Whatever After #6: Cold as Ice Read online

First, Ralph starts to trot. Then he picks up more and more speed, going faster and faster, the bell around his neck ringing louder and louder. Then I’m tilting backward and —

  We’re in the air! We are in the air!

  Oh my gosh, we are in the air!

  I wrap my arms around Ralph’s neck for dear life. Please don’t fall off, please don’t fall off.

  “I have to breathe, you know,” Ralph calls back to me.

  “Sorry,” I cry, but I don’t loosen my grip.

  He swoops up and down. The cold wind rushes against my cheeks like an air conditioner on high.

  I am feeling a bit carsick. Make that reindeer-sick?

  “This view is amazing!” Sharon cries. “Ralph, you’re amazing! I can’t believe I have lived with you for so long and never knew how amazing you are!”

  I feel him puff up with pride underneath me. It’s sweet, but it almost makes me lose my grip.

  The view is amazing. We’re above the snowy trees and mountains. The sun is just starting to come up, and the snow below us is covered in shades of orange and red.

  “Wasn’t it just night?” I ask.

  “The sun sets at eleven P.M. and rises at three A.M. in the summer,” Ralph says.

  “This is summer?” I ask in disbelief.

  “Of course!” he says. “Wait until you see how cold it gets in the winter.”

  No way am I dealing with a Republic of Blizzard winter. Thanks, but no thanks.

  I can’t believe I longed for snow back in Smithville.

  Whoosh!

  One of my boots flies off. I knew it was too big. Oops.

  “I’m sorry I didn’t talk to you more, Ralph,” says Sharon. “Mother told me I couldn’t, but I shouldn’t have listened to her. I was so lonely. And I hated robbing people. Why did we need so many statues, anyway?”

  While Sharon is feeling guilty about how she treated Ralph, I’m feeling guilty for letting Jonah out of my sight. I’m his big sister! It’s my responsibility to watch out for and protect him. Where is he? And where’s Gerda?

  “I don’t see them anywhere,” I say, scanning the ground below us. How far could they have gotten? We should have seen them by now.

  “I hope they didn’t freeze,” Sharon says. “Or get eaten by wolves.”

  “Oh my goodness, the wolves!” I shout. “I forgot about the wolves!”

  “Oh, don’t worry about the wolves,” Ralph says. “They spend summers in the kingdom of Subzero. They find Blizzard summers too warm.”

  Yet another reason why I don’t want to still be here in winter.

  “I’ll do another loop to look for Jonah and Gerda,” Ralph says. We circle back and then back again.

  “Maybe they’re already at the igloo castle,” I say. I don’t know how they could have gotten there that fast. Although they’re both in pretty good shape, with their rock climbing and jumping jacks.

  “I’ll fly over the castle,” Ralph says.

  The big sparkling igloo gets bigger as we get closer.

  I strain my neck to see if I can spot my brother. Something is moving on the roof! Is that them? Is that a penguin? No! Wait! It’s Jonah! In his penguin costume! And Gerda in her orange tracksuit and matching hat. She’s hard to miss.

  “Look!” I say, my body heaving in relief. “They’re on the roof! They made it!” I exhale. My brother is here! And I will never, ever let him out of my sight again.

  “Hooray!” cheers Sharon.

  “Jonah!” I call down. “Gerda!”

  Gerda lifts her arm in a wave.

  Hooray! She seems perfectly normal! Which means the Snow Queen really isn’t here and didn’t blow any kisses to her.

  Prince is on the roof, too. I feel another whoosh of relief. He’s in the exact same position he was in before, frozen in mid-gallop. They probably haven’t been able to defrost him yet.

  Kai is also on the roof. He’s lying on his back. It looks like he’s making another snow angel. I guess they haven’t cured him yet, either.

  It’s okay. I’m here now to help. We’ll have to figure out how to defrost everyone, but at least Kai and Prince are still alive.

  “So where do you want me to drop you guys off?” Ralph asks. “I’m not sure there’s enough room for me on the roof. And I weigh a lot. I don’t want to break it.”

  Kai has certainly been busy. There are three more snowmen than there were yesterday.

  “Maybe at the front door?” I suggest. I can see the staircase that leads up to the roof from inside the house.

  “No problemo,” Ralph bellows. “I can’t believe I’m going home. I’m really going home! Thank you, Abby, for coming back for me!”

  “Happy to help,” I say, feeling warm inside.

  “I can’t wait to see my herd,” he says.

  “You’re lucky you have a family,” Sharon says wistfully.

  Ralph not so gently lands on a snowbank. “Good luck, girls.”

  “You too,” I say. I put my arms around his midsection to give him a hug.

  “Bye,” Sharon says. “Sorry for, you know, keeping you prisoner all those years.”

  Ralph grimaces. “I know it wasn’t your decision.”

  “But still,” Sharon says, hanging her head, “I should have helped you escape long ago.”

  “Yes,” Ralph says. “You should have. Good-bye, girls! Good-bye, Jonah! Good-bye, sweet Gerda!” He waves to all of us with one hoof. Then, with a running jump, he takes flight off the mountain. I watch him sail into the sky, and then I turn around to see my brother.

  “Jonah!” I call up.

  He doesn’t look down. Obviously, he doesn’t hear me.

  “Jonah!” I call again.

  He still doesn’t look down. He’s very busy rolling something. Is he making a snowball?

  Gerda is helping him. She is packing the snow on the ground into a big ball.

  Are they making a snowman?

  She has a completely dazed look on her face. They both do.

  “Why are they building snowmen when they should be defrosting Kai and Prince?” Sharon asks. “Did the Snow Queen put a spell on them, too?”

  Dread seeps through me. It can’t be. My brother and Gerda can’t be under the Snow Queen’s spell. The Snow Queen isn’t supposed to be here.

  “But Gerda waved at me,” I say. “Frombies don’t wave!”

  “Did she?” Sharon asks. “I thought she was just taking off her hat. Look — she put it on one of the snowmen.”

  Sure enough, one of the snowmen is now wearing Gerda’s orange hat.

  Oh no oh no oh no.

  “We have to save Jonah!” I scream.

  “Shhhh!” Sharon orders. “If he’s under a spell, that means the Snow Queen was just here. She could be in the castle right now.”

  I nod. “She’s not on the roof, though. Maybe she went to sleep or is out jogging or something. Who knows? We need to sneak up to the roof, get everyone, and leave.”

  “Yes,” Sharon says. “And you know what that means.” She unzips her duffel bag. “We need disguises.”

  I motion to my outfit. “Polar bear isn’t good enough?”

  She rolls her eyes. “She’ll notice a polar bear. You need to blend into the background, not dress as something that might attack her.”

  “Good point. What do you have?”

  She rummages through the duffel bag and pulls out a fake mustache. “Mustaches. Tape.”

  “Of course.”

  “Sunglasses. Scarves.”

  “Hmm. But we can’t dress up as people. She freezes people.”

  “I wasn’t thinking that we’d dress up as people. We already are people.”

  I don’t understand what she’s getting at. “Then what will we dress up as?”

  Sharon throws her hands in the air. “Isn’t it obvious?”

  “No! And we don’t have time for guessing games! My brother is in a trance, and my pet is a dogsicle! I am not a master of disguises like you! JUST TELL ME!”


  “No need to get huffy,” she says. “We dress up as snowmen!”

  Ah. I look up at the snowmen on the roof. That is not a bad plan.

  “But how do we make ourselves white? Do we cover up in snow?”

  “Of course not! We don’t want frostbite.”

  “Then do you have snowmen masks?” I would not be surprised if she did.

  “Nooooo,” she says, rummaging through her bag. “But I do have white face paint.”

  We sneak back behind a pine tree and cover our faces with white paint. My polar bear suit is already white, so I’m in good shape. Sharon brought along a white sheet —“in case I needed to be a ghost,” she explains — so she drapes herself in it.

  “What do we do about our noses?” she asks. “They look like human noses.”

  “Hmm,” I mutter. “Oh! I know! Didn’t you pack carrots? To eat?”

  “I did!” she exclaims. She reaches into the bag and pulls out a bag of carrots. “Perfect. We’ll wear our snacks.”

  “How are we going to attach them to our faces? I don’t think the tape will hold them up.”

  Sharon sticks one up her nose. “Like this?”

  “Ew!” I yell, but I can’t help laughing.

  She snorts, and the carrot falls out. “Maybe not.”

  “I hope you’re not going to eat that now,” I say.

  She looks at it with longing. “I’m actually pretty hungry. I never got my bagel and cream cheese.”

  “What if we just put the carrots in our mouths?” I ask. “Not the gross one, but one of the others. There are so many snowmen, the Snow Queen won’t look at us that closely. I’ll even tape a mustache to my chin!”

  “Perfect.”

  We grab some branches to use as fake hands, and finally, we’re ready. We step out from behind the pine tree and march toward the igloo castle.

  It’s beautiful,” Sharon whispers as we step through the arched entranceway. “It’s the most beautiful place I’ve ever seen.”

  Once inside, it is kind of nice. If you like white. Because there is a lot of white. I would not want to drink anything around here that stains. Like grape or cranberry juice. Although, if it’s all made of snow and ice, it’s probably not that hard to clean. You just scrape.

  The main floor seems huge. There are tons of ice corridors leading off in the distance. Off to the side, I see a dining room with an ice table and ice chairs. Off to the other side, I see an ice couch. That does not look very comfortable.

  The floor is hard and I feel like I’m stepping on packed snow. It’s a little slippery, though. It doesn’t help that I’m wearing one boot.

  Ice columns are everywhere. There’s even an ice mantel. On top of it is some sort of broken mirror. Actually, it looks like a mirror that was broken and then glued back together to make a mosaic. It’s about twice my size. I wonder if that has something to do with the creepy troll mirror from the original story?

  “I’d sleep amazingly here,” Sharon says. “It’s so cold.”

  “I would not sleep well at all,” I admit. There are not enough fuzzy socks in the world to keep my toes warm.

  “I wonder what the Snow Queen is like,” Sharon says.

  “I’m really hoping you’re not going to meet her now,” I say.

  We creep a few feet more into the house. A snow staircase is up ahead. That must be what leads to the roof.

  “So what’s our plan to defrost them?” Sharon asks.

  “I read, um, somewhere that crying is the key. It melts the ice.”

  “Us crying or them crying?”

  “Both.” In the original story, Gerda shows up, hugs Kai, and starts to cry. Her tears seep onto Kai, melting the block of ice in his heart. Then he starts to cry and melts the rest.

  “Do you have any onions in your duffel?” I ask Sharon.

  “Yuck. Who eats plain onions? That’s disgusting.”

  “They’re not that bad,” I say, remembering that I had to eat them during my last fairy-tale trip.

  Sharon skids on the ice and then steadies herself. “I guess I can always pinch you to make you cry.”

  Maybe that will be our last resort.

  Quietly and carefully, very carefully, we begin to climb the icy staircase. At the top, we see a hatch that’s already opened. I step out onto the roof.

  Gerda, Jonah, and Kai are all building snowmen beside a frozen Prince.

  “Jonah!” I call in a loud whisper.

  He looks up at the sound of his name, stares at me for a split second, and then looks away.

  “He doesn’t recognize you,” Sharon says.

  “I am dressed as a snowman,” I say. I take a step closer to him. “Jonah! Jonah, it’s me! Abby!”

  The truth is that even though I knew he was in a trance, I didn’t really think he wouldn’t recognize me. How could he not?

  Jonah looks back up at me. Our eyes connect. Instead of the usual black pupil in the middle of his familiar eyes, Jonah’s eyes are totally white in the middle. He’s a frombie.

  Not such a funny word now.

  He’s staring at me as if he doesn’t even know me. Me! His big sister!

  “You look pretty sad,” Sharon says. “Are you going to cry? You have to cry! You can melt him if you cry!”

  I definitely feel some prickles in my eyes, but it is hard to make myself cry.

  “Come on!” Sharon yells. “Do it. Do it!”

  “I can’t!”

  She pinches my arm.

  “Ow!”

  “Did it work?”

  “No! Let’s just get them out of here, and then we’ll worry about the defrosting later. We don’t even know where the Snow Queen is.”

  “Okay. Come on, guys, let’s go. Follow me,” Sharon says.

  Gerda, Kai, and Jonah stare at her. They stare but do not follow. They continue building their snowmen.

  “They’re not coming,” Sharon whines.

  “I see that! Maybe let’s lead them out?”

  I walk over and take my brother’s hand. It’s cold. “Hi, sweetie,” I say. “We have to go now.”

  He blinks his frombie eyes. “Ketchup,” he says.

  “Ketchup?” I repeat.

  “Ketchup,” he repeats.

  “You want ketchup?”

  “Ketchup. Cheetos.”

  “I’ll get you ketchup and Cheetos as soon as we get home, okay? First we need to un-frombie you.”

  “Flowers,” Kai says. “Games.”

  “Red shoes,” Gerda says. “Exercise.”

  “They are being so weird,” Sharon says.

  “I think they’re saying things that make them happy,” I say, and try to yank my brother’s arm. “Jonah, you come first, okay?”

  “Ketchup! Cheetos!”

  “Yes! Ketchup! Cheetos! Come inside and you’ll get ketchup and Cheetos!”

  “Hello, little friends!” the Snow Queen says, stepping up onto the roof. Her fur cape blows in the wind.

  Oh, no!

  “Freeze,” whispers Sharon.

  Do not move, I tell myself. Do. Not. MOOOOOOVE.

  I didn’t even have a chance to put my carrot in my mouth.

  Sharon did. But she put it up her nose. She really, really did.

  And it’s staying. She is much better at disguises than I am.

  Not only do I not have the carrot in my mouth, but the mustache taped to my chin is getting a little itchy.

  No. Do not think of the chin. Forget I have a chin. What chin? I have no chin.

  I have a chin! And it’s itchy! I will not use the sticks I am holding as my pretend snowman arms to scratch my chin. Even though I really want to.

  I will not.

  AHHHHHHHH!

  The Snow Queen glides by. She doesn’t give either Sharon or me a second glance. She buys our disguises. I can’t believe it. Not only am I an excellent escape artist after all, but I am also a first-class snowman spy.

  The Snow Queen opens her arms toward Jonah, Gerda, and Kai. I
expect her to say something mean, but all she says is “Hello again, beautiful friends! Who wants to play?”

  Why does she sound friendly?

  All three of them smile at her.

  Huh? She wants to play with them? Why has she put a spell on them? Why would you cast a spell on someone you want to play with?

  And why is my mustache so very, very itchy?!

  The Snow Queen holds up a bouquet of red and white flowers. “I don’t have ketchup or red shoes, but who wants a flower? I grow hellebores in the atrium! They bloom beautifully in the snow. Kai, I know you love flowers!”

  Seriously? Hellebores? Jonah was right?

  I’m sad he’s not aware enough to rub my face in it.

  “Oh, no,” Sharon whispers. “I’m allergic to flowers. Ah … ah … ahhhh —”

  “Hold it in!” I whisper back.

  “— CHOOOOOO!” An epic sneeze echoes over the roof and through the mountains. The carrot shoots out of Sharon’s nose and hits the Snow Queen on the back of her leg.

  The Snow Queen whips her head around.

  “Uh-oh,” Sharon says, and then adds, “RUN!”

  I drop my branches and run. Slide-run is more like it. It is harder to run on snow than you’d think. I wish I was wearing Jonah’s soccer cleats.

  “Wait, girls!” the Snow Queen calls after us. “You can join the others as my special friends!”

  “Jonah, come!” I yell as I run, but he doesn’t follow me.

  I race down the stairs behind Sharon.

  Sharon gets to the main floor and heads straight out of the igloo castle.

  But I can’t leave without Jonah. Maybe I should try and figure out another way to the roof, grab him and Prince, and start knocking on things to find the portal home. I could wait to try fixing my brother and Prince back in Smithville. But how do I get back on the roof when I’m being chased off it?

  And anyway, what about the others? I can’t leave Kai and Gerda in a trance.

  “Where do you think you two are going? Huh, big sister and little robber girl?” the Snow Queen calls out from the top of the stairs.

  Jonah, Kai, and Gerda are standing behind her like a frombie army.

  Sharon turns around. “You know who I am?”

  I duck behind an ice column, hidden from the Snow Queen’s view. I can still see Jonah, though.

  “Of course I do,” the Snow Queen says. “You and your band tried to steal my sled once!”