Authors: E.G. Foley
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.
“Wel
l, 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 b
all?” Archie asked, slightly put out to find himself ignored, as usual, by a pretty girl.
Jake envied him, for this one was entirel
y 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 ro
unds of indoor bowling?”
Jake rolle
d his eyes, especially when this suggestion seemed to make Dani forget about the gravity of their situation.
Genuinely enthused, t
he 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 think?”
She nodded. “But you’re right. F
or now, we just need to bide our time.”
T
hen 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 hims
elf 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.
Watching her, Jake mused that Santa’s granddaughter must have somehow concluded that other people were merely toys, too, and only existed to amuse her.
After ice chess,
she taught Dani some fancy ice-skating moves. This seemed to thaw the Maiden a bit; the carrot-head had that effect on people, in Jake’s experience.
But when Dani asked her what it was like to go out delivering toys with Santa Claus, the chill returned to the Snow Maiden’s pretty face. “I don’t see why everybody thinks he’s so great. He’s pretty stupid, if you ask me.”
They were scandalized by such words.
“Santa? Stupid?” Dani said
.
Archie’s jaw dropped with indignation.
Even Jake was startled by this claim.
“Why do you say that?”
he asked.
She huffed.
“Half the world doesn’t even believe he exists, and he refuses to prove it to them,” she said, then she braced her fists on her waist and imitated her jolly, fat grandsire: “‘If they don’t want to believe in me, they don’t have to, dear. It’s their choice. I’m hardly going to force them.’”
She dropped the act with a cold scof
f. “He’s such a fool. People don’t deserve all his gifts, yet he goes on, year after year, wasting all his time on them. Do you know he spends 365 days a year thinking of good things that he can give to all those useless people out there, and hardly anybody even says thank you?”
She shook her head and looked away. “They’re not worth it. But when I tried to tell him so—for his own good!—he shouted so loud at me, it cracked the ice for half a mile.”
“It did?” Dani breathed.
She nodded. “He told me that if that’s the way I feel abou
t humanity, then I’m no grandchild of his, and I could go live with the Blue Hag.”
“
Who’s that?” Jake asked.
“My old aunt
, the Winter Witch.” Snow Maiden pointed to the portrait of the hideous old woman above the fireplace. “I swear, she’s the only person in the world who really understands me. Jack says I take after her. He doesn’t mean it as a compliment, but that’s the way I take it. She’s very powerful and everyone’s afraid of her.”
“So, why
didn’t you go and live with her if you’re so close? Why come here instead?” Jake asked.
She shrugged and twirled away, spinning briefly on her skates. “Oh, I don’t know.”
“Sure, you do,” he persisted.
“Well, you know…there’s a dark side of winter. Not Christmastime, that’s all bright and jolly and annoying, but past then. When it’s gray and dark and endless and it drags on month after month, and you feel like you haven’t seen the sun in an age. The bleakness makes you heavy and haggard and brings on a peculiar despair. That’s the part of winter that belongs to the Blue Hag. My brother Jack may be a reckless dunce, but at least he’s fun.
That’s why I came here.” She turned away and lowered her head with a moody look, as though feeling awkward after her very personal admissions. “Excuse me, I have to go send out the invitations for my party.”
“Do you want any help?”
Isabelle asked in a sympathetic tone.
“No.
Believe me,” she muttered with a cold look, “I’m used to doing everything alone.” With that, the Snow Maiden zoomed away with a swirl of snow and ice chips flying up from the blades of her skates.
When she had gone, they exchanged dubious looks.
But Jake waved them over and they gathered in a huddle on one end of the room.
Archie sighed
and shook his head. “We’re never getting out of here, are we?”
“Yes, we are,” Jake clipped out
, keeping his voice low.
“I’m so tired.” Dani yawned again, her green eyes watering. “We should probably rest up before the ball.”
“Good idea. We need to save our strength for our escape,” he agreed.
“You have a plan?” she asked in surprise.
“Sort of. Snow Maiden said she’s sending out invitations to the party. That means other guests will be arriving.”
“Who
’s she going to invite around here? Yetis?” Archie asked.
“It doesn’t
matter,” Jake whispered impatiently. “The point is, a moment’s bound to come when she’s got to pay attention to her other guests. That’ll be our chance to sneak away.”
“Right in the middle of the party?” Dani asked.
He nodded. “The other guests will distract her.”
“
But then what?” Archie countered. “We’re not going to get very far without a guide. We don’t know where we’re going.”
“You
’re right.” Jake gave a grim nod. “We need to get the elf in on our plan.”
“Are you nickey in the head
?” Dani whispered. “We can’t trust him! What if he tricks us again? He called those yetis and nearly got us killed. He’ll tell Snow Maiden our plan.”
“What c
hoice do we have?” Jake whispered. “We can’t just break out of here and go wandering aimlessly across the Arctic, hoping to run into Santa before we freeze to death.”
“But if you tell him we mean to escape, he could
betray us—again!” Dani said. “Don’t forget, he already tried to convince Snow Maiden we were spies, so she would get rid of us for him.”
“We
ll, I think he may be reconsidering his choice of allies. It’s obvious he’s hating life here. Look at him.” Jake nodded toward the fireplace, and the others turned to see.
Across the room, Humbug was lying on the mantel, twiddling his thumbs.
Isabelle stared at the elf, reading him as best she could. “Actually, you may be right.” She tilted her head thoughtfully. “I think he’s starting to see he had it pretty good before he left the North Pole.”
“I’ll bet,” Archie said
.
“Come on, let’s go talk to him,” Jake said. “Red?”
“Caw,” the sharp-dressed Gryphon answered with a nod, confirming his readiness, should it come to another chase of the lightning-fast elf.
“Just be careful not to say too much about
our plan until you make sure we can trust him,” Dani murmured as they moved in a tight-knit group toward the fireplace.
“Oh, I have no intention of trus
ting him, believe me,” Jake said. “But the fact is, we’ve got no chance without him. Come on.”
Humbug glanced over warily at them as they approached. “What do you
lot want?”
“To make a deal wit
h you,” Jake replied.
At once, Humbug
sat up and swung his feet over the ledge of the mantel, leaning closer with a wary but curious stare. “What sort of deal?”
“
We mean to escape. You tell on us, and I’ll let my Gryphon have at you!” Jake warned him.
Red growled meaningfully at the elf, the feathers on the back of his neck bristling.
Humbug blanched. “There’s no need for ugly threats, you carol-singing torturers.” He eyed them warily. “What did you have in mind?”
“We’re getting out of here, and we’re willing to let you come with us—under certain conditions. You do seem like you’ve had enough of your new mistress.”
“Oh, whatever gave you that idea?” he retorted, then imitated Snow Maiden in a high-pitched voice: “‘Tell me a joke, Humbug! Oh, tell me another one! That’s not very funny, Humbug.’” He harrumphed. “I wasn’t made for telling jokes! This was not what I had in mind when I left Santa’s. She’s dreadful! Little brat.”
“Well, you’ve only got yourself to blame,” Jake chided. “We could have been at the North Pole by now,
having a nice, hot cup of cocoa, but you had to go and betray us. Maybe now you’ll sing a different tune?”
“No singi
ng, please.” Then he admitted: “I want out of here as much as you do. I’ve even found a door that her wooden-headed soldiers usually leave unguarded. Only I’m too small to open it by myself. Otherwise, I’d have already left.”
“Good,
then, we’ll work together—if you promise to cooperate,” Jake said. “You must admit that with all her wolves, soldiers, and bears, we stand the best chance of getting out of here alive if we work together.”
“What do you want me to do?” Humbug asked suspiciously.
“Simple. We’ll get the door open, but once we’re free, you need to show us the way to Santa’s compound. You don’t have to go there with us!” Jake said before Humbug could protest. “Just don’t leave us to freeze to death out there. Get us close enough to the entrance of Santa’s compound so we can go the rest of the way ourselves before you head off to Halloween Town.”
Humbug narrowed his eye
s as he considered the proposal. “Sounds fair. But how do you intend to get us out of here without her noticing?”
“A
t the party tonight, we’ll slip away one by one while she’s distracted with her other guests. Once we’re free, we’ll steal one of the guest’s carriages—”
“S
leighs,” Dani corrected.
“O
r dog sleds,” Archie chimed in.
“
Whatever! The point is, the minute we’re out the door, we make a run for it. So, are you in or not, Humbug?”
“Dashed right I’m in.
” The bells on his ridiculous jester hat jingled as he jumped to his feet atop the mantel.
“You’d better not
try to deceive us. My cousin here is an empath. If you try to lie to us, she’ll know—and then you’re Gryphon food.”
“Caw
,” Red said with a menacing stare, while Isabelle scrutinized the elf for signs of deception.
“
No tricks,” Humbug muttered. “Frankly, I’ve had my share of tomfoolery for now.”
“Aw, d
oes that mean you don’t want to work in Halloween Town anymore?” Dani taunted.
Humbug furrowed his brow and looked away without an
answer, but Jake didn’t care either way what the elf wanted to do.
All that
mattered was escape.
“Keep your eyes open at t
he party tonight, all of you,” he ordered, glancing around at the others. “Watch for my signal. Then you’ll know it’s time.”