Chapter 21 #3
Stacia had no idea how long she had floated there next to her body.
It could have been minutes or hours. She watched as the limbs on her body grew blue, starting at the fingers.
It was soon up to her wrists, while the tips of her fingers turned white.
She knew what frostbite looked like and that there would be no recovery.
Lowering her head, she despaired. How would she save her sister or Zima or Iriko now?
Was it not even a day ago she’d conversed with Death?
Now it seemed he’d come for her, and Stacia was surprised to find she no longer wanted it.
What had changed? She wasn’t sure, but one thing was certain: Before she greeted the handsome Death again, there were a few items of unfinished business she had to take care of first.
“I’m not ready!” she called out to the bitter-cold sky.
Just then she saw a funnel of ice and snow appear at the edge of the woods.
The trees nearby crackled as icicles grew on every limb and snow swirled about each one.
Smaller branches broke and fell to the ground below.
Out of the funnel galloped a huge white bear, and harnessed to him was a silver sleigh carrying a wizened old man.
“On, Lednik!” she heard the man cry as he flicked the reins.
The bear roared and lifted his powerful paws, stretching his legs and sinking his claws into the ice as the sleigh slid along quickly behind him.
Then the man pulled up and they came to a crashing stop, casting silvery snow that dusted Stacia’s unmoving body with a fresh coat.
While the bear shook out his fur and panted from his run, the man climbed down from the sleigh and inspected her body. Then, to Stacia’s surprise, he looked up straight at her hovering form.
“Well,” he said. “You’re caught in the valley between two glaciers, aren’t you, my dear? The question is, which wall of ice are you going to climb, I wonder?”
“Who are you?” Stacia cried.
“Who am I? Who am I?” The man began laughing. “She’s asking who I am. Can you believe it, Lednik? It’s like her parents never read her any bedtime stories. Or perhaps they just weren’t that important to her. Is that it?”
“Of course they were important to me. What has that got to do with anything?”
“It has everything to do with why you’re here. And everything to do with who I am and who you are, for that matter.”
“What? You’ve got to be kidding me! This uzhasnyy dreamworld of yours is nelepyy.
I don’t give furry rat’s zadnitsa who you are or even who I am at this point.
I just want to go home, okay? I want everything to go back to the way it was.
I want my sister, my mom, and . . . my dad. I want my dad back.”
The big man sighed and leaned on his cane. “Young woman. Tsarevna,” he said more sharply, trying to get her attention.
To Stacia’s shock, the world around her had blurred again.
The deep heaviness was back. It was pulling her down, down, down to the dark place where she didn’t want to go.
While she’d been floating above her fallen form, she hadn’t felt anything—not cold, not pain, not emotions.
Now she could. The pain was flooding in, and if she couldn’t find a way to hold it back, to numb herself from the waves, she feared she’d drown.
She heard the man say, “Look at me. What do you see? Focus.”
Something about his voice helped her rise from the turmoil happening inside herself.
She managed to see him the way her mother would, taking in all the details, from his clothing to the way his boots were polished.
Stacia focused on his hat, taking the time to look at the jewels and the shape of the dome, the star in the middle, and the ice-blue color and how it matched his robe and belt.
She was able to figure out the value of his gloves, see they were made of the softest kid leather, and notice how his cane was taller than he was, that it was meticulously carved and that only one section was covered with ice.
Next, Stacia studied his boots, his thick, heavy coat lined with white fur, and she saw how his thick white brows were neatly brushed, as was his mustache, which was as long as his hair and beard, which ended just below the belt.
Though she suspected who he was immediately, it gave her a great deal of satisfaction to catalog all the details, storing them away in her mind.
It made her think of her father and her mother.
She could almost hear their voices speaking to her as her thoughts worked through each piece of his clothing.
That he didn’t mind her scrutiny helped.
“You’re Morozko,” Stacia said at last. “Father Frost.”
“That’s right, young lady,” he said, gifting her with a smile that softened the lines of his face. “And I have a question for you.”
“Go on, then,” Stacia replied, expecting the typical question that came in the next part of the fairy tale.
He was right. She knew it well. A kind widower with a daughter had remarried, and the new wife hated the daughter, so she forced him to leave his girl out in the cold forest. With no other choice but to make his new wife happy, he did as she asked.
When Father Frost came and saw the shivering girl, he asked if she was cold.
She replied, “No, I am warm enough.” That night he left her a beautiful coat.
This happened again. Each night he left her with gifts, jewels, and he eventually drove her home in his own sledge.
The jealous stepmother then put her own daughter out in the cold, hoping for the same treatment, but her daughter complained instead and insulted Father Frost, calling him an “old man” and basically treating him badly enough he froze her.
When Stacia first heard the story, she asked her father why the father didn’t put the stepmother outside instead.
Her mother had laughed at that. Then Veru had asked why Father Frost liked a girl who lied and said she wasn’t cold when she was.
Why was that a desirable quality? She thought they were supposed to tell the truth.
Stacia agreed with her sister. Their father hemmed and hawed a bit, saying something about humility and other such rubbish, but both girls agreed that the father should have been frozen for casting out his daughter.
Now here Stacia was, years later, wondering what her answer was supposed to be.
When Father Frost asked, “Are you cold, child?” she could say something truthful like, “Hell yes,” or “What the bloody hell do you think?” She could play the diplomat and answer, “Niggling, Father Frost. Worry yourself not a bit.” Then again, she could say, “You do have eyes, don’t you? ” or simply answer, “Obviously.”
Stacia didn’t think she had it in her to say, “No, I am warm enough.” She might as well shout to the sky, “No! I don’t need a family. No! I don’t care if I ever see my sister again. No! The empire my parents built means nothing to me. No! I don’t ever want to see the real world again!”
As she hovered there, almost trembling with a deep-seated anger at the injustice of the world and at the uncertainty of her place in it, she waited for his question.
Finally, it came.
Father Frost asked, “Do you have anything for me to eat?”