Annie Philaxis's Arc

Chapter 1 of 6

Annie Philaxis counted her stolen souls again, and the number had not grown. Twelve small lights hung in the frozen hall of her buried orphanage, each one a lost child she had lured from the snow. She needed them for the throne. Far north, at the heart of the world's oldest glacier, an empty seat of ice waited for a witch strong enough to claim it. Annie meant to be its queen. But twelve souls could not fuel deep ice magic. Twelve would leave her frozen dead before she reached the coldest reaches. She pressed her palm to the stained glass. Colored light fell across her hands. Outside, snow buried the orphanage doors to the second step. She had drained this valley of its lost children. There were no more to take here. So Annie remembered the willows. Days' walk south, past the frost line, grew a cluster of tall willow trees. Their branches still ran green. Beehives hung at their roots, warm with living bees. Warmth meant life. Life meant souls she had never touched. She wrapped herself in furs and walked until the snow thinned and grass returned. Under the willows she found two children. Twins, a boy and a girl, huddled against a trunk. They wore pale pink and blue coats gone gray with cold. Between them they shared a dented thermos, tipping the last warmth into each other's mouths. "Our family was in the car," the girl said. "The blizzard came. We walked and walked." The boy did not speak. He only watched Annie with steady eyes, and did not let go of his sister's sleeve. Lost children. Two more souls. Annie knelt and opened her cold hands to take them. But the twins were not dying. The willows kept them. The grass fed the bees, the bees warmed the air, and the children breathed easy in it. Annie's magic could only harvest a soul as it slipped free. These two clung to life too hard. So she made a choice. She lied. "I know the way home," she said. "Follow me north." They rose at once. They trusted her, because she was warm-voiced and sure. She led them out of the green and back onto the ice, where the wind would do the work the willows had prevented. Two more lights for her throne. Two more, and perhaps enough. But the boy walked strangely. Halfway across the first white slope he stopped. He held out the thermos to Annie, still offering warmth to a stranger who meant to end him. Annie took it. Her hand did not turn his soul loose. Instead something in her chest cracked, small and unwanted, like ice under a boot. She had her plan. She had two children on the ice and a throne close enough to taste. She had never before wanted to give a soul back. Annie kept walking north. The twins followed. She did not look at the thermos in her hands again.