malevolence in her smile belied the words. “You will make a splendid addition to the mistress’s army once I am done. It is a gentle process and a painless reward.”
“I’d rather die than be that cold witch’s puppet!” Alex spat.
The lady laughed. It was not a pleasant sound. “You will learn to love her with all your very being. You will live the rest of your life solely for her pleasure. Already this day I have taken many outlander children for the mistress. Today, they assume their place in the Winter Army, and you too shall join their ranks. Do you feel her love creeping up your veins, Your Highness?” The ice crackled, sliding past Alex’s knees to his hips. “Will you deny the queen?”
The woman held up a glittering shard of glass the size of a large grape. Alex frantically redoubled his efforts to free himself.
What do I do? What do I do? What do I do? Tala had her sticks still, but her palms were clammy, sweating. She looked around, spotted a lone basketball on a nearby bench.
“Open your eyes, Your Highness,” the woman crooned. Alex tried to twist away, but the woman caught his chin, setting the glass piece over the boy’s right eye. “And stop struggling so. It will take but a moment, and you shall be free and exalted above all.”
For once, Tala’s agility failed her. Her foot hit a patch of slippery ice, and she slipped, landing flat on her back. Her momentum and the icy tracks continued to propel her forward, sliding past the startled Alex and the woman with panicked, high-pitched yelps. She hit the row of opposite lockers with a loud, metallic thunk that seemed to echo throughout the room, as if to further mock her inadequacy.
“Tala,” Alex groaned.
“Ah,” the lady whispered, her smile cruel. “An eavesdropper.”
Tala scrambled to her feet. Or tried to. Her feet refused to listen, and both legs shot out, in opposite directions. She tried to regain her balance, but continued to slide along the wet floor a few more seconds before finally finding a spot that still held friction. She swallowed and tried to reassure herself that she still had the basketball in her hand, like this was an advantage. “Let him go!” she ordered.
The woman’s face split into another grin, wider than a normal face allowed for. Her freezing ice-blue eyes glittered, the irises relegated to even tinier pinpricks. “You smell like irrelevance and spit,” she purred. “No whiff of magicks and spells to protect yourself from me. Is this the best you can do, Your Highness? A little useless commoner to defend your honor?”
“I said let him go!” Tala tried her best to appear threatening. A chihuahua, she thought miserably, would have been more intimidating.
The lady drew nearer in response, her hands forming talons. “I shall enjoy sucking the marrow from your bones, little commoner. I will tear out your soul from your twitching body, draw out your agony for a hundred years and back. I will—”
Ice spiraled out from her fingers toward her just as Tala threw the basketball as hard as she could. The ball shattered its way through the attempted attack, the spell crumbling upon impact, and hit the woman’s face with an unexpected and terrifying crack…and stuck there. The lady toppled backward, hitting the wall behind her not with a loud thud, but with the sound glass made when it shattered. Alex had stopped struggling, staring at Tala in horror.
“Uh,” Tala said. “I wasn’t expecting that. Did I kill her?”
“You ninny!” Alex hissed. “Run! She’s an ice maiden!”
“A what?”
“You’re being a huge butt! I said run!”
“You’re the butt, disappearing without telling anyone! And I’m not going to leave you here!” The boy was already blue, teeth chattering. Tala tried to free his legs from the blocks of ice jutting out from the floor, bashing desperately at them with her sticks. Each swing broke off a few chunks, but her progress was not fast enough for her liking.
“T-tala! Leave!”
“You can’t honestly think I’m gonna—”
“Foolish mortal!”
The now-frozen basketball fell to the floor, shattering into a million pieces. The woman’s hand was clasped against her face, and something liquid and colorless was dripping down her fingers. The wound on her cheek gaped, black and empty and devoid of blood, as if the woman herself were hollow. Her skin was now translucent and silvery. Underneath that pale, mirrorlike face, she glittered, like multitudes of tiny stars were contained inside of her.
A burst of wind flung Tala across the room. The ice maiden’s face twisted and stretched around her head, and Tala found herself staring at something not quite human.
Then the cold assaulted her, cutting air from her lungs. She pawed at her throat, choking.
A faint rustle, a quick flap of wings, and the firebird was there, hovering inches away from what was left of the woman’s face. Its beak yawned, and its body shimmered.
The ice maiden shrieked, raising her hand, but she was half a second too slow.
A blazing ball of fire enveloped the creature. Screaming, she stumbled, but could only manage a few steps before crumpling to the ground, water trickling out from every part of her body. The winds died down as she melted, the noise falling away.
By the time Tala worked up the courage to approach, nothing remained of the ice maiden but some small tattered strips of cloth, a few puddles of water and melting snowflakes, clear and sharp, embedded deeply into the tiles.