The Snow Queen's Captive (2 page)

“Not really?” Charlotte began to shiver, rubbing her arms. “Can’t I go back to being me? I like my life.” It wasn’t the most fun or glamorous life in the world, but it was nice and safe. She had a decent job working at a craft store, was going to school at night to finish her college degree in business, and had her own apartment. If there wasn’t a boyfriend or lover in her life, it was simply because she didn’t have time and she told herself that those things would come later.

Except now? It sounded like ‘later’ was never going to get here. And that made her cold all over.

Muffin shook her head, fluttering the colored tassels on her party hat. “I’m afraid not.”

“But you said if I won, I could patch the weave so other people can’t fall through.” Heck, saying that aloud, she still wasn’t sure this wasn’t some sort of bad nitrous trip. “Can’t I patch my own weave?”

“You cannot. You don’t have a body to return to. Yours is dead.”

She couldn’t help but flinch at that. Dead was so very…final. “What happens if I fail?”

Muffin spread her hands. “Then I can’t help you. You remain outside of the weave forever.”

Charlotte’s eyes widened and her stomach gave a sick clench. “Um, that doesn’t sound good.”

“No, it doesn’t.” Muffin gave her a bright smile and leaned in to pat her knee. “So don’t fail, okeydokey?”

“O-okay.” She was starting to get more than a little scared. What happened if she remained here out of the weave — or whatever it was — forever? Would she exist without anyone able to see her? Ever? That sounded…disturbing. “So what do I do? What’s my task? When do I start?”

Charlotte crossed her fingers, praying that it’d be easy and fool-proof.

“You’ll start right away,” Muffin said, pulling out a tiny pink handbag and opening it. “We’ve found that you have the best chance of not getting all messed up in the head from the whole death thing—” she waved a hand in the air as if dying was no big deal, “—if you have a new focus right away. And since I’m a fairy godmother, we deal with fairy tales.”

“Fairy tales? Like…the Little Mermaid?”

“Not that one,” Muffin said, reaching into her bag and pulling out a tiny, fat book the size of a matchbook. She tapped the cover twice and the book expanded from matchbook-size to encyclopedia-size, covering the fairy godmother’s lap. Charlotte’s eyes widened in surprise at the sight, but neither Fifi nor Muffin blinked an eye at this remarkable growth. Instead, Muffin opened the book and began to flip through pages. “I’ve already got someone running her paces through the Mermaid test. I’ve picked something else for you.”

“Oh. Okay.” Charlotte leaned forward, watching over Muffin’s lap as the fairy godmother picked through dog-eared pages, seemingly searching for something.

After a moment, Muffin patted a page with satisfaction. “Ah! Here we go. The Snow Queen.”

Charlotte thought for a moment, and then shook her head. “I don’t know that one. What do I have to do?”

“You don’t know the Snow Queen?” Muffin looked at her in surprise, and then shook her head. “Kids these days. Fifi, do you know the Snow Queen tale?”

Fifi thought for a moment, then shook her head, her cotton-candy pink hair flying. “Nope!”

Muffin sighed and gave Charlotte a chagrined look. “So hard to find good help these days.” She smoothed a hand down her rustling pale skirts. “All right. I’m not much of a storyteller, but I can give you a nice recap at least. The Snow Queen fairy tale is about a young woman who is in love with her childhood sweetheart, a nice young hunk of man-meat. One day he’s stolen away by the snow queen, and the enterprising young woman must go and steal him back before he’s completely surrendered to the snow queen. There are a few variations on the tale, but if you don’t rescue him, the Snow Queen conquers the entire kingdom and blankets it in frost forever.”

“No pressure,” Charlotte said wryly. “Just the fate of an entire kingdom and a perfect stranger on my shoulders, right?”

“As well as that of your own fate,” Muffin agreed. “But yes, more or less. Are you up to it?”

“Do I have a choice?”

“Oh, sweetie,” Muffin reached forward and patted her knee. “Do we ever have a choice about when we die?”

Good point. At least she was getting a second chance. Charlotte pressed her hands to her forehead, trying to memorize the task. “Okay. Save guy from snow queen and save the world. Got it. Is there a time limit?”

“One month.”

That didn’t feel like enough time, but Charlotte supposed she didn’t have much of a position to bargain from. “All right, I’ll see what I can do.”

“Try not to confront the queen directly, as she’s very powerful,” Muffin told her.

That was a little scary. “You do realize that I’m a fabric salesgirl at a craft shop? I’m not exactly Genghis Khan or Luke Skywalker here.”

“You do realize nothing requires me to give you a second chance?” Muffin said in a sweet voice laced with steel.

“Good point,” Charlotte said. “When do we get started?”

Muffin waved a hand at Fifi, instructing her to come closer. The girl stopped scribbling her notes and bounded over to Muffin’s side, clearly excited that she was going to do something other than observe. “This is Fifi’s first transition, so I’m going to have her take the reins while I observe. She’s had training but hasn’t had a chance to use her skills out in the wild as of yet.”

“Oh.” Charlotte tried to ignore the nervous, sinking feeling in her gut. Fifi didn’t exactly look…trustworthy. For starters, her name was ridiculous, as was the poof of wild pink curls on her head. But Muffin seemed to know what she was doing, and she had an equally ridiculous name, so maybe things would be okay.

Muffin shuffled the heavy book over to Fifi, plopping it into the younger woman’s arms. “You know what to do now, right, Fifi, my girl?”

Fifi nodded excitedly, juggling the book with one arm and flipping the pages with her other hand. “Which one are we doing again?”

“The Snow Queen. I thought I told you to write that down?” Muffin gave Charlotte a tight smile, as if to assuage her fears. “Perhaps you should close your eyes, dear. Wouldn’t want you learning all of our trade secrets.”

“Um, okay.” That, and she wouldn’t see that confused look on Fifi’s face that was making her stomach feel like a block of ice. Charlotte squeezed her eyes shut and braced herself, waiting. As she did, she thought of her old life. Her parents, who would no doubt be devastated. Her friends, her coworkers, everyone wouldn’t know what happened to her. They’d just know she was dead. A tear trickled down her cheek and she sniffed loudly.

“No crying,” Muffin said in a kindly voice. “Everything’s going to be all right. Just do what you have to in order to complete your task, and I’ll take care of the rest, all right?”

Charlotte nodded, but she couldn’t help it when a few more tears escaped. After all, she was justified in crying, she thought, considering that it wasn’t every day that a girl died horribly in the dentist’s chair. Wasn’t she allowed a little self-pity?

Someone sneezed, and Charlotte heard the pages of the book rustle.

“Keep going,” she heard Muffin whisper to Fifi. “You’re doing just fine. Now raise your wand…there’s a girl. Good job. Now up, and…”

A warm, misty air touched Charlotte’s skin. It felt odd, but she didn’t open her eyes lest she cause Fifi to lose control of her magic. Snow queen, she reminded herself. Defeat the snow queen and save the prince. Or…was he a prince? Maybe he was just a peasant. Whatever it was, she had to save the guy the snow queen had snatched. There couldn’t be too many of those, could there? Save the guy, be the big damn hero. No problem.

Another tear slid down her cheek, and she raised a hand to brush it away…only to realize that the tear was frozen to her cheek.

“Oh, shit.” Muffin said in a disgusted voice. “You’ve really done it now, Fifi.”

Chapter Two

Charlotte opened her eyes and stared in dumbfounded wonder at the world around her. She stood in the midst of icy beauty. A courtyard unfurled before her, and everything was made of white snow and pearly blue-white ice. Flagstones of ice marked their way in a decorative path to the massive front doors of the castle. Trees were bare, their branches dripping with frosty icicles. The ground was covered in a pristine blanket of thick snow, and in the distance, spires of the ice castle rose before her. It looked like something out of a fairy tale…which made Charlotte laugh with delight. It was beautiful and didn’t look fearsome at all.

But when she laughed, her breath puffed out into a cloud. Curious, Charlotte experimented, blowing her breath outward. Sure enough, it frosted mid-air, so beautiful and perfect that she could even see the snowflakes forming in the vapor.

Which was weird, because she wasn’t cold in the slightest. Charlotte raised her arms, looking for goose-bumps…and noticed the pale bluish-white tinge of her skin. Her finger-tips were covered in frost.

Oh dear. “Um, I think we have a problem.”

She turned to look at Fifi and Muffin, who stood behind her. The two women were frantically paging through the book, a guilty look on Fifi’s face.

“But you said the Snow Queen,” Fifi said, flipping the pages quickly, a warble in her voice that sounded as if she was going to start crying.

“I know I did,” Muffin said in a too-patient voice that was at odds with the tight look on her wrinkled face. “Did you not hear the part where I said that the tale is called the Snow Queen but Charlotte will be playing the part of the heroine?
Not
the snow queen?”

“I might not have written that part down,” Fifi mumbled.

“I’m the snow queen?” Charlotte glanced down at her pale, blue-tinged skin, at her frosted fingertips. She gazed down at her clothing, which seemed to have disappeared and been replaced with a spun confection of icicles and clouds of frost that served as puffs of skirt. She grabbed a handful of her hair – normally just a pale blonde – and found it, too, had been transformed. It was now the same milk white as the rest of her, the tips tinged with the frosty blue. Gorgeous. “I’m not supposed to be the bad guy, am I?”

Shame, because she was kind of getting a kick out of this. This whole snow queen thing was kinda cool, no pun intended.

“No, you’re not,” Muffin said in a firm voice. “You are supposed to be the heroine. Clearly someone was not paying attention.”

Fifi looked abashed. It was like someone had kicked a puppy. “I messed up.”

“It’s okay,” Charlotte told her soothingly. Poor kid. For all her weirdness, Fifi looked pretty young, and Muffin wasn’t giving her the most understanding of looks. “Just wave your wand and switch me to the real one and we’ll pretend this never happened.”

“She can’t,” Muffin bit out, looking thoroughly exasperated. Her little apple cheeks were flushed bright red with emotion. “You have now been woven into the fabric as the snow queen, not the heroine. Once it’s done, it’s done.”

Panic clutched at Charlotte. “I still get my second chance, right? You said I could have one.”

“You do, but this is going into my progress report,” Muffin said in a miffed tone. She clapped her hands together and shrugged. “Oh well. Nothing to be done about it now. Congratulations, my dear. You are now officially the snow queen.”

“Thanks, I think?”

“Don’t thank me just yet. You are now officially the antagonist of this story. Since you’re no longer the heroine,” she cast a disgruntled look at the quailing Fifi at her side, “the rules have changed a little. The heroine’s going to be coming after you because you stole her man. I suppose you’ll have to stop her if you want to win this fairy tale and turn the land into eternal frost or some such.”

“Should I do that? Turn the land into eternal frost? That seems kind of…not nice.”

Muffin shrugged. “You’re not the nice guy. You stole the nice guy.”

“Oh.” Well, this was going to take some adjusting. Charlotte was one of those people that always tried to do the right thing – she never ran a red light, always tipped twenty percent, and never pushed ahead in line. She was going to be a horrible villain. She glanced over at Fifi, who looked ready to cry. Poor thing. “Well, I’ll give it my best. I’m sure it’ll be fine.”

And she forced a smile to her face.

“All right, then. That’s the spirit!” Muffin raised a hand to high-five her, and then lowered it. “Actually, I shouldn’t touch you. Your skin will stick to mine.”

“It will?” Charlotte stared at her hands. Other than being a wee bit paler than her normal self, she didn’t look all that different, did she?

“Yes. You’re a being composed of frost and magic, now. You can’t touch normal humans, and normal temperatures will feel like a heat wave to you. I advise that you not head to the beach anytime soon.”

“I was always more of an indoor girl,” Charlotte joked. When Muffin didn’t crack a smile, she sighed. “Really. It’ll be okay. I’m sure I can be the snow queen just as easily as I can be the heroine.”

Muffin nodded. “Good. Just remember. Keep that man away from the heroine at all costs and you win. You’re the bad guy, so don’t be afraid to do bad guy stuff if you need to.”

Bad guy stuff? Charlotte didn’t know if that was her thing. But she nodded. “No touching humans, avoid heat, and do whatever it takes to make sure I win. Got it.”

“Fifi and I will stop by to check on things periodically,” Muffin said, putting an arm around Fifi’s shoulders. The pink fairy godmother intern seemed a little wilted under the heat of Muffin’s disapproval, and she crossed her arms over her chest and shivered at the snowy weather. “We can’t stay here long, so I’ll just wish you good luck. Do you have anything else you want to ask before we leave?”

“Um, what exactly do I do with the captive guy?”

Muffin gave her a startlingly lewd wink. “You’re the bad guy. Whatever you want.”

And she and Fifi disappeared into a puff of smoke.

~~ * * * ~~

She was alone.

Charlotte glanced around the courtyard, chewing on her lip as she thought. Snow was falling in a heavy blanket, but it didn’t bother her. Actually, the weather felt amazing. She glanced down at her warm feet and noticed they were not only bare, but six inches deep in drifting snow. She wiggled her toes in the powder and then shrugged.