Ice Tzarina

By Jon Jacks

Thousands of years ago, the Ice Tzarina was about to conquer the whole earth – until magical charms forced her back to the far north. Now winters are growing increasingly cold once more. Pira fears for her friends: a rabbit, Philly; a goose, Freda; and Penne, a donkey. They warn her to beware; when icy air sparkles like captured stars, then the Ice Tzarina is close by.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Jon Jacks
• Release date: Nov 20, 2022
• ISBN: 9781005584313

Jon Jacks

While working in London as, first, an advertising Creative Director (the title in the U.S. is wildly different; the role involves both creating and overseeing all the creative work in an agency, meaning you’re second only to the Chairman/President) and then a screenwriter for Hollywood and TV, I moved out to an incredibly ancient house in the countryside.On the day we moved out, my then three-year-old daughter (my son was yet to be born) was entranced by the new house, but also upset that we had left behind all that was familiar to her.So, very quickly, my wife Julie and I laid out rugs and comfortable chairs around the huge fireplace so that it looked and felt more like our London home. We then left my daughter quietly reading a book while we went to the kitchen to prepare something to eat.Around fifteen minutes later, my daughter came into the kitchen, saying that she felt much better now ‘after talking to the boy’.‘Boy?’ we asked. ‘What boy?’‘The little boy; he’s been talking to me on the sofa while you were in here.’We rushed into the room, looking around.There wasn’t any boy there of course.‘There isn’t any little boy here,’ we said.‘Of course,’ my daughter replied. ‘He told me he wasn’t alive anymore. He lived here a long time ago.’A child’s wild imagination?Well, that’s what we thought at the time; but there were other strange things, other strange presences (but not really frightening ones) that happened over the years that made me think otherwise.And so I began to write the kind of stories that, well, are just a little unbelievable.

Book preview

Chapter 1

Have you ever seen the way any kind of light, whether it’s from a simple lamp, or being cast down by a watchful moon, makes layers of snow and ice sparkle in the night like hundreds of fallen stars?

How wonderfully magical it all looks!

Perhaps, to you, they’re not like fallen stars at all, appearing far more like a thousand fairies, twinkling everywhere about you in the air!

And then, caught in the very slightest of breezes, a thin layer of icy snow rises up, a glittering cloud that swirls and dances before you like some will o’ the wisp seeking to entrance you into joining him in his merry twirl.

When you see all this, why, then you know she’s there: the Tzarina of Ice

*

Chapter 2

‘The snow always looks so beautiful when it falls about the farm,’ Pira sighed, not quite sure if she was more joyous than she was miserable, ‘but it always makes my and Mother’s work all the harder and unrewarding!’

‘It’s glorious to look at, but way too cold for my liking,’ Philly replied with a shiver that set her white fur trembling. ‘It could kill me in an instant – and without a care in the world too! – if I wandered off too far from my hutch without you.’

Comfortably seated in Pira’s lap, Philly eagerly accepted once again the crisp cabbage leaf held out for her to nibble on.

Reassuringly stroking the little rabbit’s back, Pira smiled warmly.

‘I’ll keep you warm, whenever I’m close; and I’m sure you’ll never, ever be so foolish as to walk away from the comfort of your warm straw unless I’m here to hold you.’

With a happy twitch of her bright pink nose, Philly chuckled in agreement.

‘Ah, if only I were more accustomed to this cold, like Freda and Penne!’

‘In weather like this, even they stay warm in the straw of their nest and stable,’ Pira pointed out.

She peered out at the rapidly tumbling snow from the cosy warmth of the farmhouse, the fire blazing merrily in the grate stacked high in an attempt to hold back the swiftly spreading, icy chill that came with every snowfall.

The flakes whirled, danced, cavorting before them through a window already decorated with an intriguingly intricate white lace of frost. Individual flurries even appeared, at times, to take on a shape, like a bird fluttering in the air, or a man, head down, as if heading for home as hurriedly as possible.

Then, in an instant, these creatures of snow would vanish, to be replaced immediately by nothing more than a chaotic whirl even as other, new figures erupted into momentary being elsewhere amongst the crazed swirling.

‘Still, I’d better check on Freda and Penne later,’ Pira said thoughtfully, shuddering a little at the thought of having to step out into the cold, ‘and look in on Mother’s geese too.’

She always felt odd calling them Mother’s geese: but Mother’s geese they’d been before Pira had been born, and Mother’s geese, it seemed, they were determined to forever remain.

Unlike the perhaps overly chatty Freda, her mother’s geese refused to make even the slightest attempt at conversing with her. Not that Pira ever understood them anyway whenever she overheard them chatting to each other in a language even she failed to comprehend.

But then, Freda had never been one of Mother’s geese. Freda had been bought purely for the high quality and quantity of the eggs she laid. And this once again completely separated her from Mother’s geese who, to Pira’s knowledge, had never laid a single egg.

Even so, Mother never had the heart to send them off to market. Rather, they were foolishly cosseted, providing nothing more than the feathers Mother would use to pad out the finely embroidered pillowcases and eiderdowns she’d had to resort to making to make ends meet.

Outside, the snow violently whirled, the wind howling triumphantly.

As well it might.

For its cold chill had claimed Pira’s father long ago.

*

The body of Pira’s father had been found in the morning following his wedding night.

It was frozen solid, so stiff that his arms and legs had to be strenuously broken to ensure he fitted within the confines of his coffin.

He was still wearing his nightdress; and nothing else.

Even his feet were bare.

Only a crazed fool would go outside like that.

Pira had overheard the whispers of an intrigued, scandalised village.

He’d obviously been sent packing by his disgruntled bride, who’d only discovered on the night that he wasn’t up the task.

Yet, Pira thought, how can they possibly believe such a ridiculous thing, when here I am: doesn’t my presence alone prove it’s all nonsense?

Wasn’t it far more likely that he’d heard his animals moaning in distress, rushing out to help them, without a thought for his own safety?

But then, who would really do such a thing?

He wouldn’t get more than a few yards. Like the wraith-like figures Pira saw forming outside in the writhing snow, figures who lasted no more than a moment, in an instant he would have shivered, staggered, crumpled away to nothing.

In her lap now, Philly was fast asleep.

Carefully, so as not to wake her, Pira moved her over to her basket, with its own warm layering of thick, soft materials.

She would check on how Freda and Penne were faring.

Only, unlike her father, she would make sure she was warmly wrapped up in all the necessary furs, leggings, and boots.

*

Chapter 3

Once she was out in the snow, the onrush of desperate figures struggling to make their way home before they too succumbed to the cold was more obvious to Pira than ever.

They wailed in a fearful frustration everywhere about her.

The light of a lantern shone out across the snow from the long sheds where Mother’s geese could take shelter whenever the weather turned for the worse. Her mother had gone out there over half an hour ago, probably with the intention of talking calmly to them, reassuring them that no harm could come to them.

Not that her mother could really talk the animals in the same way Pira could: she talked to her geese in the same way other farmers talked to their charges, relying solely on the soothing tones of their voices to bring reassurance.

In fact, Pira had at last sadly recognised that she seemed to be the only one capable of conversing with other creatures. It had taken her a long time to realise this, despite the ridicule she’d faced in the early days whenever she’d innocently mentioned her conversations with the farm animals.

She didn’t mind.

She knew what she knew.

Besides, she reasoned, perhaps it was this very innocence that had granted her her remarkable abilities: for if she’d been told from the very start that conversation with animals wasn’t possible, she probably wouldn’t have risked making a fool of herself by simply talking to them as if they were just regular people.

Perhaps, too, lacking the warmth of a father whenever her mother was busy, she’d naturally sought out company elsewhere.

It was a