The Twistrose Key

by Tone Almhjell

  Another soft moan came rustling, and this time she didn’t hear the words, she felt them in her spine. “They’re saying he’s here.”

  Rufus grasped her hand, and there was no need for the triple pinch. Without another word they walked into the waterfall.

  Dark ice covered the ground like glass; frozen drops lay scattered like pearls. This felt right, Lin thought. This felt like the Winterfyrst mansion. The doorways and arches seemed wilder, though, less like grand architecture and more like living roots that creaked and sighed and didn’t want to let them through. Rufus spread his whiskers as he pressed between two icicles. “Isvan? Are you here? Don’t be afraid. We’re here to help!”

  “Help, help, help,” the waterfall echoed.

  They weaved their way to the back of the waterfall, where the ice slanted away from the rock, creating a tall chamber. “You’re right,” Rufus said. “He definitely came this way.” Lodged in the floor was an ice ax with a carved shaft and a transparent head bearing the Winterfyrst snow crystal. The magical ax that was also a key.

  Frostfang.

  Rufus grasped the slim handle. “Don’t mind if we do!” He pulled hard, but the ax didn’t budge. “I can’t get it out,” he said, annoyed. “Here. You try.”

  But Lin wasn’t looking at the ax, she was looking up the mountainside. Out of the darkness dangled something she had not expected. Someone had struck bolts into the rock and threaded a red climbing rope between them, and there were more bolts on the ground. Far above, she could make out the mouth of a cave, enclosing the top of the waterfall. But the rope only reached two-thirds up the wall, and there it ended in a loose coil.

  “Isvan!” Lin called. “Are you here?”

  “Here, here, here,” came the echoes, and it seemed to Lin that there were too many of them, and that they sounded too sad.

  Rope. Bolts. Loose coil. The puzzle pieces came together with a painful click. Lin turned around, still gazing up, wishing very hard that she was wrong.

  She was not. Inside the thickest frozen pillar, a falling boy hung suspended. Through the ice he resembled a porcelain figure with his raven hair and pale skin. A desperate porcelain figure grasping at nothing.

  They had found Isvan Winterfyrst.

  “Is he . . .” Rufus cleared his throat. “Do you think he’s dead?”

  “Dead, dead, dead,” the waterfall sighed.

  Lin bit her lip to stop it from quivering. He couldn’t be. After all those lonely hours sitting in his windowsill or outside the Waffleheart, he couldn’t end like this. She was supposed to save him. She was supposed to get him home. “No,” she said, shaking her head stubbornly. “His snow globe was alive. That has to mean there is still hope.”

  Rufus hunched with relief. “Then my next question is: How are we going to get him down?”

  Lin shook her head again. She really didn’t know. Isvan must have fallen where the rope ended, but he had fallen far enough that they couldn’t reach him from the mountain wall.

  Rufus twirled his whiskers. “This may sound crazy, but . . . Remember how you set off Teodor’s melt rune? He said you were charged with magic from the Observatory. I don’t know if there’s any of it left after our stunts on the Cracklemoor, but . . .” He nudged her toward the ice ax. “If the melt rune worked for you, then maybe a magical ax would work, too? And Frostfang is supposed to let the bearer control ice. You could ask it to bring him down.”

  It was worth a try. She had set off that melt rune, and maybe even the gramophone in Figenskar’s office had sparked into life at her touch. But since the frantic skirmish in the Whitepass, she had felt lighter somehow, and she knew some of the magic had passed out of her when she found those cold oak acorns. Maybe there were no more Observatory gifts left.

  Lin closed her hands around the shaft, preparing to use all her strength to pull it out. But Frostfang slid out of the ice as if it were butter. “You know, I think your theory might be right,” Lin said. She couldn’t quite smile with Isvan frozen right above her head, but the cool handle of the ax still felt wonderful in her hands; it flowed, creating strands of music as it cut the air.

  She put the edge against the root of Isvan’s pillar. It made a thin, white scar. “Let him go,” she said.

  “Go, go, go,” the ice whispered back to her. Frostfang trembled in her hands.

  Crack.

  “It’s working!” Rufus peered up along the pillar, now split in half by a fissure. If Lin hit it again, there was a good chance it might break off and tumble down on them. But they had to get Isvan down, and if this was the only way . . .

  “Rufus,” she said. “I think you had better get to safety.”

  “What?” Rufus snapped back to look at her. “What about you?”

  “I said, you should run!” And Lin buried the ax deep in the ice, yelling, “Set him free!”

  This time, there was no echo, but a thunder that shook not just Isvan’s pillar, but the entire waterfall. From the deep notch where Frostfang had bit, fractures spread out, marbling the floor, racing up the pillars.

  “Rats,” Rufus cried.

  “Rats, rats, rats,” the waterfall moaned, and then the voice drowned in a host of cracks.

  Lin’s last waking view was of icicles colliding, crumbling like the bones of an ancient temple, raining ruins down on her.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  “Lin!”

  The voice sounded woolen. Her head felt woolen, too. She was lying on her back, and her face almost touched the ceiling. She was very cold. Where was she?

  “Lin!”

  Whoever kept calling seemed distressed, for there were tears in the cries, mingled with the occasional thud and crunch. “Little one, where are you?”

  Little one! Rufus! And everything came crashing back into her head: Sylver, Isvan, the waterfall. She must be trapped under the avalanche. She tried turning over on her side. Her feet and hands moved feebly against the ice. Something heavy lay across her chest and thighs, and she couldn’t shift. Well, at least she wasn’t dead, or paralyzed.

  One point to Miss Rosenquist.

  “Be quiet, Rufus!” said a deep voice. Ursa Minor. “We won’t be able to hear her.”

  The thuds and crashes stopped, and Lin knew they were listening for her. She wanted to call out, but she couldn’t draw her breath properly. Instead, she scraped at the ice with the tip of her boot.

  “Here!” came an urgent squeal. A beam of light fell on her face. “It’s her!” A wild-eyed Rufus appeared among the ice blocks. “Are you hurt? Are you in pain?”

  “Can’t . . . move . . .” Lin wheezed.

  Rufus began scratching at the ice. The shavings swirled down to land on Lin’s cheeks.

  “Let me.” Big, brown paws ripped away ice block after ice block, replacing the ceiling with stars.

  “Careful, Minor!” Rufus said. “Don’t drop anything on her! She’s not a teapot.”

  “Oh, I’m careful,” Ursa Minor said. “Mustn’t crush the little girl.” Ever so gently, he removed the block that pinned Lin down. She drew a blissful breath and lifted her head. Frostfang stood upright next to her, blade lodged in the ground. It had carried some of the weight of the block. Quite possibly it had saved her from being crushed.

  She got to her feet, gaping at the mess around her. Nothing was left of the waterfall but a row of splintered stubbles where the glacier and mountain met, and a chaos of shattered beams and rubble on the valley floor.

  “I’m going to lift you out now,” Minor said, closing his paws around her waist. A soft hug later, she was standing next to Rufus. She felt fine, except for a bruise or two and the thousands of bony Rodent fingers that poked at her back and neck and legs, prodding for injuries. “Does this hurt? How about this?”

  “How about you?” she countered. “You weren’t hurt either?”

  “I trie
d to get you out, but there was just too much falling stuff. I ran.” Rufus’s shoulders were hunched with shame. “I’m sorry. We weren’t supposed to leave each other.”

  “No, of course you did,” Lin said. “I told you to get to safety. It was the right thing to do. The only thing to do.”

  “No. The whole stupid Frostfang idea was mine. And when we go on our adventures, we have to be able to trust . . .”

  A shout from Minor interrupted him. The bear was wrestling with a thick pillar that poked out of the debris. “The little boy! The little boy!”

  Isvan!

  Lin and Rufus clambered over broken chunks and gravel. Together, the three of them pulled the heavy log out of the pile. Minor rolled it over so it faced the right way and used his paws to brush away the crystals that powdered the surface.

  It was a stroke of incredible luck.

  Two feet below and one foot above Isvan’s body, the icicle had been smashed to dust. But the part that encased him was whole. He stared out through the glassy ice with eyes of sapphire blue that shone with fear. Lin felt that he was looking at her.

  “What are you waiting for,” Rufus said. “No waterfall will crash down on you this time. Finish it.”

  Lin hefted Frostfang. No waterfall would crash down. But she couldn’t shake an uncomfortable feeling that nagged at her, like a chill splinter moving through her body, worming its way toward her heart. She was forgetting something. Something important.

  “Wait,” she said. “Do you think the avalanche could be heard out on the Cracklemoor?”

  “Maybe.” Rufus frowned at the now unguarded tunnel. “I don’t know how deep into the mountains we are.”

  That must be it, Lin thought. “Maybe you should go back and watch the entrance,” she said to Minor. “Just in case.”

  The Wilder nodded, grim of face. “They won’t get past me.”

  As Minor shuffled off to work his way through the ice, Lin turned back to Isvan. It was the first human face she had seen all night. But none of the Sylverings had reminded her more of the taxidermied animals in Mrs. Ichalar’s cellar.

  “Can he see us, do you think?” she said.

  “I don’t know. To me he seems . . .” Rufus shrugged uncomfortably. “I guess we won’t know until we get him out.”

  Lin touched Frostfang to the end of the log, as far away from Isvan’s face as possible, and whispered, “Release him.”

  Crack.

  Isvan’s prison burst into a million tiny shards. They flew away like smoke, settling on his body like ashes.

  Lin crouched down beside him, making sure she didn’t get too close. It felt like sitting by a reverse fire. The cold beat at her skin, freezing her nose on the inside. She shook her head to clear it. No, the trolls were not it. There was something else, something she was supposed to be doing . . .

  She blew at the Winterfyrst’s face, and the ice caught in his lashes. They were stirring.

  “We did it! He’s waking up!” Rufus’s voice echoed all through the Well as he did a little victory jig. “Who would have thought he could survive all those weeks inside the ice!” He bent down to hug Lin, laughing in her ear. “I guess there are times when it actually helps to carry your soul outside your body!”

  Isvan blinked. His blue stare passed over Rufus to Lin and widened in recognition. A shy smile tugged at the corner of his mouth.

  The splinter reached Lin’s heart. She bolted to her feet.

  From across the valley came a small crunch.

  Isvan’s chest heaved once, and a faint wind escaped his lips. Then his eyes released Lin’s and slid shut.

  “Isvan?” Rufus sounded completely bewildered. “Lin? What’s wrong?”

  Lin already knew. There was a sound missing in the Well, the beautiful whispering voice that had sung to her since the ravine, and that had come from Isvan’s snow globe. Now it was gone.

  Instead there came a long, terrible, grief-stricken howl from the great, brown snout of Ursa Minor.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  Minor shuddered hopelessly with every sob.

  “Please,” Lin said. “Don’t cry anymore.”

  “The little boy!” The wail that came out of Minor was so thin, so helpless. But there was nothing Lin could say to comfort him. She wanted to cry herself.

  The foot lifts, ready to crush, the falcon message had said. Lin clutched the sleeves of her cardigan. Why couldn’t Raymonda just have told her to make sure no one stepped on Isvan’s soul? Instead she had told her “Do not fail.” So of course, Lin had done just that.

  Isvan lay lifeless in the snow. His hair was mussed from Minor’s attempts at shaking him awake. Ice crystals were creeping across his brow and cheeks, already claiming him back.

  She understood now, how Minor and Lass had mistaken her for the Winterfyrst. Isvan could be her brother. Even their clothes were the same, white and blue. Only Lin’s garments were sturdy and warm, and Isvan’s were thin, like funeral silks.

  “Is there really nothing we can do?” Rufus switched restlessly between chewing the tassels of his scarf and licking the wound on his tail.

  “I don’t think so.” Lin looked down on the shards she had picked out of the trampled snow light. Seven in all. She had hoped beyond hope that the Observatory magic could bring back the silver and gold light. But the only thing she had accomplished was to nick her finger on the jagged edges and smudge them with blood. She heard no song from the shattered orb, and her spine didn’t tingle when she touched it. It was just glass, like any broken fishbowl.

  “We should think of getting back. Teodor knows more magic than anyone in Sylver. Maybe he can help.”

  “If we make it back across the moor,” Rufus said.

  Lin nodded. They had some cold oak acorns, but no more silvercone seeds. To stand a chance at all, they needed Minor, but he was in no shape to carry them. “Dry your tears, now, Minor,” she said gently. “Everyone understands that it was an accident. We’ll think of something, you’ll see.”

  Minor lifted his head. The fur on his face was all wet, but not frozen, since Isvan no longer radiated cold. “Do you really think so?”

  “I do,” Lin said, trying to sound confident.

  Minor smiled tremulously. “You have to come with me now,” he said, lifting Isvan up in his arms as if he weighed exactly nothing. The boy’s head lolled to the side, and his arm fell down, exposing the left pocket of his coat. Something white poked out from the thin fabric.

  “What’s this now? Another letter to inform us we’ve failed?” Rufus picked the paper out and handed it to Lin. “You do it. I’m sick of prophecies.”

  Lin opened it. It was a crumpled letter, yes, but the Queen of Soothsingers hadn’t written it.

  “I’m going to read it aloud,” Lin said. “Because I think this is the letter he wrote for you, Minor.”

  “The one I couldn’t read.” Minor drew a shivering breath, but he bent his head to listen.

  Last night I dreamed of my mother again. And this time she spoke to me.

  I have to go to the Winterfyrst Well and try to free her. The path will be dangerous, but Sylver is no longer safe for me anyway. And I have a feeling I might meet her there, the scared girl from my dream, the one surrounded by shattered ice.

  Lass the gatherer will be very angry with me. If I don’t come back, tell her I am sorry. If Teodor asks, don’t tell him anything. I don’t know who to trust, except you, my dear, wild friend.

  Fresh tears flecked the snow with gray as Minor hugged Isvan close. “And I’m the one who killed him! After he made it all the way past those trolls and everything.”

  “We all forgot about the snow globe,” Lin said. Isvan had been dreaming of her. Of the moment of his death. That’s what the girl in Minor’s portrait was: Lin Rosenquist the failed Twistrose. Favored murder weapon: stupidity. “I’m as
much to blame as you.”

  “Wait a moment,” Rufus said. “He came here to free his mother? But don’t you see? That means . . .”

  He turned and frowned up at the red line of the climbing rope. Around the stubbles of the waterfall, the cave mouth between the rock and the glacier was exposed now. That was where Isvan had been trying to go when he fell. And if he had been right, if Clariselyn Winterfyrst was alive somewhere in that cave, she could make the Wandersnow and save them all.

  Almost all.

  By way of apology, Lin touched Isvan’s hand. It felt so very cold.

  “It means we have to finish what he started.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  The green slab of the glacier gate fit seamlessly into the mountain. White scrollwork obscured whatever secrets lay behind it, but Lin and Rufus had the key.

  Lin lifted Frostfang uncertainly. She had used the ax twice now, and both times, the ice had more or less exploded around her. But she didn’t know how to control its force better. She might as well get it over with.

  “Could you move aside, Rufus?”

  Rufus stood with his back pressed against the gate, eyeing the crushed ice on the valley floor. Ursa Minor was like a small cub down there, with an even smaller porcelain doll in his arms. As they had climbed the rope up the mountain wall, Rufus had not said a word.

  Lin knew he had developed a fear of heights, so she had told him he could stay on the ground if he wanted. Rufus had refused, claiming that there would be no more “leaving behind” of any sort. But it had cost him. The cave at the top of the waterfall was really not much more than a ledge full of slippery pebbles, and Rufus was too terrified to move.

  “Rufus,” Lin said. “You know how Teodor said Minor’s natural skills and instincts would grow stronger the more he used them?”

  “Mmmh,” Rufus said between his teeth.

  “Well, one thing I know about you voles is that you’re good climbers.”

  He looked up. There were white sickles at the edges of his eyes. “We are?”