by Wendy Delsol
Brigid took a seat at the head of the table, making a great production out of settling her gown. She lifted a small glass bell and rang it with a wimpy side-to-side shake. I watched as a hunched figure shuffled into the room and dropped into the chair to Brigid’s right.
“Eiswein,” Brigid said with a clap of her hands.
From our line of servers, a woman stepped forward. She hurried over to the table and lifted Brigid’s goblet. Upending it, she carefully dipped it into a shallow bowl. Even from across the room, I could see it had a sparkly rim. The server did the same to the other glass and then poured from a silver carafe into first Brigid’s and then her companion’s crystal goblets. The eiswein — ice wine? — was clear, so it hardly looked like wine to me. And was that a salt rim? Sugar rim? After a single sip, Brigid twisted her glass against the light. “Snowflakes: no two the same, and one here on Niflheim is like one hundred million on Midgard.”
A snow rim, I should have guessed. But the conversion formula? Even my mathematician mom would be impressed by that one.
Brigid looked at her guest, who remained impassive. She shrugged as if nothing could spoil her mood. “An excellent vintage. Skål,” she said, holding her glass out expectantly.
“Skål,” her guest replied in a half-dead voice, lifting his head for the first time and clinking his glass against Brigid’s.
My heart took a brief out-of-body. I heard wind rushing through the open hole in my chest. Jack. Brigid’s lifeless dinner guest was Jack. It took every muscle bundling together in restraint not to rush to him in aid and comfort. How could this listless creature be Jack?
“Congratulations on another day of progress, Jack,” Brigid said, setting her wineglass on the table. “With your help — today’s storms — we are closer than ever to our goal.” She placed her hand on his forearm. “You’re exhausted, I see, but know that your sacrifices are appreciated.” She gave his arm a tap and removed her hand.
Storms? I remembered the strange activity I’d seen atop the mountain. And sacrifices? Not the kind of thing that ever worked out well for the offeree. Just ask the proverbial lamb.
Even from where I stood, I could hear the emptiness of her words. She was gloating, not thanking.
“Our work is not done, however,” Brigid said. “And I know you can do even better. Your skill is still developing. Your best efforts are ahead of you. I’m sure of it.”
Jack, with no acknowledgment, stared at his empty plate. I felt a lurch in my stomach. How could this shell of a being be Jack? I brought my hand to my mouth to stifle a gasp.
Brigid cast a glance toward our ranks. I went rigid with fear. Had she noticed my movement? Her gaze, thankfully, pinpointed the other end of our line.
“Soup,” she said, again clapping her hands like the despot she was and triggering one of the servants to jump to attention.
I stole a look at my neighbor, who remained impassive. Was I the only one who wanted to cuff those clappy hands of hers? For now, I reminded myself that invisibility was key. A brown broth was ladled into Brigid’s and Jack’s bowls. They supped in silence. He ate with his left hand, awkwardly clanging the spoon against the bowl, while his right lay listless in his lap. Meanwhile, my stomach lurched in pain and confusion. How could he sit there and eat with her? How could he do her bidding?
As if in reply, Brigid resumed her conversation. “What a stroke of luck it’s been discovering you, Jack. More than luck, I’d suggest. Predestined by the fates.” With this she gestured toward the large tapestry of the ice-covered world. “And to think, so recently I’d thought all hope was lost.” She interlaced her fingers and steepled them under her chin. “Soon, all the worlds will pay the consequences of their actions. Not only will we reverse Midgard’s ignorant and destructive ways, but we will have the means to bring their lands and Vatnheim’s waters under the beautiful cover of Niflheim’s mantle.” She gazed at Jack with a beatific shine to her eyes. “Permafrost at last. Won’t that be lovely, Jack?”
Jack’s spoon moved broth from his bowl to his mouth in a mechanical rhythm.
“You didn’t answer me, Jack.”
She tried to keep her tone light, as if it were all about pretty snow scenes, but her rigid posture conveyed otherwise.
“Yes,” he said.
“And with conquest we will never again suffer decline because of another land’s excesses.”
Conquest. Them would be the consequences.
“Never again,” Jack said in that spooky deadpan voice of his.
“And to think, there were forces upon Midgard that thought they were equal to me. It’s quite laughable.” Except Brigid didn’t crack even the tiniest of smiles. I thought of my beloved Hulda and how old and frail and near-death she was.
“Laughable,” Jack said, his eyes as empty as his words.
“And your distant cousins, Jack, the Jötunn — the Frost Giants — are poised to return. How I’ve hated to see our lands separated by seas for all these years. But the temperatures are dropping, and the ice is thickening by the hour. Soon, very soon, it will be solid enough for the Jötunn to return. With their help, the snjóflóð will be possible.” She trawled her spoon across the surface of the bowl. “Then you understand how urgent your task is. We need to strike while the portals are still vulnerable.”
Jötunn? Frost Giants? That didn’t sound good. How giant? And vulnerable portals? “Vulnerable” had been the word Grim had used that awful night with Wade. I had no idea what a snjoflóð was, but it didn’t take much to guess that none of this was good. Not good at all.
Suddenly, a roar filled the air, its reverberation shaking the stone floor, and some kind of huge, saber-toothed prehistoric creature lunged into the room. I whipped my head side to side, expecting some kind of panic to break out among my coworkers. Nothing. Nonetheless, this was not a welcome development. Because a spellbound Jack, a power hungry, revenge-driven Snow Queen, and ice-crossing Frost Giants weren’t enough to contend with. The beast was a coal-black leopard or maybe a jaguar or panther. It wasn’t like I had much experience with the feline family, despite being a Kat myself, but somehow this seemed a cat of its own class. An ice panther? A black tiger? Kingdom, phylum, genus, species — whatever. The point was it was a several-hundred-pound man-eater capable of reducing this line of ours by one with a single slash of its meaty paw. Come to think of it, what were we lined up for anyway?
I must have flinched or skunked some sort of fear pheromone into the air, because the cat stopped, locked eyes with me, and snarled.
“Grýla, come here,” Brigid said, clapping her hands and not even bothering to look at which of her laborers the cat had snapped at.
OK, so that clappy thing of hers had its upside. And Grýla — where had I heard that name?
The cat wrested its gaze from me, languidly padded over to Brigid’s chair, and dropped its sinewy rump to the floor in a well-trained sit. Brigid trailed her hand over its bigger-than-a-beach-ball head and stroked with her long tapered fingers.
“Good girl,” she said. “Nice kitty.”
Grýla arched her head in subordination, but I wasn’t convinced of her being either “good” or “nice.” That cat was black to its core. I could smell it from across the room. On cue, I sneezed. The cat popped to a stand.
Crap.
“Sit,” Brigid said.
Grýla’s angry eyes searched me out.
“Sit, I said.” Brigid’s tone had lost its here-kitty sweetness.
The beast paced back and forth in front of Brigid’s chair and shook her big blimpy head from side to side, casting agitated glances in my direction, but she sat.
Clearly, something about me raised the cat’s hackles, and as far as hackles went, hers were long and pointy and ready to pounce. I wasn’t going to wait around for dessert, the course I feared I’d become. I slipped behind the drapery panel, inched my way toward the arched passageway, slipped around the corner, and streaked out of there like a next-up-on-the-chopping-block c
hicken.
Behind me, I heard an angry feline roar, dishes clatter to the stone floor, and an angry shout from Brigid. I burst panting and gasping into the kitchen and was met by none other than old Hawk-Eyes. With surprising force, she collared me and hoisted me off my feet.
Dang it all. Could I never catch a break? If it weren’t wild beasts, then it was snoop-minded old bats. The Grims of the worlds — plural — were out to get me. I was sure of it.
Suspecting I’d be turned over to Brigid, I did what I could to fight and flail. Unfortunately, I was no match for the squat kitchen marm, and next thing I knew, I was airborne and falling down a long, dark chute.
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 inter
nal 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.