37. Vesper #2
I’d been sitting on the floor, my fingers tracing the sketches in her journal where she’d drawn the hyena. She sat up violently from her bed, going from limp to lucid within a second. She’d frantically looked around the room, found me, and held out her hand.
I was a child who desperately wanted a mother, so I’d gone to her, thinking that this was it. This was the profound moment that she would declare her love for me just like she wrote in her journal.
“Mom, I’m here,” I’d said, taking her hand. “I’m here. It’s Vesper. I’ve got you.”
She’d looked at me with eyes so clear, hope had bloomed in my chest. She’d beaten it. She’d beaten it and I’d have a mother again. That’s what I thought. I thought everything would change. That she could be a mother to both me and Dox, who’d been abandoned beside me long ago.
Instead, she met my eyes and looked right through me. She opened her lips and the words that fell out made absolutely no sense to me then.
“Politeness is power,” she’d said. “Power in silk gloves.”
“What?” I’d asked, confused.
“Politeness is power,” she repeated. “Power. Politeness is power. Remember your manners. Politeness is power in silk gloves. Remember. Manners. Politeness is power—”
The Suffer Saints had rushed in and shoved me inside as she’d grown louder and louder with each word until she was screaming them.
“Politeness is power!” she screamed. “Remember your manners!”
They’d given her more Softlock, and she’d been dead an hour later. If not for Dox, my hope would have died completely that day. I would never have a mother, but at least I had a sister, or at least what I thought a sister should be.
For some reason, that memory filters through my mind now as the man behind the door stands waiting for some stupid password we have no way of knowing.
He’s going to leave us out here and let us freeze.
We won’t make it without having somewhere to regroup.
We need this safehouse or we’re going to die.
Why had Cipher mentioned manners? I know why my mother had been fixated on the sentences.
Her journal had a whole ten pages dedicated to how much she hated the etiquette training she’d been forced to endure in Luxe, long before my father had snatched her out of a lineup and convinced her that he’d loved her.
Within those ten pages, she’d listed out all of the lines she’d been forced to remember.
Politeness is power in silk gloves.
Remember your manners.
Please and thank you are magic words.
My eyes latch onto the man’s behind the door and linger. I open my mouth. “Please, may we come in?”
Locke jerks his attention to me in confusion. “I don’t think asking more nicely is going to—”
“You said the magic word,” the moustache man nods and the small door closes.
There’s a series of loud, metallic clanks and clicks before the wooden door swings open.
“Welcome to the Howling Wind Ice Hotel. My name is Anders. Please come inside and warm up. Hot cocoa is being served by the fire. A nice stew will be ready in an hour. A room will be made up for you promptly. Please enjoy your stay at the Howling Wind Ice Hotel and do let us know if you need anything at all.”
Locke stares at the man with his mouth hanging open, clearly flabbergasted at the change in tone.
Gone is the stern order for the magic word.
In that man’s place is a chipper accented man who taps his fingers together in delight and smiles.
The large moustache adds a certain charm to the smile even if it kind of gives me the creeps.
Just like his moustache, the man is equally as large.
He clearly had to lean down to the port in the door because he towers over both Locke and I.
His shoulders are so broad, I wonder how he fits through the door in the first place.
He’s cartoonishly shaped, as if someone tried to remember how to draw a muscular man, but couldn’t quite remember and made him too large on top and too small on bottom.
In fact, his feet are smaller than mine despite his overall massive size.
“What is hot cocoa?” I ask despite having so many other questions.
“Only the best remedy for the frigid cold,” Anders replies.
“It’s a drink and some swear it had a little bit of Christmas magic in those tiny marshmallows.
” He gestures toward another man who stands waiting to hand us the drinks.
I realize with a start it’s the same man from every other safehouse.
The bartender. The waiter. The attendant. “Gustav will get you set up.”
“What is Christmas?” Locke asks, glancing at me in confusion.
Anders gasps. “You don’t know what Christmas is?
” he asks, while gesturing around at the strange decorations I hadn’t really noticed before.
A large green tree stands in the corner of the room, small sparkly balls and shiny ropes hanging off it.
At the very top, there’s a bright yellow star almost too blinding to look at.
Beneath the tree, a bunch of shiny boxes sit, bows on top of them.
Around the rest of the room, more green strands hang.
On the ice-carved walls, there are all manner of pictures, most of them of the same rotund man wearing a red and white suit with a big beard.
He looks happy. Suspiciously happy. I don’t like it.
There’s some sort of horned creature that’s been beheaded and hung on the wall in front of us. I don’t know what it is, but someone had put a red hat with a white ball on his head. It’s the same hat the suspiciously happy man is wearing.
“Christmas is only the best holiday there is!” Anders continues.
“It used to be a religious holiday, but that religion no longer exists. However, here in the Howling Wind Plains, we like to keep the tradition of giving gifts to your friends and family that you really wanted for yourself and stealing it later under the guise of your family member being ungrateful and not appreciating your affection!” He grins.
“We also eat Christmas dinner every day here at the Howling Wind Ice Hotel. Nothing beats a Christmas Ham!”
I open my mouth but close it back up. What exactly does one say to all that? Neither one of us understands whatever this Christmas is or even what a “holiday” is. Is it a celebration of the fat happy man? Is it for the beheaded animal that looks permanently afraid? No one knows.
“What is . . . that?” Locke asks, pointing to what I’d thought was a star above the tree.
There’s a swirling light around it, so at first, that’s all I see.
I’d dismissed it as some sort of star because of the shape of the light, but as I look closer, I realize that’s not it at all.
At its center, there are easily a hundred small eyes on a dozen rings.
As I look, they all blink at me as one, swirling around each other like they’re in orbit and one large eye at its center.
Too many small white feathered wings to count flare out from around the rings, fluttering without sound. They should be making sound.
“Oh! That?” Anders says, following our gaze.
The lights dim around us as Anders voice changes from chipper and upbeat to deep and thrumming with warning.
“His divinity is like radioactivity. It contaminates and penetrates the surfaces around it with every beat of his angelic wings, every blink of his constellation eyes, every flare of holy light. There’s an inescapable poison in your lungs as you breathe in something too pure for coexistence!
” His voice grows louder and more prophetic with each line.
“The Ophanim will descend like spears of light, like bloodied spears, like light with sharp teeth! Be not afraid of his holy divinity! Be not afraid of his poisonous radiation! Trust in the shelter of his wings and let him lead you away from temptation!” He’s practically screaming now, his head tilted back, his arms spread wide.
I take a step back, my hands going toward my hip as if I’ll still find my small pocketknife there.
“REJOICE FOREVER IN WHAT I WILL CREATE! TROD THEM DOWN IN MY WRATH FOR THE DAY OF VENGEANCE IS IN YOUR HEART! BE NOT AFRAID! BE NOT AFRAID! BE NOT—”
“Anders,” Gustav snaps and it seems to violently shake Anders from his screaming.
Anders blinks and looks back at us. He glances at the many-winged creature floating above the tree and then back at the two of us.
His face is slack for two seconds before the bright smile suddenly splits his face again.
“Oh, that?” he says, as if picking up where he’d left off.
“That’s just Steve. He’s our biblically accurate Ophanim tree topper.
” With smile firmly in place, he meets my eyes.
“Stay away from him if you enjoy your free will.”
I can’t help it. I grab Locke’s hand and put just a little more distance between us and Steve.
“And you think I’m dramatic,” Svetlana says, emerging from my hood. She peers at the glowing light. “Hello, Steve. Pleasure to meet someone of similar divinity as myself.” The light seems to flare in response and the rings spin just a little faster. “I heard someone say there’s Christmas ham?”
“Right this way!” Anders says cheerfully. “Hot cocoa first. Then you must go change. Clothing has been laid out in your rooms.”
“And if we don’t want to change?” Locke asks.
Anders looks at him with that big, now eerie grin.
“I really must insist. You’re dripping water all over the ice floor, and the frozen drops ruin the aesthetic.
” He leans in closer. “We’re all about aesthetic here.
If you do not change, we will assist you in changing.
Please and thank you!” he says, maneuvering us to where Gustav is holding out two large mugs and one tiny one full of hot cocoa.
“Enjoy the hot cocoa. It’s the best remedy for the frigid cold. ”