Holly North

by Emma Savant

  Joy looked up at him, her eyes glowing. She seemed like a different person here. The timidity was gone, replaced by total confidence in Frost’s presence.

  I had to be different here, too. My stomach still felt weak and like it could upset its contents at any moment, but on the outside, I had to be as hard as ice and as opaque as packed snow. I couldn’t let them see inside me.

  “And now everything is as it should be,” she said. “Jack has his rightful property back.”

  “What do you get out of it?” I said.

  They both looked at me. Frost’s lip curled up, but Joy’s forehead furrowed.

  “What do you mean?”

  I pressed my knees together. “Well, I just mean, it’s dangerous, isn’t it? You helping him? Even if you were just doing what you thought was right, what would have happened to you if Santa had found out?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “I probably would have been banished from the Workshop and the city.”

  “At the very least,” Frost said darkly.

  “But here—I mean, I have Jack.” She squeezed his hand. “And I’ve always wanted to travel. I get to see your Colorado mountains first, when we take you home tonight. And after that, who knows? Now that Jack has the pole, we’ll have the world.”

  “The cold parts of it, anyway,” I said.

  She laughed with the lightness of someone who genuinely thought I’d just made a joke.

  “My poor love,” she said, looking up at him with tenderness on her face. “It’s been so limiting having to rely on the planet’s natural inclinations.”

  I looked sharply up at Frost.

  “I thought you said you weren’t planning on freezing the world,” I said.

  Joy’s eyebrows went up. Frost lightly massaged her shoulder.

  “I did say that,” he said. His eyes widened slightly. “Oops.”

  Goosebumps rose up on my arms in spite of the charmed coat. Beneath my shirt, the blue ornament still lay cool against my skin.

  Would it work against two people?

  Did I dare try?

  My muscles tensed. Where was Santa?

  Something must have happened. Frost had set a trap, or Joy had done something to trick him, or he’d run into some kind of problem that had stopped him in his tracks. Or maybe he’d just thrown his back out. He was a thousand years old, after all.

  If Santa wasn’t coming, then maybe I could at least get out of here in one piece.

  Frost held up the pole. The flames in the bulb at the top had faded to pale blue, and they mingled with the lightning as though the elements had always belonged together. I couldn’t deny that the pole seemed more at home here, and the truth of it chilled me.

  Frost was powerful, and the gleam in his eyes said he wouldn’t hesitate to stretch his power as far as it would go. The world would slowly freeze as its seas and continents fell under his grasp, and there was nothing I could do about it.

  I was a Humdrum—a failure with no magic and no power at all to stop him.

  “So you can take me home now, right?” I said, gesturing at the pole.

  Frost wrapped one hand around the scepter, his long fingers overlapping at the tips.

  “Not yet, Miss North,” he said. “I have one last thing to do. The old man might not have my scepter anymore, but I have no doubt he’ll come after it at the first chance he gets, particularly if he notices you’re missing. If we’re going to take a little trip to Colorado, I need to secure the palace before I go.”

  He played with Joy’s hair with his free hand. “Would you go prepare the sleigh, my darling?”

  “What about her?”

  Frost inclined his head toward me, almost in a bow. “I think Miss North will stay right where she is until we return,” he said. “Particularly once I freeze her securely in this room. You don’t mind?”

  His eyes glinted. He had me trapped. We both knew it.

  I swallowed. “Why would I mind?” I said. “As long as you come back for me.”

  “This won’t take a minute.”

  He held up his scepter. The ice on the window thickened and hardened, and he ushered Joy ahead of him into the corridor outside.

  My heart pounded in my chest, and the blue ornament lay cool and smooth against my skin.

  I pulled it out from under my clothes and clenched it tightly in my hands. I felt the magic sweep through me the moment it nestled in my palm. Santa had been right. I did know how to use this, and I didn’t need my own magic to understand instinctively how to direct it.

  Frost stopped abruptly as a cloud of shimmering blue swept toward him as though borne on a gust of wind. Joy gasped as the cloud took her, and I saw her hand twitch as she fought to free herself from its grasp.

  I threw myself off the chair, ready to hurtle past them and out of this palace before they could break free of this spell, and then Frost strode toward me.

  I stumbled backward, ready to fight. He yanked the chain around my neck, and the ornament flew out of my grasp and into his.

  “That wasn’t very polite, Miss North,” he said. His face remained as implacable as ever, but his flashing eyes told the truth: that I had made a deeply wrong move. My stomach heaved.

  He lifted the ornament, and it caught in the pale light of the blue flames.

  “Clever,” he said mildly.

  In one blinding movement, he smashed the ornament into the fire. I heard it shatter, and the flames flared up with a swirl of cerulean sparks. The room plunged into an even deeper chill.

  Frost leaned over me.

  “It seems those security measures may be more urgent than I first anticipated,” he said softly. “But you have nothing to be concerned about. I still intend to take you home. You did help me once, and I repay my debts. We’ll leave soon. I don’t want you here an instant longer than you have to be, because you, Miss North, seem to have a knack for making trouble.”

  The last word was a threat, and I drew back at the soft menace in his voice.

  He turned sharply and snapped his finger. “Joy!”

  Her eyebrows drew together, dark auburn in the blue light. She looked sad, even disappointed.

  “You shouldn’t have done that,” she said, and scurried after him as a door of impenetrable ice grew up behind them.

  Chapter 26

  A scream rose up in the back of my throat.

  I swallowed it back, hard.

  I couldn’t waste time or energy on screaming or panicking or doing anything that might keep me here a second longer. I had to get out.

  The window still glistened, but the ice had grown so thick that I couldn’t see the stars through its rippled surface. I hit it a few times with an irrational hope that it might give way or come loose from its icy frame, but of course nothing happened. The door wouldn’t budge, either, and I couldn’t get my head far enough into the fireplace to look up the chimney without the blue flames burning me with their cold.

  I was trapped.

  I looked around the room for something I could use to smash through the door, but the room was almost empty aside from the chairs in front of the fireplace, which were both too heavy to move. I was surrounded by shimmering ice, and aside from the colors shifting from powder blue to cornflower to periwinkle in the flickering firelight, everything looked the same. The room was strange, with the walls carved into the shape of bookcases and picture frames. Inside the bookcases were matching volumes in blue leather and silver writing, and the frames held cool-tinted oil portraits of snowy landscapes. The room was a strange juxtaposition of ice and real objects.

  I hadn’t noticed before. I’d been too busy focusing on Frost. I wondered if all the rooms in the palace were like this—just icy approximations of what a real home might look like.

  I didn’t have time to wonder. And yet, I had all the time in the world—or at least all the time until Frost came back, because there was no way I was getting out of here unless I magically figured out how to melt a hole through the door.

/>   Melt.

  The lighter.

  I shoved my hands into my coat pockets and scrambled desperately for the weight of the lighter.

  It had only been a good luck charm, I knew that, and Felix had never intended me to use it against Frost. But the charm I had used against Frost had only made him angry.

  What time was it? How late was Santa? I glanced around. In the corner, a tall grandfather clock with a frosted face had its hands frozen at three o’clock. Like everything else here, it was a lie.

  My left hand closed around the lighter. My right hand closed around something else that crinkled in the silence of the room.

  I hadn’t worn this coat long enough to collect any receipts or scrap paper in the pockets. Carefully, I pulled out whatever had made the sound.

  It was a small folded note. On the front, in elegant looping letters, was one word: Holly.

  I glanced at the door. There was no sign of Frost or of Joy. The hallway outside sounded deserted.

  I flipped the paper open.

  Dear Holly,

  I hope by the time you find this note you’re safe at home. I’ll see you again before we depart the North Pole, but as I may not get a chance to say everything I’d like to say, I’m writing it here in the hope that I’ll find the right words in my own time.

  Your presence at the North Pole was as unexpected for me as it was for you. It’s been many years since anyone from the Humdrum world has come to visit us, and I did not expect our first visitor to be you: a guarded young woman who had no love for Christmas and, it seemed clear, no love for me or anything I stand for or believe in.

  Because of that, your courage and selflessness over the last few weeks came as a surprise to me—a surprise that, I fear, highlighted my own distrust of the world outside the Workshop. I have spent longer than any man should live trying to keep your world safe, and at times, I confess, I wondered why I sacrificed so much. I wondered even more when you arrived, hating my world and doing everything in your power to go home. I trusted you as little as you trusted me, and wished you home perhaps harder than you wished for it yourself.

  Then I saw the way you befriended the elves, and the way the reindeer took to you, and your generosity in caring for them all, and I realized that I had misjudged you. I had allowed my first impressions to decide my judgment, and that, Holly, is something Santa should never do. Santa Claus looks inside people, at their hearts, and sees the good in everyone. I had forgotten about that before you arrived, and it’s only in these past few days that I’ve started to realize how much I’ve let my responsibility to care for the pole drag me down, and everyone with me. Mary has been telling me I’ve lost sight of the point of the thing for years, but, of course, I’m a foolish old man and have to learn these things for myself.

  You are good. I didn’t realize it until you and Felix lost the pole and you were willing to put your life on the line to bring it back. I spend too much of my time thinking about Frost and his coldness. I haven’t spent enough remembering how much warmth and courage is in the ordinary people of the world—people like you, who are willing to put their lives on the line to save others.

  You’ve restored my faith in people and reminded me that, no matter how cold things get, there is always warmth and goodness in this world. It’s my responsibility to protect that goodness. No, responsibility isn’t right—it’s my honor.

  Thank you, Holly.

  With love,

  Nick

  I swallowed the enormous lump that had formed in my throat.

  I was in danger. I needed to escape immediately. This was a stupid time and place to start crying.

  I wiped my eyes on my sleeve.

  No one had ever told me I was good—not good at being a friendly neighbor, not good at appeasing irritated customers, but just plain good. No one had ever expected me to be particularly brave or generous, not even me.

  I’d come to the North Pole without having a choice in the matter, but I wouldn’t leave it the same way.

  I tucked the note carefully back in my pocket.

  Frost would be back any minute. I walked to the window and looked out. The rippled slab was hard to see through, but the emptiness of the night sky was clear enough.

  There was no repaired sleigh flying through the night, no reindeer, no indication that Santa was on his way or would be soon. There was only me, and the ice, and the chilling black waves, and, somewhere in this palace, my captors.

  I didn’t have magic. I wasn’t that smart. I couldn’t outwit Frost. But I had to do something to stop him, no matter the cost. I was the only one between the ice prince and world domination, and that meant I had to act.

  Getting the pole back was important to Santa, it was important to the world, and, in a way that burned down to my toes, it was important to me.

  I slipped off the phoenix down jacket and got to work.

  Chapter 27

  I wished I’d worn more layers. It was almost more than I could handle to take off my sweater and the T-shirt underneath it.

  I threw them on the chair in front of the fireplace and stood there in just my bra and jeans, shivering convulsively. It took longer than I wanted to get the phoenix down coat back on, but the moment I zipped it up my skin tingled as though I’d just stepped into a hot bath.

  My socks had to go, too, awful as it felt to shove my freezing bare feet back into my shoes.

  I sat back down on the fur pelt and balled the clothes up behind me. It was a long shot—the longest, stupidest shot I could possibly imagine—but it was the only idea I had and these were the only tools in the room.

  I couldn’t maintain this courage forever. I rubbed the paper in my pocket between my fingers until I thought I might wear a hole through it, and listened. Only the sound of wind whistling around the palace broke the deep silence.

  I tapped my feet against the floor, then pulled the lighter out of my pocket and clicked it on and off, on and off, watching the tiny, inconsequential flame as it glowed vivid orange against the blue. Every second felt like thousands of years, but then, finally, I heard them.

  “I’ll be downstairs,” Joy said, her voice muffled outside the thick door. I shoved the lighter back in my pocket.

  Frost said something in response that I couldn’t quite made out, and then I heard her footsteps disappear down the hallway as the door dissolved into a pile of powdery snow.

  Frost blew the snow aside with a sweep of his scepter, which cast flashing blue lights onto the walls. The icy snowflakes swirled off into the corners of the room and dissolved.

  “Miss North,” he said, and graced me with a smile I didn’t trust.

  Despite the cold in the room, the back of my neck grew hot. Frost approached me like he was a predator and I was his prey, and I fought the urge to run.

  I couldn’t run. There was nowhere to go.

  “Frost,” I said. I tensed on my seat and shoved my hands in my pockets. My fingers wrapped around the smooth stick of Felix’s lighter.

  “Jack, please,” he said. “We are still friends, Miss North, whatever you may think. It’s time to go. You’ll like my sleigh. It’s more elegant than the old man’s. Bring the fur. It’s nippy out.”

  It couldn’t be any colder than it was here, in this room, with him. I clenched the lighter.

  I was out of time. I was out of allies. I was out of everything but the sharp awareness that I couldn’t let him leave this room with the pole in his hand.

  “Come, Miss North,” he said. He turned. I took a deep breath and grabbed my balled-up clothes.

  Then I lunged at him, throwing my whole weight at his back. I slipped on the ice as my body slammed against his, and he went down with me.

  He seemed too startled to shout or even fight back for a moment, and then he rolled over onto his back and raised the hand with the pole. Cold fire flashed in his eyes.

  “Miss North,” he growled. He started to sit up.

  I threw myself at him again.

  I didn
’t have magic. But I had fabric, and I had a lighter that Felix had claimed could light anything without kindling.

  I kneed Frost hard in the stomach, and he winced and held the pole up again. I swept my arm against his, trying to dislodge his grasp, but his bony fingers tightened around the scepter.

  He was going to freeze me just like Santa had warned. I had seconds, maybe less.

  I yanked the lighter from my pocket and reached for the clothes, which had fallen to the floor just out of reach.

  “Look out!” I shouted, leaping off of him, and Frost craned his neck before realizing that it made no sense to listen to me.

  It was enough.

  I grabbed the clothes and threw myself at Frost again, pinning his scepter arm down with one of my knees. He growled and reached for me with the other arm, but I turned my back to it and hunched over the fabric.

  My fingers fumbled against the lighter’s thumbwheel. A tiny flame emerged, then died away.

  “Come on,” I muttered.

  The flame sprang to life as though coaxed by my desperation, and I held it to the fabric. Frost punched my back with his free arm. I coughed as the impact pushed breath out of my lungs, but hunched over more and held my ground.

  Felix had been telling the truth. The flames caught instantly and crept up my balled-up sweater so quickly I almost dropped it.

  But I had to hold on.

  I pinched the sweater at the bottom while the fire began to devour it, my fingers less than an inch away from the base of the flames. I twisted to face Frost.

  “Drop the pole,” I ordered.

  Frost pressed his body into the floor, recoiling from the vivid flames. His hand tightened around the scepter, and I lowered the fire.

  “Let go,” I said. “Or I’ll make you.”

  “You’re a Humdrum,” he hissed. “With all the backbone of a melted icicle.”

  “There is nothing Humdrum about me,” I said. “You know what? You did what everyone else does. You didn’t expect anything from me. Well, you made a big mistake.”

  I grabbed his free arm and forced his hand into the flames.