Chapter 5: Lament of the Ice Age

For every moment that passes,
A heartbeat ticks time away,
And progress once slow molasses
Becomes naught what one must pay.

:o:-:o:-:o:-:o:-:o:

"Hunger is a driving force, yes? Enough strain . . . and the most calm will deviate," Adelaide mused. Her wrinkling fingers tapped the side of a bottle containing a writhing aura. A laugh escaped her lips, a mere bubble of her old enthusiasm. This laugh was dark.

Whispers frowned, eyes focused on the concerning vial in her sister's grasp. Beneath its glass exterior, the spectral flame pulsed with an unfathomable desire. Even she shuddered to think what that might entail.

"Now . . . what . . . who might we unleash this on?"

"Sister!" the elder witch cried, temper leaping. "How could you suggest such a thing?"

"What? We are to create a beast, yes?" Adelaide held up the bottle for her sibling to behold. "There is no greater evil than the evil in a human soul."

"I will not allow it," Whispers said finally, snatching it from her. Dread coiled within her chest. To say she wasn't becoming afraid of her own sister would be a lie. Too many lies were created for their cause.

She set the bottle in a box on the table. Adelaide's eyes danced with the unholy spirit inside, filled with persistence. Even though she would not physically defy Whispers' ruling, being respectful of her, the elder enchantress knew that she would find a way around it soon.

"I hope you realize that we're not to harm the citizens."

"It will do no more harm than humans can do themselves . . ."

"Put this hunger into something else or I will dispose of it now."

Sighing theatrically, Adelaide plucked up the unfinished experiment and slipped it into her robe pocket. Whispers stared at her. Adelaide . . . What would become of them?

Before they could discuss the matter further, a rustling sound carried through the open window. The freezing forest parted for hasty steps, the noises of a man approaching their cottage. "The King?" He's not coming from the palace.

"Allow me to greet him," her sister said eagerly. Whispers began to protest.

Running ahead on weakening legs, Adelaide opened the door to the chilling world. The unnatural coolness rushed into the heated cottage. And beyond that . . .

The aging woman witnessed not the King but a peasant barge from the icy landscape. In his arms was the sleeping form of a small girl, older than a toddler but just as frail. His dark hair was stark in the white. His eyes widened in fear. It looked as if he hadn't intended to run towards them — the Witches of the Unknown.

Adelaide wasn't deterred by this. It even seemed as though she knew all along that it couldn't have been the King. In spite of Whisper's yells and best efforts, the witch uncapped the lid of the vial. The spirit flew untethered from its cage, escaping hastily towards the man and his precious child. It began consuming everything behind it in a seeping cloud of malintent.

She couldn't stop it. The ghost of hunger smashed into the girl as the man started his retreat, finding a home within her innocent body. A scream elicited from his lips. He gazed fearfully down at the girl in his arms, who had suddenly woken up.

She struggled in her father's grasp, clawing at him, biting at him. Her voice echoed in deep growls of frustration as she took on a strange glow, eyes becoming like holes.

He dropped her form onto the ground suddenly, sobbing.

Would he run? Would he stay? Whispers didn't care to find out.

"Do not touch him, evil spirit!" Whispers roared, pushing past her feeble sister and beckoning her magic to answer. No. No, I will stop this madness! Gathering the sleepiness from the fog, she enchanted it to subdue the child.

The strength of the spirit was unbearable. By simply being near the girl, she could tell that almost all of her former humanity was overpowered by a ravenous greed.

Yet by the time Whispers dared set her hands upon the child, it yawned and grimaced, groaning as though having a nightmare. Beneath the skin of her palms there writhed something that could fight forever, never exhausted, never satisfied.

There was a moment of pause.

Whispers could smell magic in the air. When she turned, she saw Adelaide holding a squawking crow in her hands.

"H-hey! D-don't! Please! P-please!" he screeched, flapping his wings. "My daughter! My baby! Don't take her! D-don't take her! I'll give you anything — a-anything else!"

"Sister!"

"Oh, whoops. He isn't supposed to talk."

"Adelaide."

Adelaide shrugged, releasing the man. He flew in crazed circles over their heads.

"M-my Lorna! My Lorna, please!"

"Your Lorna's far gone, boy," Adelaide said, reaching to pick up the child, who had fallen into a fitful sleep.

Whispers knocked her hand away. "Let me."

She lifted an eyebrow. "Very well."

Carefully, with a million grievances in her heart, Whispers stole away the girl's future, disappearing into the cottage.

o-o-o-o-o

Her father stayed for days by the window, always crowing, always watching. The two sisters did indeed try to satiate Lorna's appetite, Whispers out of guilt and Adelaide out of curiosity.

Vegetables. Fruit. Meat. No matter what they served her, she was never full.

The girl couldn't have been more than eight years old, yet she was sickly, coughing and roaring for food, for fresh blood. So they fed her the failed experiments in the basement.

The petal snake, the angry dog, the poison bird. It was Adelaide who fed her the bird.

Despite it all, Lorna would care not of what they were. She hastily gobbled them up, leaving behind only the bones. Since they could not risk burying them in the open for fear of the King's plans being known, they tossed them in the basement. They kept Lorna in the basement too.

It took all of Whispers' energy to keep her still, to keep her from running outside. If she got free, there was no guarantee that she wouldn't gobble up the King as well. They wanted a beast, not a serial killer.

Even Adelaide admitted Lorna was more trouble than she was worth, if not their "greatest success". Whispers felt sick each time she said it. Every time she looked outside to see the sad face of Lorna's father pecking on the glass.

For days and days, it seemed to go on like that. Nothing but struggle and stress, no word from the King, no messenger, no passerby.

Then one day while Lorna's father had flown away to find food, Whispers was working on a subduing tonic when she heard the somber toot-toot of a bassoon. Adelaide, knitting a sweater for Lorna's growing body, looked up, cocking her head towards the window.

"Absolutely not," Whispers said.

Toot, toot, toot.

"Whatever do you mean?"

"Stay here."

"Whatever do you mean?" Adelaide huffed, fanning herself with one of her needles that had spread into a fan to compensate, a highly unnecessary gesture in the middle of magical winter. "Whispers, oh sister, listen to yourself! Have I once gone back on my word?"

"You have taken to lying and manipulating and I don't like it."

Toot. Toot.

"Unfair and untrue. I am doing my duty as His Majesty wishes. There is no greater command."

Whispers sniffed, setting aside the tonic. She reached for her cup of tea, staring darkly into it. Once she'd read fortunes from the dregs left by adventurous customers. Now she read the sagging lines of her reflection.

Toot-toot-toot!

"You have created too many an abomination in your life," Whispers said. She took a slow, shuddering sip of black tea. "I, as well."

"As long as the King wills it, I shall not cease."

"You are a heartless monster."

This did not seem to bother her. In fact, she smiled. "The worst of all."

The shadows themselves appeared to wrap around her, around them both. It was as if the world understood what they were. Beasts creating more of their kind.

Adelaide did not laugh. She set her knitting materials on the table, watching as Whispers let her fingers fall from the cup handle. The world did not stop darkening.

"What did you . . .?"

The witch grinned wider, leaning over the table.

Toot! Toot! Toot-toot!

"Sweet dreams, dear sister."

o-o-o-o-o

The crisp chill of the winter wind was nice on Adelaide's old skin. She loved the way it shook her numbness awake, great bursts of power tickling her bones. Compared to the dingy little cottage with her stuffy older sister, it was a great improvement.

She followed the music leisurely, shuffling through the snow.

Earlier when she had fanned herself, she blew the magical spores from Whispers' tonic into her tea. Her sister might have been a fool, but she was no weakling. She would be asleep for a long time.

"Come out, come out, wherever you are . . ." she sang.

The bassoon player couldn't hear her, playing a staccato of melancholic notes. She found him walking near the frozen river, humming along his own melody. He was a stout man in his middle ages with a beard lighter than the color of his hair rimming his visage.

It took a while before he noticed her.

Adelaide waited patiently. His eyes widened.

"You . . . are the witch, are you not?" he said, holding his bassoon lower to his chest. It was a deep, dark blue.

"You know very well I am."

He did not know very well, apparently, but she enjoyed watching him twitch.

"You unleashed the Beast on all of us," he said, blowing a low, long note on his instrument. "He is an evil creature! He is like the wrath of forest shadows! You took our King from our Queen and made an enemy of the forest!"

Oh? "So I did."

"Our crops are dying. This season brings sadness to everyone. It is why I play my bassoon," he said, stepping back to play more.

It certainly was making her sad. Adelaide could feel a headache coming on. If her sister found out about whatever "Beast" this strange bassoon man was talking about, she would pose a major problem to her experimenting.

"Keep playing your bassoon, then," she said, pointing to it. "We don't need you going around spreading rumors."

He opened his mouth to speak. A white cloud of his breath came out, sucked into the bassoon. He said nothing else, choking on unspoken words.

Even with his voice in his bassoon, this might not be enough for my sister. The thought came to her as he gripped at his throat, panicking. She would recognize my magic. This isn't enough.

Best that he not be able to play that bassoon ever again.

The bard suddenly realized her intentions, whipping around to run. He dropped his instrument to the ground when she lifted her arms. He almost looked like a frog, flailing mid-air like that.

A frog. Perfect.

She watched as his features changed, his body becoming green and spotty, his clothes falling in a heap in the snow. Adelaide was impressed with herself. After the fiasco of Lorna's talking father, she was proud that this time was different.

"Rorop! Rorop!" Music to my ears.

There was nothing that he could do. She picked him up, strolling over to the river. With a motion of her hand, the ice cleared over, revealing the tossing, abyssal waters. She knew that it would lead to another universe, possibly one with little flying frogs in the clouds. At the very least, it wouldn't be strange to find a frog floating belly-up in the river.

"R-rorop!"

Adelaide held him over the water. "See who'll listen to your melodies after you've swam through the dark Unknown," she murmured, dropping him with a splash.

Another passing of her hand and the ice re-appeared, trapping the frog. She followed the green tint of his skin as he was whisked away.

"Begone from this world."