Chapter 34
Lark
Long after the last illusions have faded, the bewildered townspeople have mostly wandered off.
A few idle, concerned about the queen’s lingering presence, or murmuring behind their hands with friends and neighbors about the curious happenings they just witnessed.
Wary eyes watch their queen whisper sweet nothings into the twitching ears of a mule.
Guards seem unsure what to do with their Ice Queen acting anything but frosty toward the local livestock. A few huntsmen work to shoo nosy villagers away, while another tries to move Queen Taynia from the square, only to be severely rebuked when he comes between her and Tahto.
Neither Daria nor Beron has returned, and I allow myself a moment to picture her chasing him all over town. Drowning Deep, I wonder which one of them will kill me first when morning comes.
For now, though, I want nothing more but to go after Val—er, Talvie.
The kids are tossing props into piles, casting worried looks my way between giggles over the queen’s antics. Finally, Mikael herds them all over to me. “We’ll take this stuff back,” he says.
I nod.
Then Aili pipes up. “But I want to go get Val!”
“We all do, Lark. We want to help,” Katja adds.
“Let’s go melt her free!” Helkki ignites fire in her palm.
Quickly, I smother her hand before she can spook the mule again. “It won’t be that easy. Melting the ice won’t be enough to break the curse, I’m sure.” From my pocket, Hugo chirps his opinion. “I know. We’re going to need the queen’s help.”
Tahto’s head tosses, but he calms quickly under Queen Taynia’s gentle pats and reassurances.
Despite this strange new calm the enraptured queen has adopted, my own fire still burns at what she’s done.
Somehow, I doubt shouting at her will get me anything but arrested, so I need to rein it in. Storms, it’s hard though.
“But how?” I mutter, eyes darting from the queen cooing at the mule to the guards still lurking nearby. “There doesn’t seem to be much point in reasoning with her in this state.”
Katja steps beside me. “The potion will wear off by morning. If you’re going to do something dumb, now’s the time.”
“That sounds like permission.” My grin is half-hearted.
“We’re coming with you,” Juani says. The others all nod.
There’s no point arguing; I can already tell. They’re all too invested, as captivated by Val as I have been. They care for her too.
“Fine, you can come with me. But there will be guards at the pond, so you stay back until I say it’s safe.”
We make a quick stop at the cottage to drop off props and change out of costumes, then hurry for the forest path, led by Aili. Near the pond, she guides us to the same bushes where she took cover before. From behind thick pine boughs, I whisper, “Hugo. Recon mission.”
The hedgehog pokes his nose from my pocket like I’ve announced a cheese festival.
“Go count the guards and report back.”
With a chirrup, Hugo dives into the snow, nearly invisible as he scurries through the underbrush. What feels like an eternity later, the snowbank ahead wiggles, and he emerges, quills fluffed with triumph. He gives me two quick grunts.
“Only two?” I whisper. “I can handle two guards.”
Slipping through the trees, I craft a quick illusion of motion and sound to spook them. One guard yelps in alarm.
“Ow! What was that spiky rat thing? It bit me!”
That…wasn’t part of the illusion. I check my coat pocket.
Empty.
Drown it, Hugo!
The second guard grumbles, “It was just a hedgehog. Relax.”
“Are they poisonous?”
“Dunno, never ate one,” the second guard dismisses. Then, “What? You said poisonous. That means you eat it, and you die. Never ate a hedgehog on account of the quills.”
“You know what I meant!” The first guard curses.
“Ohhh. You mean venomous. They bite you, you die. Not the other way around.”
“Obviously!”
“Okay, fine! Sorry! And no, hedgehogs aren’t venomous. Pretty sure.”
By the time they stop bickering and turn back to their post, my new illusion is in place.
The first guard sputters. “Wha—Where is she?”
Water splashes as they rush to the pond.
“Drowning Deep, we’re so dead,” he breathes. “That was frozen solid. How did it melt?”
“The princess was under a sleeping curse,” the other mutters. “What, is she sleepwalking? She can’t have gone far. Let’s go!”
They rush off, stomping through the undergrowth. After their footsteps fade, I drop the illusion of the fake pond that masked the real one.
The reflecting pond still stands frozen, Princess Talvie entombed within it.
I step to the edge, heart pounding. “Okay, little beasties. We thawed Mikael out from worse than this. Let’s save a princess.”
Mikael and Johannes keep watch while the rest of us use whatever warming or fire magic we have.
Hellion is in her element, aiming fire all around the pond’s edges, while Aili is more cautious with her fire, brows furrowed in concentration.
Katja, Juani, and I send focused heat closer to Talvie, palms pressed to the surface.
Even Hugo waddles to the edge to breathe little puffs of warm air over the ice’s surface.
Slowly, it begins to melt. Far too slowly.
The lavender glow of dawn rises as we work, until finally, the princess floats on a single remaining slab of ice. Mikael helps me pull her from the pond and wrap her in the thick quilt we brought from Redcurrant Cottage.
Talvie’s face is serene, her limbs limp, but her chest rises and falls just enough to know she’s still with us.
“She’s breathing,” I whisper, brushing white hair from her face. Her skin is cold to the touch. Her lips have lost their bright red tint.
I ease her to the ground, tucking the blanket’s edges around her body and placing my coat beneath her head. The others cluster close, worry etched on every face.
Katja kneels and runs her hands over Talvie’s chest. There’s no change. She shakes her head at me. “There’s nothing to heal. But she won’t wake. What do we do now?”
“I…don’t know,” I admit.
A pause stretches between us, broken only by the soft rustle of wind through the branches and the faint crackle of melting ice. Scattered clouds dull the earliest rays of daybreak.
“We can’t help her. Not alone.” Unfortunately, I see only one solution. “We have to hope we reached Queen Taynia, because without her to tell us how she cursed Talvie…” Saying her true name out loud for the first time makes this all too real.
No one speaks. We all know what it means if we can’t find a counterspell.
I’m out of magic, out of tricks.
And apparently, out of time. The crunch of footsteps on snow snaps my head up.