His Touch of Ice

by Kody Boye

“Why?”

  “Because that’s where she lives. Underground.”

  I sighed and bowed my head.

  “You won’t be going alone,” Guy continued. “I specifically told my father that I refused to let you see her without another Kaldr present.”

  “Do people normally attend her summons alone?”

  “She is our goddess. Normally, it would be improper and completely disrespectful to bring another person with us, yet she understands that you are a human and might suffer the shock of seeing her.”

  “She’s not—”

  “Human? No. She isn’t.”

  I swallowed the lump in my throat but kept my thoughts to myself, though physically it was hard to maintain any form of integral diplomacy. Thoughts flashed through my head—fire, lightning, ice raining down the sky. They said she was one of the first. Was she a god? If not human, what?

  The skittering sensation of chills crossing up and down my spine weren’t the result of Guy pressing his hand against my back. I imagined it could have been her, all the way down there—watching, waiting for me to come. I instinctually shied toward Guy’s body and was thankful for the arm he set around me.

  “She isn’t a judging god, Jason. Her benevolence is what sustains us.”

  “What does she want with me? What reason does she have to talk to me?”

  “I don’t know, Jason. I wish I could tell you more.”

  Had there been a rift—a shift, disturbance, the complete upheaval of what it was to be ‘normal’ due to my presence? Would I be cast to the sea, forced to swim without the help of a lifeboat, devoid of a companion, unfortunate in the fact that he could not argue my case? If I was being kicked out of here—if I couldn’t stay on the ranch—then what would I—

  I focused my attention just well enough to where the tears ready to spring from my eyes did not come forth.

  Guy’s hand, flat along my ribcage, flexed, then settled back against my chest.

  “It’ll be ok,” he said, his lips against my ear. “It’ll just be a visit. That’s all.”

  That’s all?

  Could such an important summons be just a visit?

  I wouldn’t know until later.

  Tonight.

  Tonight.

  It couldn’t come soon enough.

  My arrival with Guy to the home’s first floor was met with the acknowledging glances of both Elliot and Amadeo from their places in the living room. Dressed suavely in robes made from the fur of long-dead animals, Amadeo stood upon our entrance and watched Guy and me with eyes that appeared far too knowing for his own good.

  “Jason,” Amadeo said. “Guy.”

  We both nodded.

  “Are you ready?” Elliot asked, setting his attention on me.

  “Yes sir,” I replied. “I am.”

  I wasn’t sure what to expect when Elliot stood. Maybe it was because I’d seen so many science fiction or military movies in which secret compounds were hidden beneath parts of the floor with dials or security codes, or maybe it was because I was still adjusting to this whole ‘secret life’ thing. Either way, when Elliot crouched down and pulled the rug aside to reveal nothing more than the simple, nondescript wooden floorboards, I couldn’t help but frown.

  Was this it—Guy’s whole secret entrance declaration?

  Before I could open my mouth to speak, Mr. Winters trailed, then locked his fingers along a floorboard before sliding a section aside.

  Beneath was a handle—which, when grasped and then pulled, extended, a metal cord spooling from its prison, until it was fully within standing length.

  Guy and I needed no instruction when Elliot pulled the trapdoor open.

  Bared to the world, it revealed a flight of stairs which disappeared down a dark, narrow corridor, lit only by emergency lights that glowed a dull red.

  “Before we make our way down there,” Elliot said, taking note of Amadeo for only a moment as he checked to ensure that his partner was securing the front side of the house, “there’s a few things you need to know.”

  I remained silent—subservient to his demands.

  “One,” he began. “You do not address the Kelda unless she addresses you first. Two: You do not interrupt or speak out of line. Three: Give respect and authority, for she is the reason why you are here. And last, but most importantly: you are to never divulge the location of her sanctuary, the concepts of her home or the makeup of her person. Are we clear?”

  “Yes sir,” I said. “I’m clear.”

  “Come, then. I will escort you the furthest I can.”

  Elliot took helm of our small party as he descended the stairs and disappeared from sight. Heart throbbing in my chest, sweat breaking out under my arms and along the back of my neck, I forced myself to match Elliot’s steps one-by-one and instantly panicked the moment my foot pressed down on a stair. Stone-cold, its impact reverberated through my feet, and a sick wash of chill swept up from the base of the stairs as if testing me—wrapping around me and prying at every visible aspect of my modern body.

  “It’s ok,” Guy whispered. “Keep going.”

  I only glanced back long enough to see the trapdoor closing behind Guy before continuing forward.

  I’d forgotten I was claustrophobic.

  The temptation to panic was immense.

  The short flight of stairs ended before I could become too overwhelmed.

  We continued through a metal door which met Elliot’s presence by wrapping ice around his hand the moment he touched the metal bar. Twisting about the handle, pressing against the flat of his palm, darkening his knuckles until they turned a taut blue upon his skin—he waited for a moment before opening the door and ushering us in as quickly as possible, the reason instantly marked when the opposite side was encased in ice.

  “Come,” Elliot said.

  At first, I didn’t bother to question where the source of the near-unbearable chill was coming from. Such was my belief that it was because we were underground and in an ice-people’s territory that when I finally did begin to scan the room—first by tracing the frozen patches that lined the bottoms of the walls, then by following them to the ceiling—that I realized why it was.

  Directly above, a miasma of ice crystals hung like a spread of honeycombs across the largest bee colony in the world. Like Guy’s eyes on that fateful night, they glowed aurora, offering light that otherwise would not have existed.

  My awe over the sight was extinguished when Guy’s hand latched around my shoulder, stopping me before I could run directly into his father’s back.

  “Father?” Guy asked.

  “We’re here,” Elliot said.

  The door beyond was nondescript and ordinary, carved simply out of wood and bearing upon its surface a lowercased r-shaped insignia that began at the bottom of the door and hooked down diagonally before disappearing into the doorframe. It, too, glowed like the ice crystal formations over our heads.

  “Remember what I told you,” Elliot said, stepping aside to allow us free passage. “And son—do not speak for him. She will understand his position and act accordingly.”

  “Yes Father,” Guy said. Stepping forward, Guy set a hand along my upper back, then trailed it across until it came off my shoulder. “Come on, Jason. Let’s go.”

  I waited for Elliot Winters to offer further instruction—for him to say not to speak of ill wills or laugh or cry or do anything that most human men did—but when he did nothing and offered only a slight nod, I returned it in kind and stepped forward.

  At the threshold to the Kelda’s domain, Guy reached forward and pressed his hand against the door.

  “Kelda,” he whispered. “Our Well. Our Spring.”

  His eyes burst into brilliant aurora light and tendrils of ice siphoned up and beneath the surface of his arm before disappearing under his shirt.

  Once they hit his neck, it didn’t take long for a constellation to strike their mark on his face and guide two significant arcs from his left eye and lips.


  Breathless, Guy bowed his head. He trembled as his breath whitened.

  Despite myself, I managed to keep from asking if he was all right.

  No sooner had he pressed his hand to the door, he pulled it away, the vein-like fading from his body.

  Something clicked, and then the door cracked open.

  Guy pressed his hand against the wood and directed me inside.

  I couldn’t know what to expect.

  Light, dark, hot, cold—I stepped into the room knowing that whatever I could face could easily change my life.

  It took a minute for my eyes to adjust to the room.

  At first, I wasn’t aware it was the lighting. When I finally was, I allowed my conscience to bathe in the sight before me.

  Darkness pooled the room in a way I’d only imagined it doing in a place where light held the concept of liquids and wreathed about like waves. Drifting along the stone floor, it swallowed our feet in a ghastly mist and rose only briefly to reach out for us—begging, senselessly, like children hungry and without regret. I tried to detect any similar abnormalities, but such formations were only apparent around clusters of black ice that seethed with smoke. I couldn’t gauge the relation. Was it heat? It couldn’t be, since ice was never hot, but if it was black ice, then couldn’t that mean—

  A flicker of movement at the far corner of the room caught my eye.

  “Kelda folkhagi,” Guy said, his voice nearly-godlike in such an enclosed space. “Great leader, our fountain, spring and mother—I am Guy Winters, Svell Kaldr of Folkhagi Elliot. You requested audience with the one I brought into our presence. I have brought him here.”

  A whisper of acknowledgement flickered along my skull.

  I shivered.

  Had that been her speaking?

  All around, the crystals began to take on life.

  Ascending from darkness, they birthed light from the core of their beings and dispersed it like webs woven from the quickest of spiders.

  It took little time for the room to be thrust into such luminescence.

  It wasn’t until she revealed herself that I realized the integrity of the situation.

  Her person was unlike anything I had ever experienced before. She came from the shadows of the room like a wraith whose purpose was to submit oneself to the darkness of another’s situation. Tall, bone-white, with a face whose angular features were defined by the sharpness of her cheekbones and the cleft V-shape of her jawline—upon her face where her eyes should have been existed two great onyx stones fromwhich I felt a presence despite a pair of pupils, upon her head a crown of crystals molded in the natural shapes defined by earth. Without a nose, she appeared alien, and almost devoid of lips she appeared somewhat comical—a fish who surfaced only once every great moon and never again.

  Her body was not adorned with clothing. Frost guarded the finer parts of her sex—slight breasts upon her chest and a cleft where her legs would have been, had she not floated above ground. She appeared to be adorned in a gown of falling snow.

  Her gaze was immense—penetrating into me.

  At first, I couldn't help but think that no Kaldr could compare to her.

  But then I realized.

  She wasn't Kaldr. She was Kelda.

  Once more, the whisper echoed around my skull.

  Jason, it said. DePella.

  The surname she said as if she were pronouncing a word that defied the laws of her existence—tentatively, with a slight ambition, as if she wanted to discover it. Though my father claimed French heritage, I could never find anyone else with the name DePella, but it wasn't like it was something completely foreign. But to her? Maybe. I didn't know. I just nodded and watched as she drifted forward.

  She lifted a long, gangly arm and extended a three-fingered hand toward me, gently stroking the curve of my cheek. Her thin mouth parted into a smile and revealed a distinct measure of thick molars descending from dark blue gums.

  “Hello,” I managed.

  Hello child.

  She withdrew her hand and floated a few steps back, her dress of falling snow shifting about nonexistent legs and her head inclining toward me. The three largest crystals upon her head pulsed and then began to swim like Guy's eyes had in the past, then dimmed until they darkened again.

  I swallowed a lump in my throat.

  What did she wish of me, if not simply my presence?

  “You... wanted to see me,” I said, careful to express my words as a statement rather than a question.

  Yes. I did.

  She tilted her head to the side, then flushed it about her bony shoulders, as if it was weighed down by the ornate formation upon her head, before hovering forward.

  Beside me, Guy tensed.

  The Kelda's distance was cleared in but an instant. Soon, she hovered no more than an inch in front of me, her face so close that I could feel the cold pouring off her porcelain skin.

  There is a mission within one's life, she thought, her hand once more rising, tracing my face before snaring her fingers through my hair. One normally chosen by the individual, but often defined by others. Do you not agree?

  I nodded. The true nature of my person would've been quick to counter such a sentiment. I was as great a pessimist as any—I believed that, yes, life usually sucked, but it was the little things that got us through the day; that the government was crooked, and that no matter how charming a person or attractive a smile they had, every politician was out for their own good; and that if Santa Claus really did exist, the banking industry would be fucked. In that regard, I was like every other person. But unlike most people, I'd come to believe in faith—purpose, if you would, in what your life meant after one or a series of events changed who you were forever.

  The Kelda reared her head back to examine me in full.

  Then you understand that your position has changed, she said. And that who you thought you would one day be will no longer exist.

  She drifted another pace back.

  Svell Kaldr Guy Winters, she said, directing her attention on the man I'd spent the last few weeks of my life with. Child of the Firstborn, Declared Prince of the Second-Kin: for thirty years, you have lived beneath a shadow, wishing well the intentions of one whose wishes you'd only seek to prefer. But there are always times when the tides will shift. This you know, for you have left and then returned on a construct of your own salvation.

  Guy nodded. His sheer admiration for the creature could be seen in the loyalty within his eyes.

  Reign will one day be yours. But your father—the First-Born, the Kelda Svell—sees you as impudent: childish, irresponsible, and incapable of duty. But that is not the case. You, as well as any who look upon you, know that.

  She shifted around me and then came face-to-face with Guy, whose energy immediately bonded with one another like symbiotic organisms beneath the seas. Their eyes glowed bright, the crystals upon her head pulsed—even the marks beneath Guy's body, which I thought were no more than an illusion, appeared, then darkened into tight blue knots, throbbing as if filled with blood.

  The time is almost upon us, she said, her hands lifting along, but not touching Guy’s skull. Will perhaps there be another when the Moon does pass, or will Luna be lonely and rule alone? It is as we know, and fear, and loathe, and love: that it is the age of the Wendigo, and if trifled, will rise to stake its claim.

  The Kelda withdrew and floated toward the back of the room.

  The warm flesh will remain, she said. As is decreed by the Kelda Svell.

  “Thank you,” Guy said, and then bowed his head.

  He stepped forward, took hold of my arm, then began to pull me toward the exit.

  I watched the ice queen fade into the darkness.

  Her eyes glowing the entire way.

  “What did she mean by that?” I asked when we returned to Guy's flat.

  He lifted his head. “You heard that?” he asked, a frown crossing his face.

  “Well, yeah. It was pretty clear what she was saying.”
>
  “No, Jason. It wasn't.”

  “What do you—”

  “No human should be able to hear when the Kelda speaks to another,” Guy said. “Especially not one of her Kaldr.”

  “What is that supposed to mean?”

  “I don't know,” Guy sighed. “I don't know.”

  He turned toward the living room and braced his hand on the back of his skull, the muscles in his upper back taut with tension. His actions were indicative of the secrecy that I had grown so used to over our short relationship, and while at first I’d been more keen on ignoring them, I was tired of having things withheld from me.

  Grunting, I started forward, only to have him spin to face me shortly after.

  “Guy,” I said. “What’s going on?”

  “I said—”

  “Don’t bullshit me. Please. Tell it to me straight.”

  The hurt in his eyes was plain and obvious. “Jason,” he sighed.

  I crossed my arms over my chest and waited for him to continue—holding my ground, keeping my eyes level with him. There were few times when I had enough fortitude to hold the upper ground. Usually that came with unease, or panic. Here, it grew from defiance—to the point where I felt that, if I’d the will, I could easy cut glass into fine, solid points with my gaze alone.

  Under my scrutiny, Guy’s will faltered. With a sigh, he lowered his hands and said, “My father doesn’t want you here anymore.”

  The blow was harsh—blunt, sharp, barbed like a stinger that exploded when enough pressure was applied. It took the breath out of me and left me reeling in the declaration, but I held my ground and waited for him to continue.

  “Why?” I asked.

  “Missy Sue’s death on our property was a very, very big deal. Pierre Le Blanc made it very clear to my father that our ‘agreement,’ as he so put it, was dangling on very thin wires.”

  “And your father’s pissed.”

  “Yeah.”

  “But the Kelda doesn’t want me to leave.” Guy didn’t respond. “Why?”

  “Because she believes me to be of stronger will and declaration than my father,” Guy replied. “And because of your presence here, I have a reason to remain and protect my ancestral homeland.”