The Girl Who Froze the World: Fairendale, #19

By L.R. Patton

Combining the imaginative powers of ABC's Once with the whimsical humor and irony of Adam Gidwitz's A Tale Dark and Grimm, Fairendale is an epic middle grade fantasy series that follows fairy tale villains, unexpected heroes, and the magical world that unites them all.

 

What happens when the world freezes?

 

Izzy is frustrated with her magic, mostly because all it seems to do is freeze things. After a Vanishing spell sent her from the land of Fairendale to the frigid land of Guardia, she does not need more frozen things around her. She hates the cold with a passion. She wants to leave the land, but she has no idea where to go. So she stays in a cave and tries to do the best she can. Hidden away from people. Protected from all the dangers of the northern world.

 

When Izzy steps on a shard of glass, a broken mirror, and learns it has magical properties that allow her to see the true natures of the people around her, she feels a bit more powerful. A king and some Yetis discover her hiding place, and the mirror tells Izzy they are dangerous. She flees to another cave, which she turns into an ice castle made just for her. She locks its doors and creates an impenetrable ice wall around it. She keeps the shard in her pocket.

 

But alone means loneliness, and Izzy misses her family and especially her best friend, Ralph. She sends a magical message across the distance, calling Ralph to come to her. He miraculously shows up at her ice castle, but the ice shard she keeps in her pocket has burrowed into her eye. It ruins everything she sees. She no longer trusts her best friend, to say nothing of the king and the Yetis outside her castle, trying to get in. Izzy locks Ralph in the dungeon of her ice castle, despite his pleas for freedom. Will she remember who she is in time to save herself, Ralph, and the many others who might be frozen by her ice powers?

 

The Girl Who Froze the World is the nineteenth book in the Fairendale series and retells the story of The Snow Queen, a popular fairy tale. Fairendale is an epic fantasy middle grade series that explores both familiar and unfamiliar fairy tales, legends, myths, and folk tales. The world of Fairendale revolves around villains and heroes—all on a quest for what they believe is right. Throughout the series, the story of the royal family of Fairendale is woven into the story of fairy tale children fleeing for their lives—children who become what we know as fairy tale villains (according to traditional stories), for one good reason or another.

 

One cannot always know, at first glance, who is the villain and who is the hero.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Batlee Press
• Release date: Aug 2, 2022
• ISBN: 9798201739812

Book preview

Wandering

Cora and Blindell have made slow progress north toward the land of the Mages.

Cora has felt every step of the excruciating journey—not so much because she is unused to walking long distances (though she does much prefer flying long distances as a blackbird—she is a shape shifter—over walking) or working hard; it is because of the intolerable dragon with whom she travels. They have done practically nothing but argue, seethe in silence, and walk (or waddle, if one is speaking of the dragon. Cora takes great pleasure in knowing she, at least, looks much more graceful walking the earth).

A dragon should be able to fly, you may be thinking. And this is true—flight, especially across long distances, is what differentiates dragons from other magical and nonmagical beings alike. Unfortunately, Cora’s dragon, Blindell, was recently imprisoned in a magic circle, exiled there by the dragons in his own homeland for his radical plans to destroy the land of Fairendale, along with the people in it, a revenge he has long craved for the death of his mother and father. Though the people of Fairendale were not directly responsible for the death of Blindell’s mother and father, Blindell has never been a dragon who cared much for technicalities. He also does not like humans. Not even his rider—he did not ask for a rider, which he will tell anyone close enough to listen to the rather loud complaints of an embittered young dragon.

Magic circles are not traditionally penetrable things, especially for a sorceress, like Cora, who has misplaced her magic. But when Cora visited the dragon lands of Morad to proposition her dragon to accompany her to the land of the Mages so she could restore her misplaced magic, and she found Blindell trapped in the circle, she somehow managed to free him. She still is not entirely clear on the details. She whispered the proper incantation, the one that would dissolve a magic circle, but instead of the circle dissolving, Blindell himself became...well, for lack of a better word, ghostly. He passed through the walls of the magic circle as an apparition passes through stone walls. (He was no apparition, though. He tried passing through a tree in the same way he passed through the magic circle, and he got a bruised nose for his attempt.)

The dragon has been unable to fly since that day.

Blindell, of course, blames Cora for this indignity. Cora denies all blame, reminding the dragon she is the one who saved him. He would still be trapped in a magic circle, if she had not freed him.

It is difficult to say why the two have made such poor progress in the six days they have traveled together. Perhaps it is the dragon’s walking, a lumbering, waddling sort of motion that does not lend itself to hurry, not to mention the trees he must maneuver around, without harming them. It is difficult in thick woods; he must contort himself in uncomfortable ways.

Or perhaps their delay is due to the frequent breaks Cora must take. (She did not wear sensible shoes, thinking she would be flying on the back of her dragon. She will hereafter only wear sensible shoes.)

Both, predictably, blame each other.

What they have not admitted, however, is that their pathetic progress might be a direct result of their threadbare relationship—and the pride that seems to plague both of them in equal measure.

I suppose you do not have any idea where we are now, Cora says. She assumes, though she does little else.

I know precisely where we are, Blindell says. And he looks as though he does, but for a quick little flick of the eye, to the side, perhaps to assess whether anything around him looks recognizable. In his defense, he is usually navigating the skies, not the land.

Still, neither the sorceress nor the dragon has been this far north in all their lives. Cora would like to project the image that she is well traveled and wise for her relatively young years, but in truth, she has never been outside the land of Fairendale, except for the day she was born (but that will come later in our story). And Blindell would like to project the same image (how ironic that they are so like each other and yet so dislike each other), though he has had a comfortable life in the land of Morad, safe under the rule of his cousin, the dragon king Zorag.

Tell me, then, Cora says.

I would like you to guess, Blindell says.

I will not guess, Cora says.

You do not know? Blindell says.

He is insufferable, she thinks.

She is insufferable, he thinks.

Their arguing has become almost as predictable as the weather in these lands (cold, snowy, and unpleasant). In their six days of travel they have argued about which direction was north (neither was right, and they spent one maddening day walking in a great big circle before finally heading in the right direction), what to do with the cold (both think it is unpleasant, but neither wants to admit it to the other, though at night they sleep huddled together, Blindell grateful for the sorceress’s warmth and Cora grateful for the dragon’s bulk, which blocks the wind, for the most part, from nipping at her ears and nose), and what the Mages look like (Blindell thinks they look like hideous humans, since all humans look hideous to him—but these will look even worse, with golden hair and sky blue eyes and lips the color of strawberries; Cora thinks they will look like the mountain people in Fairendale’s storybooks that show pictures of the wild-haired men who used to live on their own, without kingdoms to rule them. So you do not think there are female Mages? the dragon asked her. Of course there are female Mages, Cora replied. There is no magic without females. And then they fought about that, too).

Cora wishes, not for the first time, that she still had her magic and could speed them along—but if she still had her magic, she would not need this trip in the first place. She would be safe at home, checking on the blackbird that is Prince Virgil, the prince of Fairendale whom she turned from a boy into a blackbird for safekeeping, after the king of Fairendale attacked the village, intending to round up and imprison and do who knows what else with the children of Fairendale. The children, including Cora’s daughter, Mercy, fled, and Cora led a revolt among the villagers, during which she stole the prince from the castle, purportedly to show the king and queen how it felt to lose a child.

Though she never intended any harm to come to the prince, she did misplace him, just as she misplaced her magic. She needs her magic to find him and turn him back into a boy, among other important things. Time is of the essence.

How does one live without magic?

Cora has never needed to know.

In the land of Fairendale, Mages are the only magical people who can restore a lost gift of magic. But the journey to their land, so far north, is treacherous.

So, yes, Cora would rather not have to visit them. But here she is, teeth chattering, feet aching, mind humming with annoyance at her companion.

At least the dangerous woodland creatures have left them well enough alone, likely deterred by the foul-tempered dragon at her side—though a strange beast, one that looked like a large white bird with the face of a woman and fingerlike talons that could tear flesh apart, did attempt an attack. Blindell simply gathered a bit of fire and sent the sizzling ball in the creature’s direction, singeing its feathers and effectively scaring it off.

He has not let Cora forget that, either.

Without me, he likes to say, you would have long been dead.

Do not be so sure about that, dragon, she said just the other night. I know how to survive on my own.

It is mostly true. Cora has survived many of life’s surprises, even some she does not know about.

Today Cora has lapsed into silence. She and the dragon are about to leave the land of Rosehaven and venture into the land of White Wind, or at least in that general direction—and there is no telling what sorts of people and creatures and things they will find along their way.

The dragon, too, is quiet as he watches the sun rise higher in the sky.

The two of them stick to the borders of a village when they reach it. Most villages do not welcome strangers as Fairendale does. Did. Cora is always aware that she is not home, though her home was a place full of people who did not trust her, either, especially once they discovered she retained her magic, even after passing a magical gift along to her daughter. According to the magical annals of Fairendale, if magic remains once a sorcerer or sorceress becomes a parent, it is the darkest sort of magic.

Cora does not feel swallowed up by dark magic. But that has never stopped people from talking.

She tries not to think of her daughter, whom she has not seen in almost two moons. She tries to believe Mercy has magic enough to survive anything on her own. And she tries even harder to believe that they will see each other again, sooner rather than later.

Not thinking of her daughter drives her to think about the prince. Prince Virgil is not a magical boy (this she knew the moment she captured him, though the rules of Fairendale say that only a magical male can inherit the Fairendale throne; it is why the king was searching for a magical boy, rumored to live in the village—to make sure his nonmagical son did not lose the throne). Prince Virgil is not equipped with the same protection Mercy has. And he is a blackbird. How many more dangers are there in the world for blackbirds?

Something eats away at you, Blindell says, quite out of the blue.

Nothing of concern to you, Cora says. Sometimes she forgets that what she feels the dragon feels, too. She tries to close off that part of herself, but she is his rider; they are linked mind and heart and spirit, for life. Where one goes, the other cannot be too far away. What one does the other always knows. What one thinks and feels...

As soon as she gets her magic back, she will sever this connection. She will ask the Mages to do it, right after she asks them to restore her magic. And if they refuse (some magical people believe that severing the connection between a dragon and his rider will result in a curse overtaking them both), she will do it herself. How can she be any more cursed than she already is?

It is the prince, Blindell says. His voice has a growl in it. He wants the prince for his own purposes, though he has hidden those from Cora. She cannot peer behind the veil he carefully spread between them, likely because of her misplaced magic. He has a bit of magic, too, as all dragons do. He uses his to keep the veil firmly in place. She cannot know his mind as she should, as his rider.

You like to think you know more than you do, Cora says.

Blindell huffs. It sounds like a laugh, but it does not sound like an amused one. You are one to talk. He tries to say the words under his breath, but he is a dragon, and his breath is large, and the words are more than loud enough for Cora to hear.

She does not feel like fighting this morning. We should pick up the pace.

You have really lost him, Blindell says.

I do not want to talk about it. She has really lost him, and she regrets just about everything. She should have left him in his castle, should have left him with his father and mother, should have at least left him a boy and cared for him well. How can one protect a blackbird in a world such as this one?

I say good riddance, Blindell says to the sky.

Cora’s head swings around to him. What a terrible thing to say, she says, though she might have said the very same thing days ago. She does not know what has come over her lately, but she is feeling far more regret and empathy and...well, call it love, perhaps...than she ever has before. He is just a boy.

An evil boy, Blindell says. From an evil father from an even eviler father.

A boy cannot help who his father is, Cora says. And in her mind she thinks, A girl cannot help who her mother is.

She hopes Mercy is safe. She hopes that if Mercy returns to the village the people will be kind to her, in spite of all Cora has done to destroy their trust. She hopes her daughter will have a better life than she did.

Is it not every mother’s hope for her child?

Cora closes her eyes and sends her wishes out for Prince Virgil, too.

May you be safe. May you be happy. May you be fulfilled.

She has to believe there is magic enough left to make the words come true, for both Mercy and Prince Virgil. She has to believe in a happy ending. Even if that happy ending never finds her.

MERCY wakes when the sun is almost directly in the sky.

She has some kind of veil hanging over her mind. She is not sure what happened to put it there—or what has happened since it slipped into place—or whether she should be worried. She does not remember much at all, come to think of it. Except the quest, blackbirds, and Theo, her traveling partner.

Watching her from across the clearing is Theo, who once called himself the Huntsman—and likely still does, since he does not know Mercy has guessed his true identity. All along, he was Mercy’s old friend from Fairendale, though he also does not yet know this, that the two of them were friends or that she herself was the best friend of his sister, because he does not know her identity. He thinks she is the Enchantress. During the king’s round-up of all the children in Fairendale, both Mercy and Theo completely transformed themselves with a Vanishing spell, adding about five years to their faces and several inches to their frames. They took new names: the Enchantress and the Huntsman. Their eyes are the same, though, and Mercy does not know how she traveled so long without recognizing Theo’s eyes, which look like they stole pieces from a perfect noonday sky. And how he has not recognized her green ones.

A voice reaches her from somewhere far away. Let the boy help you. She remembers, vaguely, an old woman visiting her—in a vision? Or a real moment?

What did the old woman mean, Let the boy help you? Should she tell Theo who she is? Or should she simply explain that she should not use her magic for the duration of their quest, or at least use it more sparingly than she has up to now?

The old woman also warned Mercy that she uses too much of her magic, that she is full of dark magic, and that the dark magic will eat her up inside if she continues the way she is going.

It all makes Mercy’s head hurt.

Mercy sits up, with great effort, and brushes her scarlet tangles out of her face. It is not polite to watch someone while they sleep, she grumbles to the ground.

Thinking, of late, makes her feel grumpy.

You slept for a very long time, Theo says.

Yes, well, I was tired.

I did not know if you would ever wake. Or if I would ever have my breakfast.

"You did not have to wait for me," Mercy says. His words—his covert blame—make her feel even grumpier. Or perhaps it is the fog over her mind...she remembers learning something, or figuring out something—something they must talk about?

Are you hungry? Theo’s voice is softer, kinder. Mercy looks up at him. I have a large bowl of greens for you.

Did you find any fruit? Mercy says. It has been so very long since she has had fruit; she does not eat anything from animals. Only vegetables, fruit, and nuts and seeds. Vegetables have been in abundance on their travels, though they mostly take the form of dandelion greens and nettles. Bitter, peppery plants.

I did manage to find something, Theo says. Though you will be able to tell me more about what it is, I think. He wrinkles his nose, then looks back up at her. Will you join me at the table, or would you prefer to eat in the cart?

The cart smells ghastly, cramped as it is with blackbirds in cages.

The table is a large stone, with two logs on either side. Theo has laid the stone with two plates and two very royal-looking goblets.

There is no roasted animal at the table. Mercy does not miss this.

You must tell me where you get these table settings, Mercy says. She would like to steer the conversation into a surface-level space, because she does, in fact, remember there is something important they must discuss, and the pit in her stomach tells her she does not want to do it.

If she could only remember what it is...

I brought it all with me, Theo says. He holds up his pack. In my pack.

I believe the last time I looked in your pack, you had nothing of the sort in it, Mercy says. She keeps her voice level, but she feels her insides flush with heat. Shame? Or anger that he somehow hid the contents of his pack from her?

So much for surface things. When Theo caught her rummaging through his pack without permission one evening while he was off gathering food, he got quite angry with her. She apologized, but only barely.

She sighs, as though already weary of her inability to control her words. Why did she bring it up?

It is a magical pack, Theo says.

Finally. Some truth.

He adds, It only shows what I want to show.

Well, that is not reassuring, but Mercy lets it slide. Her belly rumbles.

Shall we eat? Theo says.

Please.

How long was she asleep? Her stomach seems to think it was days. The insides have hollowed out completely.

She joins Theo at the table, her eyes fixing on the fruit. It looks like some kind of apple. She supposes the land here has apple trees somewhere. She tries to remember where they captured the last Fairendale child. White Wind, was it not?

This land has no snow, so they must have moved on in the time she slept.

They eat in silence for a time, until Theo says, I know who you are.

Of course you do, Mercy says. But there is a sticky feeling in her throat. We have traveled together for... She does not know how long they have traveled together; Theo is the one who keeps track of the days. In a little journal, with a pencil—the same kind of pencil he carried around with him in Fairendale.

There were so many signs that pointed to his identity, and she missed them all, too intent on pretending like she was a grown woman, instead of a young girl.

Forty-four days, Theo says. But that is not what I mean. He leans closer, as though he intends to whisper a secret. I know who you really are.

A chill runs down her spine. It is ridiculous. There is nothing dangerous about this information, not when she knows who he is, too.

But is she ready to share the information? Not yet.

He is bluffing. He does not—

Mercy, Theo says.

Mercy gives a start. Theo leans back, a satisfied smile on his face. They stare at one another for a moment before Mercy says, Well, I know who you are, too.

The smile falls from Theo’s lips.

That is right. Do you think you are the only one good at guessing secrets, seeing through disguises?

Theo tilts his head. Mercy can tell he does not believe her, so she says, You are Theo.

Long lost friends, but they do not feel as such. They have seen so much of each other on this journey. They have both disappointed the other in ways they could never have imagined, and neither is particularly good at letting go of those offenses. In the land of Fairendale, before the Vanishing spell that changed them, they had held one another in high esteem. Now they can hardly trust each other.

They do not embrace or express relief upon knowing who the other is. They merely stare at one another, as though still trying to figure out whether they should trust their eyes and their brains and the real names they can now use, instead of the old, fake ones.

Well, Mercy says, her voice cold and sharp.

Well, Theo says, his voice much the same.

I suppose we know a lot more about one another than we did before, Mercy says.

I cannot say I like you all grown up, Theo says.

Mercy shrugs. The feeling is mutual.

Their Vanishing spells grew them up, long before their time. Theo,