He wasn’t wearing a coat despite the cold. He was scrubbing down the hull of the boat.
“I just made a snow tornado. Aren’t you going to congratulate me?”
I left out the part where the River Witch had pushed me. I assumed he would not approve.
“Bravo,” he said, dumping fish off the side of the boat.
“What is your problem? The witch gets results.”
“You think that the how doesn’t matter. But it does. We don’t always get what we want in this life. But we can control how we get there. She almost drowned you to get you to use your power. And I’m guessing you didn’t just learn how to fly by closing your eyes and thinking happy thoughts.”
“But it worked.”
He turned away from me. When he returned, it was with more fish guts. The result of the River Witch’s latest meal, probably.
I caught my reflection again at the bottom of the River in the mirrors. So many fractured wishes. Did they get what they wanted? I wondered before turning back toward the house.
15
When the River Witch pushed me off the mountain, I thought that she had gone as far as she could go. But the next day, she pitted me against Gerde. And Kai’s warnings and words came back to me again as I stood at the side of the River, toe to toe with the girl who had served me the best omelet I’d ever had in my life only an hour before.
“She wants us to fight,” Gerde explained in what was intended to be a whisper but instead echoed back to us.
I looked down at tiny Gerde. Even without magic, I could have broken her. Gerde may have been the more experienced witch, but she was all roses and healing and I was ice claws and a bringer of storms.
“I won’t fight you,” I said. “I don’t want to hurt you.”
“Don’t be so sure you’re the one in danger of causing harm,” Gerde said.
This was not the sweet-as-pie Gerde I knew. There was an edge to her that I hadn’t seen before. I didn’t know if I liked her more or less in that moment, but I did know that she had become a heck of a lot more interesting. I wondered what dark thing she was channeling her magic from.
“You don’t even know who you are or what you can do,” she taunted. “You have less than a snowball’s chance in hell of getting your precious Bale back.”
“Don’t do this—” I warned. She was using what she knew about me to get me mad at her. Mad enough to push back. I knew what she was doing. Just like I always knew it when Magpie did it—and when the River Witch did it yesterday. But still I felt myself failing. I felt myself giving in to the reflexive anger. Giving in to my monster. And there was no pill to fight it now.
But this was Gerde in front of me. Not the River Witch, who could handle it. Not Magpie, who deserved it. Gerde was as innocent as the snow was white.
“Or what, you’ll make me into a snowman?” she challenged.
Suddenly the surface of the River broke, and green, mucky seaweed oozed through the surface and coiled around itself a few feet from us.
It took me a few seconds to realize what was happening. The seaweed was forming a Champion to fight me. I got it now. That was Gerde’s, and I was supposed to create something to fight hers. But when I concentrated on the water, nothing happened.
The seaweedy Champion inched toward me. Her slimy arms stretched out menacingly.
A new wave of frustration mounted in me as I tried to summon my snow claws to cut at the seaweed that was winding its way around my ankles.
As it seized me, icicles shot out from under my fingertips. But they did not stop at claws like before. Instead the icicles shot from the tips of my fingers like arrows and arched toward Gerde.
They found their target all along her pretty dress, pinning her to a frozen tree. A trickle of blood ran down her face where an icicle had grazed her cheek.
The seaweed of Gerde’s creation uncoiled herself and retreated back into the pond. Gerde struggled to break free. And then the most unexpected thing happened. Gerde’s ears suddenly contorted into points, and her sharp, tiny features softened into lumpy cartilage, which was reconfiguring itself under her skin.
You underestimate her, the River Witch had said.
I winced as I watched. Her skin sprouted hair everywhere—from her face to her ears to her neck and on downward. Fur even grew on Gerde’s once-delicate hands. Her shoulders increased in size, and thick muscles bulged through the silk of her blouse, while giant calves burst out from beneath her skirt’s hem. And a catlike nose replaced her upturned cartoon-princess one. But one thing remained the same: Gerde’s eyes, which seemed to be pleading for me to go. Or for me not to look at her.
“Gerde …” I said her name, but she didn’t seem to hear it.
Did I make this happen somehow? I looked at my hands, which were already back to their normal non–icicle claw state. The out-of-control feeling had passed. But Gerde was still changing, becoming something else. Or had she been something else all along?
Gerde bared razor-sharp teeth, and I realized it didn’t matter what I was in her eyes a moment before. She was coming for me and the witch.
The River Witch watched us both intently. She wanted me to stop Gerde. Would she let me hurt her, or would she let me be hurt?
“River Witch?” I pleaded as this new monster that was Gerde broke free from my icicles.
“Find your snow,” Nepenthe commanded heartlessly.
Gerde charged.
I raised my hands in Gerde’s direction. I would not hurt her. But could I let her maul me to death?
Out of the corner of my eye, I spotted Kai running toward us. He had a panicked look all over his normally stoic face. His handsome blue eyes pleaded with me.
“Kai! It’s Gerde!” I screamed. He could stop her. He could bring her back.
“Gerde!” he joined me in calling her name.
She didn’t stop. But she glanced in his direction for a split second.
That moment was all I needed. I held up my arms defensively and pushed her backward, knocking her off balance. I was going to make a run for it.
But Gerde was quickly back up on her feet again. I wasn’t going to get far.
Kai called to Gerde, “This isn’t you, Gerde. Come back to me, come back…”
In the center of the River, snow began to swirl in the water. I was brewing a storm.
“Focus,” demanded the River Witch.
As Gerde ran at me again, I put my hand on the ground and a wall of ice sprang up between us.
Monstrous Gerde crashed against it and crumpled into a fetal position. She calmed down instantly, and let out a human cry.
“There you are … You always come back …,” Kai said.
He crouched down beside her, and Gerde shifted back to her previous small self in his arms. Her clothes were in tatters, and her face was full of tears. He wiped the shame away. I stood there shaking, still processing what just happened. Kai had been right. How mattered. Selfishly, I wanted his eyes to meet mine. I wanted him to know I understood that now. I wanted him to know that I was sorry to have been a part of what he’d just walked in on. But instead he was staring daggers. I followed his gaze.
Across the way the River Witch began to clap. Then she disappeared into mist.
A few hours later, after Kai had taken Gerde to her room, I went to see her.
She was back in human form, feeding her penguin in the corner of her room.
“You could have given me a heads-up,” I said quietly.
“And ruin the surprise?” she said with a little laugh.
She looked at me, searching my face for judgment or pity. Finding neither, she smiled at me. I wanted to tell her that I was a monster, too, just not the kind with fur.
Then she shook her head and her eyes seemed even further away.
“You know what I remember most before the witch?” she said, her voice finding a little bit of its missing musical quality again.
“What?”
“Not the cage that Kai had to put
me in every night. Not waking up in strange places with blood all over me. Not knowing what I’d done or who I’d done it to.”
“What then?” I asked with growing dread.
“The hunger. It was constant. I wanted to gobble up the world. I know you don’t approve of what the River Witch did back there,” Gerde said. “And I know Kai doesn’t approve of her in general. He won’t even call her River Witch. It’s always Nepenthe. He says that using her title gives her more power than she deserves … but her ends do justify the means. I am one of the ends. Because of the witch, I have my plants and my animals. I have peace.”
After a beat she continued solemnly, “What do you feel when it happens? Your snow, I mean … or do you not feel anything at all?”
“I do feel something, but it’s not cold. Or rather it’s so cold, it’s almost warm. I can’t put it into words, exactly. It’s just so cold that it isn’t cold anymore…”
“Sounds nice.”
Compared to the hunger she described, my snow sounded almost easy. Almost like a blessing.
Kai was in his workshop, wearing a metal mask and a tank top that exposed his biceps, which I was completely surprised to find that he had. He was soldering a piece of metal.
“Never sneak up on someone when they’re working with fire,” he chastised, putting the equipment down on his workbench.
“What about when they’re working with a …” I drifted off. “Monster” was the wrong word. “What is she, Kai? And how could you not tell me?”
“It was not my secret to tell.”
“She could have killed me.”
“You’re the Snow Princess. I hear you’re hard to kill.”
“I could have killed her.”
He turned away.
“So she’s not your sister. She’s a…”
“She’s Gerde,” he said simply. “I saved her and she saved me, and the River Witch saved both of us. I don’t have to like the witch, but I owe her. And if you let her help you, you’ll owe her, too.”
I didn’t know what to do with that information. “So that means that you and Gerde aren’t biological brother and sister.”
“She’s my family!” he barked.
“Before the witch … you took care of her, didn’t you? That’s what the cage was for?”
“Why do you care?” he asked.
“I just like understanding you better than hating you.” The words came out in a whisper.
He didn’t respond. He let them hang there between us for another interminable instant before speaking again.
“There aren’t many of Gerde’s kind. She may be the only one. And if she had been caught … Let’s just say she’d be a hide on someone’s wall.”
They’d traded their freedom for their personal safety. So that Gerde would not turn into a beast again.
I understood it even though I wasn’t sure I would have made the same move.
But something seized me when I looked at Kai.
“Why did you treat me like shit for making the same compromise that you and Gerde have made a million times over?”
Kai didn’t answer.
“Hypocrite,” I blurted.
“I wanted you to find another way. Gerde remembers a time when she was hunted. She remembers that fear AND she channels that and she relives that over and over again. I didn’t want that for you.”
No wonder Gerde looks so faraway all the time, I thought.
“I hoped that it would be different for you.”
“But it’s not different. I don’t like what happened today. But I need her to help me. Gerde understands that. She told me herself.”
“Gerde said she would walk away once the witch taught her to control her beast. But we are still here. She got caught up in what else the witch can teach her. I don’t know if she will ever want to leave. That could happen to you, too. Trust me, the River Witch wants more than just our thanks.”
“That may be, but I’m only here to train, and then I’m gone. We made a deal.” I looked around, thinking of the cage in Kai’s house. Before the witch, he had been the one to put her there.
“I am sorry for what you and Gerde have gone through,” I said, looking at him in a new light.
He saw the shift in me and almost flinched. “Don’t pity us. I can’t bear it. Not you.”
He stood up straighter. If I could tell a story with my shrugs like Vern said I habitually did, he told them with his vertebrae. And right now he was trying to put a wall back up between us. I wasn’t going to let him. Not until I understood what he meant.
“What do you mean, not me? You hate me. Why does it matter what I think?”
“Who says that I hate you?” He was looking at me intently. Like he wanted to say something else. But instead of saying something he closed the distance between us and in one strong, single-minded move, he kissed me. It wasn’t tentative or sweet like with Bale. It didn’t come out of a history of love and longing. It came out of a week of friction and misunderstanding and frustration that brought us to this moment. His lips were inhaling and hungry and challenging, and I felt myself responding.
And then I thought of Bale’s lips against mine, our bodies pressing close. I pulled back, suddenly pushing Kai away. He looked confused, but he didn’t stop me.
What had I done?
Why had he kissed me?
Why had I kissed him back?
It had taken me years to work up the courage to kiss the boy I loved. The boy I wasn’t even sure I liked had closed his lips on mine within a week.
I had betrayed myself and Bale. My heart ached. But my lips burned. The kiss had had its own inertia, as if it required a force equal and opposite to stop it. But it was the curse of my kiss that I thought of before I thought of Bale himself.
“Snow …” Kai opened his mouth to say something more, seeming unsure for maybe the first time since we met.
But the look in his eyes was unfocused. He leaned against his workbench.
I helped him sit down. When I leaned over him and touched his lips, they were cold.
“I’m fine. I just feel a little dizzy … Snow, I didn’t mean to…”
I didn’t let him say anything more.
I didn’t, either …, I said in my head as I backed out of the doorway and ran to my room.
16
I was pacing my room, contemplating the kiss when there was a knock on my door.
If it was Kai, what would he say? What would I do? I’m sorry I might have frozen you a little. Good thing we stopped before I froze you to death … Or maybe I just imagined the whole thing.
But when I opened the door, it was Gerde, not Kai, standing in front of me.
She slipped into the room, wearing a white low-cut dress I hadn’t seen before and a hint of a smile. She was feeling better. Or doing her best impression of someone feeling better.
I, on the other hand, felt more confused by the minute. And guilty. The only explanation for kissing Kai was that I’d been too long without people being nice to me, and I didn’t know how to handle it. Even before I’d come to Algid, it had been a year since I had really spoken to Bale, having only my mother, Vern, and Dr. Harris for company—when Magpie wasn’t trying to make me miserable. My kiss with Kai had everything to do with my missing Bale and nothing to do with Kai. I was sure of it. But just almost.
What happened was all me. My kiss had done something to Kai. Not like Bale. But something. Maybe something. I wasn’t sure. Dizzy wasn’t frozen. Cold lips weren’t definitive. But how had his lips turned cold, while mine felt like they were on fire?
I tried to refocus on Gerde.
“Let’s get out of here,” she said suddenly.
“What about the River Witch?”
“She still hasn’t returned from the River. Sometimes she’s gone for days.”
“And Kai?” I said. His name felt different crossing my lips now that he’d kissed them.
“He’s in his workshop. He might not come out for days, either.
There’s a little village not far from here. I think we could use a change in scenery.”
Maybe having her secret out in the open had been a weight off Gerde. She seemed different somehow. Maybe it was all in the way I looked at her. But it seemed like more than that. She was not talking about being a beast. But she seemed freer somehow.
I wanted to tell her everything. I’d already told her about Bale. But I bit my lip. Kai and Gerde were so incredibly close. I had already disturbed their delicate ecosystem. And Kai had disturbed mine.
I hadn’t been outside except to train since I first arrived days ago.
I got up to my feet and raced to get dressed.
The town was really just a street of storefronts and tiny houses all made out of the same packed colored snow I’d seen right after the tree with Jagger. But this time nobody was frozen. There were people everywhere. And through the translucent houses, I could see families cooking and eating and kids playing.
There was a big bonfire in the center of the street, and people were gathered around it for warmth. A musician was strumming on a triangular stringed instrument that looked like a small harp, but the sound that came from it was deeper and sharper.
Gerde immediately began humming along. She twirled around, her dress creating its own wind. My spirits lifted, seeing her like this. I wished for the day that I could be that light, too. But that could not happen until Bale and I were reunited.
We stopped at a table to eat some savory meat pies. They were nowhere near as flavorful as Gerde’s, but we were so very hungry. We washed them down with hot cinnamon milk in metal mugs.
“Kai is all business,” Gerde said. “He comes here only to sell. But I like to look around.”
Gerde had mentioned Kai about two hundred more times than usual today. Or at least that was what it felt like.
“Let’s play a game. Imagine a story,” I suggested, trying to change the subject. This was what I used to do with Bale. It was nice to have a friend again. “You pick someone, and you make up a whole life for them.”