When you open a new book, you hardly know where it will take you. That's the fun of reading. It might plunge you into dark foreboding places, full of terrible monsters, or it could take you into places frighteningly white and empty, like this one.

Bells rubbed her arms. Freezing wind cut through her clothes. She took a step, slipped on the ice, and promptly fell down. The ground met her with a bone-chilling hospitality. She looked around, but there was nothing to see except drifting, twirling snow.

"Hello?" Her voice sunk into silence.

"Anyone here?" She glanced up, fully expecting to see the gigantic faces of her friends. But there was only sky, swept over with depressing whiteness.

"What is this place?" She pinched herself. The scenery didn't change one bit. In fact, it appeared stubbornly snowier.

Bells sighed. "Okay, let's analyze this. Scientifically speaking, and based on the facts of what has just happened, I must be inside the book I found by the duck pond. Right? Right. I am inside it. I grew smaller and it pulled me in, and it looks like a frozen lake with a forest around it. What does this mean? This means that maybe it's a part of the story written on these pages, and that means that I am now inside this story. That makes sense, doesn't it? What else could it be?" She didn't know to whom she was talking, but the sound of her voice gave her courage. "I'm not scared. I'm not scared at all. I will figure this out." She fell silent. The first twinge of fear poked her like a shard of ice.

Bells rubbed her hands. "Okay, okay. I'm okay." She tried to remember how long Grand said it takes for someone to freeze to death. "I will be fine." Her head began to pound with the injustice of it all. "Why is it always me who has to test everything out? Why couldn't it be Peacock for a change?"

Bells kicked at the snow. "Great. Now I'm inside some stupid book that somehow opened up into this stupid place, and I have no stupid clue how to get out of here." As she was talking, she noticed that the wind quieted down and every snowflake appeared to have grown ears, carefully listening to her every word.

A suspicion formed in her head.

"Hello?" she called.

There was no answer, but she thought she heard a rustle that could be the clearing of a throat or the creaking of pages. The sound dissolved into nothing somewhere above her head, and all was still again, as if something was watching her.

"Hello?" she repeated.

No answer.

"Naturally, as my luck would have it, it appears that I'm alone here. But," she raised a finger, "if my hypothesis is correct and this is a story, there must be characters here—it must be a story about someone. I don't see anyone, and that is very strange. What kind of a story is this, if it only has a lake and a forest in it? A stupid story, that's what. I get it. This book is dumb, that's what I think." She spoke louder. "It must have been such a boring and dull book, that someone finally got fed up with it and has thrown it away. In fact, I think this book is the most lame and uninteresting book of them all!"

The snow stopped. The wind died with a disgruntled sigh.

"Lame?" rustled a papery voice. "Did you call me lame?"

Bells' heart plummeted, then sprung into her ears and hammered so hard, she thought she would faint.

"Do I need to repeat myself?" demanded the voice. "Or are you not only rude, but deaf also?"

Bells swallowed. "Who is it?" she asked timidly. "Is anyone here?" She looked about her, but there was nothing to see except snow.

"You're blind, too? Oh, this is getting better by the minute."

Bells rubbed her eyes. "I don't see anyone. Where are you?"

"You saw me well enough to dig me out, did you not?" inquired the voice. It spoke all around her, and Bells trembled from fright.

"I'm sorry, but do you mind—"

"Yes, I do mind. I mind very much."

"You're...the book I found?" Bells faltered. "You can talk?"

"So full of insults, boorish and uncultured. All of you are like that. How little respect and gratitude I see from you, for everything I do." A crack ripped through the air, and the ice on the lake shifted.

Bells cowered, expecting the worst, but nothing else happened. She cautiously looked up. "Er...Book?"

No reply.

"I'm sorry. I really didn't mean to throw you." She paused. "I was mad at my mom, and, well...I tend to throw things when I'm mad. It makes me feel better."

The voice huffed.

"I really am sorry. I promise."

Without the slightest warning the ground lifted and threw Bells off her feet. She sat back hard and cried out in pain.

"No, you're not. You're not sorry at all. You all say that, and none of you mean it," hissed the voice.

The snow rolled around Bells in great dunes.

"You're scared, that's what you are. You're trying to placate me. Well, it won't work. You will pay for your offense, you and your pitiful friends."

Bells swallowed. "My friends? Are they here?"

"Maybe." The voice crackled in what sounded like papery laughter.

"Where are they? What did you do to them? Please, let us out of here, or we'll freeze to death!"

"Suits me," said the voice with an audible shrug.

"Who are you?" demanded Bells.

"I see you don't have much of a brain. But then again, girls usually don't."

Bells choked on her breath. "Excuse me?"

"Excuse you?" boomed the voice. "Excuse you! You, the most disrespectful annoying badling who dared to throw me—throw me!—like a piece of garbage, like an insignificant trifle, like a...like a..." It burbled with rage.

"Badling?" repeated Bells. "What's a badling?"

The snowy dunes drew closer. "Do you have to know the meaning of everything?" asked the voice cunningly.

"Yes," answered Bells, her teeth on edge. "I need to know the meaning of things so I can understand them."

"How boring your life must be," mused the voice. "Where is your sense of wonder?"

"Facts are the only things that matter for a scientist," said Bells proudly.

"I see now why you would abandon books," concluded the voice.

"What books?"

"You don't even remember."

"I'm really cold. Please. How do I get out of here?"

The voice tittered. "What makes you think you can?"

Bells didn't know. "Can I?"

"Maybe. If you finish reading the pages you have so heartlessly forsaken."

"What pages?"

"The ones you're standing on!"

"But there are no words." Bells looked down. She saw dark lines and cracks and bubbles encased in ice, but nothing else.

"Of course there aren't." The voice cackled.

The sound chilled Bells' blood. "So how do I read it?"

"Enough! You have tired me out. I will go nap now." And with that the voice whooshed away in a shower of sparkling crystals.

"Book?" called Bells. "Hello?"

Hard sun indifferently shone down.

"Grand? Guys? Anyone?"

Bells took a deep breath and marched forward, although it may as well have been backward. The lake around her spread equally in every direction. "So this crazy book is pissed off at me because I threw it at ducks. It got me in here for punishment and wants me to read the pages I left unread. Okay. How do I do that?"

There wasn't anyone to answer, and after a while Bells reached the edge of the woods, where tall pines and firs burdened with snow hunched over like sullen giants. She tucked her hands in her armpits.

"Okay, let's think. What book did I read that had a frozen lake in it?" Her memory refused to cooperate. "I can't think of anything. I must keep walking, otherwise I will freeze to death." She waded into the forest.

"Peacock? Grand? Rusty?"

Behind a particularly thick fir something lay sprawled across the ground. Whatever it was, it was warm and breathing and alive. Bells choked back a scream, thinking that it might be a polar bear or some other big predatory animal. White fur covered it from head to toe. Only, it wasn't fur; it was snow, and it fell off in clumps as the figure sat up and dazedly looked around.

"Grand!" Bells rushed to him.

"Bells?"

"You're here! Where are Peacock and Rusty?"

"Back at the pond, I think."

"They are?" Bells sagged a little.

"I didn't see them come after me." Grand stood up, brushing the snow off his shirt.

"Listen! This book we're in, I talked to it. It can talk, Grand. It's angry at me for throwing it and for not finishing reading books, or something like that. It called me a badling. I suppose that means I'm bad. So, right now we're standing on a page of a book that I haven't finished reading, and I have to finish it."

"The page of what?" Grand's face puckered in concentration.

"This book we're in, the book I found at the duck pond, I talked to it. Can you believe it?"

"Sort of..." said Grand slowly.

"Anyway, it said that Peacock and Rusty are here too. Maybe."

"They are?" asked Grand. Contrary to Bells, whose face had attained a shade of blue, he didn't appear to be suffering from cold. His round cheeks blazed crimson. "I'm glad I found you. Did the book tell you how to get out of here?"

"Nope," she admitted. "It got tired of my questions and went for a nap."

"A nap?" Grand smiled. "A book went for a nap?"

"That's what it said."

"That's not good. If we stay here much longer, we will grow so cold, we'll be tempted to lie down and our blood will chill and our hearts will beat slower and slower until—"

"Okay, okay, I get it. Thank you."

"You're welcome," said Grand, nonplussed. "I'm scared of what will happen, that's all."

"Boys aren't supposed to be scared."

"That's not true." Grand looked her straight in the eye. "Everyone gets scared. It's okay to be scared. Girls always—"

"Don't talk to me about what girls do and don't. I'm a girl and I know better." Bells' face flushed and she felt a little warmer. "Let's go find Rusty and Peacock."

This new purpose filled her with energy. She grabbed Grand's hand, marveling at how it could possibly stay so warm in this temperature, and together they trudged to the lake.

An echo trailed on the wind.

Bells stopped. "Did you hear that?" She took a deep breath and yelled, "Peacock? Rusty?"

"Bells?" came an answer from behind a snowdrift.

She looked at Grand. He nodded, and they ran around it, quite suddenly colliding into their friends. There were cries of pain, then cries of joy, and, once they had confirmed that all four of them were whole and uninjured, cries of agitated bewilderment over what Bells told them.

"That is insane," said Peacock, jumping for warmth.

"We're in a book! How cool is that?" Rusty blew on his hands and rubbed them.

"Not cool at all. It would've been cool if it was warmer," Peacock said with feeling. "Are you interested in turning into an icicle? I'm not."

Bells crossed her arms. "Well, nobody asked you to follow me."

"Oh, thanks." Peacock snorted. "We couldn't just leave you, could we?"

Bells squinted. "I bet you were the last one to get in."

"Yeah, he got in after me!" Rusty sniggered.

Peacock gave him a murderous look.

"Guys, please." Grand put up his hands for peace, the gesture he used on his two little brothers. "We need to find a way to get out of here."

"Do we, really?" Peacock smirked. "Why hurry? I like it here. It's nice and warm and sunny."

Bells pursed her lips. "Stop it."

"Look, someone is coming!" Rusty pointed at a drifting cloud of flurries. It glided. It clopped. And then it snorted in high animal voices.