20. Frozen

Rating: T

Verse: Fairytale AU

Inspiration/idea: Kotoffeya, who drew my attention to classical Russian fairytale Morozko

For all who suffer in the cold...

He saw an elderly man driving the sledge into the forest. In such a weather? And so late in the evening? Who went timber-working at that hour? But the man had two horses, so good chance that he would manage to the other side of the forest.

How surprised Madara was when the man stopped the sledge, retrieved some bundle from the back and with effort threw it into the snowdrift. Then he turned the horses and rode back.

Madara neared. The bundle moved.

Out of the snow a fur hood emerged, a pair of mittens dug the way out. Like swimming in the snow, a small statue rowed towards the sledge tracks. Soon in the greying light of dusk a girl stood on the path. She shook the snow off her coat and skirts, skipped up couple of times – the snow must have gotten into her undergarments - and readjusted her mittens. Then she turned around. She took some time looking in the direction where the sledges disappeared. A sad time, seemed to Madara. For a moment he thought that she would follow the tracks. Unwise. She should conserve her strength – whoever left her here had to return for her – it was her only chance.

The girl looked around the forest – spruce branches covered with thick layer of snow. Snow knee-deep all around. And greyish daylight fading with every minute.

Madara stepped closer.

The girl rubbed her cheeks – was she crying? What had even happened? That man pushed her off the sledge on purpose. Did he leave her here to die? Madara suppressed a sigh – was it another bad harvest this year? Too many mouths to feed?

Surprisingly, the girl, instead of huddling under the trees, readjusted her hood and started marching. In the opposite direction from where she came.

Madara matched her pace and made himself visible on the physical plane. The girl jerked and almost jumped. But then she halted and bowed politely. She didn't address him, and after this one momentary stop, she picked up her pace and kept going. He walked along.

"Are you warm, girl?" Madara asked.

"Well," the girl half-turned to him still walking briskly, "I would lie if I said that I am. But that's how it is now, isn't it?"

Madara breathed out. A wave of bone-shattering cold expanded from his lips.

The girl trembled. "No matter how cold I am, we both have not much choice here, don't we? We just have to do what we have to do…"

"What do you mean?" Madara almost stopped. No one ever talked to him this way.

"Well, you will try to freeze me. I will try to survive."

"You're saying it as if you weren't upset by that."

"I'm not. That's just the way of the world."

They walked in silence for a moment. A strand of girl's hair slipped out of the hood – it was pink. Combined with her green eyes she looked like an impersonation of spring. How ironic. Because she won't live to see the next spring. She will freeze. He breathed out again.

The girl hugged herself tighter.

"Still alright, lass?"

"As alright as I can be, given the circumstances."

"Where are you even going?"

"Next village."

"Why? Why not returning home?"

"I have nothing to look for there anymore…"

"Why?" Madara stopped. To his great surprise, she so did she. She stopped to answer his question even though by just walking further she would have left the aura of acute frost that was around him.

"It was my father who dumped me there. I have nowhere to return to. They don't want me there anymore." The girl sniffed but immediately squared her shoulders. "So, I just need to keep going. If I keep going my blood will keep flowing and it will prevent me from freezing. Then it is just a numbers game for you and me. If I ran out of energy before I reach the next village then you take me. If I don't – I survive."

"You don't hate me?"

"Why would I? You are a force of nature. You just are."

"You're a very strange girl…" Her cheeks were so red, he could almost see the blood flowing within the vessels. He didn't restrain himself and touched her cheek with one finger. She bit her lips but didn't flinch. "You don't hate me even now? When I'm hurting you?"

"You just are who you are. You cannot otherwise. Why would I hate you for that?"

"In contrast to your father, I suppose?"

"My father?" the girl laughed. It was the last thing Madara expected to hear. "No, I don't hate him either. He's a weak, beaten up man, old and deprived of his own will. I feel only sorry for him… I don't hate my stepmother either… What she did, makes sense… She did it for her own daughter. I could never honestly expect her to prioritize me, why would she? We all just do what we have to do…"

The girl picked up her pace.

"So, what will you do in the next village? Any family there?"

"No. I don't know anyone there."

"Then… How are you planning to survive?"

"I just need to make it to the spring. Just to the spring. I will sleep with the animals in the barn, I will take up any work, I will beg if I have to. It is already the end of January. Only until the roads are free."

"You sure have it all well thought through… So what will you do once the spring comes?" Madara never saw the spring. He only heard about it from wistful tales of people in the forest, musing about the gentle warmth of the sun and open soil under their feet and plants coming to life.

"Well, I'm a fast thinker, I guess." She shrugged. "In the spring," the girl looked up into the dark sky. "In the spring, I'll go further… I've heard there is a woman several villages away, a woman that lives alone in the forest. A healer. She can mend bones and chase out diseases and knows about childbirthing. Some call her a witch. Some call her just a drunken old hag. I will go to her. Maybe she takes me for an apprentice…"

Madara chuckled. "No dreams of getting married and getting a flock of kids of your own?"

The girl sent him a heavy look. "Nope. And I don't have a dowry anyhow."

The girl started to beat her arms against her sides in the rhythm of her steps.

"You alright?" asked Madara once again.

"My fingers are getting numb."

"And your toes?"

"Well, numb for a long while already… I keep curling them since the very beginning. It makes walking really odd. But for sure they would have been much worse off without it."

She didn't speak more for another couple of minutes. Or hours. He didn't know. Human time flowed differently and Madara didn't have much grasp on it. But she was slowing down.

"Are you alright? Are you cold? Your cheeks are so red that I can see it even in the moonlight…" Especially her left one, there, where he had touched her. The blemish was almost black.

The girl let out a heavy exhale. "It is getting harder; I have to admit it."

Madara let it sink. The girl slowed down even more. It looked as if she had to pull her leg up with the weight of her entire body for every step. "I don't want to sound too discouraging, but… I don't think you'll manage. The village is too far away."

The girl took another pained step. "I will… Just… Do my best…"

Madara stayed a bit back, allowing her to exit his freezing aura.

The girl turned back. "Don't stay behind. I don't think it matters much. That cold you're emitting isn't making much of a difference anymore. I don't even feel it anymore. And it's nicer to have someone around."

She lifted her leg and didn't manage to tear her shoe from the snow. She swayed, stepped back into the hollow made by her foot and breathed heavily. Couple of second later she tried again with renewed ferocity. This time she succeeded and took the step. Before next one, she waited, apparently bracing herself for the effort.

After a dozen of excruciatingly slow and inefficient steps, she turned from the path towards the nearest tree. Good thinking - the snow might be shallower under the cover of branches. But it didn't help her much, her speed barely increased. She was breathing so heavily and Madara refrained from comments – talking would cost her too much energy.

Finally, the girl propped herself against the trunk of a tall spruce. "Well, it seems that I won't manage in the end…" she laughed. Her lips weren't pink anymore, but white. But there was still color in her hair, and in her eyes. And on her cheeks – they were almost black now. "That's a pity… I really wanted to be a healer… If I could once save someone else's life – wouldn't it be beautiful? Or to ease someone's pain?"

She extended her hand towards low-hanging branches of another spruce and pulled herself towards it. Some snow fell on her hood and on her face, but she didn't remove it, just stood there, heaving with effort. "No matter…" Madara saw her smiling. "No matter… If I won't survive, someone else will, right? Everyone is so hungry now during the winter… Someone else will take me up and maybe thanks to me will make it through until spring?" She slowly sank down sliding her spine along the trunk. "What will I become? Will I be a wolf? A crow? Maybe some small part of me will be a mouse…?"

Madara crouched next to her.

"Will you undress me when I'm gone? So that whatever comes to eat me won't have to dig through all these layers?"

Madara stared in shock. What a last wish.

"Can you even do it? Undress me, I meant? Are you even real?" she asked, but her eyes were already unfocused.

"Yes, I am real…" Madara extended his hand and undid a ribbon holding her hood. "I'm real. See?"

"Good…"

"I could… I could take you back…"

The girl didn't open her eyes.

"There was another girl once," Madara continued, "she was also left in the forest to die. I asked her whether she was cold, but she kept telling me she was warm. It was so strange, she spoke so meekly, not a single word of complain. I… I pitied her. I returned her to her parents, with a chest of jewels…"

Girls eyes slowly opened. "Have it ever occurred to you that maybe she was telling you that she was warm because she wanted to die?"

"To die?! No! Why?" He never understood mortals very well, but this was too far-fetched. Didn't all living things want to keep on living?

"Maybe because her life was so full of misery that the soft and painless death in the forest was a better way out. That any death was a better way out…"

"Why wouldn't she take her life then?"

Girl's head rolled to the side. "Maybe she was afraid… Or maybe her god didn't let her…"

"And you don't believe in that god?"

"I sure don't believe in gods that tell you to suffer in silence." For a shortest moment the previous ferocity sounded back in her voice. But then her head fell down and she didn't say anything more, as if having spent too much energy on that outburst.

"In what do you believe then?" asked Madara softly.

"In life. In life… That the spring will come no matter if I breathe or not," she answered not opening her eyes.

"Do you want to go back?"

"No… I want to go to that old hag and be a healer."

"You won't manage through the winter. If I take you to the next village the villagers won't take you up."

The girl didn't answer.

Madara knelt in front of her. Her hood slid down and her hair spilled. Pink like petals of those trees he had ever seen only from very far.

"Come and live with me. Keep me company until the end of winter. I will get you to that healer when spring comes…"

Girl opened her eyes once again and smiled at him. "Company? What kind of company?" She extended her hand. It travelled so slowly through the space between them that Madara didn't know if it was his perception of human time or was it just all the speed that the girl could now manage. He also didn't quite understand the purpose in her gesture, until she stroked along his cheek and put her fingers against his lips. He could see how they become transparent from the cold of his skin. "That kind of company? All other things aside… All of them aside… that's a treacherous proposal… Because how would I ever become a healer with a babe on my hip?"

"If there is a child I will take to my domain once it's born. I thought since a long time already that I would need a helper…"

The girl smiled and held a strand of his hair.

"And you can come for every winter when my domain is over the land."

AN: Thank you for reading, and please tell me what you think about this retelling (and feminist-make over) of this fairytale.