Of Giants and Ice (Ever Afters, The)

by Bach, Shelby

  She used it as her signature. If you crossed her, she left it with the bodies.

  For the first part of the war, the Fey stayed out of it. They didn’t mind their anonymity from the human world. They enjoyed their privacy and their court games. Every once in a while, a fairy would join a side, but it was an individual decision. The King of the Unseelie Court’s favorite daughter, for instance, joined our side—her and her betrothed.

  Then, one day, a couple of decades ago, their bodies showed up in her father’s throne room, marked with the Snow Queen’s flakes.

  It backfired. The Fey were furious. The Unseelie princess was the heir to the throne and very popular. Fairies joined us en masse. They laid siege to the Snow Queen’s palace. Her army was defeated. She was captured.

  “How?” I asked. “Aren’t you skipping over the important bits?” Basically everything that would help me if I ever did meet the Snow Queen.

  Lena and Chase looked at each other, waiting for the other one to answer. “We don’t know,” Chase admitted.

  “It was a Character,” Lena said. “A Destined One. I know that much.”

  “We could look it up,” Chase said. “His name is on the Wall of Failed Tales in big, golden letters.”

  “But how did he Fail?” I still wanted to find out something useful. “The Snow Queen was captured.”

  “He died,” Chase said. “That’s pretty much an epic Fail.”

  I stopped practicing, feeling exactly like I’d been punched in the stomach—breathless and slightly vomity.

  “Chase,” said Lena in a scolding tone.

  “What?”

  Lena pointed at me.

  “Rory, you’re not going to die,” Chase said in a slow patient voice, as if it were painfully obvious. “We’re not even sure what the Canon thinks about you. We’ll just keep her from breaking out of prison, and everything will be fine.”

  “If she’s still such a threat, why wasn’t she—” I didn’t finish the question, shocked that I could have such a ruthless thought.

  “—killed?” Lena said, looking like she knew exactly what I was thinking.

  “They tried. They executed her no less than eighteen times,” Chase said with a heavy sigh. “Burned her at the stake, stabbed her through the heart, then the usual: firing squad, beheading, lethal injections, and then, uh . . .” He stumbled a little, seeing the queasy looks we were giving him. “A bunch of tortures the Fey cooked up. For revenge.”

  “So, she can’t be killed.” My voice rose shrilly. I hated that I was panicking. I hated that Chase and Lena were watching me panic. I hated the pity on their faces. “And she can magic bad guys back and forth,” I added, jabbing a finger at the letter.

  I was shocked to see someone actually standing over there—a really old man.

  “Evildoer!” Lena cried. “Evildoer alert!”

  “You don’t need to shout, Lena. I’m right here.” Chase rushed over to intercept him.

  The old man ran toward Chase, swinging a black ax. He had a hunchback, a very crooked nose, and warts on his hands.

  “This is the most exciting story-time I’ve ever had,” I told Lena. “Two villains in a little over an hour.”

  The old man turned to me and smiled. Most of his teeth were black. He took a tie-dyed sack off his shoulder, and when he opened it in front of me, the colors started to spin in a hypnotizing way. Suddenly, I felt dizzy, and even sleepier than I’d been all morning, and for some weird reason, I wanted to jump in the sack.

  “Rory, don’t look at it!” Lena cried. “It’s enchanted.”

  “I noticed,” I said, rubbing my eyes.

  Chase crashed into the old man noisily. “Hey, Ugly—you’re fighting me.”

  I looked back, just in time to see the end of the fight. Chase disarmed the guy neatly, stabbed him through the shoulder, and then kicked the old man backward. The villain fell through the letter, sack and all, and disappeared.

  Looking a lot like his dad, Chase grinned with his arms crossed and one hand on his chin. “We don’t really need to worry unless she sends Bluebeard,” he told us, leaning back toward the wood that divided the cubbyholes, but he misjudged the distance and tumbled into the darkness.

  “Smooth, Chase,” I said, half-laughing. “Bluebeard will quake with fear.”

  But Chase didn’t come out of the cubbyhole.

  “Chase?” I called uncertainly, but no one answered.

  “Oh, my gumdrops.” Lena stared at the queen’s letter. “He fell through.”

  “Through the desk?”

  “Through the letter,” Lena said, her voice a couple octaves higher than usual. “Of course the spell would allow for unexpected magics and persons to travel bilaterally. The Snow Queen wanted her villains to transport the harp back to her.”

  I had a hard time following Lena when she started talking technical, so I wasn’t sure if I understood her right. “You mean, Chase went to the Glass Mountain?”

  ena nodded, horrified. “This is bad. She’ll capture him, hold him for ransom, maybe. Oh, maybe it would’ve been better for us to let her have the harp after all.”

  Something clenched in my chest when I imagined Chase surrounded by villains, dozens and dozens of them, all staring at him with little smirks, more than he could ever fight by himself.

  You’ll have to follow him through the letter, Rapunzel had said. It was spooky how right she was, but I was on the verge of getting used to it.

  “I have to go after him,” I said.

  “Why?”

  “Rapunzel told me to.”

  Lena bit her lip, glancing between me and the letter. “Rory, it’s hard for anyone to understand what Rapunzel means. I can’t imagine she would want you to face the Snow Queen directly.”

  It was more than just what Rapunzel had said. I didn’t want to leave Chase there alone. I didn’t want to sit in the giants’ desk helplessly, wondering if he was okay. I wanted to go after him.

  I was worried about Chase. And kind of shocked to discover it.

  “She said I would have to bring him back.” In front of the letter, I drew my sword slowly and hoped that I hadn’t used all the magic up in one go.

  “Rory, please. She’s bound to have allies in there with her, and if she catches you—if you both don’t come back . . .” Lena faltered, wide-eyed.

  If she were the one who had fallen into the Glass Mountain, I would have already jumped through the letter after her. I wouldn’t have even stopped to explain myself first. I couldn’t stay any longer, even to comfort Lena. “I’ll bring him back, I promise.”

  Then I leaped through.

  Cold radiated everywhere, starting as an ache in my bones, the same way it does when a winter wind blows through your clothes. Then my limbs stiffened, like a layer of ice covered my entire body. I couldn’t move. I couldn’t even breathe.

  Just when I started to panic, I tumbled onto a thin blue-and-white rug patterned with snowflakes.

  Chase was in the far corner, fighting with a pack of wolves bigger than he was. His sword was already bloody and a lump of gray fur lay motionless, so he had already beaten one of them.

  At the other end of the room, the old man with the sack stood between a desk and a rack of spears. His shoulder was still bleeding heavily. He picked up the spear closest to him and began to smile in a way that meant trouble for Chase.

  The man threw the spear, and I ran directly into his path. That weird runner’s high returned, and my sword struck the shaft so hard that it fell to the rug with a muffled clatter.

  Then the old man with the sack saw me and smiled so widely that I could see the gold caps on his molars.

  “Ugh,” I said, before I could stop myself. “As villains go, I think I liked Ferdinand better.”

  The old man didn’t appreciate that. With a scowl, he grabbed a second spear from the rack next to him and advanced toward me.

  I pushed all thoughts away and lifted my sword. He jabbed so fast the silver point sliced my
left sleeve, nearly brushing the skin. He stabbed toward me again, and my sword knocked it out of the way a half instant before the point touched my face.

  Then I heard Chase shout and the wolves growling behind me. He needed my help.

  Without really paying attention to what I was doing, I grabbed a heavy book off a shelf beside me. When the old man tried to stab me a third time, I deflected the spear with my sword and threw the book like a Frisbee. It thunked him in the head, and the old man collapsed.

  I whirled back to Chase, ready to charge the nearest wolf.

  “Genius—using a book as a weapon,” Chase said, impressed. “We should tell Lena. She always has one handy.” He pulled his sword out of a dead black canine, and three other bodies lay still around him.

  “You didn’t need my help,” I said accusingly.

  “You came to help me?” Chase grinned. “Rory, I’m touched.”

  I rolled my eyes, distracted. Why would Rapunzel send me after him if he didn’t need saving?

  “As you can see, all the bad guys have been defeated,” Chase continued. “In this room, anyway.”

  I glanced around, expecting to find evidence of an evildoer, maybe some torture devices tucked in a corner where normal people put their exercise equipment.

  “It’s an office,” I said, surprised. It wasn’t very big, but it seemed like a fairly normal home office besides all the spears, the dead wolves, and the unconscious villain. One wall was covered in maps, one with bookshelves, and another with filing cabinets that looked like they were made out of real silver.

  I was distracted for a moment by the picture on the closest bookshelf. In a plain, wooden frame, a grainy black-and-white photograph showed a woman in an eighteenth-century dress. Her dark braid coiled at her feet like a rope. She looked familiar—something about the expression in her dark eyes.

  I pointed it out to Chase. “Look.”

  “It’s a Rapunzel,” Chase said.

  “But doesn’t it look like our Rapunzel?” I asked Chase. He looked closer and shrugged. “Is this really the Glass Mountain?”

  To answer, Chase pointed at the last wall.

  It was made entirely of glass—a thick lumpy sort of glass with ripples in it, like you see in antique windows. Beyond it were great black and green bumps that looked a lot like mountains covered in forests. In the very middle of the glass wall yawned a dark empty doorway.

  “Oh, good—I bet that’s the way back.” I took a few steps toward it.

  “Just a minute. Now that we’re here, we should look around,” Chase said, sheathing his sword.

  That was why Rapunzel said I would have to bring Chase back. He got distracted when he was by himself.

  “Do you have any idea how worried Lena will be if we don’t come back right away?” I said sharply.

  Chase shot me an irritated look. “Lena is going to worry anyway. It’s what she does. But do you think anyone else will be able to see this room?”

  He had a point.

  I sighed deeply. Every second spent in the Glass Mountain dramatically increases the probability of a personal encounter with the Snow Queen, said a voice in my head that sounded a lot like Lena. But I couldn’t leave Chase. If I didn’t help him, it would only take longer to drag him back to the desk.

  “If someone comes in, and we get caught, I’m totally blaming you,” I said.

  “If someone comes in, we’ll dive through that doorway before Lena can say, ‘Oh, my gumdrops.’” Chase went to the filing cabinet.

  I tackled the desk, keeping my sword pointed at the old man and the sack, just in case he woke up. Each handle was shaped like a snowflake, but the drawers wouldn’t open when I pulled on them. I had to content myself with the papers that covered the desk.

  “Most of it looks like fan mail.” I put aside one letter and picked up another signed by Your Most Affectionate Troll, Lord Grumblot the DisGruntled.

  “This too.” Chase slid another drawer closed, making a face. “She’s filed them.”

  Your Illustrious Majesty, I read, I sincerely hope that you can get the information you require in some other way. I deeply regret to inform you that the American EASers you recently offered to purchase have escaped with the help of the rings of return I’d meant to throw in as a bonus—

  I dropped the letter mid-sentence, heart thumping. I had the sneaking suspicion that the same hand that had written it had also cut off Evan’s fingers a couple weeks ago.

  “Torlauth sent her a letter. Just this weekend,” Chase said, scowling at a file. “And he’s included a detailed report on our fighting force. I knew the last-minute tournament was suspicious.”

  “Is he on her side?” I asked.

  Chase shook his head and shoved the file back where he found it. “Torlauth is on Torlauth’s side. He just likes blood. Do you know what he told George after the ref stopped them? ‘I miss the war. They wanted us to kill people then.’”

  My mouth went dry. No wonder George had lost the third match.

  “Don’t tell Lena,” Chase said uncomfortably, realizing he’d said too much. “George made me promise not to mention it to anyone. He knew it would scare his family.”

  I nodded quickly and turned back to the desk. Lena definitely didn’t need to know.

  After reading the next letter, I checked and double-checked the signature. “Chase, look at this.” I crossed the room, reading aloud. “‘A Catalogue of Damages and Disrepairs incurred upon the Palace of the Indomitable Snow Queen, as reported by Her Majesty’s Humble Servant Genevieve Searcaster.’ It’s dated yesterday. It’s not a coincidence that Searcaster got Jimmy and Matilda out of the house and to the Arctic Circle. She was on a reconnaissance mission.”

  That worried Chase. “Keep looking. Maybe we can figure out why she wants the harp so badly.”

  “Did you see these?” On top of each file cabinet sat a stack of papers, held in place by a glass paperweight. When I moved it, it was cold to the touch, and I saw a face caught in the glass, frozen in agony. Goose bumps sprouted on my arms. Even though I couldn’t explain why, I knew that it was a real person, trapped inside. I put it back as fast as I could.

  Chase read the paper I held in my other hand. “‘Confirmed Allies.’ There must be tens of thousands of names here, way more than she had when she started out last time.” He took the list and started flipping through. He stopped at the third page and stared at one of the names. “Crap. I know that guy. I used to fence with his son.”

  I picked up the other stacks of paper, making sure I didn’t look closely at any of the paperweights again. “‘Potential Allies—To Be Persuaded. Potential Allies—To Be Bribed. Potential Allies—To Be Blackmailed.’ This is why she’s keeping track of her fan mail. She’s organizing the people who stay in touch with her.”

  Chase rubbed his face, still reading the list of confirmed allies. “She’s a lot closer to getting her army back together than anyone guessed.”

  We couldn’t let that happen. We couldn’t let her get out of prison. We had to return to the giants’ desk and figure out how to get the harp far, far away.

  “Put that in your pocket,” I told Chase and stuffed the other three lists in my jeans. “The Canon will want to see it.” I strode across the room, toward the glass wall and the doorway waiting for us. “Let’s go.”

  “Hold on. If Lena was that worried, she could’ve come after us.” Chase hurried to the last file cabinet, half the size of the other three, and when he moved the paperweight to grab the stack on top, the whole file cabinet swung out of the way.

  A door stood there, even though I knew it hadn’t a moment before. My heart missed a beat. The doorknob had a graceful scrolling S under it, decorated with a snowflake, but this door—I realized with relief—wasn’t wooden like the one I had seen in my dreams. It was made out of glass and swung slightly open, as if a breeze pushed it.

  Chase hadn’t noticed it yet. “‘Known Enemies.’ I wonder if I’m in this.”

  “Chase
,” I said, pointing.

  Voices crept through the crack. The first was a high, musical voice that made me shudder harder than traveling through the letter. The second voice belonged to a young man, one that Chase and I both recognized.

  “Dad,” Chase whispered. He took a step toward the door.

  I caught his arm. “He sounds fine. We have to go while she’s occupied.”

  Chase knew I was right, but then we heard Jack’s voice again.

  “Please, Rory,” he said, sounding a little desperate.

  It was a terrible idea. So many things could go wrong. So many villains could get between us and the way back. So many doors could turn out to be the one I’d been dreaming about, and I wasn’t ready for that yet.

  Then I saw Chase’s expression, and I knew that if it were my mother talking to the Snow Queen, nothing in the world would get me to leave before I made sure she was okay.

  “Quickly,” I said, remembering my promise to Lena. Besides, Chase was much more likely to get caught if I didn’t help him.

  When we stepped outside the door, I thought we were walking on air for one excruciating second.

  I froze, hardly breathing.

  Even the ledge we were standing on was clear. Outside the office, everything was made out of glass.

  “Stand on the carpet.” Chase pointed out the light blue rug that ran along the ledge. “That way you won’t be able to see the drop.”

  I stepped onto it carefully and stood exactly in the middle.

  We could still hear the voices but we couldn’t see them—or even tell where they came from. The glass dome threw the sound around in a weird, echoing way.

  “Why is it so hot in here?”

  “Greenhouse effect,” Chase whispered. He picked a direction and started walking. “It’s a good thing. The heat makes it harder for the Snow Queen to gather magic.”

  It was also incredibly bright. Sunlight streamed in from every direction, and I could see the dust smeared on Chase’s face and the gritty streaks on his shirt.

  “You’re filthy,” I whispered.

  “Look who’s talking,” Chase whispered back.

  I glanced down. My dusty jeans were almost as gray as the Ferdinand statue. The light and the glass and the dirt on my clothes made me feel very young—and very conspicuous.