Vera Pallick's Arc

Chapter 2 of 2

The back door stood between Vera and her daughter. She grabbed the iron handle and pushed. It held. Locked. Behind her, buckets clattered and men shouted at the burning roof. If she stayed here fumbling, one of them would turn and see her. She pressed her shoulder to the wood and shoved again. Nothing gave. She searched the doorframe with her fingers. A gap ran along the top hinge where the wood had swelled and cracked. Vera dug her nails in and pulled. Frozen splinters bit her hands. She braced one boot against the wall and hauled with her whole weight. The hinge screamed loose. The door sagged. She wedged her fingers into the widened gap and dragged it inward. Inside, the lamp swung. The woman still gripped the child, backing toward the inner door. But she was not a woman. Her skin was packed snow, white and cracked. Red eyes burned in her face. A ragged purple scarf hung at her throat, and a pointed hat sat crooked on her head. Glaciana Frostbite bared a mouth of jagged teeth and hissed. "You should have stayed in your field," Glaciana said. Her voice cracked like ice underfoot. Beside her stood another shape of snow, taller, in a battered top hat. Twig arms jutted from his round body. Frost Blackwell smiled with the same red eyes and the same teeth. "Too late for the mother now," he said. He stepped between Vera and the child. Vera did not stop to think. She lunged past Frost and swung at Glaciana. Her fist struck packed snow. It crumbled and reformed. Glaciana laughed and shoved the girl through the inner door. "Run, Elise," she said. "Run to the cellar." The child obeyed. Vera saw her clearly for the first time. A small girl in a white snow suit, brown hair loose beneath a knit cap. Not frightened of the snow-things at all. Elise looked back at Vera with wide brown eyes, then vanished down the dark stair. Vera drove forward. Frost's twig arms raked her parka and tore it. She ducked under him and reached the stair. Cold rolled up from below. She grabbed the doorframe and looked down into black. "Elise!" she called. Her daughter's name felt strange after so long. The girl had not turned when she called it. Glaciana caught Vera's arm with fingers hard as stone. "She does not know you," the snow-woman said. "She is ours now. She forgot you in the cold." Vera ripped free and threw herself down the stair. She reached the cellar floor and found it empty. A low door stood open in the far wall, snow drifting through it into the night. The child was gone, and the snow-things had taken her out ahead. Vera had broken into the house. She had seen her daughter's face. And her daughter had run from her, into the dark, without knowing who she was.