Ember Ashwing's Arc

Chapter 1 of 3

Ember Ashwing had touched snow only once, and it died under her hand. She stood at the edge of Birchroot Forest and watched the first frost creep over the grass. Her orange hair hung past her waist. Heat rolled off her skin in waves. She wanted to kneel and press her palm to the white crust, but she already knew what would happen. The frost would hiss, steam, and vanish. Everything cold fled from her. And she had fallen in love with the one thing colder than all of it. She had seen the snow queen three nights running, far off among the birches. A pale woman who left ice blooming behind her steps. Ember wanted to walk up to her and simply speak. But heat was a wall around her body. Last time she crept close, the ice at the queen's feet melted into mud, and the queen turned away. Ember crouched by a white cottage with a purple door. Pink flowers climbed its trellis. Beside her, a red fox pressed against her leg, its white-tipped tail flicking. The fox never burned. It was the only living thing that could bear her touch. "I can't get near her," Ember told the fox. "I melt the ground she walks on." The fox trotted to a patch of tall red bell-shaped flowers near the fence. It nosed one bloom. A butterfly lifted off the petals. Its wings looked like toasted bread, golden and crusted. The butterfly drifted toward Ember, then veered away from her heat, circling instead above a line of carved stones half-buried in the grass. Ember had walked past those stones a hundred times. Now she looked. Each stone held a glowing rune. The symbols pulsed with faint blue light. Cold light. She held her hand above the nearest stone and felt no burn pushing back. The rune's glow did not flee from her. She pressed her bare palm flat against it. Nothing melted. The stone stayed cold under her skin. A chill crawled up her arm, slow and strange, like river water. Her fingers stopped steaming. For the first time, heat drained out of her and into the stone. Ember gasped and pulled back. The frost on the grass beside her held. It did not hiss. It did not vanish. She reached down and touched it. The white crust stayed white. The fox barked once. Ember laughed, breathless. She pressed both hands to the rune stones and felt the cold pour into her, filling her like a cup. She could hold it only a while. The heat already pushed back, warming her fingertips again. But now she knew. The stones could cool her long enough to cross the snow without ruining it. Long enough to stand before the queen and not melt the ground between them. Ember stood. The frost stretched toward the birches, toward the pale woman waiting among them. She had one chance before the heat returned.