The Elf of Frostisen

by Dent Nagle, Megan

  The Elf of Frostisen

  A novelette

  By

  Megan Dent Nagle

  Copyright © 2016 by Megan Dent Nagle

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

  Patrick was positive the man sitting next to him was yelling at the top of his lungs. His neck muscles were wound tight like a coil, and he was waving his arms in an exaggerated motion as he pointed to something outside the window. Patrick just nodded politely at his host, even though he couldn’t hear a word the man was saying. The deafening rumble of the Cessna 208 was getting louder as the plane began its descent, and Patrick’s fear of crashing into one of the surrounding mountains intensified with it. His stomach lurched forward from the changing cabin pressure and his unadulterated fear of flying.

  As the plane prepared to land at the single runway airport in Narvik, Norway, Patrick surveyed the remote country bordering the Arctic Circle. The Scandinavian Mountains to the west were rocky and doused in gray mist, while the famous Norwegian fjords, caused by glacial erosion thousands of years ago, overlooked icy lakes that seemed frozen in time. Overall, the terrain was menacing for Patrick to behold.

  Snow covered roofs and asphalt roads began to pebble Narvik’s rocky shore as the airport landing strip drew closer. Patrick closed his eyes and braced for the plane’s turbulent landing. He hated flying. Soon he felt the impact of the Cessna hit the ground, and he heard the squeal of burning rubber against the gravel. The violent landing threw him back into his seat before they slammed to a halt. His host sitting next to him gave him a debonair smile once the plane engines had finally quieted.

  “Welcome to Narvik, Doctor!”

  ***

  “How far is the university from here?” Patrick asked his host, whose name was Stig. They had exited the airport and were now seated inside a taxi that was rumbling down the street.

  “About ten minutes,” the man replied in his choppy accent.

  Patrick was already a world-renowned anthropologist who’d spent the last five years uncovering Native American artifacts along the San Xavier Indian Reservation in Arizona. He had been flown to Norway by the University of Narvik to analyze a set of fossilized remains that had been discovered outside the small village of Solheim. The village lay several miles southeast of Narvik, beyond the slow moving glacier Frostisen. Stig was a history professor at the university who’d volunteered to be Patrick’s point of contact while he was visiting Norway.

  “Unfortunately, the university doesn’t have a full medical program, but we offer nursing courses,” Stig explained with unnecessary enthusiasm. “Hopefully we should have everything you need to do a basic analysis on the remains.”

  “Why wasn’t the skeleton transported to the University in Oslo, especially since you all don’t have the proper tools for examination?” Patrick asked in annoyance. “I’d rather they had flown me to the capitol instead of bringing me to this frozen wasteland.”

  Patrick could tell he’d slightly offended his gracious host, but Stig just shrugged. “Guess they wanted to bring you in first to verify the bones’ authenticity before paying the fancy officials to come confiscate it.” He tapped the cabbie on the shoulder, said something in Norwegian then looked at Patrick.

  “Would you like to retire to your hotel? I’m sure you’re jetlagged.”

  Outside, twilight had quickly encompassed the northern country and snow flurries had begun floating down from the sky. Patrick detested anything cold or the dark, and he was already irritated with the freezing temperatures and snow-capped mountains of Narvik.

  “No, I’d rather begin today,” the man said shortly. “The sooner we are done, the sooner I can go home.”

  ***

  Shortly after, Patrick was standing in one of the university’s mock hospital rooms. It was eerily silent, and empty beds lined the length of the room. Subway tiles covered the walls from floor to ceiling, and the ground was some sort of white linoleum. The entire room smelled of hospital disinfectant and bleach. Bright fluorescent bulbs hung in a row from the ceiling, their light reflecting off of the tile and making the doctor’s eyes hurt.

  A rolling mortician’s table had been set up in the middle of the room, and Stig brought the excavated bones to him in a wooden box. Once Patrick had spread a black sheet over the metal table, the doctor began to reassemble the bones of the ancient human into its proper, anatomical form.

  The skeleton was better preserved than Patrick would have thought; no wonder he’d been called in specifically for this. The bones were almost all accounted for, and he neatly pieced them together like a human puzzle on the table. Full of excitement, Patrick reached into the box, pulled out the scull, and placed it between the clavicles.

  Based on the robustness of the bones and shape of the pelvis, Patrick could tell his skeleton was an adult male. Patrick crossed his arms across his chest and stood back to admire the beautiful piece of human history. Something about the shape of the human skull suddenly caught the doctor’s attention as he stood back studying it. The cheekbones seemed a little misshapen and there were something odd in the location and structure of the temporal bone, where in a normal human the ear cartilage would be located. He walked back over to the table and carefully ran his fingers over the skull. He could feel the protrusion of bones, curved like the helix of a human ear, but it felt slightly different—narrower and converged at a point.

  Patrick frowned to himself, completely befuddled. He was a PhD holding historic anthropologist. How could he not know what this was?

  Patrick brought the heels of his hands to his eyes and rubbed them until they hurt. He been traveling for almost two days straight and was exhausted. Maybe he should have done as Stig suggested and retired early. When he opened his eyes, his blurred vision refocused on the stationary skeleton, and he felt his heart skid to a halt in his chest. He recognized the remains lying on the mortician’s table, although he’d never seen its complete image in anything other than fairy tales before.

  The hairs on the back of his neck stood on end, although it wasn’t the cold that caused it.

  ***

  “What’s Solheim like?” It was the next morning, and Patrick was eating breakfast with Stig at his hotel’s dinning room. The doctor looked over the rim of his cup of coffee, letting the steam warm his chilled face.

  “It’s a little town of nothing,” Stig mumbled with a mouth full of food. “And located a good day’s hike into the mountains.” He parked his forearm on the table and leaned into Patrick. “They say the town’s occupants are direct descendants of the Vikings. Their genealogy can be traced all the way back to Eric the Red himself. But they mostly keep to themselves.”

  “I want to go there,” Patrick declared. There was something outlandish about the fossils he’d been brought in to study, something he couldn’t quite put his finger on, and he wanted to find out what.

  “Why?” Stig asked.

  “I think talking to the villagers will help me develop a more accurate hypothesis about the skeleton.”

  “There are no roads that lead to Solheim. The only way to get there is by foot,” Stig explained with a pained expression. “We’d be venturing into the alpine wilderness where temperatures get well below freezing each night.”

  Patrick cringed outwardly when Stig said this. He was no outdoorsman. In fact, he averted all things recreational that didn’t involve a lab coat or a microscope. But he’d never seen fossils like these, and his curiosity burned like the embers of a fire.

  “So we go by foot,” Patri
ck replied doggedly, but deep down, he hoped they didn’t killed in the process.

  Somehow, in the small city of Narvik, Stig found a mountaineer tour guide willing to lead them on their journey into the wilderness. At the crack of dawn, equipped with a backpack, snowshoes, and walking poles, the three men began their journey through the Scandinavian mountains to the secluded town of Solheim.

  ***

  Patrick had never been so cold in his entire life. As the entourage gained altitude hiking up the mountainous terrain, icy mistrals beat ruthlessly against his body. He wore UV goggles and a scarf over his face to ward off frostbite, but it didn’t seem to help. Surprisingly, Stig seemed at ease trekking through the unknown regions of rocky wilderness. He chatted pleasantly with their guide while they stomped through the compacted snow.

  It seemed like they’d been climbing the same massif for an eternity, and Patrick’s legs burned as he exerted his physical aptitude beyond what he was normally accustomed to. He was beginning to trail further and further behind Stig and the guide. Finally, Stig turned around and addressed him from the craggy summit several yards in front of him.

  “Come look, Doc,” Stig yelled over his shoulder with a wide grin. “Solheim lies just down below.”

  Patrick felt relief wash over him. He leaned heavily on his walking poles as he struggled to reach the team’s final peak.

  The town was located in a small valley of the Scandinavian mountains, and to Patrick’s chagrin, they still had several more miles to traverse. While going up a mountain wearing snowshoes was strenuous enough, going down, especially considering Patrick’s lack of coordination was downright dangerous.

  “Just a little more ways to go,” Stig said with a pat on his shoulder.

  Patrick hesitated, terrified of the near vertical slope he was expected to take on, but he braced his knees and carefully placed one snowshoe in front of the other. He was halfway down the mountain when heard it; it sounded like a freight train running full speed ahead on a steel rail. He stopped dead when he saw his guide point to something behind him. The man wore an expression of pure horror.

  “Avalanche!” the guide screamed.

  Before Patrick could turn around, the ground was ripped out from underneath him and a wall of snow pummeled him from behind. A sea of hard packed ice was speeding down the mountain, sweeping all three men up like the currents of an ocean and pulling them underneath its force. Patrick screamed and flailed his arms in a vain attempt to stop the assault. A white world spun around him until he could no longer tell which way was up or down. Without warning, Patrick felt his stomach torpedo into his throat as the sensation of freefalling took over. His body plunged downward with no end in sight until finally he made impact with the ground, and his white world turned black.

  ***

  When Patrick finally awoke, he was certain he was still wandering through the dream world, for the environment in which he found himself was like nothing he’d ever seen before. Whatever dwelling enclosed him was made entirely of ice, carved and polished as smooth as glass. The doctor was underground, that much was obvious. He was lying on an ice bed covered in furs, but he wasn’t cold.

  “We weren’t sure you’d survive,” a voice said from the corner of the room. Patrick jumped and swung his head around to see who was addressing him. He saw a man and a woman leaning nonchalantly against the wall, studying him. Both had hair as yellow as corn and eyes like glittering topaz. They were the most beautiful people Patrick had ever seen.

  The woman advanced quickly towards him. The man quickly followed in her footsteps.

  “How are you feeling?” she asked as she stood next to his bed.

  “Like I got hit by a car,” Patrick croaked. The woman reached out her hand to touch his forehead.

  “My name is Portia,” she explained. “And this is my brother, Asmund.” She indicated the man behind her. “We found you not two days past, the victim of an avalanche.”

  “I remember,” Patrick replied as the memories of his voyage to Solheim quickly returned. “Did you find any others? There should have been two more men…”

  “We found none other than you,” Portia explained gently. “I’m sorry.”

  Patrick gulped hard as he thought of Sig and their guide being buried alive by the wrathful avalanche. It made his head hurt.

  “Where am I?” the doctor asked. Portia opened her mouth to reply, but Asmund grabbed her by the wrist and said something in a foreign language. They argued back and forth for a while before Portia finally heaved a frustrated sigh.

  “I cannot divulge anymore to you,” she explained, “not without taking you to see our father first. He is the ruler of this dominion. Are you well enough to walk?”

  Patrick nodded, but when he placed his feet on the floor and attempted to stand, they immediately buckled underneath him. Asmund barked a laugh.

  “He’s nothing but a weakling,” Asmund scoffed.

  “Let me help you,” Portia said, grabbing Patrick’s elbow.

  “As if you could,” he replied breathlessly. She gave him an incredulous look, then with the strength of an Olympic body builder, lifted him back up with ease. Patrick’s face burned in humiliation, and Asmund laughed again.

  Before they moved on, the blonde haired man addressed him. “You are an outsider,” he said. “As such, you have no right to look upon the world we have worked so hard to keep hidden.”

  With that, he withdrew a piece of cloth from his parka and threw it over Patrick’s eyes like a blindfold. Once the blackness fell over him, the brother and sister escorted Patrick, like a detained prisoner, even deeper into their strange world.

  ***

  Patrick didn’t know how long he walked, and a stab of fear accompanied every step he took in the darkness. While both Portia and Asmund looked like models that had just stepped off of the cover of a Vogue Magazine, he wasn’t entirely sure he could trust them. Finally, he felt his escorts halt.

  “What is this?” a mocking voice boomed in the darkness.

  Asmund ripped off Patrick’s blindfold with more force that was necessary, leaving his eyes vulnerable to the sting of cold air and the darkness of underground. The doctor panicked for a second as his eyes adjusted to the dim cerulean light permeating the ceiling. When the images before him came into focus, his muscles went weak and his head became dizzy.

  He was standing in the middle of a massive ice cave, as big as an outdoor amphitheater. The ceilings were carved out into deep arches, and lavish chandeliers hung from the roof. Winding staircases ran to the left and right, and elegant ice sculptures decorated every corner of the cave. Patrick couldn’t tell how far the underground city went, for its architecture was eventually lost in shadow.

  Large ice pillars marked a straight path leading to a dais where a man dressed in furs sat seated on a throne. He was as beautiful as Portia and Asmund, although his face was as hard and frigid as the ice he sat on. The Ruler’s dais was flanked on either side by dozens of sentinels. Despite the subzero temperatures, the sentinels were naked from the waist up, except for a vambrace on either arm and a two thick straps that crisscrossed over their broad chests. Patrick squinted into the light, and swore when he saw double glints of steel blinking over the sentinels’ shoulders. They were armed with blades. Not guns, but blades.

  “What’ve you brought me today, my children?” the Ruler continued to pry. His eyes bore into Patrick’s like a drill. “Another interloper here to expose us to the outside world?” He clicked his tongue. “When will your filthy kind learn to respect that which is kept hidden?

  “Father, he is not here by his own doing,” Portia spoke up before Patrick could. “He fell into the crevice outside of Solheim. He was not venturing to expose us, I don’t think. I just couldn’t leave him there to die.”

  “You’re a foolish girl, Portia. He is of no value to us. None of them are. I would have considered letting him go. But now that he’s seen our world, I cannot let him leave.”

  It wa
s then Patrick noticed that the Ruler was not sitting alone atop his dais. There was a girl perched behind him, and she was glaring at Patrick like a lion studying its prey before lunging in for the kill. Her unbound hair was the color of liquid mercury and it lay against her ivory skin that seemed to glow like starlight amidst the gloom.

  The Ruler narrowed his eyes at Patrick then growled, “Guards! Get rid of the outsider.”

  Two rows of sentinels marched forward like robots, pulling hidden daggers from their vambrace as a means to subdue him. Fear coursed through Patrick’s veins. “No!” he yelled out weakly, but a pair of iron hands had already gripped him and forced him to his knees.

  The Ruler was leaning back in his chair with a smirk on his face, as if Patrick’s death would cause him tremendous amusement. Suddenly, the girl on the dais leaned down and whispered something into the Ruler’s ear. Whatever she said to him left him flustered and aggravated, for he responded by hollering, “Stop! Do not touch him!”

  The sentinels halted in their tracks and released Patrick so that he fell forward on his hands and keens. They backed several paces away from him and sheathed their weapons.

  The girl came flying down the stairs of the ice dais until she was standing right in front of him, her long hair trailing behind her like a kite in the wind. She was, by far, the most beautiful woman Patrick had ever seen; it put Portia and Asmund’s beauty to shame.

  “You must accept my apologies,” the woman sang. “We don’t receive a lot of outsiders here.” She stopped and studied him. “My name is Aurora. If it’s asylum you seek then I will grant it to you. As long as I say so, no one here will hurt you.” She glanced over her shoulder at the Ruler and lowered her voice. “Will you walk with me for a bit? I’d like to hear the story of how you got here. ” Her beauty was so overwhelming that Patrick couldn’t find his voice, so he nodded back like a mute.

  Aurora grabbed his elbow and steered him away from the Ruler and the sentinels, leading him back the way he’d came. Patrick kept stealing side glimpses at the woman. He was almost certain he recognized her, although he’d never seen someone so angelic in his life.