The House of Winter

by Isobel Bird

  “Fiona, I know how you must feel,” Sophia said. “But I think we need to leave the girls alone for now. They’re confused and upset. Trying to find them would only make things worse. Besides, we have another idea.”

  Mrs. Reilly looked at her husband, who said after a moment, “Sophia has never steered us wrong before.”

  “Okay,” Mrs. Reilly said. “Let’s hear it.”

  “I think we need to go forward with our Yule ritual,” Sophia said. “I believe it will draw the girls out of hiding. Then we can do what we need to do to help them.”

  Mrs. Reilly looked at all of them for a long moment. “Okay,” she said finally. “I can’t say that I understand any of this—and I think there’s more going on here than you’re telling me—but I trust you, Sophia, and I trust anyone you call your friend. So I’m going to pretend that everything is fine and leave it in your hands. Besides, I have a lot of hungry guests waiting for breakfast and only three gas stoves to work with. I have enough to worry about today.”

  “And I have a generator that went kaput for no apparent reason,” Mr. Reilly added. “So, like my wife, I, too, will assume that everything is going to be fine, although I’m sure I’ll have to remind myself of that every five minutes or so.”

  Sophia reached over and took their hands in hers. “It will be fine,” she said. “It will.”

  They left the Reillys and walked back to the lobby, where they saw Thea, Thatcher, Archer, and some of the others straggling in looking tired.

  “Somebody point me to the coffee,” Archer said. “If I’m going to last through the longest night I need caffeine in my body.”

  “Coffee will have to wait,” Sophia told her.

  Archer blinked. She looked at Thatcher and Thea. “Why do I think this means we’re all in trouble?”

  “No trouble,” Sophia said. “It’s more of a…project.”

  Archer groaned. “Even worse,” she said. “All right. Let us have it.”

  Sophia took them to a couch in the corner of the lobby and filled them in on what was happening. As each detail unfolded, Archer’s eyes got bigger and bigger. When Sophia was finished she looked at Annie, Sasha, Kate, and Cooper. “Well,” she said. “You guys have certainly brought a lot of excitement to our quiet little circle.”

  “So what exactly do you want us to do?” Thatcher asked Sophia.

  “I want a Yule ritual to beat all Yule rituals,” Sophia said. “I want singing. I want dancing. I want fires and merrymaking.”

  “You got it,” Thatcher said. “I’ll handle the merry making and fires. And I’m sure Luna will be glad to help out with the dancing and Maia with the singing. We’ll give you a Yule ritual, all right.”

  “I’ll see what kind of decorating I can do,” Archer said. “But can I please have some coffee first?”

  “Yes,” Sophia said. “And thank you, all of you. I know we’d all planned on an uneventful Yule celebration, but maybe this is what we needed.”

  Thea turned to Sasha. “Now let’s talk about this falling-in-the-lake thing,” she said sternly.

  Sasha groaned. “I knew I should have left that part out,” she said, looking helplessly at her friends.

  Sophia told the girls to go get something to eat while she and Thatcher spoke to the leaders of the four paths and made plans for the evening’s activities. Cooper, Annie, Sasha, and Kate went into the dining room, where Fiona Reilly and her staff had managed to pull together breakfast despite having no electricity. The girls piled their plates with eggs, sausages, toast, and other things and sat down at a table to talk.

  “Do you think this will work?” Kate asked as she spread strawberry jam on her toast.

  “It has to,” Annie replied, spooning some hot oatmeal into her mouth.

  “I don’t know,” Cooper said. “I still feel like we should be doing something. Maybe Mrs. Reilly was right—maybe we should be searching the hotel. I mean, Nora has to have Lucy somewhere, right? Maybe we could find her.”

  Sasha bit into a sausage link. “You guys are always telling me that you can’t force magic, right?” she said thoughtfully. “That you have to let things happen the way they need to happen.”

  “True,” Annie said. “If you try to make magic do what you want it to, it usually backfires.”

  “Then I think we should wait,” said Sasha. “This is all about magic, right? It’s about Yule and the struggle between darkness and light. Whatever Mary is planning, it has to happen tonight, when the light and dark are changing places. If we try to stop it before then, maybe we’ll throw everything off.”

  The others stopped eating and looked at her. Then Cooper said, “For someone who hasn’t even been in class, you’ve got a better grip on this than we have.”

  Sasha laughed. “I think the dunking in the lake woke me up,” she said.

  “So we wait,” said Kate a moment later. “But we have to be part of this somehow.”

  “I think we’re about to find out how,” Cooper remarked. “Here comes Sophia.”

  Sophia arrived at the table and sat down. “Okay,” she said. “I have your assignments. Cooper, you’re going to work with Maia on music. Kate, you’re going to help Jackson organize the ritual. Annie, you’re going to help Archer and Ginny with some decorating ideas they have. And Sasha, you’re going to help Luna with the dancing.”

  “So basically we’re doing what we’ve been working on all week?” Cooper said.

  Sophia nodded. “You didn’t think you chose your paths by accident, did you?” she said. “Now, get going. We have a lot of work to do before tonight.”

  “You still haven’t told us how this is all going to help us find out where Nora has Lucy,” Annie said.

  “I think if we do this right Nora and Lucy will come to us,” Sophia answered. “You just worry about doing your parts.”

  The girls hastily finished their breakfasts and then went to their various classrooms. For the rest of the day they barely had time to even think about Nora and Lucy as they planned, wrote, decorated, and organized. By the time they came together again in the late afternoon, they were tired but excited.

  “We came up with some great stuff,” Sasha told the others as they prepared in their room for the evening’s activities.

  “So did we,” Cooper said. “It was a little weird because only Maia and I knew what was really going on, but it was like the other people in class somehow sensed that this was really important. We wrote some amazing songs for tonight.”

  “How did decorating go?” Kate asked Annie.

  “Better than I thought it would,” Annie told her. “Archer is a genius when it comes to putting things together. Wait until you see the dining room.”

  The enormous dining room had been off-limits all day as Archer and her crew prepared it for the Yule ritual. Annie, of course, had seen it, but no one else had, and they were all eager to find out what had been done to it.

  “What exactly is going to happen?” Cooper asked Kate. “You’re the one on the planning committee.”

  Kate smiled mysteriously. “You’ll have to wait to find out,” she said. “All I’m going to say is that it’s very cool.”

  When they were all dressed they prepared to leave the room and meet everyone else in the lobby, where they had been instructed to gather. Before they left, though, Annie said, “Could we do something before we go down there?”

  The others stopped on their way to the door and turned around. “Like what?” Cooper asked.

  “I’d like to do a little circling up for a minute,” Annie said.

  The others walked over to her. Annie took Kate’s hand in one of hers and offered the other to Cooper. Cooper and Kate took Sasha’s hands. The four of them stood there for a moment in silence. Then Annie spoke.

  “I just want to say that you guys are my best friends,” she told them. She looked specifically at Kate, knowing they were both thinking about the recent past, and Tyler. “Watching what’s happened with Nora and Lucy has made me r
ealize how important family is, even when things aren’t going right. You guys are like my sisters, and you’re definitely my family. I know things haven’t been all that easy lately, but I really love all of you and would do anything for you. That’s all I want you to know.”

  “We love you, too,” Cooper said.

  “Hey, speak for yourself,” Sasha told her. Then she smiled. “I know you three have a special thing going here,” she said. “Thanks for letting me be part of it. I never thought when I first saw you at that Ostara ritual last spring that we’d be standing here like this.”

  “Trust me,” Kate said. “Neither did we.” She looked at Annie and Cooper. “Annie’s right—we are a family. Even when it’s tough. And as long as we all stick together, no one is going to get in our way. Not even a ghost with a bad attitude. We took Sherrie down, didn’t we? Mary doesn’t have a chance.”

  They all laughed and hugged one another tightly. Then it was out the door and down the stairs. When they reached the lobby they found the doors to the dining room closed. Thatcher and some other people were standing beside some large boxes, out of which they were taking white robes and handing them out to everyone in the lobby. The girls walked up to see what was going on.

  “Here you go,” Thatcher said, handing them each a robe. “Your outfits for this evening.”

  “Don’t tell me you spent all day making these,” Cooper said, pulling the robe over her head.

  Thatcher laughed. “No,” he answered. “We use these every year. Fiona and Bryan let us store them here.”

  “Now what are we supposed to do?” Annie asked after they were all outfitted in white.

  “Why don’t you ask Kate?” Thatcher suggested. “She’s the one who planned this.”

  “Well?” Sasha asked, putting her hands on her hips and turning to Kate.

  “We’re going to split into two groups,” Kate said. “Water and Earth paths down the left-hand corridor and Air and Fire paths down the right-hand one. You’ll find out more when you get there.”

  “More mystery,” said Cooper, rolling her eyes.

  “Don’t worry,” Kate replied. “All will be revealed in time.”

  “Oh, brother,” said Annie. She grabbed Kate’s hand. “Come on, water girl,” she said. “We’re going this way.”

  She started to drag Kate down the left-hand corridor. As they left, Kate turned to Cooper and Sasha. “See you in a little bit,” she said, winking.

  CHAPTER 18

  “Why are we carrying unlit candles?” Annie whispered to Kate as they walked down the hallway. It was difficult to see because all of the candles that had previously lit the corridor had been extinguished.

  “I’m not telling you,” Kate said. “You’ll just have to wait.”

  Annie groaned and kept walking, following the sound of the drums that were being played somewhere ahead of them. The soft thudding echoed through the corridors as the Earth and Water paths, arranged in two rows of people, made their way slowly toward the lobby. When they reached it, they stopped. Like the hallways, the lobby was in total blackness, and Annie couldn’t see anything. She gripped the candle she’d been given tightly and waited to see what would happen.

  They stood there in the darkness for some time while the drumming continued. Outside, the snowstorm that had been raging for two days continued, the wind screeching loudly as it buffeted the hotel and rattled the glass in the windows. With no fires burning in the lobby, the air was very cold, and Annie shivered a little. She didn’t like being surrounded by the dark and the cold, and she wished something would happen.

  Suddenly a spark flared up in the center of the lobby, and Annie saw Bilbo’s face illuminated by a candle. Although the flame was small, it made her feel good just to see it. It drove the blackness back just enough, reminding her that there still was light in the world.

  “Welcome to the longest night,” Bilbo said. “Tonight the world is wrapped in darkness as the reign of winter begins. We are about to enter the hall of the Winter Queen. As you pass by me and into her realm, touch your candles to mine and bring to her the gift of light.”

  The drummers began playing a different tune, slightly faster than the one that had summoned everyone to the lobby. The columns of people moved forward, and when they reached Bilbo each person touched her or his candle to the one Bilbo was holding. Annie saw that two other lines of people were emerging from the right-hand corridor, so that four people at a time walked toward the doors of the dining room and disappeared inside.

  When Kate and Annie came to where Bilbo stood they lit their candles. Cooper and Sasha were there as well, having just come out of their corridor, and together the four of them proceeded into the dining hall.

  The tables in the room had been pushed against the back wall so that most of the space was clear. In the center had been erected what looked like a throne. It was draped in white and surrounded by candles, and sitting on it was Sophia. She, too, was dressed in white, and her long dark hair hung loosely about her shoulders. On her head was a crown of holly leaves. She watched, her face impassive, as the people filed in.

  “Bring the gift of light to the Queen of Winter,” said a voice from the darkness.

  The people coming in walked up to the throne and placed their candles on the floor around it. Soon the queen was surrounded by a small circle of light as people presented their candles and then stepped away to stand outside the circle. As Kate, Sasha, Annie, and Cooper came in, they added their own candles to the expanding circle, then went to stand together and wait. They looked at the queen, who seemed to be seated in a pool of fire, as the rest of the participants entered the dining room.

  When everyone was inside, the doors to the dining room were shut. The drumming ceased and silence descended as everyone watched the face of the queen. She continued to sit, not moving, for a few minutes more as she stared into the candle flames that surrounded her. Then she looked up.

  “I am winter,” she said, her voice soft and stern. “I am freezing cold and killing frost. I am blizzard and icicle and howling wind. Tonight I come to claim the world.”

  The queen stood up and held out her hands. “This place belongs to me,” she said. “It is wrapped in darkness and bound by the cold.”

  She bent down and picked up a candle. “Should I choose to,” she said, “I could extinguish all light forever.”

  She blew out the candle and smiled as a thin stream of smoke floated up from it. Then she looked around at the people watching her. “But perhaps you can change my mind,” she said. “Perhaps you can tell me why I should call back the light for you. If you can do that, you may have my blessing.”

  The queen sat down again. “Let it begin,” she said.

  The drumming resumed. As they all watched, a group of people walked through the crowd. They were wearing white masks over their faces.

  “Those are our death masks!” Annie exclaimed.

  The masked people surrounded the queen’s throne, facing outward. As the drummers played, the dancers began to circle her, turning their faces first toward her and then toward the assembled group. Then a woman’s voice began singing.

  “In the bleak midwinter the queen wakes from her sleep,” she sang. “She gathers cold about her as she walks in forests deep.”

  “This is one of mine,” said Cooper proudly as the girls watched the dancers’ empty faces. The words of the song mirrored their movements, and they became creatures of the winter worshiping their queen.

  “Robes of snow and crown of stars, she rules the frozen land,” the woman continued. “All the world slumbers, gone to rest by her command.”

  The dancers began to spread out, moving through the crowd as the woman continued to sing. The Queen of Winter watched them, a small smile on her face, as they twisted and turned through the group. Sometimes they stopped, their masked faces peering into those of the unmasked before moving on.

  “This is creepy and beautiful at the same time,” Sasha whispered to the others
. “It’s like she’s putting us all under a spell.”

  “That was the idea,” said Kate.

  The Queen of Winter stood up again. “Join the singing,” she commanded. “Call to the cold. Call to the darkness.”

  All around the girls, people took up the song being sung by the lone woman. Their voices filled the room as they welcomed winter in.

  “In the house of winter, we gather at her feet,” they sang. “On the longest night we wait, the frozen hours to greet.”

  The song went on, repeating itself several times, as the dancers circled the room. Then one of them took the hand of someone nearby, who took the hand of the next person, and a spiral dance began. Eventually the line of people reached the girls, and the four of them joined the string of hands, holding on to one another as they were swept away in the dance.

  The drumming continued as they circled the room. Then the lead dancer moved closer to the queen, forming the first spiral. Around and around they went, the spirals growing tighter and tighter as the white-robed celebrants continued their dance celebrating the Queen of Winter. The song Cooper had written was sung over and over, the many different voices rising up and joining together to create a hypnotic sound.

  It seemed that the dance lasted for hours. When the first dancers reached the queen’s throne, the spiral began to move out again, with those coming behind intertwining with those making the journey back out. Here and there masked faces continued to appear, and it was as if the winter beings were leading everyone into the darkness of the longest night.

  Then the spiral began to open up again as the leader reached the outside of the spiral and drew everyone along the perimeter of the room. The final dancers twirled out of the spiral, and now they all formed one complete circle with the Queen of Winter in the center on her throne.

  Only she wasn’t alone. As the circle came together and the first and last dancer held hands, they saw that someone was lying on the floor in front of the throne. It was Lucy. She appeared to be asleep. The dancers came to a stop as the drumming abruptly ceased.