Frost (30 page)

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 internal 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.

I didn’t. I took two more steps in his direction. Though I wanted to appear calm, I teetered on my twitching-with-fear legs.

I knew by the lines scoring his brow that I wasn’t getting through to him. “I was in the neighborhood,” I said, trying a new approach. “I thought maybe you could use some help.”

“Help?” He laughed, but it was scoffing in nature.

“That’s what friends do. They help each other.”

I was trying to jog his memory. If he had a flashback, even just briefly, of our relationship, of what we shared, maybe I could reason with him.

“We’re not friends,” he said.

“Sure we are. Don’t you remember?”

He looked at me with such hatred I flinched.

“We were never friends,” he said in a voice I didn’t recognize.

So, the friends angle hadn’t worked; I tried another avenue.

“You say that because we were more than friends.” I walked the remaining steps that separated us and placed a hand on his arm. It was icy cold and, again, I noticed its bluish tint. I saw, too, the lines in his face and bags under his eyes. “We could be more than friends again, if you’d like.”

I didn’t have much experience in the seduction department. I had hoped, with Jack at least, to tap an emotion or awaken a part of him that was frozen.

“Don’t touch me,” he said, swatting my hand away.

Ouch again.
Not that I thought I was some kind of irresistible temptress. But Jack? He had once confessed to being drawn to me. I had held on to some sort of naive belief that I could get through to him — that I just needed to be close to him, to touch him, to look into his eyes. I was hurt — and more than a little angry.

“Go,” he said. “I have to get back to work.”

Figures. Even doing someone else’s evil bidding, the guy had a work ethic. Set him to a chore — even triggering a modern ice age and wiping out most of life as we know it, for instance — and he was good at it. I remembered how Penny had once said he was good at everything he tried. Except . . . My mind scurried back to an image of Jack awkwardly cradling a lacrosse stick.

“I was watching you just now,” I said. “Seems you don’t quite have that flick of the wrist down, do you?”

Jack whipped around to face me. “What?”

“You’re too stiff-armed. There’s no fluidity, no form.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said.
Suck much? Fail ever? Jeez,
the guy really couldn’t handle criticism.

“True. I’m no expert, but if even I can see your mistake, doesn’t that mean it’s all the more glaring?”

He flexed his fingers in and out. “That’s a load of bull.”

“Maybe.” I tried to sound casual, but in reality I’d never been so unstrung. “Except, Brigid’s not all that happy with you, is she? She thinks you can do better, right?”

Doubts rolled across Jack’s face. I saw them snowball like . . .
Hold everything!
Snowball, as in gather mass, speed, and destructive force.
OMG.
This mountaintop of snow was a big stockpile, a snow warehouse. Until it was needed, anyway. And
snjoflóð,
the way it was pronounced in Icelandic, obscured the last letter. It sounded like snow float, but if it was spelled with a
d
— the way
brauð
was — it didn’t mean snow float; it meant snow
flood.
As in avalanche! And if one snowflake in Niflheim was like one hundred million on Midgard —
Dear God,
I had to stop this.