Frost's End

When Spring comes, the ice must die.

This piece was written for Spring Fever - Horror in Bloom, hosted by TiF Team . And I’m a big dope and missed the deadline, so I’m very thankful that Garen Marie allowed me to send her my link manually. As I wrote the story, I had all intentions of making it scary, but for some reason it kept wanting to be something else. But it is what it wants to be, and sometimes scary is in the eye of the beholder. And you’re a big old lumbering human, so what do you know about what’s scary? Without further ado, I’ll leave you to it. Please read all the other (likely much scarier) tales here: http://topinfiction.com/p/spring-fever

Meg bolted down the corridor, squealing with delight. Her hand touching the slick white wall as she went. She was followed by an enormous field mouse, twice her size, who bounded and zig-zagged in her wake. “You can’t catch me, Belladonna!” Meg’s pale white skin had a slight glow to it, and she dropped into a slide as she rounded a corner. She waved as she went, and held out a fist of seeds, the bait she’d used to entice the enormous mouse into playing with her. The corridor narrowed until it was half its width, and the ceiling dipped. She slid along the icy floor and disappeared into the tunnel at its end. She had enough momentum that she just kept on sliding into the darkness. Bella wasn’t blessed with brains, and she didn’t remember this tunnel, so as she rounded the corner, she wasn’t able to stop herself in time. She went barreling into the funnel nose-first, and would have been stuck, if it weren’t for the fact that mice are terribly good at getting unstuck from any stuck situation. She sneezed, a bit indignant at being suckered in by the tiny girl, shook the frost off her whiskers, and then turned right around and waddled back the way they had come.

The tunnel wound and wound down, and Meg just kept sliding until she skidded to a stop at the bottom. Light was spare here, so she held up a hand and produced a fist full of light in her outstretched palm after tucking the seeds into a pocket. The light rose from her hand and floated next to her, enough to see a ways in front or behind her. The ice of their home was always changing. As the great light came and went, the ice melted and then froze again as it disappeared and the cycle began anew. Walls built layers and melted. Icicles and ice columns appeared and melted away every cycle. Meg had lived through enough of these cycles that it no longer felt mysterious to her as it had when she was little. She was a big girl, and not as old as her mother of course, or her grandmother, but old enough to know that the coming and going of the great light was just the way of things. This tunnel had been bored by her mother, and they often came down here to sit in the quiet of the ice. You could hear it creaking above you, and the hard soil below was a comfort. You felt one with the All down here. Layers of snow and ice were visible, and yet, one could tell that this was the true nature of things. Ice was like her. Ephemeral. The ground was forever. Her mother once told her.

“You were born here, my girl,” Mother had touched the ice wall, and traced a hand down to where it met the soil, “and you must squeeze every joy from this life while you are in it. We live but briefly. My mother taught me, just as I am teaching you. Every instant you live must be relished, for when it is gone, we are transformed back into light and mist, and it is only fifty, or if we’re lucky, ninety cycles before we only exist in the memories of the stars above, and the loam below.” She traced Meg’s cheek with one glowing finger and gave the little girl a boop on her tiny translucent nose.

Fifteen cycles had passed since then, and Meg was back here in their sacred cavern. The ice above looked thin, and the great light had been rising for a time. She could see it almost as if she were out in the open, which was rare. Since the beginning of this cycle, it felt like the walls were more shiny than they ever had been. Drips from the ceiling were steady, and she heard more and more shifts and groans as the ice around her began to recede. It felt sad, but as her mother had taught her, it was the way of things.

“Meeeeeeeeg!” came a voice, and she turned her head to the tunnel. Another shout came, and then the rushing sound of someone else coming down the icy chute. Two someones as it turned out. Her friends Cal and Shiv. They were twins, and looked much like her. They each had bright eyes and upturned noses, but not the sort that made one look unkind. They looked as if they were made last cycle. Glassy and yet lit from within. They were her best friends in all the ice and snow.

“Why all the racket?” Meg frowned.

“We knew you’d be down here. You’re missing it. It’s all happening! It’s all going away!”

“What is?”

“All of it! Mama said we have to find the shade if we want to watch till the end, but we didn’t want to watch without you. I’m gonna miss you.”

“No you won’t dummy. You’ll be gone. You won’t miss anything.” Cal looked matter-of-fact about it, but it was obvious that Shiv was distraught.

“Do you think it’ll hurt, Meg?” Shiv’s eyes were wide. Searching Meg’s face for some sign of hope.

“I don’t know, sweetie.” Meg was a few cycles older, and the twins looked up to her.

“Mama says it’s just like going to sleep.” Cal squatted down and fiddled with a bit of decaying bark on the ground.

“I’m sure it’s just like that,” Meg said, though she wasn’t sure of any such thing.

“In any case,” Cal said, “if you wanna watch, we need to get topside, and find some shade.”

“I don’t know if I want to watch. Do you really think it’s the end? It was so cold in the dark half of this cycle, and I thought it was supposed to be kind of a gradual thing, no?” Meg really wasn’t all that much more knowledgeable than the twins. She just had a few cycles on them.

“I heard Grandpa talking about legends of a warm snap, where everything just ends in less than a cycle.” Cal started to head for the other end of the cavern. It was the direction out.

“Where did he hear about this warm snap?” Shiv tucked herself under Meg’s arm, and the two followed Cal.

“Where do old folks hear anything? The wind?” Cal scoffed.

A sudden crack came from above. A blinding beam of light shone through and all three gasped, jumping away from the space where the beam fell. A splash of water fell, and a few tiny drops hit Meg’s arm. She winced and held onto it with her other hand. “SSssssss!”

“Oh, Meg! Are you okay?” Shiv looked up at her.

“Let’s just keep going, Shiv.” Meg tried to make a good show of being strong, but it had really hurt. As the hurried on, she looked down at her arm. Where the droplets had touched, she saw her pale translucent arm turn blotchy and a small hole pierced it. She watched as her arm tried to fix the hole. She waved a hand over it as they went, and felt herself regain some sense of her own cold. Some sense that she could fix it, but she wondered how long that would last. If Cal was right, then did it really matter?

The cavern gave way to a hollow, and Shiv said, “Are we at the tree already?”

“Are we at the tree already?” Cal mocked her. “Yes. We’re at the tree, dum-dum. You have no sense of space or direction.”

“Hey!” Shiv’s lip trembled.

Cal looked at her and a sparkle of frost shone on his cheek. “I’m sorry, Shivver. That wasn’t kind or necessary. I’m just scared is all.” He stopped and waited for them to catch up. And put an arm around his sister.

“S’okay,” she whispered.

Meg heard more groans and cracks behind them. Maybe Cal’s grandpa was right. It sounded like entire frozen lakes were suddenly thawing, and she thought she could hear running water. Not just drips and drops, but rivulets. She shook it off and bent down so her head was in line with the twins. “Listen, if we want to last a bit, we’re gonna have to get to the shady side of this tree. Otherwise we’re soon out of time and luck. Cal, do you think the ice is solid on the other side? Do you think we’ll have a path, or do we need to risk going topside?”

“I don’t know, Meg. I haven’t been by this tree in a couple cycles. It’s a biggun. With things going the way they are, it could be there’s a path at the foot of it.”

“Let’s risk it. We’ll follow you. You’ve been here more.” Meg gestured for him to go ahead.

“Okay…” Cal lead on, and they heard rushing water behind them. Meg tried not to shove, but wished he would hurry just a little more. She wasn’t ready just yet. She wanted to see the sky once more.

They traced a path around the roots of the great tree, and as the cycle wore on, they could hear more and more the sounds of falling ice, caverns of solid crystal turning to slush, or in some cases evaporating before they ever fell. The air was stifling. Meg could barely see her own breath. The little ones were sniffling. It was then that they turned a corner, and came upon something awful.

“A puddle! Here? But we’re so close to the shade!” Shiv was young enough that she may never have seen a puddle, but she’d heard of them, and she knew enough to be scared. Touching a puddle, or even getting too close to one might spell the end for a small Frostie. Puddles were hot, and black, and this one was directly in their way.

“Well that’s it. That’s the end of it. It’s too big. We’ll never make it around. It touches the ice above, and we’d have to tunnel to get past it, but we can’t waste the time. Take too long.” Cal sat down.

“We can’t give up! I wanna see the sky before I go! And Meg said there’s still time if we get to the shady side! Please don’t give up, Cal.”

Meg knelt down, and then put her hand to the soil near the edge of the puddle, but not too near. The soil there was hot too, and had some moisture in it. She wondered if she could make a bridge. She had a good deal of frost in her. Healing her arm had worked, hadn’t it? She tried. Reached out, and saw ice crystals forming on the surface of the soil in front of her. She couldn’t ask the twins to help, but Cal saw what she was doing, and he reached out his hand and put it on top of her own. Together, the crystals spread out over the surface of the soil in jagged spiky teeth of frost, and then reached the water’s edge. Meg closed her eyes and envisioned the shelf of ice crystals spreading out and out, around the tree root, and around the corner, so that they could cross. It didn’t need to be too far. Just a short way.

“It’s working!” Shiv cried out, and came to add her hand to her friends. Together they were doing it. Meg opened her eyes a crack to see that the shelf of ice crystals had grown over the surface of the puddle, around the root, and was almost to the other side. And then felt herself shudder, as her own cold began to wane. She felt the heat of the water through her connection to the ice she was crafting, and it felt like a hot punch to her tummy. She fell forward on her hands, and saw the twins both gasp and fall at the same time.

“Ugh!” Shiv cried out, and the three watched as their hard shelf of ice slipped quietly into the puddle, and dispersed into several small floes, then disappeared altogether.

Meg could hear the ice falling behind them. This part of the cavern was almost at the edge of shadow, but she could see light peeking through in many more places behind them. Water was pouring in. She heard snow and ice falling from tree branches in the distance. They boomed as they struck, and she knew this cavern would soon be no more. The great light would touch them, and unlike in past, more frigid, cycles when she was younger, it would not be so kind to her. She held her friends close so that they could feel and share her cool.

“Remember that cycle when you were both babies and the snow was so deep we almost lost you in it?” Meg smiled at them.

“And then we sneezed and found our magic?” Shiv smiled back at her.

“Did you ever find your magic,” Meg said. “You found your magic, and you made the snow drift you were lost in glow so bright, you scared a family of owls. Those owls thought you were the great light in the sky, and they flew away to escape back into darkness!”

“And then we made more snow with you for the rest of the cycle, and we watched the big pink children playing when the light came!” Cal chuckled. “Those giant pink children in their bright colored frocks! They acted like they had never seen snow before. So excited!”

“But they moved so slowly! Like this,” and Shiv did an imitation of the giant children, and their lumbering movements. She moved extra slow, and it made them all laugh to remember it.

Meg wondered if the pink children really moved that slowly, or if she and her friends just moved a bit faster by nature. She sort of thought it was that way, but didn’t want to break the spell of their memory by saying it aloud.

Amidst their laughter, and in the distance, Meg heard a sound. Not like the sounds she’d been hearing. Dreadful sounds of cracking ice, and falling clumps of snow, and the incessant dripping of water. This was different. It sounded like galloping. A great gallumphing of feet. She knew that sound. Then it stopped, and a different sound came. This was another sound she knew well. Tunneling. It was the sound of tunneling. She put up a finger to the twins to shush them a moment. And just as Shiv said, “Wha-,” the enormous head of Belladonna came crashing through the wall of snow to their left.

The giant field mouse shoved her way out of the snow, and sat proudly next to Meg. She blinked her great shiny black eyes and Meg felt frost forming in her eyes. Her friend had come to see her off.

“Oh, Bella!” The three Frosties gathered around Bella and nuzzled her. She shook off the snow from her tunneling, and it swirled all around them. She thumped her foot, and motioned toward the far side of the puddle. Meg frowned a moment, and then she understood.

“Do you think? Would we make it?” Bella gave another thump with her back foot, and lowered her great body to the ground, flattening.

“What’s she doing?” Shiv asked.

“I think she wants to give us a ride,” Meg said, unsure.

“Would we all fit?” Cal was just as skeptical.

“What do we have to lose, really?” Shiv was already climbing up onto the mouse’s back. “Let’s go!” Bella looked back over her shoulder at Meg.

At this point, the cavern was dripping in so many places that Meg began to worry about catching a random droplet and being swept away into the puddle herself. A good sized one might take out either of the twins, and that would be that. She didn’t want to watch her friends melt away. A drop fell on Bella’s nose just as she had the thought, and the mouse gave a sneeze.

“Let me help you,” Meg pushed Cal’s bottom higher onto the mouse’s back, and then she climbed up after him, using Bella’s hindquarters to step up. Without wasting any time, Bella waded gingerly out into the puddle. Meg gave the mouse a pat, and said, “Keep as shallow as you can, Bella. We’re counting on you.”

She found her footing, and then lost it, and all three children shrieked just a little, and Shiv began to softly sob, frost forming on her cheeks as she did. Meg heard her mother’s voice explaining that it was just the way things were, and there was nothing to fear. But it didn’t help. The water rose around them. Belladonna sank deeper into the puddle until she was swimming. She did her best to paddle gently, but there was a splash here and there, and one so large it hit Cal’s thigh. It sizzled a hole straight through it, and Cal bit his lip to avoid screaming out. Shiv reached out a hand to give him some of her cold, to try to patch the hole in him. She frosted it over, but it didn’t look like it would last.

They hiked their knees and feet as high as they could on Bella’s back, and held tight to the fur at her nape. The water around them was hot, and Meg felt she herself would scream out from fear, but instead she held tight and with a soft voice sang in Shiv’s ear a song her mother had sung to her when she was little. “Every snowflake on your nose, Started as a north wind blows, Never fear the changing winds, for we are all contained within.” It had always struck her as a cryptic bedtime song, but it actually made her feel a little better just now. And Shiv stopped sobbing.

They opened their eyes when it felt like Bella was stopping. Meg dared to open just one. Fully expecting to see the water creeping closer to her toes, she gasped when she saw that Bella had come out of the water on the other side of the puddle, and they were safe in the shade. The ice on this side of the cavern had not started yet to drip, and there were no holes here. She gave Bella a kiss as she climbed down off her back. She pointed to the snow wall at the far end of the cavern. “Good work, Bella! Good girl! Now dig! Quick as you can!” The giant mouse bounded for the snow wall and dug. She disappeared into a hole of her own making, and the three followed after her, reveling in the fresh snow she left in her wake. They felt rejuvenated, and for just a moment allowed themselves to laugh.

Meg caught Cal’s eye and he grabbed her hand, and squeezed it. A knowing passed between them. Neither would say it, but this was the end of their adventures. Shiv called out, “Bella! Wait for us!” She tore after the mouse, and Cal and Meg followed after down the new tunnel.

They erupted out into the shade of the great tree. Snow still covered the ground here, but the air was hot. Meg felt frost on her cheeks and it evaporated as soon as it formed. She held fast to her friends hands, and soaked it all in. The great light glinted in every drip and drop that spelled death to her kind. For all the cycles she could remember she had seen the great light above as it rose and fell, and she had only seen it as a beautiful distant orb. It made what color existed in the land around her brighter. The pines were a deep green. The cardinal that flew by was brighter in the light of the great light. Red and strong. Even shadows held deeper blues when the great light was in the sky. But now, this cycle, the great light was at its strongest since she knew she was alive. And she felt it calling to her with its heat. Even here in the shade where she couldn’t see it directly, she knew what her mother had said was true. There was nothing to fight. It scared her, but it was just the way of things. She held fast to her friends, and she said, “Goodbye Bella. I’ve so loved playing with you.”

Shiv cried, and Cal did too. Meg felt in her pocket for the seeds she’d been taunting Bella with. She pulled them out and handed one to each of the twins. They took them, and looked up at her with frost covered cheeks that melted as soon as the crystals had formed. They held fast to their seeds, and Meg knew then why she’d felt compelled to pick them up that morning. She closed her eyes tight, and forced every bit of magic she had into her hands. The twins saw the glow, and they followed her lead. And just then, the great light peeked around the edge of the tree, and the three friends fell to the ground in the terrible glint of a sunbeam. There were no screams. No pain. Their seeds fell to the ground.

Bella sniffed at the seeds. She considered eating them, but instead used a single paw to separate them just a tad. Then she used both forelegs to cover them with newly moist soil.

And then she waited.

She waited for new friends.

She waited for Spring.

Thanks to Keith Long for the Spring Fever logo

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