Stealing Snow (15 page)

“You’re … human.”

“Let’s not get carried away,” she said, sounding disdainful. “But if you’re so curious, come get a better look,” she dared, nodding at the space between us. It was a challenge. It was, I assumed, my next lesson.

I raised my hand and tried to create a snow bridge between my mountain and hers. But nothing happened. It was like one of those wishes that the River Witch described as worthy, only I didn’t know how to grant it. No matter how hard I tried.

“The snow is yours,” she proclaimed.

“But it doesn’t feel like mine,” I said a little too loudly.

I wasn’t sure if my voice was in her ear the way hers was in mine. My words echoed back to me, boomeranging with more confidence than they had had when they left me. The distance between us seemed insurmountable, and the drop down from where I stood was a ragged, brutal, sure drop to the death.

“You have spent your whole life locked up. You have spent your whole life ignorant of your rightful power. Because of your mother. Because of your father. They restrained you. Now you can do anything, be anything, you want. Claim your gift.”

“Come to me, snow,” I whispered, this time feeling like I had already failed before I had begun. The more I thought about my confinement, the further away from controlling my powers I felt.

“You aren’t trying!” the witch snapped.

Was this lady kidding me? I was on top of a mountaintop trying not to fall off. Of course I was trying!

My eyes narrowed at the River Witch. My hands balled up reflexively. I knew what she was doing. She was trying to get a rise out of me in hopes that my anger would spark my snow. I knew the tactic from Magpie at the institute. Though Magpie’s motives were not at all noble.

The River Witch tsked twice. “Algid has waited fifteen years for you. And look at you. So very disappointing. You’re useless,” she said. And then with a quick flash of her arms, an unseen force shoved me off the mountain and down into the chasm below.

I screamed as the cold air rushed by me, burning my ears and lips and teeth.

Use your snow!
The witch’s voice came from everywhere and nowhere.
You can control your fate. Use it!

I let loose a string of expletives at the witch as I free-fell. She had actually done it. She had actually pushed me off a cliff as part of a lesson. I could see the rocky floor of the terrain getting closer and closer as I hurtled down to it.

I would not die like this. I felt a burning anger in my chest. I wasn’t useless. I wasn’t! I was not disappointing.

Kai’s words from the flood came back to me.
You just haven’t done it yet.

I tried to whisper to the snow, but the air was moving too quickly around me, so instead I closed my eyes and concentrated.

Come to me, snow
. I felt the slightest shift in the atmosphere as, degree by degree, I started to feel more attuned to the cold air and space around me.
Come to me, snow
, I ordered again, and I noticed that all around me snow was falling. Suddenly I wasn’t afraid. Like the witch said, I owned the snow. It belonged to me, and I could make it take me where I wanted it to.

“River Witch,” I whispered with newfound confidence.

For the briefest of seconds, I didn’t feel cold anymore. I felt warm and whole. As if the emptiness left by Bale had filled up for the first time.

I felt myself lifted up off the ground, weightless, by a wave of snow. And in a white-out blink I was suddenly standing on the mountain next to the River Witch.

She was waiting for me. Her lips curled into a smile.

“I expected you only to stop your fall,” she said, impressed. “But it could be beginner’s luck, so don’t get cocky.”

I smiled. I knew I’d almost died, but I hadn’t. I had done it. I had controlled my snow. Maybe it was good enough to get Bale back.

But when I asked this of the River Witch, she said, “You’re nowhere near ready. Tomorrow we begin again.”

After the River Witch deposited me in front of the cube house, I walked down to the River and looked at the mirrors in the water. I looked for my reflection, but instead I found Kai’s. He appeared suddenly on the side of the boat.

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.

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.