by Jill Myles
“Do I have a choice?”
“Oh, sweetie,” Muffin reached forward and patted her knee. “Do we ever have a choice about when we die?”
Good point. At least she was getting a second chance. Charlotte pressed her hands to her forehead, trying to memorize the task. “Okay. Save guy from snow queen and save the world. Got it. Is there a time limit?”
“One month.”
That didn’t feel like enough time, but Charlotte supposed she didn’t have much of a position to bargain from. “All right, I’ll see what I can do.”
“Try not to confront the queen directly, as she’s very powerful,” Muffin told her.
That was a little scary. “You do realize that I’m a fabric salesgirl at a craft shop? I’m not exactly Genghis Khan or Luke Skywalker here.”
“You do realize nothing requires me to give you a second chance?” Muffin said in a sweet voice laced with steel.
“Good point,” Charlotte said. “When do we get started?”
Muffin waved a hand at Fifi, instructing her to come closer. The girl stopped scribbling her notes and bounded over to Muffin’s side, clearly excited that she was going to do something other than observe. “This is Fifi’s first transition, so I’m going to have her take the reins while I observe. She’s had training but hasn’t had a chance to use her skills out in the wild as of yet.”
“Oh.” Charlotte tried to ignore the nervous, sinking feeling in her gut. Fifi didn’t exactly look…trustworthy. For starters, her name was ridiculous, as was the poof of wild pink curls on her head. But Muffin seemed to know what she was doing, and she had an equally ridiculous name, so maybe things would be okay.
Muffin shuffled the heavy book over to Fifi, plopping it into the younger woman’s arms. “You know what to do now, right, Fifi, my girl?”
Fifi nodded excitedly, juggling the book with one arm and flipping the pages with her other hand. “Which one are we doing again?”
“The Snow Queen. I thought I told you to write that down?” Muffin gave Charlotte a tight smile, as if to assuage her fears. “Perhaps you should close your eyes, dear. Wouldn’t want you learning all of our trade secrets.”
“Um, okay.” That, and she wouldn’t see that confused look on Fifi’s face that was making her stomach feel like a block of ice. Charlotte squeezed her eyes shut and braced herself, waiting. As she did, she thought of her old life. Her parents, who would no doubt be devastated. Her friends, her coworkers, everyone wouldn’t know what happened to her. They’d just know she was dead. A tear trickled down her cheek and she sniffed loudly.
“No crying,” Muffin said in a kindly voice. “Everything’s going to be all right. Just do what you have to in order to complete your task, and I’ll take care of the rest, all right?”
Charlotte nodded, but she couldn’t help it when a few more tears escaped. After all, she was justified in crying, she thought, considering that it wasn’t every day that a girl died horribly in the dentist’s chair. Wasn’t she allowed a little self-pity?
Someone sneezed, and Charlotte heard the pages of the book rustle.
“Keep going,” she heard Muffin whisper to Fifi. “You’re doing just fine. Now raise your wand…there’s a girl. Good job. Now up, and…”
A warm, misty air touched Charlotte’s skin. It felt odd, but she didn’t open her eyes lest she cause Fifi to lose control of her magic. Snow queen, she reminded herself. Defeat the snow queen and save the prince. Or…was he a prince? Maybe he was just a peasant. Whatever it was, she had to save the guy the snow queen had snatched. There couldn’t be too many of those, could there? Save the guy, be the big damn hero. No problem.
Another tear slid down her cheek, and she raised a hand to brush it away…only to realize that the tear was frozen to her cheek.
“Oh, shit.” Muffin said in a disgusted voice. “You’ve really done it now, Fifi.”
Chapter Two
Charlotte opened her eyes and stared in dumbfounded wonder at the world around her. She stood in the midst of icy beauty. A courtyard unfurled before her, and everything was made of white snow and pearly blue-white ice. Flagstones of ice marked their way in a decorative path to the massive front doors of the castle. Trees were bare, their branches dripping with frosty icicles. The ground was covered in a pristine blanket of thick snow, and in the distance, spires of the ice castle rose before her. It looked like something out of a fairy tale…which made Charlotte laugh with delight. It was beautiful and didn’t look fearsome at all.
But when she laughed, her breath puffed out into a cloud. Curious, Charlotte experimented, blowing her breath outward. Sure enough, it frosted mid-air, so beautiful and perfect that she could even see the snowflakes forming in the vapor.
Which was weird, because she wasn’t cold in the slightest. Charlotte raised her arms, looking for goose-bumps…and noticed the pale bluish-white tinge of her skin. Her finger-tips were covered in frost.
Oh dear. “Um, I think we have a problem.”
She turned to look at Fifi and Muffin, who stood behind her. The two women were frantically paging through the book, a guilty look on Fifi’s face.
“But you said the Snow Queen,” Fifi said, flipping the pages quickly, a warble in her voice that sounded as if she was going to start crying.
“I know I did,” Muffin said in a too-patient voice that was at odds with the tight look on her wrinkled face. “Did you not hear the part where I said that the tale is called the Snow Queen but Charlotte will be playing the part of the heroine? Not the snow queen?”
“I might not have written that part down,” Fifi mumbled.
“I’m the snow queen?” Charlotte glanced down at her pale, blue-tinged skin, at her frosted fingertips. She gazed down at her clothing, which seemed to have disappeared and been replaced with a spun confection of icicles and clouds of frost that served as puffs of skirt. She grabbed a handful of her hair – normally just a pale blonde – and found it, too, had been transformed. It was now the same milk white as the rest of her, the tips tinged with the frosty blue. Gorgeous. “I’m not supposed to be the bad guy, am I?”
Shame, because she was kind of getting a kick out of this. This whole snow queen thing was kinda cool, no pun intended.
“No, you’re not,” Muffin said in a firm voice. “You are supposed to be the heroine. Clearly someone was not paying attention.”
Fifi looked abashed. It was like someone had kicked a puppy. “I messed up.”
“It’s okay,” Charlotte told her soothingly. Poor kid. For all her weirdness, Fifi looked pretty young, and Muffin wasn’t giving her the most understanding of looks. “Just wave your wand and switch me to the real one and we’ll pretend this never happened.”
“She can’t,” Muffin bit out, looking thoroughly exasperated. Her little apple cheeks were flushed bright red with emotion. “You have now been woven into the fabric as the snow queen, not the heroine. Once it’s done, it’s done.”
Panic clutched at Charlotte. “I still get my second chance, right? You said I could have one.”
“You do, but this is going into my progress report,” Muffin said in a miffed tone. She clapped her hands together and shrugged. “Oh well. Nothing to be done about it now. Congratulations, my dear. You are now officially the snow queen.”
“Thanks, I think?”
“Don’t thank me just yet. You are now officially the antagonist of this story. Since you’re no longer the heroine,” she cast a disgruntled look at the quailing Fifi at her side, “the rules have changed a little. The heroine’s going to be coming after you because you stole her man. I suppose you’ll have to stop her if you want to win this fairy tale and turn the land into eternal frost or some such.”
“Should I do that? Turn the land into eternal frost? That seems kind of…not nice.”
Muffin shrugged. “You’re not the nice guy. You stole the nice guy.”
“Oh.” Well, this was going to take some adjusting. Charlotte was one of those people that alway
s tried to do the right thing – she never ran a red light, always tipped twenty percent, and never pushed ahead in line. She was going to be a horrible villain. She glanced over at Fifi, who looked ready to cry. Poor thing. “Well, I’ll give it my best. I’m sure it’ll be fine.”
And she forced a smile to her face.
“All right, then. That’s the spirit!” Muffin raised a hand to high-five her, and then lowered it. “Actually, I shouldn’t touch you. Your skin will stick to mine.”
“It will?” Charlotte stared at her hands. Other than being a wee bit paler than her normal self, she didn’t look all that different, did she?
“Yes. You’re a being composed of frost and magic, now. You can’t touch normal humans, and normal temperatures will feel like a heat wave to you. I advise that you not head to the beach anytime soon.”
“I was always more of an indoor girl,” Charlotte joked. When Muffin didn’t crack a smile, she sighed. “Really. It’ll be okay. I’m sure I can be the snow queen just as easily as I can be the heroine.”
Muffin nodded. “Good. Just remember. Keep that man away from the heroine at all costs and you win. You’re the bad guy, so don’t be afraid to do bad guy stuff if you need to.”
Bad guy stuff? Charlotte didn’t know if that was her thing. But she nodded. “No touching humans, avoid heat, and do whatever it takes to make sure I win. Got it.”
“Fifi and I will stop by to check on things periodically,” Muffin said, putting an arm around Fifi’s shoulders. The pink fairy godmother intern seemed a little wilted under the heat of Muffin’s disapproval, and she crossed her arms over her chest and shivered at the snowy weather. “We can’t stay here long, so I’ll just wish you good luck. Do you have anything else you want to ask before we leave?”
“Um, what exactly do I do with the captive guy?”
Muffin gave her a startlingly lewd wink. “You’re the bad guy. Whatever you want.”
And she and Fifi disappeared into a puff of smoke.
~~ * * * ~~
She was alone.
Charlotte glanced around the courtyard, chewing on her lip as she thought. Snow was falling in a heavy blanket, but it didn’t bother her. Actually, the weather felt amazing. She glanced down at her warm feet and noticed they were not only bare, but six inches deep in drifting snow. She wiggled her toes in the powder and then shrugged.
Maybe being the snow queen would be simpler than she thought. Stick to the ice castle, hang out for a month, and drop the hero into the deepest darkest dungeon and hope for the best. Maybe she could make her ice castle more defensible. An ice maze? Who knew? Maybe she had some ice minions around her she could ask.
She…really should have asked for more details about this whole ‘ice queen’ thing before Muffin had disappeared. But at this point? Everything was starting to run together into a big blur in her mind. Her death, the weird fairy godmothers, the whole snow queen thing. Maybe that was why she wasn’t more upset about dying – none of this felt like reality just yet.
Charlotte glanced at the cobblestone path made from ice crystals. She headed toward it and the icy cobbles felt like sun-warmed brick under her toes. Kinda delicious feeling. With a shiver of pleasure, she headed toward the frosty castle in the distance, noting the defenses of this place. There was a wall surrounding the ice castle, but it seemed more decorative than anything else, a spiraling, artful lattice of ice that could probably be snapped by a single hit with a baseball bat. If she was going to do this snow queen thing, she was going to do it right. She needed a thick wall around the castle. A moat, too. Maybe some spikes.
Just as soon as she figured out how to activate her powers, anyhow.
Charlotte extended her hands in front of her, considering. Was it like Iceman from the comic books, where she just extended her hands and ice would form? She tried it…and nothing happened. There was clearly a piece of the story missing here. Maybe someone around here would have answers.
Not that she’d seen anyone since arriving. The courtyard was empty, and she could sense no one nearby. Maybe she was the only one here? That’d be lonely. Still, beggars couldn’t be choosers. And she did have at least one other person here.
She set off down the icy path toward her ice castle, intent on finding her captive.
As she approached the ice castle, she was continually amazed at how beautiful it was. The building was enormous, with delicate windows made from panes of wavy glass (that she suspected were ice) and tall, fluted spires that rose and twisted high into the cloudy skies. There were multiple towers, and the entire thing reminded her of an icy cousin to the famous Russian Kremlin.
The doors opened slowly as she went up the steps, as if attuned to her presence. Inside, she still saw no one. The interior was brightly lit despite having no visible light sources, and she suspected it was due to the ice and refracting of light. Or magic, she thought to herself. It could always have something to do with magic.
The walls of the palace were glittering and smooth, though when she looked closely, she could see delicate snowflake striations carved into the ice walls. There were no furnishings other than endless ice, but the ice seemed clever and flexible enough to provide everything that she needed, which was kind of neat on its own. Charlotte began opening doors just to see what was behind them, and she even found an icy sort of ‘Snow Queen bathroom’ which amused her to no end. There was a throne room (why, she had no idea, considering that the palace seemed devoid of subjects) and the throne was composed of ice so clear and smooth that it could have been made of glass.
Her bedroom was something out of a fantasy, that was for sure. Polar bear furs covered a raised dais, and Charlotte figured that must have been the bed. There were no personal adornments of any kind, no treasures or trinkets or anything to show a personal side to whoever the ice queen had been before. That was kind of odd…or sad. Did the snow queen not bother with personal items? Or had they all been removed prior to Charlotte’s arrival? More questions that she didn’t have an answer to.
At the far end of her chambers, though, she spotted a large mirror and nearly fell over in shock at her own reflection. Stunned, she approached the mirror, her hand going to her mouth and touching it, if only to see the person in the mirror do the same and know it was her reflection she was looking at.
She was…gorgeous.
Her skin was porcelain pale and perfect. And while it was her own face that stared back at her, it was like she’d been converted into this whole ‘Snow Queen’ thing from head to toe. Her hair hung in glossy, white-blue waves and tumbled around her shoulders, and her brows were a darker bluish shade that framed her blue eyes quite well. Her lashes were long and spiky with white, and her lips held just a hint of blue tint to them. There was no longer a hint of pink in her coloring. On a whim, she tugged at the front of her icicle bodice and glanced down at her breasts.
Blue nipples.
“You have got to be kidding me,” Charlotte muttered aloud, and then was hit with a fit of the giggles. This had definitely crossed over into the realm of absurdity.
She admired her reflection for a moment longer, especially the inventiveness of her icicle-and-frost dress, when she noticed two small chips missing out of the corner of the mirror. Frowning, she moved forward and examined it. Broken?
As she touched the mirror, she felt a shiver of unease, as if dark things were brushing against her mind.
Startled, Charlotte jerked her hand away. What was with this mirror? She peered into it, and the longer she stared, the creepier it seemed. Her own reflection seemed to distort as she gazed at it.
Just then, she heard a low groan somewhere in the distance.
Charlotte froze and backed away from the mirror, looking around. “Who’s there?”
No response. Had it been her imagination? Maybe the ice castle was settling and the ice was groaning as it shifted? Did ice do that? She’d seen no one so far.
Of course, she was also supposed to have a guy held captive somewhere ar
ound here and she hadn’t seen him yet. Maybe this was her cue.
Charlotte gave one last uneasy glance to the mirror and examined the gleaming walls of her chamber. That had sounded awfully close, but she hadn’t seen any doors except for the main one that she’d come through. Was there a hidden chamber somewhere? She touched a wall and it felt warm, despite looking like sub-zero ice. It also felt completely smooth – if there was a door, she couldn’t see one. Frowning to herself, Charlotte moved along the chamber, her hands skimming the walls. “Hello out there,” she called. “If you can hear me, can you make another sound?”
Another groan, and this one sounded almost as if it were beneath her feet. Curious, Charlotte glanced down at the gleaming floors…and gasped. A shadow deep beneath the glassy ice moved, just a bit.
Someone was down there.
She looked around anxiously. There was an enormously large polar bear skin covering the floor next to her bed – so large that it was a little alarming to think it had come from a real animal. On a hunch, she lifted one corner of the blanket, and saw a trap door.
Not the cleverest queen out there, Charlotte thought to herself. But she supposed that was a good thing, or else she might never have found him. “I’m coming,” she called out, and shoved the rug aside, then lifted the trap door, easing it backward. A set of glossy ice stairs met her eyes, twisting down into the bluish light of the chamber below her own.
Charlotte went down the steps carefully, wishing she had a torch for light – one pitfall of being a snow queen, she supposed. The shadows grew deeper here, the muted blues and silvers of the ice gleaming around her. Her heart began to pound furiously in her chest, uncertain at what she might find. She stepped off of the last stair delicately, her gaze going to a series of massive icy spikes forming a prison at the far end of the shadowy chamber. Oh dear. “Hello?”
“Mistress,” a voice rasped. “Please.”
Oh no. Was he being tortured? She rushed forward, unable to see anything beyond the icy barrier. Her hand went to the ice and she pushed at it, hoping for a door to magically appear and swing backward. Instead, the ice melted under her hand, flowing and ebbing backward like the tide. Was that how her power worked? She had to touch the ice and mentally demand something? Fascinated, Charlotte continued to push at the ice until she had cleared a small gateway for her to step through. Maybe she was going to get the hang of this after all.
