by Foley, E. G.
Dani was appalled. “No Christmas?”
Isabelle nodded. “She threatened poor Santa and Mrs. Claus that one day, the whole world would forget that Christmas had ever existed. Then she left Santa’s compound and invited herself here to stay in a guest wing of her brother’s castle.”
“No wonder Humbug ran straight to her,” Jake said. “They sound like kindred souls. He also decided he hates Christmas and ran away from Santa.”
“Erase Christmas?” Dani shook her head, still trying to absorb the Snow Maiden’s unthinkable proposal. “But it’s Baby Jesus’ birthday!”
“Look, our main concern right now is getting out of here,” Jake reminded them. “What about Jack Frost? Did the penguins tell you anything about him? Maybe he’s more reasonable than his sister.”
“Er, no, sorry,” Isabelle said dryly. “According to the penguins, Santa’s son and heir apparent is a bit of a rowdy hellion. He’s eighteen. He hasn’t been home in days. The penguins said the last they heard, he was having a skiing party on top of the Matterhorn with some of the Valkyries.”
“Valkyries?” Jake and Archie burst out in unison.
The boys glanced meaningfully at each other.
“Let’s hope he doesn’t make them angry,” Archie muttered after a moment.
“You mean like we did?” Jake answered wryly.
After their recent visit to the land of Norse giants and Viking legends, the boys still couldn’t decide if the dazzling beauty of the tall, gorgeous warrior women outweighed the horror of the hag form the Valkyries could take when they decided to turn nasty.
Just then, the silvery jingling of little bells heralded the arrival of Humbug at the bottom of the stairs in his new jester hat.
“Would you stop dawdling? Get down here!” he demanded. “Her Highness is waiting! And she doesn’t like to wait.”
Jake glanced at his companions, who were staring at the elf in astonishment. They had not yet seen Humbug’s transformation.
The little fellow looked more annoyed at the world than ever. “Hurry up.”
“Why does he look like that?” Dani whispered.
“I forgot to tell you, Snow Maiden’s keeping him. She’s not letting him go on to Halloween Town.” He shrugged. “I guess she wanted him to match her décor.”
“She’d better not try something like that on us,” Archie mumbled.
“Come on. We’d better go before she sends those creepy toy soldiers up to fetch us,” Dani said.
“Follow my lead when we meet with her,” Isabelle advised. “We’re the closest in age. I’ll try to make friends with her, girl to girl.”
“Be my guest,” Jake said under his breath.
The ice-slicked stairs were too dangerous to walk down, but someone had already thought of that and had had the good sense to have an ice slide built right next to them.
The kids whizzed down it one by one, while Red flew down to the lower level. Humbug watched and waited below, looking annoyed as ever.
Then the little jester-elf led the way back to the great hall, his bells jangling. “Your guests, Maiden,” he announced them in a grumpy tone as they rejoined their captor.
She turned with a swirl of snowflakes flying from her long white skirts. Jake was glad she had not put her eerie white mask back on. For some reason, it unnerved him.
“There you all are. Finally!” She skated closer. “I trust you enjoyed your rooms. Feeling better? Good,” she said, indifferent to the answer.
Cold-hearted, thought Jake.
“Now then. First things first—and you had better tell me the truth. Are you spies or aren’t you?”
“No,” they said in unison.
“Excellent! I have decided to believe you. If you’re lying to me, you’ll be sorry. But provided you’re telling the truth, now we can get down to the main reason you’re here.”
“What’s that?” Isabelle asked in the friendliest possible tone.
“To have fun, of course!” the Snow Maiden exclaimed, clapping eagerly, much to their surprise. “My brother’s not the only one who can have friends, after all. My blood is as royal as his own. Every princess needs an entourage.”
“Entourage?” Archie echoed.
“But you don’t do me any credit in those clothes,” she declared, shaking her head with a frown. “Let’s see if we can make some improvements here.”
“Oh, no…” After what he’d seen her do to Humbug, Jake started backing away.
“W-what do you mean?” Isabelle asked.
She flashed an oh-so-sophisticated smile. “I’m going to make you all look cool.”
Before anyone could protest, she tapped them all with her snowflake wand, one by one, in quick succession.
Just as had occurred with Humbug, they were each engulfed in a chilly little whirlwind of magic snow.
It was dizzying, rather like being inside a snow globe when somebody was shaking it. When the puff of magic cleared, they looked around at each other in shock.
Humbug stifled a laugh.
But the Snow Maiden folded her arms across her chest and nodded proudly. “Oh, that’s good. Take a look.” She nodded toward the ice mirrors all around the hall.
They stared at themselves in disbelief.
“I have purple hair!” Dani shouted when she finally found her voice.
Snow Maiden clapped her hands. “I know! You look adorable!”
Dressed in a puffy white satin coat that ended at her waist, a short lavender skirt, and thick white stockings, with ice skates on her feet, Dani turned away from the mirror with a look on her face like she very well might cry—until she saw Jake.
Who looked just as silly, if not worse.
Snow Maiden had dressed him up like some sort of Prince Charming ponce in a white military coat with gold epaulets and a shiny black belt. He had dark blue breeches on and black leather riding boots. Thankfully, she had not put ice skates on him, or he’d have already gone sprawling face first on the floor.
He supposed he should be grateful for that, but he could not get over what she had done to his hair. She had put some sort of frosty white freeze on it so that the longish blond forelock that usually hung over his eye had been lifted in a swooping wave that curled out from his forehead like a ski jump.
He looked perfectly bizarre, but then, the Snow Maiden seemed to like bizarre.
She was terribly fashionable.
Hand on hip, she turned to Isabelle. “Now you look like a friend who’s cool enough for me. What is your name?”
“Isabelle…Bradford,” she mumbled, unable to tear her shocked gaze off her own reflection.
Snow Maiden thought this over. “Hmm, you’ll need a new name, as my right-hand person in my entourage. Henceforth, you will be known as Ice-a-belle. Much cooler.”
Izzy’s golden ringlets had gone magically into a complicated, upswept hairdo of the sort that only older girls back home were allowed to wear.
Her long, sparkly gown was an understated pink shade, with long, tight sleeves. But she was appalled at how the front of her princess-like overskirts were split to allow her to skate freely.
Instead of a ruffled petticoat underneath, she had only been given pink woolen leggings like Dani’s white ones.
Isabelle was mortified. Back home, no one ever even glimpsed the outline of a respectable female’s leg, other than when young ladies wore bicycle bloomers, which were considered very shocking.
The only other exception was with the sort of costumes worn by female performers in the circus—acrobats, tightrope walkers, and such. A gentleman’s daughter simply did not wear such things, but Snow Maiden either didn’t know or didn’t care.
Or, as Jake suspected, she just liked being shocking for its own sake.
She was beaming with pride at her creation. “Well, Ice-a-belle, what do you think? How smart you look! It’s very avant-garde.”
“I feel indecent!” She tried to hold her split skirts back together, no doubt dreading to think
what her governess would say.
“Don’t worry, you can’t see anything,” her brother assured her with a sympathetic frown.
“And look at this clever young fellow! Ice-a-belle, who is this?” Snow Maiden asked.
“My brother, Archie,” she managed, still red-faced with embarrassment.
“How did you do that?” Archie asked Her Highness.
“By magic, of course. We Clauses have elven blood.”
“I see.”
Snow Maiden had put the boy genius in gray wool trousers, a warm blazer of dark purple corduroy, a silver scarf, and a gray waistcoat covered in white snowflakes. Actually, Archie didn’t look half bad. Except for his dark hair, which stuck up in all directions in frosted spikes, as though he had just given himself a mild electric shock with one of his scientific experiments.
Even Red had not escaped the Snow Maiden’s passion for giving people high-fashion makeovers. The Gryphon wore a royal blue waistcoat like the one on her polar bear; the lordly yellow ascot around his neck brought out the gold in his beak.
Cunning as she was, the Snow Maiden had also encrusted his wings with a thin layer of ice so he could not fly away.
“Becaw,” Red complained to Jake.
Who couldn’t agree more.
“Look here, Princess.” He turned indignantly to their captor. “I don’t know what you think you’re doing, but I demand you put us back to the way we were and let us go on our way.”
“Oh, you demand?” she echoed. “Sorry, did you think you were in charge here? How funny! What is your name?”
“I am Jake Everton, the Earl of Griffon. This is my Gryphon, Red, who goes with my title.”
“Cool.” Nodding, she looked him over in the most embarrassing fashion, from his feet up to his head, inspecting her handiwork. “Trust me, this is a big improvement. For one thing, these clothes have a magic spell on them that will help to keep you warm. Secondly, you look good. I’d almost call you a handsome boy.”
Jake was instantly flustered—enough to forget his demands for a second.
She laughed at him. “How old are you?”
“Twelve,” he answered warily.
“Ew.” The Snow Maiden grimaced.
“What’s wrong with being twelve?” he retorted as his cheeks turned even redder.
“Well, you’re much too young to be my beau. After all, I am sixteen,” she announced with a worldly air.
Jake scowled, the words on the tip of his tongue: Who ever said I want to be your stupid beau?
He wanted a girlfriend like he wanted a hole in his head.
But then he saw Ice-a-belle send him a warning look from behind Santa’s mad daughter and somehow he kept his mouth shut.
If Her Highness could do this to them in a good humor, he did not want to find out what she might do to them if she felt insulted.
She waved off her fleeting interest in him and turned away. “At least you’re as tall as me. Therefore, you will be my dancing partner at the ball tonight.”
“What ball?” Archie asked, slightly put out to find himself ignored, as usual, by a pretty girl.
Jake envied him, for this one was entirely spoiled and possibly demented.
“Oh, yes, entourage!” the Snow Maiden announced, beaming at them all. “We are going to have a great party tonight. Why should my brother be the one to have all the fun?”
Jake feigned ignorance. “Your brother?
“Jack Frost.” Snow Maiden rolled her eyes. “He’s such an idiot. He’s so irresponsible. He cannot even follow a schedule, you know. Half the time he sleeps in and forgets to end a blizzard he started a week ago. But just because he’s a boy, Father let him build this castle for his bachelor lodgings. He moved in here when he was my age. But can I have a place of my own? No, no, no, of course not. Because I’m a girl.”
“Maybe your grandparents just wanted to get him out of the house,” Dani piped up. Now that she had recovered from the shock of having purple hair, she set about trying to help Isabelle with their goal of getting on their captor’s good side. “I have older brothers, too, and they can be horrid to live with. They eat everything in sight and their feet stink.”
“Right you are! La, you are so cute, my little snowflake.” Snow Maiden put her arm fondly around the purple-haired ten-year-old. “Anyway, as you can see, the prince isn’t here. If Jack were at home, you’d see the blue snowflake light shining in the tower. He’s gone off with his friends again.” She heaved a sigh. “They never let me come along. I’ve had the whole castle to myself for days. It’s so dull. No wonder I’m bored silly. So let’s have some fun! What shall we do first?”
“Ahem, as much as we’d like to stay, Your Highness, I’m afraid we really must be on our way,” Jake said as tactfully as possible.
“Nonsense! You’re going to love being here with me.”
“No, really,” Jake insisted. “We must be on our way. We have to take Humbug back to Santa, and then get home to England to spend Christmas with our kin. They’re expecting us, y’see.”
“And we’ve agreed to be in the Christmas pageant back in our home village of Gryphondale. They’re counting on us,” Archie added with an earnest nod.
Snow Maiden’s eyes narrowed. “That is not my problem,” she said crisply. “Now then. How shall we amuse ourselves today?”
“Caw,” Red muttered.
Even the Gryphon could see they were getting nowhere.
“Er, what would you like to do, Your Highness?” Ice-a-belle asked politely.
“I know! What do you say to a few rounds of indoor bowling?”
Jake rolled his eyes, especially when this suggestion seemed to make Dani forget about the gravity of their situation.
Genuinely enthused, the purple-haired girl clapped her pink-mittened hands; she couldn’t seem to help herself. “I love bowling!”
Snow Maiden grabbed her hand. “Then come with me! Come along, all of you!”
Isabelle forced a smile and Archie nodded reluctantly, but Jake rolled his eyes as the Snow Maiden sailed off ahead of them, skating down another icy hallway.
How ridiculous to spend the day bowling in one of the castle’s sprawling, gilded, frozen staterooms, when he had serious business that needed to be handled!
Jake was beyond annoyed.
But then, who could resist a few games of bowls on a wintry day? Especially when they bowled with large snowballs, knocking over nervous penguins that Her Highness ordered into formation to serve as bowling pins.
“Just try to be patient,” Isabelle whispered to Jake while Archie took his turn, Dani and the Snow Maiden watching him, all smiles.
Jake growled. “I suppose if we keep her entertained throughout the day, eventually we’ll find our moment to escape.”
“We’d better be careful, Jake. She’s really desperate for some company. I wouldn’t put it past her to hurt us if she interprets our escape as us rejecting her. She’s not as tough as she’s trying to seem.”
He nodded in agreement. “Well, I’ll tell you one thing. I don’t fancy going up against that polar bear. Or those wolves. Or those creepy toy soldiers.”
“What about Humbug? We still don’t know where we’re going without him to show us the way,” Isabelle whispered.
They glanced over and saw the grumpy elf looking absolutely miserable in his new post as jester to the Snow Maiden. Every time she ordered him to tell a joke or make her laugh, he looked like he wanted to throw himself off a bridge.
“I think that little miscreant is as eager to get out of here as we are. At this point, I’m ready to make a deal with him,” Jake said. “Who cares if he wants to go and work in Halloween Town? I won’t stop him anymore, if he’ll work together with us, so we can all get out of here.”
“You’ll give up on collecting the reward?”
“Gladly, if he’ll just show us the way to Santa’s. Once we get there, we can ask for help and eventually get home. I mean, Santa’s sure to help us, don’t you t
hink?”
She nodded. “But you’re right. For now, we just need to bide our time.”
Then it was Jake’s turn to bowl.
He picked up a waiting snowball about the size of a snowman’s head and sent the nervous penguins an apologetic look. Down the lane, they squeezed their eyes shut, but braced themselves and held their ground as the ball came rolling at them.
A moment later, they scattered in all directions with a chorus of harried squawks.
“Strike!” Dani cheered.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Yule Be Sorry
Another couple of hours passed. Jake wasn’t sure what time it was because the night lasted twenty-four hours in the Arctic at this time of year. Considering they had left London in the evening, he could only guess that it had to be very late at night.
The four of them kept yawning, which their hostess did not appreciate, determined as she was—almost to the point of mania—to be entertained.
She discussed fashion with Isabelle and magically switched her own outfit ten times with a snap of her cold fingers. “Look at this, look at this, look at this…”
Each costume was more bizarre than the next.
When Ice-a-belle finally protested in the most polite tone possible that she really didn’t follow fashion all that much, Snow Maiden abandoned her with a peevish scowl and turned to Jake to amuse her.
She snapped herself one last time into a sporty costume and then showed him how to play hockey, continually thwacking the puck into the frozen fireplace.
It got boring fast. Perhaps she didn’t realize that as an aspiring Lightrider, a righter of wrongs and doer of great deeds, Jake was a rather more serious boy than one who simply devoted himself to games.
When he looked at her and heaved a sigh before whacking the puck yet again with the stick, she got the message and moved on, dragging Archie into a game of giant ice chess.
The slippery ice chessboard took up a whole room, and the chess pieces were beautiful waist-high ice sculptures—king, queen, bishop, knight, rook, pawn. Though the sculptures were heavy, they slid easily enough to whichever square the player chose.
Alas, the Snow Maiden grew dangerously annoyed when the boy genius failed to let her win.