Author's note: This is my entry for Postuhenin's Santa's Not-so-Little Helpers Contest. I chose Ded Moroz from Russia as my subject.
Down and down the snowflakes fall, drifting down out of the hard grey clouds above, like little stars lost in the dark of the night.
There are so many of them – more than I or anyone else could count. To look up is to disappear among them, their dancing forms towering so very high into the darkness above, tumbling gently down to rest like feathers against my cheeks. I wonder, sometimes, what it must be to fall so far. Where have you come from, little snowflakes? What things have you seen, on your long descent?
They do not melt, as they settle on my face and my coat and my hair. They never will. I will have to brush them away, and bid sad farewell to those delicate things, falling for ever out of the muffling sky.
The snow is thick, thicker than it has ever been. Even here, beneath the trees, my boots vanish within its pale softness, my coat gliding over its surface like the wing of a swan. Away from them, I sink sometimes to my knees, or deeper, its chill embrace seeming almost to reach up for me, as though to pull me away forever into its quiet, suffocating cold.
How strange that would feel!
Quietly, I wrap my arms around myself, the thick furs of my coat folding around me like a kind embrace. It is foolish, I know – it will not warm me, not really, not against that cold that seeps through my flesh and my bones like an icy river far away underground. There is no coat that can protect against that biting, frosting chill, or dull that constant numbness stitching through my skin, that endless sharp ache pounding through the deepest parts of me. But still I wrap myself up, imagining what it might be like, just for a moment. It is good, at very least, to pretend.
I sigh slightly, my breath leaving no cloud as it meets the winter air. Grandfather will be returning soon. And the thought of what will happen if he finds me gone chills me deeper still.
Quickly, quietly, I turn, and begin making my way back through the whispering snow.
Grandfather’s troika stands already at the foot of the hill. It is a beautiful thing, cobalt blue and icicle-pale, its runners long and sharp as rime-frosted blades. So many times I have seen it, but still it takes my breath away – like a great spirit of the snowfields, poised to bound after some mighty prey, shackled here by Grandfather’s will. Even now, despite the nervous pang it sends through me, I slow as I pass it, my eyes tracing the etched fairy-tales that spill out across its flanks, the impossible metal filigree that adorns its gleaming form.
But I cannot afford to linger long. If it is here, that means that he is here as well. And he will have seen my absence.
Up the hill I walk, wading with quick steps through the snow on the pathway, faint pale dustings drifting down from the dark trees beside it. At its summit, half-hidden by the pale mist, a lantern burns, its point of golden light flickering in the great, unending darkness. A beacon, there to call him home.
I hold out a hand, as I pass it, but it returns no warmth, only the bitter chill of the endless winter night.
Upon the hill’s peak, vast and looming against the clouded sky, stands Grandfather’s house. It is a towering thing, floor after rearing floor of gambrel windows and knife-sharp, sloping roofs, standing dark and proud between the trees like the castle of a forgotten king. The blanketing snow seems almost to magnify it, coating its uneven form like the fur of an ancient bear, or falling down to settle in drifts like pale waves against its walls. Its windows are dark, as they have always been, and its chimneys stand cold and silent, untouched by smoke or fire. There is neither light nor heat, in Grandfather’s house – only the ice-cold blowing of the snow.
I wonder, at first, if he has already gone inside. But as I stop beneath the wooden steps, I see the great figure standing motionless in the doorway, watching me.
Within my chest, I feel my heart begin to beat, quick and frightened and aching with dread.
Grandfather towers up on the porch before me, colossal and imposing, an ice-pale silhouette looming into the air like a frozen monolith. Elegant webs of frost and rime lace his titan form, spiking from the sleeves of his long coat, blue as glacial ice, hanging ragged from the still-longer tail of his flowing beard, white as moonlit fog. His eyes are frozen lakes, inky black and stitched with pale cataracts, and his breath rushes down from his frost-blackened lips like the iron-cold blade of the North Wind himself. Though I am already cold, I shiver anew at the feel of him, his very presence an aching wall that seems to sap my life away, and tear the strength from my shaking limbs.
Staryy Ded Moroz. Old Grandfather Frost.
My stomach curls as I step forward, bowing low and shakily before him. “Forgive me, Grandfather – I did not mean to –”
“Silence.” His voice is a blowing thunder, the endless whispered roar of a blizzard on the steppe, strong enough to drive the very seasons before it. “You disobey me.”
“I know, Grandfather…I am sorry – I wished only to see…I will not leave again, I promise –”
“Silence.” Again his great voice booms, washing frigid and unstoppable across me, leaving me cowering down like a frightened animal before its crashing power. “You were told to stay upon the hilltop.”
“Yes, Grandfather…” I nod miserably, wrapping my arms around myself and staring at the snow that piles against my boots. “I am sorry…”
“You will obey me, Snegurochka. Always. Lest I take back the breath I have granted you.”
He turns, vast and slow, the great wind of his passage coiling cold and sharp behind him as he steps away into the bitter darkness of the house. And as the great door closes behind him, I am left, as always, outside, alone, in the cold and the endless dark.
I will remember always the touch of Grandfather’s hand, the feeling of those icy fingers on my cheek, as I opened my new eyes to see the falling snow.
It was a beautiful thing, silent and world-filling, great soft flakes drifting slow and gentle down out of the sky. Their chill caress brushed against my face, nestling against my hands and my shoulders and my hair, like cold, caring fingers welcoming me into the world.
That is the first thing that I remember. Cold. The cold of the snow around me, pressing against my legs and filling them with its numbing embrace. The cold of the winter air, slipping like a serpent through my coat and my skin and coiling itself immovable around my aching bones. And most of all, the cold against my cheek, so hard and so sharp it felt like a burning brand, the first and worst pain that I have ever known.
For a moment, I simply stood, letting these new sensations flow across my mind. And then, very suddenly, driving itself like a knife out of the cold, a breath stabbed itself down into my new-made lungs, filling my chest with its ragged, aching chill. With its passage, I became aware of lips, of throat, of nose to breathe and chest to pump. Somewhere deep within me, small and sharp and hard, a heart began, shakily, to beat.
Without even truly understanding the movement, I lowered my eyes, and found my gaze filled with Grandfather’s face.
He stared down at me with those ink-black eyes, dark and deep as the night itself, icy orbs behind which thoughts moved vast and slow. His ancient, withered face held no expression, no smile to disturb that ice-encrusted beard. He only watched, silent and unmoving, as I blinked back at him like a newborn child.
It was a long time, before either of us moved. I do not think I truly knew that we could – that there was anything more to existence than his eyes, and my heartbeat, and the chill of the tender snow. But, at last, he did, lowering his great hand, and letting that icy pain fade at last from my cheek.
I felt the strangest pang of loss, as his touch fell away, though I did not understand why.
His voice boomed out, then, an onrushing wave of cold so vast and so mighty that it sent me stumbling back before it. My gasp of shock and terror lost itself within that crashing wind, and I instinctively raised my hands in some foolish attempt to shield myself as it cut its way down through coat and skin and flesh into my frightened, guttering soul.
“I name you Snegurochka, Maiden of Snow. Daughter of my white Winter.”
Heart pounding, tears freezing at the corners of my eyes, I stared up at his towering form, unable to respond.
“You will act at my call, and obey that which I command.”
Slowly, shakily, I looked up at him, the vast thunder of his words flowing down around me and leaving me trembling in its wake. Somehow, through the sobs of fear that bubbled up in the corners of my lungs, I managed a tiny, hesitant nod.
“Who…who are you…?”
The words felt foreign in my mouth, falling strangely from my lips into the silence his words left in the winter air. He simply stared down at me, quiet and grim, as though considering whether to respond.
“I am Grandfather Frost. Of the flesh of my great Winter are you made, and through its white halls you walk by my will.”
Again that frigid gale of breath came crashing against my body, and I took a step back away from him, forced by that unstoppable wind. Instinctively, I wrapped my coat around myself, hoping vaguely to keep out that bitter, roaring chill, and discovered that it did nothing at all.
“Grandfather…I…I’m so cold…”
“You are formed of snow,” that great voice roared, like an avalanche tumbling down some distant mountain. “To feel warmth for you is death. But you will never need do so.”
He turned, ever so slightly, and for the first time, I saw the space around us. I saw the great dark trees, standing against the shadowed clouds, the snow settling on their swaying branches as they loomed like sentinels in the nighttime. I saw the pale snow on the ground between them, rolling off and up and away, and beyond it all I saw that great house, towering huge and ragged against the muffled face of the sky.
“You will stay here, Snegurochka, upon this hilltop, and wait. When I have need of you, I will call, and you will answer.”
Shaking with awe and fear and sheer, overwhelming cold, I managed, somehow, to nod.
He nodded once as well, a vast movement of a vast head, like icebergs turning over in some forgotten sea. And then, in a great swirl of frigid wind, he turned, and glided slow and inevitable away up the hill, leaving me alone among the falling snow.
“Come.”
I glance up at Grandfather as he steps down off the porch, snow trailing behind the hem of his vast coat. He has never given me an instruction before, save to stand and wait atop the hill, and as he passes I tilt my head, cautiously, like a mouse before a giant.
“Where to…?”
He strides down past me, leaving no mark upon the heavy snow. “Come.”
Hesitant, curious, I turn, and make my way after him through the icy night.
Down through the trees he leads me, grim and silent, to where his troika waits at the foot of the hill. Before it, like blizzards bound and harnessed, stand Grandfather’s three white horses, wreathed in clouds of pale mist. Each one is immense, far taller than I, their manes and shoulders jagged with shards of ice, their faces shriveled into hollow skulls that hiss white breath from between their frozen teeth. They champ and toss at their halters, pale hooves stamping at the snow beneath them, but they cannot escape Grandfather’s will. He has brought them into this frozen world, and so they do as he bids them.
Grandfather steps silent up into the troika behind them, gathering the reins in his hand and leaving me to scramble in after him. There is no seat, within that gilded vehicle, and so I stand behind his titan form, hands shivering as they curl around the metal rail, hair swaying slightly in the winter breeze. The icy presence of him washes back over me, and I curl down before it like a bird, coat wrapped around my huddling form, head lowered to shelter from the creeping frost.
And then, very suddenly, he cracks the reins, and with a great rush of wind and a glittering wave of snow, we are away.
We glide fast, so fast, across that shining surface. The trees flicker past around us, like great pillars falling eternally back and away, and the shadowed spaces between them blend together into a single blur of winter darkness. The horses’ hooves make no sound as they run, our passage spoken only by the endless soft hiss of the troika’s runners, two blades drawn forever across the pale blanket beneath us. Icy wind presses back against me, its bite sharp but its teeth drowned by Grandfather’s frigid presence, and it catches my hair and pulls it out behind us like a pale flag. We are a ship, skimming across this white sea, and Grandfather stands as its great figurehead, staring motionless and unfailing out through the blackness before us.
I do not know how long the horses draw us between those pale waves. It is long enough for the clouds to glide by overhead, their dark forms muffling the moon as it flies beside us, keeping us company through this dark, unending night. It feels like hours, and perhaps it is, the cold biting into my skin, the snow flying up in long, slow tails in our wake. But, at last, as I begin to wonder if the journey will ever end at all, the troika begins to slow, and I glance out from behind Grandfather’s great form to see something more than trees ahead.
At first I do not know what to make of that strange space, lying sprawled across the snow before us. It is a space of lights, hanging in the darkness like stars brought close, little points of flickering, golden comfort in the night’s bitter infinity. Within those lights are houses, garlands of lanterns hanging from their eaves, little candles and bright fires shining behind their many windows. Each is far smaller than Grandfather’s house, but they are kinder, warmer, more welcoming of their blankets of muffling snow.
It is a town – a little village, huddled in the winter’s cold embrace. And on the long street that pierces down its center, wrapped in layers of bright clothes, their breath turning to mist as it meets the icy air, are more people than I have ever seen.
They stand in ragged crowds beneath the streetlamps’ golden light, groups of two or three or four or more, waiting eager and patient as the snow piles around their boots. The youngest are barely old enough to stand, clutching dolls and toys and peering bright-eyed through heavy hats and scarves, and the oldest are hunched over canes or huddled in little wheeled chairs, layers of coats and shawls transforming them into amorphous shapes. Around them stand those in between, men and women and boys and girls, their conversation filled with excited anticipation, the rippling joy of their laughter ringing out across the snow.
I am too far away to hear the words they say, but even from here, I can see their brilliant, hopeful smiles.
Beyond the people, beyond the town itself, there stands a vast, gilded thing, towering spire on spire into the shrouded sky. It is a building, I think, but a building bigger and more beautiful than any that I have ever seen, a building so tall and so magnificent that at first it does not seem real. It is a monolith of domes and towers and minarets, a mountain of bright color and intricate décor that dwarfs the village huddled at its feet. Golden lights drape its looming crags – strings of lanterns swooping across its complicated walls, candles shining from within its gilded towers, hundreds on hundreds of glowing windows nestled like roosting birds among its architectural cliffs. It is the most wonderful thing that I have ever seen, and even as Grandfather guides the troika to a slow stop beneath the snowy trees, I cannot tear my eyes away from its colossal, fiery beauty.
Awestruck, thrilled by this place that he has brought me, I look up at Grandfather, a smile of delight dancing across my lips. But Grandfather is silent, indifferent to those illuminated wonders, stepping only over the troika’s edge and down into the whispering snow.
After a moment, I follow him, sinking to my knees in that pale, frigid surface. But as I start forward, he turns back towards me, and the icy thunder of his voice falls down across me like a woodcutter’s axe.
“Stay.”
My heart seems to snap, slightly, as though the strength of his words alone has split it in two. Quietly, helplessly, I step forward towards him, hand half-raised, mouth opening as though to ask some question that even I do not yet know. But already he has turned away, continuing on toward those lighted streets and smiling people, and leaving me alone among the cold and the mantling dark.
They gasp, as he steps forward into the light, rushing forward to crowd around his towering form. Their chatter echoes back to me across that white expanse, ringing with excitement and childlike joy, and they stretch their hands up towards him like a forest of new trees, smiles of anticipation stretching across their faces.
Quietly, he spreads his arms out toward them, letting clouds of pale snow swirl around each impatient palm. As each one fades, an object is left behind, nestled in those expectant hands like a baby bird awaking in its nest. I cannot see them from where I stand, but I see the way the people gasp at the sight of them, the way they squeal with joy and clutch them to their chests and thank Grandfather with grateful, shining eyes. And as each in turn receives their gift, Grandfather pushes silently between them, the snow around him swirling into a comet’s tail that stretches back through that waiting crowd and grants each and every one their shining gift.
I want, so badly, to see what he has given them.
Softly, quietly, I start forward through the snow, making my slow way towards that glimmering expanse. The crowd has turned away, now, following Grandfather along the snowy street, and they do not see me as I approach, do not hear the gentle rush of the snow around my boots. They do not notice as I stand, still and quiet, outside the light’s soft border, and watch his shining gifts form within their eager hands.
A tiny horse, carved of pale wood and studded with shining jewels, an intricate saddle inlaid in gold across its back. A beautiful egg, made of gilded porcelain, tiny paintings of strange creatures and far-off places stretching up its sides. A toy ball, patterned with blossoming diamonds of red and gold, smooth and perfect as a sphere of blown glass. An orange, small and round and flawless, its peel all but falling away at the touch of the woman who holds it. A little cat, pale patterns in its dark fur, great green eyes staring wide and innocent from its pointed face. All sit cradled in their owners’ hands, received with small sounds of awestruck wonder, and one by one each smiling face looks up at that great figure and calls its joyful thanks.
Grandfather does not answer their delighted cries. He simply strides slowly onward, letting that swirling snow wrap itself around him, and glides between them up the street and towards the immense, gilded building beyond.
I know, deep within me, that I should not follow him. I should make my quiet way back to where the troika stands and wait for him to return, to leave this perfect place and return to his dark house on its lonely hill. But I do not want to return yet. It is so beautiful, here, so gentle, so kind. I cannot bear to simply stand and wonder, and watch its golden lights disappear among the trees as the horses bear us silently away.
Quickly, quietly, I slip through the darkness around the edge of town, running like a silent spirit towards that titan building beyond.
There are people, standing scattered on the hill beneath Grandfather’s house.
They are motionless things, quiet and still, like strange statues standing beneath those dark trees. Their feet are rooted in the deepening snow, letting it pile into pale drifts around their legs, and their eyes are hard and glassy, staring out from their stagnant faces into the misty darkness around them. Some are old, their faces lined with years of hardship and their backs bent beneath the weight of the world, but some are young, their delicate forms staring wide-eyed into nothingness, small and helpless and afraid. Some seem to scream, or weep, or shout with rage, but others simply stand, heads bowed, arms folded, waiting for the cold to take them.
As I brush aside their coverings of snow, peering in through the jagged ice that envelops their frozen bodies, I wonder if they know that it already has.
I wander, sometimes, between those silent figures, when Grandfather is home and the wind is bitter cold. I stand beside each one in turn, letting the snow fall soft as eiderdown across me, imagining who they were before the ice wrapped them in its iron embrace. Here is the old woodcutter, his eyebrows bushy as his matted beard, his stained axe still slung across his shoulders. Here is the pretty noblewoman, her flowing dress preserved eternally mid-flutter, her forkful of cake desiccating before her crimson lips. Here is the soldier in his shining uniform, his heavy musket resting in one gloved hand as gold glints from the sack he clutches in the other. The hard-eyed woman with the bundle of switches, the gaunt man with his crimson-stained chin, the little boy clutching his dog’s severed tail. Figure on unmoving figure, standing among the towering trees, their silent shapes slowly veiled by the gathering snow.
I asked Grandfather, once, who they were. He stared down at me from his frigid height, his dark eyes piercing the space between us like a ship cutting through a storm. For a long time he did not speak, and I began to fear that my words had angered him, that his staring gaze could push its way through my chest and into my pounding heart. But, at last, his withered lips opened, and his freezing voice enveloped me like an icy storm.
“They are trespassers against my great Winter.”
Down around me his words boomed, the cold sinking into me like the teeth of some vast wolf. Huddling before it, I glanced quietly back towards the trees, and the pale forms that stood unmoving within that tangled darkness.
“What…what did they do?”
“They took from others that which was not theirs to take.”
His words were deep and sharp, rushing like icy blades across the snow and leaving a crust of rime on the edges of my coat. Shakily, I nodded, hesitating a moment before I managed to ask the question that burned at the back of my throat.
“And…what did you…do to them…?”
“I took back the breath I gave them, Snegurochka. Such is fitting punishment for the heartless.”
He turned, then, striding off across the pale curve of the snow, leaving me huddled and frost-touched in his wake. For a time I simply stood there, his words settling in my mind, my gaze distant and thoughtful as it traced the falling snow. But eventually, gradually, I made my way back down into that silent forest, looking anew at the ghostly forms that dotted it. As I stared into each icebound face, I wondered what things they had done to earn their place here, how awful they must have been to be punished so. They could deserve no pity, no sympathy, for they had trespassed against Grandfather, and he had judged them in kind.
But oh, how painful it must be, to stand forever in those icy coffins, too cold to do so much as move.
I stand small and quiet among the falling snow, staring up in awe at that vast, gilded building, looming higher than I can understand up into the sky.
Standing here, so close that the light from its windows falls almost at my feet, it is even more wonderful than I had imagined. It is big, so very big, tall enough that if I climbed it I could touch the sky, wide enough that it seems to fill the world with its shining majesty. Its decorated walls are so complex that even from here I cannot make out their full wondrous intricacy, and across them shine those million lights, hanging delicate from swooping garlands, guttering from the railings of high balconies, glowing bright and bold from within a thousand subtle windows. It is a monumental expanse of color and glittering splendor, like the stars themselves pulled down from the nighttime sky, and as I look up at its endless, overwhelming might, I cannot imagine anything in the world more beautiful.
At its feet, sprawling out before its shining doors, marble steps lead down into the snow. On those steps stand people, soldiers, arranged in rigid rows and clad in uniforms of blue and gold. Though Grandfather walks towards them up the snowy street, they do not run to him like the others do, do not smile or hold out expectant hands. They simply stand there, silent, unmoving, and as he glides closer I half-wonder if they are statues. What other reason could there be, to ignore such wonderful things?
Still Grandfather comes, the swirling snow granting its last few gifts to the people hurrying beside him. But he does not look at them, now. His eyes are fixed on those great doors, looming up and up within their arching frame, painted wood and stained glass towering into ornate patterns like trees framed in radiant light.
And as he watches, they open, and through them steps the most beautiful person that I have ever seen.
She is dressed in brilliant orange, her long gown spilling like a waterfall across her form and trailing elegantly through the snow beneath her feet. Gold glitters about her neck and shines resplendent from the edges of her dress, inlaid with crimson jewels and flowing like a fish’s scales as she takes step after step across the icy stone. Her hair is long and fiery red, and atop it, curling like the crescent moon, a dazzling crown leaps asymmetrical into the air, a living flame made somehow of metal and gemstones. Her face is scattered with tawny freckles, and as she comes to a stop at the head of the stairs she tilts it upward, staring proud and haughty at Grandfather’s vast form below. She is not tall – taller than me, but far shorter than Grandfather – but there is a presence to her, a rippling power that seems to spill like a heat-haze down across those snowy steps. The soldiers bow low before it, and the people on the street huddle together, cowering slightly as they stare wide-eyed and fearful at her radiant form. Only Grandfather remains motionless, standing still and silent at the foot of the stairs as his dark eyes gaze unreadable into hers.
“What present do you have for me, Grandfather?”
Her voice is loud and high and clear, ringing like a bell through the night’s muffled silence. There is an authority in that voice, a merciless command, and the people on the street flinch back before it, as though her words alone had struck them. But still Grandfather does not move.
“You have given the rabble their trinkets. Now where is mine? What treasure have you come all this way to grant me?”
Her words hang in the dark air, fading as they bounce back from the little houses. The soldiers stare up at her, motionless as cold iron, waiting for her command.
Slowly, step by step, Grandfather begins to move. His great coat slides in turn across each marble stair, a trail of jagged hoarfrost forming atop the unbroken snow behind it. Rime cakes the soldiers’ uniforms as he ascends past each in turn, but his hollow eyes never leave the woman’s pointed face, even as he crests that final stair like a towering, icy wave.
As she stares eagerly up into his ragged face, the dreadful chill of his presence flowing forward across her like a winter storm, I realize that she is very, very small indeed.
It is then, as she flourishes her expectant hand, that Grandfather speaks at last.
“I have no gift for you, Tsarevna. Not after what you have done.”
There is silence, for the smallest moment, as the thunder of his voice settles across her gilded form. And then her face changes, anticipation melting away into confusion, frustration, rage. Wide-eyed, she snarls up at him, words curling from her lips like a dragon’s flame. “How DARE –!”
And Grandfather’s mouth yawns wide as the northern sky, and her words are lost in a roar of rushing snow.
Over her and on that frigid exhalation swirls, a deafening blade of wind and frost that carries churning hail upon its edge. It folds her in its pale grasp, a curtain of blizzard wrapping itself around the cowering form within, stretching on and on until it flicks like freezing flame against those open doors. The lights gutter and die at its passage, as rime stretches up across those painted walls and ice runs jagged along the marble below, and the soldiers stumble backwards, their stillness shattered, terrified in the face of Grandfather’s power.
And when that dreadful breath subsides at last, the Tsarevna stands before him amid a cloud of settling snow, her body entombed forever in bleak, impenetrable ice.
Grandfather speaks no words to the frightened soldiers. He does not approach those now-dark doors, or do more than glance at the thing the Tsarevna has become. He simply flicks his hand, and lets that pale, ragged mass disappear in a swirl of windblown snow. Then, like a frigid ghost of the endless winter night, he turns, and begins to descend the steps toward the snowy street beyond.
It is only then, as the snow settles along the steps and the people of the town scatter in Grandfather’s wake, that I am able to spur my speechless body into motion, and begin to run back towards the troika and out into the snow-softened dark.
I stare, quiet and pensive, through that shell of clouded ice at the imprisoned shape that hangs still and silent within.
Long hours I searched, after the troika bore us back to Grandfather’s looming house. Long hours it took me to find her, trudging through the deepening snow between the silent trees, moving from shape to pale shape. I peered in turn into every frozen face, searching in vain for the one I did not recognize, slipping quick and quiet between those frozen forms until I began to fear that he had not sent her here at all.
But of course, he had.
She stands pale and motionless among the trees, her icy form looming up among the rest as though it had been there always. Snow settles down across that ragged surface, but as I brush it away I can see the shape of her within, trapped in her last, eternal moment. Her delicate face is bound into a silent scream of rage and fear, her body leaned back as though it might somehow escape Grandfather’s inevitable judgement. Her golden crown sits still atop her flowing hair, its luster dulled by its icy cage, its gilded gleam gone silent, dead. She is like a candle flame, caught forever at the moment of its death, preserved eternal atop this frozen hill.
Quietly, solemnly, I stand there before her, staring up into that unmoving face. My eyes trace the edges of her – the fiery dress that flutters unmoving about her feet, the glittering jewelry that shines across her like stifled sunbeams, the auburn hair that pours flowing and beautiful down around her shoulders. Snow collects, sometimes, across the uneven ice, and I brush it quietly away as I stare awestruck past it into the frigid space beyond. Even here, hanging half-visible in the frozen darkness, she is more beautiful than anything I have ever known.
I find myself wondering who she was, before Grandfather bound her atop this lonely hill. What was it like, to live in that vast, wondrous building, warm even when the winds howled and the chill grew ever deeper? What was it like to walk among those pretty houses, to sit and talk with smiling people in the glow of roaring fires? How wonderful it must have been, to wear such clothes and walk such halls, to spend a lifetime in that shining place, surrounded by warmth and kindly faces.
Staring up at her now, silent and immobile within her frozen tomb, I wonder how Grandfather could take that from her, and leave her here alone, among the falling snow.
That thought drifts through my mind as I wander the darkened woods, swirling like the dropped feather of some strange, distant bird. I tell myself that there is a reason he brought her here, away from that warmth and golden beauty. I tell myself that she did something, something unforgivable, and he exacted upon her the punishment she deserved. But as I find myself returning again and again to that pale, unmoving form, I realize that I do not believe that, not really. She cannot deserve to suffer here, blank eyes staring forever upward through the empty trees, surrounded only by the snow and the others bound within it. No one can.
I imagine, sometimes, breaking the walls of that clouded prison. I imagine taking a rock and driving it into that frozen mass, feeling Grandfather’s work give and shatter beneath my blows. I imagine the way she would gasp a desperate breath of winter air, would step forward from amid those pale shards and run, run out into the snowy night to where her town waited warm and safe to welcome her back home.
But when I try it, when I find a heavy stone and slam it against the ice’s uneven surface, I realize with a jolt of aching pain that it is impossible. There is nothing I can do that could break that iron-hard mass. There is not so much as a pale scratch where my feeble effort fell against it. And as that understanding washes over me, as I begin to grasp just how impenetrable Grandfather’s creation truly is, I step quietly back away from it, and drop the stone with a little sound into the waiting snow.
For a long time I stand, quiet and sorrowful, before that pale mass. It feels as though I have failed her, somehow, as though my inability to pull her from that frigid cage has doomed her here as much as Grandfather’s power. I wish that I could speak to her, tell her how sorry I am that I cannot free her from her from that unbreakable ice. But her freckled face simply stares, hollow and unchanging, unaware of anything beyond her frigid tomb.
And then, as I stare up into her distant eyes, a thought drifts slow and quiet into my mind. It is a subtle thing, pale and fragile, so small that it is almost lost in the rush of the world. But nevertheless, it comes to rest, so simple and so obvious that I wonder that I did not think of it before.
It does not matter how hard the ice is, how little dent my blows can make against it. It will melt still at the touch of fire.
My heart begins to pound, quick and shaky within my chest, as I turn and begin running up the snow-covered hill towards Grandfather’s house.
The little lantern shines, as it always does, at the head of the narrow path that winds its way down the hill.
Slowly, hesitantly, I kneel in the snow, cupping its small form within my hands. It is a delicate thing, a fragile egg of glass and coiling iron, an embryo of precious flame burning tiny and bright within its heart. No heat is able to push through that shining glass, nothing to warm my shaking fingers as I slide it with the faintest scrape from its iron hook. But still, with luck, that pinprick of light will be enough. It must be.
Quietly, carefully, I slip back through the deepening snow, down through the trees to where the Tsarevna stands. Gingerly, I set it down, cradling it within the blanketing snow to keep safe its glassy shell. And then, nervously, heart pounding I straighten, turning with a shaky breath to face that white pillar, and begin.
A fire, I know, needs food if it is to grow. And so I walk between the looming trees, my eyes skimming eagerly across the snow’s white surface. Here and there, nestled beneath the vast trunks, dark shapes emerge like breaching whales, branches fallen long ago from those distant, ancient heights. Gently, I brush the snow from their ragged forms, pulling each in turn from its resting place and bringing it carefully back, to place it like an offering before the feet of that pale form.
Gradually, piece by piece, I begin to pile them together, forming them into a shapeless, ragged mound. It wraps itself around the base of that pale mass, scraping at its flanks like a hungry spider, the Tsarevna’s half-seen shadow seeming to float above it, oblivious, serene. I smile, slightly, as I look upon it. Soon it will be all right again. Soon she will be free.
I turn, padding back through the snow and picking up the little lantern, cradling it gently in my hand as I kneel beside that mound of shadowed wood. Once, twice, I rap it against the bark, and on the third blow it shatters, glass bursting from its metal confines and spilling out into the pile with an icicle sound. The flame within gutters, flickering and almost going out, but as I still my hand it rises again, steady and shaky within its ruined cage.
Slowly, carefully, I set it down among the ragged branches, nestling it within that haphazard shadow.
The fire dances for a moment there, licking up through the darkness at the dampened wood that frames it. But it does not catch, not yet. Breath shaky with anticipation, I sit back, staring down at it as the snow falls soft and quiet around me.
And beyond the snow, in the dark between the trees, something else moves, something tall and slow and unbearably cold.
My breath catches as I meet Grandfather’s hollow eyes, scrambling in horror to my feet as panic clutches itself like an icy hand about my chest. Trembling, I glance down at those heaping branches – so small they seem, now, and so foolish, scattered twigs beneath that unbreakable ice and its vast, impassive creator. Thoughts swirl like windblown birds through my mind, too quick to catch and too small to speak, and for a moment I simply stand there, staring terrified up into those twin icy voids. “Grandfather…I…I’m sorry…”
He does not answer, just stares silent and unmoving through the snow-filled dark.
Frightened, uncertain, I step back away from him, my boots whispering through the powder snow. “Please, Grandfather, I’m sorry…Please, I’ll come back…I’ll put it out –”
And then, very suddenly, as I scrabble in vain for words worth saying, there is a roaring flare of orange light, and a wave of searing, unimaginable pain.
It is agony unlike anything I knew was possible, agony that pierces my flesh like blazing light and leaves me pinned and transparent in its gaze. It fills my senses, blinding me and choking me and locking me in place, slamming down across me like a wave of crushing water and pressing its unbearable heat through the corners of my skin. It is as though my flesh itself is being torn from my bones, as though a million tiny blades are pressing into me and splitting me apart. A scream tears itself from my mouth, the loudest sound that I have ever made, and then another and a third, as I manage at last to stumble back and get a glimpse of the thing that I have wrought, the great amber pyre that licks like hungry wolves at the feet of the Tsarevna’s tomb.
Beyond it, towering and silent, Grandfather looms, the flickering flames dancing in his shadowed eyes.
Steam rolls billowing and pale from that frozen pillar, a coiling finger that seems to reach out for the sky above. It unfurls around me as well, tearing itself hissing from my skin, and as I fall to my knees in the welcoming snow, I look down at my hands and see what has become of me.
They do not move, those hands, not any more. The pale skin that bound them is running clear and warm, pouring down across my fingers and dripping with small hisses into the waiting snow. Beneath it, pale muscle begins to split and crumble, transparent rivulets of me carving runnels through that white, sloughing flesh, and as it falls away even the bone begins to fail, thin, pallid spars bending and breaking before the fire’s majesty.
I am melting, I realize, melting like the snow, and before long there will be nothing left of me at all.
Helpless, terrified, I stare up at Grandfather’s unchanging face, trying desperately to beg for him to help me. But my throat does not work any more, and my gasping, failing lips produce no sound at all.
Before me, there is a sharp, deafening crash, and the fire gutters as that pillar of ice splits open at last. But even then, even as steam rolls up across her body, even as her face falls into that consuming amber light, the Tsarevna does not move. She simply lies there, motionless, dead, as the flames begin to lick her auburn hair.
Within what is left of me, I feel some final bone give way, and I collapse limp and helpless down into the snow. Grandfather’s eyes still watch me, not leaving my face even as I fall, even as I feel the last of my body start to boil away around me. Only when I have ceased to move entirely does that great head lower, and his hands begin to flow in long, slow motions, pulling something up out of the aching cold.
At his feet, the snow begins to swirl, curling up and up into a swaying shape before him. As it begins to take form, his hands dance delicate and graceful across it, sculpting it with quiet intent into a small, thin shape. Arms blossom from its shoulders, hair flows bright and pale from its head, and around its body a white coat wraps, sheltering her from a cold that she will never be truly free of.
Before him, standing small and pale in the dying firelight, a girl opens her wide new eyes to see the falling snow.
Written by StalkerShrike
Content is available under CC BY-SA