by Amber Argyle
In her panic, she had separated the ice bubble from her clavicle, and now water filled the bubble to her chin. Her head felt light and floaty—she’d taken too many breaths. She glanced around to ensure that nothing else was after her before she kicked for a distant ice floe. Just as she surfaced, she drew the ice back into winter. Taking hold of the raised, icy edge, she gasped in a breath of crisp air. She heard the seal pup squealing in pain as the bear dragged it back onto the ice. Elice’s first instinct was to try to save the pup, but it was already too late. Besides, the bear had to eat, just like she did.
Trying to block out the sound, Elice let the spear dissolve from her hands. She looked back at the faraway shore. The winter palace and her forest appeared no bigger than she was. She glanced into the watery sky to check the time and was surprised to see smoke rising in the distance. She stared. Here, she was the only one who lit fires.
Curious, she pulled herself out of the water and onto the higher vantage point of the ice floe, doing her best to ignore the sound of the bear ripping and tearing at the seal carcass. The scene was distant enough now that Elice could cover it with her outstretched hand.
Floes from the spring melt stretched into the distance. Dominating the horizon was a chunk like a floating mountain broken off a glacier. The smoke was coming from behind the iceberg. Smoke means people, Elice thought. She’d never known other people. Never met anyone outside her immediate family.
Hope and longing tore at her. But with that hope came fear, for after six months away, the Winter Queen was returning today. And she would never allow a ship to survive this close to the queendom.
Knowing running would be faster than swimming, Elice dissolved her flippers and opened wide the channel to winter, letting water freeze beneath her feet as she ran across the ocean, ice spreading just ahead of each of her steps.
Her heart pounded in her ears when she finally reached the iceberg, her underdress and hair hanging stiff and heavy from her body. She withdrew the cold, and they were wet and dripping again. She climbed the steep ascent and peered over the rise.
Elice gasped in disbelief at what she saw—a ship, close enough that she could make out dark-skinned men running about in panic, shouting to each other. Elice gaped at them. She’d only seen three people in her entire life, and here was a whole group of them!
She squinted and read the name etched in the side of the ship—Drauga. She’d never laid eyes on a ship in real life, but from her books and her grandfather’s stories, she knew what it was. This one was obviously damaged, for it leaned sharply to one side, a trickle of smoke coming from somewhere below decks.
Movement in the sky drew Elice’s gaze. A flock of ice fairies shifted in the air currents like a school of fish, their clear-as-glass wings catching the sunlight in a thousand sparks. They hovered between Elice and the ship. Dread seeped into the place where hope had been. She was too late. Too late to meet the ship. Too late to warn its occupants.
Tinted green by the water, a spear of ice shot out, stabbing into the underbelly of the ship. The ship’s scream sounded remarkably close to the cry of the dying seal pup just a few minutes before. The men released a small boat, but the moment it hit the water, it was crushed between two ice floes.
Having completed their dark task, the fairies fluttered away, leaving the craft in her death throes as they headed toward Elice. She knew their destination was the Winter Palace, and she was directly in their path. She ducked down, pressed herself flat, and tried to keep her breathing shallow. The fairies passed over her, their wings making a sound like a hundred scissors opening and closing at once.
Elice wanted to stay put until the fairies were long gone, but there wasn’t time. Whatever they’d done to that ship had doomed it—otherwise they wouldn’t have left it. She eased around the other side of the rise, putting the iceberg between herself and the fairies and hoping her movements hadn’t caught their attention.
A horrible screeching of wood made her whip around. The ship canted to one side before plunging into open water again. It was listing badly and sitting heavy. Water gushed out some sort of pump, but the craft was sinking fast now, water closing around the sailors. They began to scream.
Still at the pinnacle of the iceberg, Elice sent out a ribbon of slick ice. She sat on it and slid. Her wet hair whipped behind her, freezing in crazy tangles. She wasn’t fast enough. Helpless, she watched as the ship slid beneath the surface, dragging the men down with it. Some of them splashed around in the water, but with their heavy fur clothing and their weapons, they sank faster than the ship, which was already fading like a ghost.
When Elice reached the edge of the iceberg and launched to her feet, all that was left behind was a bit of flotsam—shards of wood and barrels ripped loose from their moorings. There was no trace of the sailors. Hands crossed and pressed hard over her mouth, Elice silently waited for one of the men to resurface. For someone to have survived. She couldn’t explain the tears that pricked her eyes. All her life, she’d been taught that humans were insignificant, their deaths no more important than the seal she’d seen killed earlier.
But Elice dove in anyway, forming flippers even as she kicked and stroked to where the ship had been. She dove down, pushing away debris and hunting for any signs of life. She hadn’t taken the time to form an air bubble, so she soon surfaced, panting. Then a man burst up on the other side of the debris. He gasped for breath, his hands tangled in rope wrapped around a barrel. Their gazes locked, and the shock of looking into a stranger’s eyes rendered Elice temporarily immobile.
He was shivering violently, staring at her with despair. He made a shuddering sound again, as if trying to call for help, and she remembered that while the water was pleasant for her, it would be freezing to him.
“Swim for the iceberg,” she cried even as she swam toward him.
He gave another great shudder, his lips moving as if he uttered a prayer, and kicked out. Whether he was trying to reach the iceberg or her, Elice wasn’t sure. But then he slipped under the waves and disappeared. She dove below the surface and swam hard for him. His eyes were closed, and strands of his tied-back hair wavered in the water like sea plants as he sank gently into the water’s dark embrace.
She grabbed under his arms and hauled him upward. They broke the surface, and she struggled to keep his head above water. She managed to drag him to the sloping edge of the iceberg, but with his multiple layers of dense wool clothing, she could not drag him out of the water.
Opening herself back up to winter, Elice let in a trickle of ice, which she formed into a razor-sharp point on the tip of her finger. She cut through the soggy outer layers of wool, pushed them off the man’s arms and legs, and let the clothing float away. He was left with only a thin piece of cloth around his loins. She hauled his limp body onto the ice, noting how cold his skin was. She drew the cold away, back to winter. His color improved quickly, from ash to deep brown, and he moaned.
Elice’s mother had been a healer before she became the Winter Queen, so Elice knew a lot about healing. She inspected the man, awkwardly running her hands over his bare skin. His arm was twisted at a bad angle. No wonder he hadn’t been able to hold on to the barrel. He also had a hard lump on the back of his head.
He opened his eyes and looked at her again. His eyes were so warm, like cinnamon flecked with black. Through bloodless lips he mumbled something Elice couldn’t understand. She drew the cold into herself again, knowing she must get him out of the weather—to her cave where she could hide him. She had no doubt that her mother, the Winter Queen, had sent her ice fairies to sink that ship. If she found this man alive, she would kill him.
As the man mumbled incoherently, Elice opened her connection to winter and let ice flood through her. Using her hands and her thoughts, she shaped a small boat. Then she made herself a ramp, took hold of the man under his arms, and heaved. But though he was wiry, he still far outweighed her. She couldn’t get him over the gunwales. Drawing in the cold that invaded hi
s wet body, she clasped his face. “Can you hear me?”
When he did not respond, she slapped him hard. He blinked at her, but his eyes didn’t seem to be focusing. “Find her,” he said in strangely accented Clannish, gripping Elice’s arm so tightly she nearly cried out.
Whoever he was looking for, she was gone now, lying at the bottom of the ocean. Elice pushed away her pity and ordered, “Stand up.”
The man tried to bat her away. “Must find her!”
Elice growled in frustration. “I’m taking you to her. You just have to get in the boat.”
He looked at the boat, then back at her, his behavior reminding her of when she found her grandfather so deep in his cups he could barely stand. Pure determination steeled the sailor’s features, and he strained to rise. Elice helped balance him when he got to his feet.
“Climb in,” she managed, breathing heavily. He tried to lift his leg over the gunwale and promptly tumbled into the boat. He didn’t let go of Elice, who fell on top of him. Through her thin and sopping-wet underdress, she could feel every ridge and plane of his body. She immediately scrambled off. He groaned in pain, his hand going to his head as he curled into a shivering ball.
At the back of the boat, Elice leaned over the side and stretched out her hands. Snow stormed from her palms, building up under the boat and launching it into the frigid water. She shaped an oar and rowed them toward the Winter Palace, using ice to clear away the floes and pulling the cold from the man whenever his muttering started to fade.
When they reached the shore, Elice formed more ice beneath the boat, leveraging them up and out of the water. Then she pulled the ice back into herself. She tried to get the man to stand again, but his legs trembled and buckled. He collapsed on all fours and mumbled, “I have to find her.” His lips were a dark gray, his skin damp and cold. Elice could draw out the chill, but she could not produce heat—his own body had to do that. The fact that it wasn’t meant his systems were shutting down.
She took hold of him under his hairy, damp underarms and tried to pull him up. “Come on. You have to walk. I’ll help you.” He strained, but his good arm wobbled and he collapsed. “The girl. She’s this way. I’ll take you to her,” Elice pled, the lie tripping off her tongue. Thankfully, the man seemed too disoriented to notice.
After some struggle he got one foot under him, but it refused to bear him up. He collapsed again, and this time he didn’t rise. Elice pressed shaking fingers to his throat. His pulse was weak and sluggish, and he wasn’t even shivering anymore. She glanced at the sky and noted the horizontal movement of the sun as it inched along the skyline. It wouldn’t be long before her mother arrived. Elice couldn’t drag the man all the way to her cave. He was too big.
She had been in this place before. If she had been stronger, it wouldn’t have happened. And now it was happening again. She fought the panic bursting inside her. She gripped the man’s shoulders and glared at him. “You are not going to die.”
He didn’t respond. Her mind spun, trying to come up a solution, some way to save him. With a pang, she remembered her father taking her sledding as a child, the runners gliding effortlessly across the snow. Concentrating her thoughts on the sled her father had made for her, Elice formed a replica of it directly beneath the man. She didn’t have a way to pull it—ice was too brittle to function as a rope. So she tore off the hem of her underdress, wrapped it around the sled’s handle, and started pulling, her feet digging into the snow until she was running.
The forest of ice blurred as she ran through it, dodging a razor-sharp porcupine, ducking beneath a shining spider web, and destroying a dandelion gone to seed. She kept glancing at the palace, waiting for the bells to announce the arrival of the queen and her court.
Elice was gasping breath into her burning lungs when she finally reached the entrance to her cave and plunged into the snow-lined tunnel. A couple dozen running steps and she was inside the cavern with its rough walls, bare rock, and sealskin-lined floor. It was by no means warm inside the cavern, but it rarely froze.
She settled the man next to the cold fire. Her only other patient, a fluffy seal pup, chirped hungrily at her. Ignoring Picca’s cries, Elice drew the cold from the man again before rooting around for her flint and striker. Once she finally found them, she set about building up a fire, her haste making her movements clumsy.
When a few eager flames finally licked up the tinder, she added a few sticks of her precious firewood, brought all the way from the Summer Realm, and turned back to the man. She tucked a sealskin rug over him, wishing she had something cleaner. She didn’t have much need for blankets.
Her underdress and hair had frozen again, so she melted them with a thought, then tugged the damp waves behind her ears. From one shelf she snatched balm, from another a brown tincture. She eased the man’s head onto her lap and poured the tincture into his mouth. He choked and then swallowed reflexively. After settling his head down again, Elice smeared a generous amount of balm onto the lump and bandaged his head with a snow-packed water skin. He moaned and mumbled as she worked, which she took as a good sign.
She added more wood to the growing fire and was relieved when the heat pressed against her right side. The man tossed a little, but settled when she took her hand away. His coloring was better, his skin flushed from the heat of the fire. She turned her attention to his twisted arm. Upon closer inspection, she realized his arm was fine but his shoulder was dislocated and swollen. Elice had dealt mostly with animals, but she could guess what the joint looked like. She braced both her feet on the side of his chest, then gripped his hand and pulled.
There was a satisfying pop and the man reared up, screaming and clutching his shoulder. Elice scrambled back and smacked her head on the table behind her. Hand over the smarting spot, she watched him warily, her fingers itching to form a dagger. She’d been so frantic to save him, she hadn’t even considered that he might be dangerous.
Holding his arm to his side, he fixed his eyes on her, then said something in a language she couldn’t understand. The language was somehow familiar, but his words were too sloppy for her to place it.
He was shivering violently again—a good sign. Then it hit her with a sudden force: he is going to live. She had saved him, but she didn’t know anything about him. Was he a good man like her father and grandfather, or a bad man like the ones her mother was always warning her about? And perhaps most important of all—what was she going to do with him?
Keeping her movements even, as she would with any injured animal, Elice reached up to the table behind her and took hold of one of her tinctures. She held it out to the man and said, “Drink this. It will help with the swelling.” Hopefully the vodka and poppy would knock him out. That will give me time to decide what to do.
He accepted the bottle, sniffed its contents, and took a small taste before throwing back the whole thing, his throat working as he swallowed. Then he wiped his mouth with his good hand and looked around her cave, at the shelves filled with bottles and baskets. At the table made of whale bone lashed together with rawhide and littered with dry herbs. And then he focused on the sealskin rug that had settled on his lap.
“Well, it’s not every day a man wakes up nearly naked in a beautiful woman’s . . . lovely home,” he said slowly in Clannish. Elice gaped at him as he gingerly settled down again and pulled the rug over him. “My ship?” he said, teeth chattering. She shook her head. His eyes squeezed shut. “And those on board?”
She stood up and put the table between them, then came closer to Picca, setting off the seal’s chirping again. “You were the only one I found,” she told the man.
He let out a sharp breath.
If he finds out who I really am, he will hate me for what my mother did to his ship and those onboard, to the girl he obviously lost. Best to keep my mother’s powers secret for now. “Who are you?” Elice asked softly.
“Adar. I’m the navigator. I don’t . . . what happened?” He looked her up and down. “What’s yo
ur name?”
“Elly.” She wasn’t sure why she gave him the nickname her grandfather had chosen for her.
“My shoulder?” Adar said.
Elice undid the weighted belt around her waist, then removed the octopus and fed it to Picca. As the seal ate, Elice stroked her soft fur. “Dislocated. I popped it back in.”
Adar ran his hands over the bandages on his head before checking the cord that tied back his shoulder-length hair. “Where are my clothes?”
“At the bottom of the ocean.” Elice stepped carefully around him, put more wood on the fire, and took out a basketful of skeins of ripped cloth. “Your shoulder will feel better if we wrap it.”
He gave a tight nod and sat up. “Do it.” She took a skein in one hand, but hesitated as she stared at his bare chest, at the corded muscles and curling hair. There were scars everywhere, silver against the dark of his skin. One scar was as large as her palm on his right side. How had he survived that wound?
“Are all men as big and hairy as you?” Elice asked.
Adar turned laughing eyes to her. “No. Some are smaller. And hairier.”
She swallowed. “Just so you know, I can kill you as easily as heal you.”
He cocked a lone eyebrow, and she forced herself to rest a hand on his opposite shoulder. His skin was soft, but the muscle beneath was as hard as stone. Biting her bottom lip, she angled the strips of cloth down under his elbow and brought them back up. “Who . . . who is the girl you were looking for?”
Adar’s brow furrowed. “What?”
“You said you had to find a girl. What happened to her? Was she on the ship?” This was none of Elice’s business. Why had she opened her mouth?
His jaw tightened. “I haven’t found her yet.”
Elice wasn’t sure what that meant, and she daren’t ask more questions. She tied off the strips and took out another. “Lift your good arm.” He obeyed, and she pinned his injured arm to his ribs, her fingers skimming his ribcage and causing him to shiver. She tied off the last of the strips and gently pushed him down on the rug. “How’s your head?”