The pain hurt, but it was good.
I had saved myself, just like Kai had ordered. And whatever else the River Witch had said, it turned out the part about me having the power of snow was true. For a girl who had spent the better part of her life stuck in a hospital for crimes against sanity, this was everything.
I felt my entire being wake up. I had a power I had only felt once before in my dreams, which allowed me to be sane and free and stronger than anyone or anything, except maybe the fabled Snow King, Lazar.
I heard the sound of the door creaking open, and the snow beneath me began to melt almost as quickly as it had frozen. The slushy mess flowed out the door as I and my bed’s icy island descended back down to the floor. The River Witch stood in the doorway. Kai and Gerde were behind her.
Kai stepped forward. “Let’s get you out of here,” he said exasperatedly. He reached a hand out to me.
Did he not see what I had done? What I was capable of doing?
I reacted reflexively, swiping a claw at him and forcing him to step backward.
He was undaunted. He came forward again.
“Snow. It’s okay. You’re fine now.” He didn’t move again. Instead, his eyes were focused on me, as if his stare could somehow bring me back to myself.
For a second I thought it could. But I couldn’t risk it.
I looked down at my ice claws, which were now shaking. But why? Was I going to freeze the world, or was I just coming down from what I’d done?
“Stay back!” I yelled.
The River Witch crossed the threshold and pushed past Kai.
“Stay back,” I said, fear peeking through my anger. “I don’t want to hurt you. Please don’t make me hurt any of you.”
“You can’t hurt me, my child. You may be able to freeze me for a time, but I believe I can handle it.”
The River Witch approached me and didn’t hesitate. She grabbed my claws in her watery hands.
I tried to pull away, but she held firm. I watched with growing horror as her hands began to freeze and, instead of veins, flesh-colored scales began to rise from beneath her skin. The witch’s face scowled down at me. I couldn’t tell if her face was set in concentration or pain. I could suddenly feel the heat radiating off her and her hands. She was combating the ice with her water, which melted my snow faster than it could form again.
When she was done, when my claws were no longer, she pulled me to her and I let myself sink into her and begin to sob.
“I know. My child, I know. You’re safe now. You must have been so scared. This was a test. And this is the feeling you need to remember to find Bale and to face the King. That day will come. It is your destiny. And mark my words, no matter what the outcome, it will take every ounce of strength you have.”
“Help me,” I said, clinging to her.
“You will help yourself,” she replied, holding me closer.
13
After I recovered from the River Witch’s first test, I found Kai outside Gerde’s room, where I’d gone to clean up. I was wearing another dress of Gerde’s: a light-blue one. I crossed my arms over my chest defensively. The air between us seemed different now. It was charged with the intimacy of his having helped me save my own life.
I remembered the sureness of his voice through the door. There was no door between us now.
“Nepenthe wants to see you outside,” he said curtly, walking away as he tossed the words behind him without bothering to turn around.
I followed him. He had just helped save my life, and now he’d turned colder than my ice claws. Maybe what he’d seen had made him afraid of me.
“Hey,” I said a little more forcefully than I meant to.
He turned around.
“What you did before … talking me through it …” I held up my hands, which were just hands now.
He shrugged, not giving me anything.
Maybe the air between us wasn’t different after all.
“It was just a test. I played my part. I would have done it for anyone,” he corrected.
“You knew?” I demanded. Somehow it mattered to me if every minute of my pretended rescue had been pretend for him.
“No, of course not … I just meant …,” he began.
“Look, I know we got off to a bad start … But I just want you to know that I appreciate…”
“Snow, stop. I didn’t do anything. That was all you. You have your powers now.”
Right. I was not special in any way, shape, or form. Except for my snow superpowers, which he had no use for. And we had not been connected at all in the last few hours. He just gave me the same courtesy he would one of Gerde’s farm animals.
“Long live the Snow Princess. I have to go.” He moved off, leaving me reaching for more words.
Maybe Kai had carved out a life with his sister and had left no room for anyone else.
I’d spent my whole life trapped in Whittaker, but I had never felt fear on a day-to-day basis. Sure, I was afraid of Bale not getting better, and other people were afraid of me. But Kai lived with fear every day. He looked at me like I was an invitation to trouble, which I was if the King ever found out I was alive. Not a flesh-and-blood person, not someone who he could connect to. It occurred to me that Gerde was probably the only person he had let get close, and that made me want to knock down the wall around him even more. If only he wasn’t so hell-bent on getting rid of me, I thought, but then I remembered I was supposed to already be gone.
I took the stairs and path all the way down to the water. There the River Witch was wrestling with some kind of sharklike creature. One tentacle was wrapped around its grayish purple body and another one extended down its throat.
I raised my hands. To do what exactly, I didn’t know. To help? I could not produce those claws again if I wanted to … and the whole point of my coming down here was for her to teach me how to control it so I could NOT do it ever again.
“River Witch!” I yelled.
She dropped the shark back into the water. Her tentacle down its throat was triumphant. The dead animal floated to the surface, its blood eddying into the water around it. I began to look away, but something caught the light. She was also holding a piece of mirror. It was about the size of a hand. It wasn’t just reflective; it was luminescent. It made me think of the mirror in Bale’s room that took him away.
“People throw bits of mirror into the River. They are offerings to me. They think that I will grant their prayers and wishes.”
“Mirror? As in the Mirror?”
The River Witch laughed at that. “If anyone had a piece of the King’s mirror, they wouldn’t be throwing it away just for a wish. It’s much too powerful. These are just regular mirrors. But they represent the mirror and the power it holds. At least to the people making the wishes.”
“And do you do that for them? Do you grant their wishes?”
In my head, I wondered if she would grant mine: to find Bale and go back home.
“If it amuses me. If it is a worthy wish.”
It was like throwing pennies in a wishing well, only a witch with gills actually granted them.
“What constitutes a worthy wish?”
“Something that you can’t get on your own. Something hard.”
“Like making someone love you who doesn’t?”
“Love is easy. It comes and goes like the River. Try power. That is much harder to find. And in short supply in Algid, save for a choice few.”
I didn’t want to hear any more about my father. Even though he was at the center of everything.
“What do you do with the mirrors you get?” I changed the subject.
“Mirrors reflect what we want to see, or sometimes they reveal what you really are or what you really want. You have to be very careful with a mirror.”
She tossed the mirror piece up in the air, and it sank down into the water by her feet. Just below the surface were dozens of tiny pieces of mirror anchored on some kind of white coral. One of the mirrors caught th
e light, blinding me for a second.
A tentacled arm pulled me away from the edge.
“Look in the mirror only if you know exactly what you want.”
“Okay …” I didn’t know how to respond to the witch when she spoke in riddles. But it reminded me of Wing back home. “You said you could help me.”
“Yes. But before you can wield your power, you need to understand it.”
The witch became more watery as she said it, her rivulets becoming wider and their currents picking up. The effect made me want to both recoil and reach out and touch her at once.
“What I want is to find my friend.” I decided to go for it. “He was taken from the Other World, and I believe he’s in Algid somewhere.” I left out the part about the strange mirror suddenly appearing in Bale’s room in the asylum. I wasn’t sure I could trust the River Witch enough yet.
She studied me for a moment. “If you want to find your friend, you need to survive in this world. And to survive, you need to learn.”
“You think I can do that?”
She nodded.
“Because I froze the room?”
“And the Snow Waves you created.”
She knew about the Snow Waves. She probably also knew about me spending the night in Kai’s house with him. Which meant she also knew that I had tried to run. But from her unchanged expression, I assumed that she didn’t care. After all, I was here now.
“But who’s to say I made them?”
“Only the King makes Waves like that and he was nowhere near here. I would have felt him. Snow, you can already wield a storm. In time, with practice, you can become one. And in the meantime you can do this—”
She mumbled some words under her breath I couldn’t make out.
From the murky River, a person made of water emerged. She walked over to me and touched my face. Then she fell back down into a puddle.
“What is that?”
“My Champion. She can fight for me, but only where there is water and warmth. Out there,” she said, gesturing across the frozen landscape, “she would not do much more than freeze. But yours could do whatever she wanted.”
“You want me to make one of those. An ice person. But I don’t want to hurt anyone.”
“You can’t get rid of your power, Snow. You can only learn how to control it.”
This was not what I wanted to hear. But the witch didn’t seem to know or care that I was upset.
“Then why train me? Why help me?” I demanded, confusion mounting.
“The same reason I help that girl up there,” she said evenly.
She was talking about Gerde. But Gerde sews and maybe adjusts animal genomes. She doesn’t make storms, I thought.
“You underestimate her. You can’t see it through all the flowers. But she is not unlike me. And I know what it is to have power and not know what to do with it. I want you to reach your full power. You deserve that, and so does Algid,” Nepenthe continued.
“I just want Bale back—” I said, overwhelmed.
Her curl of a smile dropped for the briefest of instants.
“Then we’ll get him back. It’s not an either-or proposition. But from where I’m standing, you need to get strong before you can do anything. Let me help you with that.”
It was just like Gerde said, though there was something in her tone that I didn’t quite trust. I thought I saw her face catch when I said the part about Bale. But I had to believe that she was going to help me. I had to, for Bale’s sake.
“With practice, you could be stronger than either of your parents,” she said.
I had always felt there was no one like me, but I hadn’t ever seen that as a positive. The witch saw my value. In this world I was something that people wanted. That was new. For most of my life I’d only really mattered to a short list of people. And only one I was sure of: Bale. And I had to get him back at any cost.
“Okay,” I said, making a deal with the witch. “I’ll work with you, if you help me find Bale.”
And so it was done.
14
The River Witch didn’t waste any time. My “training” started immediately in the cold, early dawn, outside on the edge of a mountain far away from Kai and Gerde’s cube house. If I didn’t know any better, I could have sworn this was Mount Kilimanjaro or Mount Everest, or some equally ridiculously death-defying place. Places I had only seen when clicking through the channels on the TV in the common room or flipping through the encyclopedias in the library.
I didn’t know how I got here, and part of me wanted this to be another dream. But the ice that kissed my face and the wind that picked up around me felt so very real.
When I had climbed down the ladder of the cube, instead of the final step leading to solid ground, my slippered feet touched down on top of the mountain.
I knew panic would seize me soon, so I allowed myself to take in the beauty of what was beneath me. I had lived most of my life in a locked room and had never seen anything like this. All of Algid stretched out in every direction. Pink, blue, and yellow trees dotted the floor of the land. Tiny houses sparkled in the distance. If I didn’t know how messed up this land really was, I could almost believe this was paradise. Somewhere down there was the King, and roaming around those trees were more Snow Lions, Tigers, and Bears—oh my.
A strange fog rolled past me. I could feel its warmth before it settled above the nearest park. I gasped when the mist began to take shape. It looked almost like a woman. A face and a body began to articulate itself. The mist became solid. And the solid became the River Witch. Not a single drop of water dripped down her skin, and she was wearing a cape that reminded me of a creepy, scaled mermaid version of Little Red Riding Hood’s. Even though she stood atop the next mountain over, her voice was in my ear as if she were right next to me. Her face was pretty. Dry, but pretty. But it was nowhere near as beautiful as the watery version. I could see why.
“You’re … human.”
“Let’s not get carried away,” she said, sounding disdainful. “But if you’re so curious, come get a better look,” she dared, nodding at the space between us. It was a challenge. It was, I assumed, my next lesson.
I raised my hand and tried to create a snow bridge between my mountain and hers. But nothing happened. It was like one of those wishes that the River Witch described as worthy, only I didn’t know how to grant it. No matter how hard I tried.
“The snow is yours,” she proclaimed.
“But it doesn’t feel like mine,” I said a little too loudly.
I wasn’t sure if my voice was in her ear the way hers was in mine. My words echoed back to me, boomeranging with more confidence than they had had when they left me. The distance between us seemed insurmountable, and the drop down from where I stood was a ragged, brutal, sure drop to the death.
“You have spent your whole life locked up. You have spent your whole life ignorant of your rightful power. Because of your mother. Because of your father. They restrained you. Now you can do anything, be anything, you want. Claim your gift.”
“Come to me, snow,” I whispered, this time feeling like I had already failed before I had begun. The more I thought about my confinement, the further away from controlling my powers I felt.
“You aren’t trying!” the witch snapped.
Was this lady kidding me? I was on top of a mountaintop trying not to fall off. Of course I was trying!
My eyes narrowed at the River Witch. My hands balled up reflexively. I knew what she was doing. She was trying to get a rise out of me in hopes that my anger would spark my snow. I knew the tactic from Magpie at the institute. Though Magpie’s motives were not at all noble.
The River Witch tsked twice. “Algid has waited fifteen years for you. And look at you. So very disappointing. You’re useless,” she said. And then with a quick flash of her arms, an unseen force shoved me off the mountain and down into the chasm below.
I screamed as the cold air rushed by me, burning my ears and lips and teeth. r />
Use your snow! The witch’s voice came from everywhere and nowhere. You can control your fate. Use it!
I let loose a string of expletives at the witch as I free-fell. She had actually done it. She had actually pushed me off a cliff as part of a lesson. I could see the rocky floor of the terrain getting closer and closer as I hurtled down to it.
I would not die like this. I felt a burning anger in my chest. I wasn’t useless. I wasn’t! I was not disappointing.
Kai’s words from the flood came back to me. You just haven’t done it yet.
I tried to whisper to the snow, but the air was moving too quickly around me, so instead I closed my eyes and concentrated.
Come to me, snow. I felt the slightest shift in the atmosphere as, degree by degree, I started to feel more attuned to the cold air and space around me. Come to me, snow, I ordered again, and I noticed that all around me snow was falling. Suddenly I wasn’t afraid. Like the witch said, I owned the snow. It belonged to me, and I could make it take me where I wanted it to.
“River Witch,” I whispered with newfound confidence.
For the briefest of seconds, I didn’t feel cold anymore. I felt warm and whole. As if the emptiness left by Bale had filled up for the first time.
I felt myself lifted up off the ground, weightless, by a wave of snow. And in a white-out blink I was suddenly standing on the mountain next to the River Witch.
She was waiting for me. Her lips curled into a smile.
“I expected you only to stop your fall,” she said, impressed. “But it could be beginner’s luck, so don’t get cocky.”
I smiled. I knew I’d almost died, but I hadn’t. I had done it. I had controlled my snow. Maybe it was good enough to get Bale back.
But when I asked this of the River Witch, she said, “You’re nowhere near ready. Tomorrow we begin again.”
After the River Witch deposited me in front of the cube house, I walked down to the River and looked at the mirrors in the water. I looked for my reflection, but instead I found Kai’s. He appeared suddenly on the side of the boat.