by Amber Argyle
Together, they returned to the ice shelf and silently watched the ocean slip by. Their specially designed iceberg caught the current and wind, propelling them much faster than Elice had thought it could. Circular ice floes bumped into each other, the constant collision leaving a slightly raised buildup of slush on the edges—like the lily pads Elice had read about. A bird suddenly gave a startled cry, and Elice placed her hand over Sakari’s arm to signal her to keep quiet. The other girl didn’t question her as Elice silently filled in the opening before them, leaving only a small hole to look out of.
On wings of pure white, half a dozen fairies flitted past. Elice opened her mouth in a silent gasp. From experience, she knew those wings were softer than rabbit fur. These fairies were smaller than most, but that’s where any illusion of a gentle creature ended. Their eyes were beady and black, their teeth rodent-like and sharp as needles. What Elice could see of their skin was pink with a short covering of fur. They were stoat fairies—relentless hunters with an excellent sense of smell and sight.
“It’s stronger here,” came a voice out of sight.
The fairies circled back into view, hovering. From this distance, they were indistinguishable from one another. It didn’t much matter, though, for Elice hated them all. Most of the predatory fairies thought themselves superior, but the wolf fairies were a little playful, the bear fairies a bit sluggish and dense at times. But what the stoats lacked in size they made up for in cunning and viciousness.
“Let’s circle it again,” said another fairy.
Elice had thought that as long as she and her friends were out of sight, they’d be safe. She should have known better. She shut her eyes and closed tight all the iceberg’s vents, including the one directly in front of Sakari and her.
“Still nothing,” came a muffled voice.
“Perhaps it’s the stink from the human village,” said another.
“The scent is weaker when we fly that way. I say we find ice fairies to disintegrate this iceberg.”
“The ice fairies are fluffy-headed, pretty fools.”
“Yes, but they deal with snow and we do not.”
The fairies’ snarling was interrupted by a rending sound. Elice gasped silently and turned to Sakari, but the girl had buried her face in the snow and clamped her hands over her ears. Elice had no idea what was happening, but the sound went on long enough that it seemed it might never end.
Finally, the roaring subsided. Elice listened hard for the fairies but heard nothing. “What was that?” she whispered.
“Earth tremor,” Sakari said, her voice muffled by the snow. “They come all the time now.”
Cautiously, Elice pulled back a bit of the snow and glanced out. There were no fairies in sight. She and Sakari silently moved away from the hole. Once Elice was sure the creatures could no longer hear her, she rushed down to the main cavern.
Adar blinked up at her, his face shiny with sweat. “What was that?”
“We have to go. Now!” Elice said. She poured him a cup of blood to give him strength.
He didn’t ask questions, just drank the blood without complaint as Sakari gathered up their few supplies. Elice pulled Adar to his feet and started out. She didn’t bother going up the path she’d made before. Instead, she forged a new one straight through the heart of the iceberg. At the same time, she was filling all the other crevices and caverns with packed snow to hide that anyone had been there.
When they neared the outside she paused, dissipating the snow more slowly, watching and waiting. They were at sea level, and the ocean was still, almost glasslike. “I don’t see them,” Elice reported, “and I don’t dare wait any longer.”
“We’re with you,” Adar said from behind her.
Elice whipped out her cold and froze the frazil ice into place. Determined that nothing would hurt her friends, she made the ice deep and thick. She was surprised when a whole swath of ocean froze solid. Maybe Adar was right and her magic was stronger than she’d ever imagined. She stepped out cautiously onto it, the once-slushy edges of the frazil ice crunching beneath her boots. She checked for any signs of seals below, but could only see large white bubbles stacked on top of each other a dozen deep. Even if there were seals, they weren’t getting through that.
“Come on,” Elice said to the others.
“Smoke.” Sakari pointed to a dirty-looking haze to the south. “The village must be that way.”
For the better part of an hour, with heads down and hoods up, they hurried across the solid sheet of sea ice toward an inlet. At one point, they crossed onto naturally formed ice, the surface going from smooth to jumbled, and their pace slowed accordingly. Elice kept glancing back at Adar, but she could see little more than the vapor of his breath trailing past his furry hood, leaving a rim of hoar frost in its wake.
She didn’t like being out in the open like this—they were exposed for miles in all directions. Forming icebergs to hide them would draw even more attention, so that idea was out. Finally, they were almost to the shore, close enough that Elice could make out the texture of the sheer fronts of the glaciers. Her connection to winter was open so wide that she started at the feeling of no longer being alone. It was almost like she was being watched.
Then Elice realized she always felt that shift in her magic when a large group of fairies came near, as if her magic allowed her to sense them. “They’re coming back. Run!”
“I can’t,” Adar panted. One look at him confirmed it was true. His face was pale, his shoulders hitched against the cold.
“We have to hide,” Sakari said stiffly.
Elice’s attention turned to the sea ice beneath them. If it was thick enough, they might be able to hide inside it. She shifted some into herself, creating a pockmark big enough for them to fit inside on the surface. What she found beneath, however, wasn’t seawater but empty darkness. She let out a trickle of aurora light and was shocked to see the bare sea floor glimmering wetly about a story below.
“The tide’s gone out,” Sakari said, relief in her voice. She hurried in front of them and dropped down without a moment’s hesitation.
Elice and Adar shared looks of concern. But she could feel the fairies coming closer. “Hurry,” she whispered. He sat down before falling forward, Elice a beat behind him.
She broke through a thin layer of ice to splash into a puddle on the rocky bottom. Here, it smelled strongly of fish. She promptly closed the hole above them and let the aurora trickle along the bottom of the buckled sea ice, revealing a maze of jagged edges, pockets of emptiness between the angular pieces. Everything gleamed with a thin layer of ice. Spines of hoar frost as long as her fingers glittered wickedly in the light.
Elice hurried after Sakari, every step breaking off spines and plowing through ice-covered puddles. They turned sideways to slip past a mound of sharp-edged mussels growing on the side of a large rock. The sharp edges cut her hands.
“What do we do when the tide comes?” Adar asked skeptically.
Sakari didn’t look back. “Sometimes we come under the ice at low tide for mussels. Everyone knows the stories of those who didn’t make it out.”
“Not exactly reassuring,” Adar muttered.
Sakari came up to a huge wall of ice blocking their way and turned left. “Which is why we must hurry.”
“How much time do we have before the tide comes back in?” Adar asked.
Sakari huffed. “I don’t know how long it’s been out, but half an hour at most.”
Elice slipped on a chunk of slimy seaweed. Adar caught her arm and steadied her, wincing as her weight pulled on his bad shoulder. “I don’t know if this is a good idea.”
Elice studied Sakari’s retreating form. “The smell of the fish should cover our scent. We just have to be out of the fairies’ line of sight by the time the tide comes back.”
They hurried along the eerie cavern. Crabs scuttled out of sight, claws clacking. Starfish gleamed. An octopus in a deep crevice dragged itself limply out of view, its
eyes reflecting weirdly as it watched them.
The water level rose until the travelers were splashing through water up to their ankles. Elice kept her hand firmly in Adar’s to protect him from the cold. Sakari splashed to a halt before a chunk of sea ice that blocked off their progression. She pushed away a piece of frosty seaweed that dangled from the ice. She started left, then turned back to the right before rounding on Elice and Adar.
“We’ll have to backtrack.” Fear tinged Sakari’s voice.
Elice felt the seawater coming up her ankles. “We don’t have time.” She forged ahead, pulling the ice and snow back into winter and creating a tunnel through the blockage. Finally, they reached what had to be the shore, with the ground inclining sharply.
As the water came back, the ice shifted, the chaotic buckles of sea ice leveling out. Even when Elice crouched down, the ice brushed her back. Water dripped beneath her collar and inched up her legs, until she had no choice but to let go of Adar and crawl through rocks and seaweed, the heavy ice weighing oppressively over her.
“Elice,” he said breathlessly. He didn’t have to say anything else—she could hear the strain in his voice. Her legs and arms were soaked, the front of her torso damp. She couldn’t imagine how bitterly cold this must feel after his fever. With no way to make a fire to warm him, he was already in grave danger.
Fairies or no, it was time to surface.
Elice formed an opening above them and hauled herself up. She peeked over the ice and found her glacier that was now a speck in the distance. It was too far away for her to detect any fairies. “Let’s hope they gave up when they found the glacier empty and our scent trail gone.”
She climbed out and reached back to help Sakari and Adar, who was shivering hard. Sakari eased him to the ground. “Help me take his clothes off.”
“Easy now, ladies,” he said through chattering teeth. “There’s enough of me for both of you.”
At his teasing, Elice bit her lip in worry. He was frightened. Careful to keep a hand on him to protect him from the cold, she helped Sakari pull off his boots and pants. Sakari briskly rubbed the fur through the snow.
“What are you doing?” Elice asked as she turned the water in Adar’s boots to snow and shook it out.
“Caribou fur is better than seal. The snow soaks up the water.” Sakari started dressing him, Elice helping her.
Adar looked at Sakari in disbelief. “They’re dry.”
She was already pulling off her own clothes.
“I could do that for you,” Elice offered.
Thanking her, Sakari handed over her boots, and Elice shook out the resulting snow. Not wanting to be wet, she did the same for herself, with Adar’s hand on her neck so she could draw away the cold. Once they finished, they helped Adar to his feet, each woman positioning herself under his arm, and headed toward the smoke. The village was partially obscured by a rise.
Elice cleared a path through the snow, and they crossed the side of the inlet on bare ground. On the other side was a cluster of tents built in a protected spot between three hills a safe distance from the ocean. Elice’s freeze hadn’t touched the water here, so it was black and open, spotted with ice floes and icebergs.
Soon she could see the tents were made of sealskins stretched across bleached whale bones. The people on the shore didn’t seem to notice the three strangers approaching them; they were too busy looking out over the ocean to the east. Elice followed their gazes and made out people in small boats barely big enough for a single person. They were trailing behind a bowhead whale, close enough that it could swamp all their boats with a powerful flick of its tail.
The lead man thrust his paddle toward the whale, and when he drew it back, blood dripped off a blade attached to the end. A pool of blood circled the animal—the hunters must have already wounded it.
Elice would have never guessed something as small as those little boats would have the ability to kill a massive whale, but the animal didn’t even seem alarmed. A commotion drew her gaze back to the village—they’d obviously been spotted. By the time they reached the village, a group of eight women were the only people to be seen, the children having vanished. The woman in the center was older, her dark face heavily lined. Her hair was nearly white, with a few gray strands here and there. The women behind, of varying ages, had Sakari’s almond-shaped eyes and dark features. Elice couldn’t help but stare. She’d never before seen so many people at once.
Sakari stepped forward. “I am Sakari. My uncles are Anuniaq and Kiviuq from the northeast. We have traded with your people for caribou hides.”
The oldest woman nodded. “I am Tapeesa. I know your family, Sakari, but I do not know this woman.” Her gaze turned to Elice.
“It was her,” whispered a woman partially concealed behind Tapeesa. “She’s the one who made the path through the ice and snow. It went into her and disappeared.” When the young woman caught Elice looking at her, she started and took another step behind Tapeesa, whose gaze narrowed at Elice.
“Are you the Winter Queen, who controls winter as if it were a toy to be played with?”
Adar sighed and said in Clannish, “Elly, we have to work on your discretion.”
“She’s the Winter Queen’s daughter, Elice,” Sakari clarified.
The old woman lifted her chin. “The Winter Queendom is much like her queen—harsh and merciless. Yet we survive. Thrive even. Until the last few years. Tell me, daughter of winter, why we have lost favor with the queen?”
“Please, my friend is sick,” Elice said. “He needs a warm fire. A place to rest.”
“After all the damage your queen has caused?” Tapeesa asked.
“Then send us away with a couple of sleds and the dogs to pull them,” Sakari said.
The woman glowered. “You would take our livelihoods from us?”
“We would give them back,” Elice said quickly.
“We only need to borrow them long enough to get out of the queendom,” Adar said.
“And how would you return them to us?” Tapeesa wanted to know.
One of the younger women spoke up. “We cannot send them away hungry and sick. It is not our way.”
Tapeesa clenched her teeth. “Fine, Maliq, find them a tent and some supplies. You can help them set it up somewhere far from our village.”
“That is not the way of the Svass,” Sakari retorted. The two women traded glares.
Tapeesa turned on her heel to stride back to the village, calling out orders in rapid succession. Elice and Adar shared a hopeless look. Without those dogs, they had no hope of reaching the border before the last day of Winter’s End—now only three days away.
“Adar . . .” She let her voice trail off, not knowing how to give voice to her hopelessness.
“We need those dogs,” he ground out. “We’ll steal them if we have to.”
Elice cast a nervous look back at the men on the kayaks. Ropes trailed from around their middles to the whale, which had gone still.
Sakari followed her glance. “The men would hunt you down for trying,” she said in a low voice.
Adar opened his mouth to argue when the ground suddenly bucked. Elice’s hands flew out to catch herself and she stared at the pitching ground, half expecting a giant fissure to open up beneath her feet.
In the village, one of the tents collapsed. Back the way Elice and the others had come, a small avalanche plowed through the fissure she’d created in the snow before spilling harmlessly into the ocean. After a long while, the shaking subsided. Elice instinctively turned toward Adar, whose worried gaze was already raking over her. She nodded to let him know she was all right, and his expression relaxed a fraction.
“Sakari?” Elice called out.
“Another one,” Sakari said from the other side of Adar, her hands fisted at her sides.
They helped each other to their feet. Tapeesa was already up and storming toward them. Sakari took up a defensive stance in front of Adar and Elice.
“This is th
e Winter Queen’s work!” barked Tapeesa. “Her bloodthirsty tirades have already killed dozens of—”
The woman’s outburst was interrupted by a piercing scream. Elice’s gaze snapped to the villagers, who were either running or gazing slack-jawed out over the ocean. She spun around and followed their gazes. The surf was rapidly disappearing, the sea drawing back to leave gaping fish and limp sea plants.
“What is that?” came Adar’s voice beside her.
Tapeesa cried out in grief, calling for her sons in their boats. Other women screamed for their children, commanding them to flee up the mountains. Children emerged from their hiding places behind the village. Some heeded their mothers and began to scamper up the rise. Others burst into wails. One little girl covered her face with her hands. A woman swooped down and snatched her from the ground, then ran on. Elice saw another child peeking out from the hood of the woman’s parka.
Elice looked back at the hunters. A giant swell sucked them back. They pulled on their paddles with frantic sweeps, but the sea kept hauling them up and up and up, until a wave as tall as a mountain formed.
Holding to Elice’s arm, Adar dragged her away from the shore. Sakari was already running, her hood slipping off as she bent down to snatch a screaming toddler and sprint after the others. Tapeesa, her face determined, was cutting the lines that tethered the dogs. Elice knew the woman didn’t expect to survive.
Elice glanced back as the wave blocked out the sun, casting a dark shadow across the village. She jerked her arm out of Adar’s hold. “No.” She said it as much to him as she did the wave threatening to destroy these people.
“Elice!” he called after her.
I’m stronger than I know, she thought as she planted both her feet. The wave tipped ominously over the hunters. She closed her eyes and opened herself to the winter—the cold, the ice, the frost, the surging blizzard and merciless wind. She pulled all of it in until there was nothing left to take. She opened her eyes to find a ball of silver-white light dancing in her hand, so bright it was nearly impossible to look at. Just like the one her mother had used to kill Chriel.