Frost

by Wendy Delsol

  “I think I will,” Jack said, nodding his head.

  I gave him an are-you-kidding look, but he was too lost in thought to notice.

  “I better get home,” Jack said, snapping to. “There’s still more snow to clear.”

  A few minutes later, watching from the front porch as his truck pulled away, I thought that I should have been at least a little cheered up. My mom and Stanley were over-the-rainbow happy. And Jack seemed genuinely gung ho about visiting Stanley’s lab. So why did I feel like another cold front was moving in?

  On New Year’s Eve, as I Windexed and wiped display cases, Afi limped out of the back room. He was pale, with frosty white whiskers growing high on his gaunt cheeks.

  “Good God, Kat, what do you have on?”

  I stood and looked down. Afi never got my outfits. It was a running joke between us. This one, I supposed, was especially hard to comprehend.

  “It’s the grunge look.” I posed for him, tapping the toe of my Doc Martens out to the side and displaying the full length of slash marks down the front of my baggy jeans. My chunky knit sweater with old leather buttons and its thumb holes at the base of the too-long sleeves hung mid-thigh.

  “The what?”

  “Grunge look.”

  “You look like that on purpose?”

  “Yep.”

  Afi shook his head, but I suspected that it was more than fashion trends on his mind.

  “Are you feeling OK, Afi? Why don’t you go home?”

  He looked around, as if unsure of his bearings. “You think I should?”

  “Yes. Definitely.”

  He brought a blue-veined hand to his temple and rubbed. “I miss it, you know.”

  Uh-oh. He’d only been at the store for an hour, tops. Hardly enough time to work up a hankering for his couch. He’d been sick since the storm, and all he did the whole time was bellyache about being housebound. He wasn’t making sense.

  “Are you OK to walk?” I asked him.

  “God, no,” he said. “I’ll have to fly.”

  I waited for him to explain. He said nothing. I tucked my chin in. I was the bird in the family, but you didn’t hear me preparing for takeoff. Maybe Afi wasn’t over the flu? Maybe he was sicker than we thought?

  “Should I drive you?” I asked.

  “Drive me? To Iceland? Don’t be silly.”

  “Who said anything about Iceland?” I said.

  “It’s my home,” he said, pulling his anorak from a hook by the door. “And you’re right I should go.”

  Afi clomped to the door and was trudging down the snow-banked sidewalk before I could respond. I had no idea where he was headed.

  I called my mom and gave her a heads-up on his strange behavior. She promised to check on him before going out for the evening.

  As I scrambled to close up early, with New Year’s plans for a party at Tina’s boyfriend Matthew’s house, my head started to itch.

  Shoot. A scalp rash was the archaic means by which we Storks communicated a nine p.m., same-day meeting. As always, I exhaled a huff of steam at our prehistoric ways. Even courier pigeon would be more technologically advanced and would at least keep with our bird theme.

  I punched Jack’s number into my cell phone. We hadn’t seen each other since the day after Christmas, when he dropped me at Afi’s house. In the space of five days, he and Stanley had become the new couple — as two-ply as Charmin Ultra — poring over Stanley’s research notes, running around the county collecting data, and preparing for the researcher’s arrival. And I was still running my own personal shopgirl marathon.

  “Hey. It’s me,” I said.

  “What’s up, buttercup?” It was a corny line, and he overused it, but it made my insides melt. It did. I heard the slosh.

  “A little wrench in the evening.”

  “Uh-oh.”

  “Stork duty.”

  “But you’ll be done by what? Nine-o-two?”

  It was true that our Stork meetings — though always long, drawn-out affairs whose rules and regulations probably predated the Roman Republic — accounted for mere minutes of real time, but it was a little rattling that the guy knew me well enough to punch a hole in my busy-delivering-souls alibi.

  “Except that Hulda always keeps me after.” Now I sounded like a whining schoolgirl. “I think I should meet you at Matthew’s.”

  “OK. See you there, then.”

  I hung up, sensing my stomach gurgle. There was an awkwardness between Jack and me. We talked daily by phone and both had legitimate distractions; still, there was a muck-filled puddle in the road we were both politely stepping around.

  The only good news of the day was that the normally wicked boiling and bubbling and prickling of my scalp wasn’t nearly as bad as in the past. About time.

  Though I had another itch, and that was to shake things up a bit.

  Our flock was in urgent need of a new meeting place. Now that Starbucks had bought Hulda’s store and was “opening soon,” our usual gathering spot — Hulda’s dungeon — was about to get more foot traffic than was good for an ages-old clandestine organization. We’d already discussed the issue at three meetings with the unanimous-but-one consensus that — drumroll — the topic should be discussed further — cymbals crash. I was, for the record, the but-one. If you asked me, we should assign a couple of location scouts: they’d go out with maps and cameras, return with suggestions, and the group would put it to a vote. Problem was, no one asked me. Hulda had tabled the discussion with her customary, “We wait for a sign.”

  I swore, one of these days, I was going to walk in with a big picket sign that said: DECIDE SOMETHING.

  I tugged the knit cap with braided ear tails over my scabied scalp that, thankfully, looked worse than it felt. Though construction crews had been transforming Hulda’s old Fabric and Notions Shop for weeks, my key still mystically fit in the lock, even though it was an entirely different door. I walked through the dark shop, a jumble of carpenters’ tools and painters’ equipment, all neatly stored for the night. The door that had once been marked OFFICE, though I had only once ever seen it in that incarnation, was now a coed restroom. I super-hated coed bathrooms. For starters, I had a fear of being walked in on, and secondly, I had an even stronger fear that men didn’t wash, construction crews in particular.

  I turned the handle to the door with my shirtsleeve and found, naturally, the same dark hallway, naked bulb, and winding stairs. OK. Things like this about the Storks still made my spine curl.

  I settled into my Robin’s seat, the much-coveted second chair, an honor I’d never asked for and over which Grimilla, aka Grim, still bore one big galumph of a grudge. Well, that and the fact that Penny — Grim’s granddaughter and sole heir — had become a little more rebellious since meeting me. I looked across to Grim as she heaved herself into her Peacock’s chair. Her gray-blue eyes chopped me with one quick, dismissive glance. Nice to see you, too.

  Hulda walked into the room, followed by Dorit, or a shell of the Stork once known as Dorit, anyway. Dorit had been conspicuously absent from recent meetings. Her hair hung lank, her normally pudgy face appeared lined, and she had the slow, heavy-footed shamble of a convict. I even looked at her feet for shackles, but her hobble was self-imposed. I’d never seen anyone so beat-down. Granted, she had to be one steaming kettle of regret. She’d foolishly, over the course of many years, confided top-secret information to her grandson Wade. Enough, even, for him to murder out of jealousy his own sister, a future Stork; to fall in with soul-snatching Ravens; and to summon the centuries-closed Bifrost Bridge — his fatal mistake.

  Hulda motioned for us all to stand. Dorit took her place behind her chair, but I noticed she did not pull it away from the table, as most of us had.

  “Before roll is called,” Hulda said, “our first order of business will be to read the verdict of the World Tribunal as pertains to our suspended Stork, Dorit.”

  You’d think, as second chair, I’d have known that Dorit’s case wa
s being reviewed by the World Tribunal, or that we even had a World Tribunal. Once again, communication was not the group’s strongest suit. I also noted the omission of the word sister before “Stork” or Fru (the Icelandic for Mrs.) before “Dorit.”

  Hulda unfurled a scroll of brown paper that looked old enough to be the Cro-Magnon Carta, or whatever form of law prehistoric man governed with. I looked over her shoulder, half expecting it to be written in hieroglyphs. “Dorit Giselda Arnulfsdottir.”

  The room went quiet as a Verizon dead zone.

  “You have been accused”— continued Hulda —“of disclosing Stork secrets to a Raven, an act which resulted in the death of Hannah Ivarsson.”

  Dorit sniffled at the mention of her granddaughter and removed a cloth hankie from her sleeve.

  “As well as injury to Jack Snjosson and to Katla Gudrun Leblanc, a sister Stork.”

  Note to self: Keep mouth shut, even to Jack. Gossip can go bad — very, very bad.

  Hulda rolled to a new section of paper. Dorit’s sniffles became sobs. “The tribunal’s decision is an . . .”

  A collective intake of air sounded like the start-up of a small engine.

  “Immediate and lifelong termination of Stork affiliation and privileges.”

  Dorit crumpled to her knees. We all gasped. I, too, was caught up in the emotion of the moment. Though it wasn’t a death sentence, her reaction and the responding clucks and squawks were funereal. The Storks whose chairs were on either side of Dorit helped her to her feet, or attempted to, anyway. Once composed, she resisted any offer of assistance with angry flaps of her arms. She gathered a ragbag purse from her feet, yanked the cloche hat from her head, and slapped it on the table.

  “You have made a mistake you will come to regret, Hulda,” Dorit said with an accusatory wag of her thick index finger. She clutched the bag to her chest and stormed out of the room, causing the candles to flicker and all the Storks to chatter like loose dentures. I heard words like “insolent” and “an insult to Fru Hulda” volleyed back and forth. Not only had Dorit threatened our esteemed leader, she had, perhaps even more shockingly, addressed her as simply Hulda.

  Upon Dorit’s dramatic exit, Hulda braced the table as if exhausted. She turned to one of the quietest of members. “Fru Svana, if you would be so kind as to see to Dorit’s chair.”

  Svana, our Swan, pulled the chair away from the table and then turned it backward, facing out. I remembered that this was the way my chair had been the first night I stumbled into a meeting.

  “Fru Hulda,” I said, “may I ask a question?”

  “Yes, child. Ask.”

  I noticed I was “child,” whereas the omission of a tiny article in front of Fru Hulda’s name had set the room atwitter. Whatever.

  “How will we replace Fru Dorit?”

  “This discussion is not on the agenda,” Grim interrupted.

  Hulda sighed and then turned to me. “Katla, you remain after meeting. Yes?”

  “Yes. Of course.” Lucky for Jack, I wasn’t able to discuss Stork business, otherwise he’d have earned an IOU for an ItoldU.

  “Fru Hulda,” Grim said. “Perhaps after the meeting you will remind our fledgling member of protocol.”

  Dang, Grim was harsh. I shot her a look. And though I suspected Penny would bear the consequence of my glare, and was sure my messages to her would never again be delivered, I couldn’t help it. And besides, I was second chair. And it wasn’t like there was a manual to follow. If there was, it was probably carved into some ancient stone in the north of Iceland. Furthermore, I’d been demoted from child to fledgling.

  The rest of the meeting was a snore. We accomplished nothing. Not one thing. The agenda, besides giving Dorit the boot, called for the discussion of a new meeting place. We discussed it all right, but decided — as usual — nada.

  After the Storks had filed out, all — except Grim — wishing one another “Happy New Year,” I remained in my chair next to Hulda.

  She tapped my wrist. “So, you wish to know how new Storks come to be.”

  “Yes.”

  “But do you not remember your own arrival?”

  “Of course I do, but it had seemed unusual.” Unusual was an understatement. That night while working at Afi’s store, my scalp had felt like it was going to crawl off my head. I’d looked across the street to see Hulda’s shop open for the first time in months. To hide my head pox, I’d borrowed my poor dead amma’s beret and hustled over for bargains on velvets and satins. When the beret accidentally fell off, Hulda took one look at my blistered scalp and spooked me into following her down to a dungeon full of old soul-delivering birds, literally, where I was pronounced a member — the youngest ever, at that. So what, I asked myself, were the chances of this being standard recruitment practice?

  “You found us,” Hulda said. “This was a sign. Now, as we did then, we wait for a sign.”

  Holy cow. If I remember correctly, it had been a three-year wait to find me. It just seemed there had to be a better way. “I wonder”— I said, thinking out loud —“if it wouldn’t do our group good to be a little more proactive in certain things.”

  Hulda gave me a wide-eyed look. In a grave tone, she said, “We have, for centuries, followed a strict protocol. We rely on signs and dreams and omens to guide us in the selection of new Storks, just as we rely on signs and dreams to identify souls and vessels. These ways are not for us to change.”

  Wasn’t it Hulda who once said “The bamboo that bends in the wind is stronger than the oak that resists”? I could tell, though, that I was already skating on thin ice. And as someone who once fell through a not-so-frozen lake and nearly died, I preferred terra firma.

  “And Fru Hulda, are you worried about the way Dorit left us? She threatened you.”

  “It is not Dorit I fear. Though she has disappointed and endangered us all, she has a good heart. She is shocked and her pride is wounded, but she has learned her lesson. Our secrets are safe with her.”

  It wasn’t a bank I’d be depositing in, but I hoped Hulda was right.

  “It was, rather, Wade’s actions that night,” Hulda said, “that most frightened me. The portals — the Álaga Blettur — the power places, if the seals were weakened when recently opened, if a wedge . . .” Hulda waved hands in front of her face, as if parting a curtain. “Listen to me. Such an old worrywart. Go. Be young. Enjoy this night.”

  I wasn’t in the mood to contemplate wedges unless they were of the heeled variety. I wished her a Happy New Year and hightailed my feathers out of there. It was close to nine-thirty. Plenty of party time remained.

  I drove to the New Year’s party straight from the Stork meeting. Surprised by the number of cars, I parked on the street a few houses down from Matthew’s. I had thought it was supposed to be a small group. As I walked down the sidewalk, I spied a lone figure huddled against a beat-up truck.

  “Jack? Are you waiting for me?”

  “Yes.”

  “It’s freezing out here.” Even I couldn’t quite grasp his absolute immunity to the cold.

  “How was your meeting?”

  I tucked my arms under his and clasped my hands behind his back. “You know I can’t talk about it.” As much as it was a small comfort to have at least one person outside council who knew about this crazy responsibility of mine, the secrecy surrounding our Stork duties was often overwhelming.

  “Fine.” He rested his chin on my head. “How about telling me if you’re in the mood for a party.”

  “I’m in the mood to be with you. Anywhere.”

  “Good answer.” He took my hand and led me toward Matthew’s house.

  The party was in the basement, more aptly described as the entertainment level. There was a pool table, Ping-Pong table, long granite-topped bar, and huge U-shaped sectional front-and-center to a theater-worthy plasma HDTV. And there were kids everywhere. Way more than I expected.

  Jack stopped to chat with Matthew. I spotted Penny and Tina sitting at the bar
with Cokes in front of them.

  “Happy New Year, girls,” I said, giving them both hugs. I pulled up a stool on the other side of Penny. “Big crowd.”

  They exchanged looks.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked.

  Penny motioned with a dip of her head toward the TV area, where a big group, guys mainly, were watching a football game. They were loud and already rowdy. I noticed Pedro among them.

  “Most of them weren’t invited,” Penny said.

  “Matthew’s a nervous wreck,” Tina cut in. “He promised his parents he’d keep it small and that there wouldn’t be any drinking. If they come home early, he’s dead.”

  I looked again at the group. I noticed they were mostly football players from our school and that many of them were drinking beer.

  “Can’t Pedro talk to them?” I asked. “About the beers, anyway.”

  “Pedro’s the one who brought them all,” Penny said with a roll of her eyes. “Without even checking with Matthew. Plus, he’s had a Coors in his hand since he got here.”

  “Oh,” I said. “Is Matthew going to ask them to leave?”

  “No,” Tina said. “Not yet, anyway. Only if they get out of control. But it’s just ruining the entire night for him. He’s all stressed out.”

  Jack joined us at the bar. I raised my eyes warningly as he presumably summed up the mood of my two friends. “Do you want me to talk to Pedro?” he asked Penny.

  “Good luck getting his attention,” she said. “He’s ignored me all night.”

  Overhearing Jack and Penny’s conversation, Matthew stepped behind the bar. “Forget it,” he said to Jack. “I just don’t want any trouble. As long as they stay cool and take their empties with them.”

  More kids arrived, gathering at the bar. Matthew and a buddy of his handed out sodas from the fridge. Jack and I got talked into a game of pool. We lost, but didn’t let it stop us from challenging Tina and Matthew to a game.

  Around eleven, the Ping-Pong table was folded up, some Top 40s cranked through the cable-music channels, and a small dance floor got going.