Flash Fiction #403 -- Lost in Elsewhere/13

Did you know the winter lands have living snowmen?

No, neither did I.  And it turns out they don't appreciate Lord Ice as their overlord.  Apparently, there is a large 'snow ruled by snow' protest going on.  I learned all of this from Maggie after we'd been taken captive, though.

Snowmen moving through a snowstorm are hard to spot.  I glanced off to the right a couple times, thinking something had moved in the vast wasteland of white.  At least I wasn't as cold as I had been, though.  Lord Ice radiated a bit of warmth, and even the snow beside him had started to melt. 

I looked again, thinking something had --

And then they were on us.

I don't think I can genuinely relate the terror of seeing live snowmen with snarling mouths full of ice teeth open, glittering black eyes, and spindly arms of animate branches.  They grabbed and knocked me to the ground.  One even caught Edmond by the neck, but I broke the branch and freed him.

"Go!  Get help!"

Edmond leapt to the sky and disappeared.  The snowmen dragged us quickly away from Lord Ice.  I thought I saw the dragon start to stand and fall over again.  Snowmen laughed, an odd chittering sound like a hundred enraged squirrels.

"Maggie!" I shouted, afraid of what might have happened to her.  The snowmen were wrapping me in chains of ice, tying down my arms and legs.  I tried to kick, but even when I tumbled one, it pulled itself back together and stood again.  "Maggie!" I shouted again.

I heard her answer, a snarl of sound that might have been words, though I couldn't make them out.  I lifted my head just enough to see Maggie being dragged along behind me with snowmen spread out on all sides.

Strong and fast creatures, I realized. The snow streamed out around us in a billowing cloud, and I could see nothing at all.  I tried to yell for Maggie again, but one of the creatures stuffed my mouth full of snow, and I began shivering uncontrollably while it melted.

"Orm-th" I heard Maggie yell and then cough.  "Orm --"

Was she trying to say some kind of spell?  The snowmen didn't like whatever she was trying --

Warmth.

I swallowed down the last of the snowmelt and thought frantically about what I had learned from my father.  It was necessary, he had said, to be able to survive in any weather since things changed so quickly in Elsewhere, especially in troubled times.  I could pull water from the air and create a small breeze.

And I could create a ball of fire to warm myself and my companions.  The problem, though, was that I'd only learned to do that with my hands.  If I created a fireball now, my clothing might catch fire.  I didn't think that would help.

Why hadn't Maggie done it?  Maybe she was hurt!  That brought my focus back.  I decided that I could create a small fireball and burn away the ice chains that held my arms and then grow it more substantial.

Worry was my bane.  I couldn't focus well when I worried about Maggie, about where we were going, about what had happened to everyone else --

Focus.  Small.  Focus on the feel of one link of ice chance beneath the fingers of my right hand.  My fingers were almost number from the cold, and I thought I might be slipping into dangerous hypothermia -- but I focused.

The chain melted and freed my leaden arms.  I didn't have much time since the snowmen would notice.  I could see the slight glow -- and just as one of the snowmen gave a shout of worry, I brought that little flame up and made it grow large.

Very large.  I think I singed my eyebrows and hair.  Snowmen backed away in haste with howls that sounded like the echos of winter winds.  My fire lifted slightly as I sat up, anxious to find out where Maggie might be -- but she came at a near run, stumbling a bit, and with her fire bright and deadly to our enemies.

The snowmen had backed away well beyond the warmth.  Maggie, who had better control than me, and she was able to get her fire to dance in a circle around us, making the snowmen back up even more, though they still made sounds of anger and protest.

"You alright?" she asked as she sat by me, brushing some snowmelt from my hair.

"Cold," I admitted.  "Why did you wait for me to do the spell?"

"You were ahead of me.  I didn't want them to keep going and risk losing you."

"I didn't have enough brain cells left for that kind of logic," I admitted.  My clothes had started to get wet from the melting snow, but now they were drying with the growing warmth.

We had a problem, of course.  Neither of us could keep the warming fires going forever.  I thought we must just hope for our friends to find us before we ran out of energy.

From the way the snowmen watched us with their glittering black eyes, I had the feeling they fully understood and were prepared to wait us out.  I brought the power of my fire down a few degrees, and Maggie nodded approval.

We still had allies out there -- as long as more snowmen didn't get them first.  I worried about Edmond and Five especially.

"What do they want?" I suddenly asked. 

"I think they mostly want you since you are the son of a powerful fae lord."  She told me then about the trouble in the snow lands, and how they were starting to resent Lord Ice.  I found it incredible that anyone would not want a big, mighty dragon to protect them.  Then I thought that maybe Lord Ice didn't always understand other beings.

"Maybe we need to talk to Lord Ice," I suggested.