Fire and Ice

The Snow Maid-2

One of the old Soviets, Bill thought. A doctor or nurse who left her hospital or lost her job when the old system collapsed back in the nineties. He had read that there were many of them on the fringes of society in Putin's Russia, former professionals making do as best they could, living on the remains of their pensions and helping people when they needed it. Could she have seen our tent and called in a rescue for us?

She walked quickly up to the bed and threw back the covers, exposing him to the waist. She laid one hand on his forehead, and the other on the inside of his elbow. They were both frigidly cold, and he flinched away.

“What…”

“Hush,” she said in a distracted tone. “You'll make me lose count.”

Confused, he held his tongue, even as he blushed in embarrassment. After a few moments, she removed her hands and smiled at him, displaying slightly crooked teeth in a careworn face.

“Well, the fever is gone, and your pulse is steady. The hand is well?”

He held it up and wiggled the fingers experimentally. “It seems to be…Doctor…”

“I am Polina,” she said. She pulled the covers the rest of the way down, ignoring both his startled yelp and his nudity. His feet, he saw, were as undamaged as his hand. She tested them briefly with her hands, then nodded, satisfied.

“Your feet are recovered as well.” Her cold hand dropped briefly to the inside of his thigh, and she examined his groin. “No damage there, thanks be to the High One.” To Bill's intense relief his c**k lay limp and flaccid against his leg. Despite the fantasies of young men, he knew enough to know that women nurses and doctors did not fall madly in lust as soon as one of their patients displayed an erect p***s.

It would be even worse to do it in front of a woman who was obviously long past such recreational thoughts.

Polina tsked irritably. “Well, I suppose that will need some time to recover. You have had an intense trauma, after all.” her voice was slightly accented, but she spoke English well. She looked at his torso critically, counting the ribs in his too-thin chest.

“Excuse me,” Bill said. “I don't quite understand. Are you a nurse? A doctor? Where am I? What happened to my friends?”

“Your friends?” she asked. “That would be the men and women in the cloth hut a short distance from where you collapsed? Seven of them?”

“Yes!” Bill said eagerly. “Are they still there? Why didn't you rescue them, too?”

Polina's voice was confused. “Why should I save them? You are the sacrifice. You were at the stone pillar. I saved you. They are the ones you gave your life for. Their lives are in your hands now. What would you have happen to them?”

Something is very wrong, Bill thought. Either I am going crazy, or we are speaking the same language with entirely different meanings.

Think, Carter.

He had been dying of malnutrition and exposure, and had medical issues which modern science could not cure. He was now lying in a bed, warm and safe, with all his wounds healed.

Reason said this was impossible.

Reason could go f**k itself, Bill decided. Either I am still dying, and all this is a hallucination before I slip away entirely, or this is reality. Either way, I have to try to help my friends.

“Let me make sure I have this right,” he said slowly. “The place you found me means that I am a sacrifice. Which means that you now have an obligation to aid those I choose. Is that correct?”

Polina shrugged, displaying an appalling lack of concern for his companions. “Within limits. I cannot summon a boat to take them off dry land, or cause them to fly.”

“They need food. Shelter. Warmth. A chance to survive until they can reach more of our kind.”

Our kind? Why did I say that?

Polina nodded. “Let me think.” After a moment she nodded and smiled, satisfied. “A very stupid bear has eaten a rotting seal carcass not far from where your friends are. He is going to collapse and die. I have made sure he does it within a few yards of your friends' tent.

“They will also be astonished to find an abandoned stone hut only a few hundred yards away from where they camped. Doubtless they missed it in the snow and wind the night before. It has, amazingly enough, a large supply of driftwood stacked outside. The fire, food, and shelter should be enough to keep them safe until the men searching for them can find them.”

Bill bowed his head in gratitude. Tears formed in his eyes and dripped down his cheeks. Normally not an emotional man, he found himself overcome by the thought that the people with whom he had shared the most terrible of journeys would survive, even though he might never see them again.

“I am in your debt,” he said softly.

“Yes, you are,” she agreed frankly. She patted his hand where it lay on the coverlet. “Luckily enough, you will spend the rest of your life paying it off.

“Now, child, how would you like something to eat?” She sniffed the air disapprovingly. “Or maybe a bath first?”

Bill agreed eagerly. He had not bathed or washed since the night before the crash. Sweat, grime, and the stink of gangrene had suffused every stitch of his clothing until his own smell nauseated him. Though his clothes had been removed, the foul smell wafting up from his skin was far from pleasant.

He swung his legs out of the bed and stood up, staggering only a little. He tried to cover his nudity with his hands, and heard Polina sniff disparagingly.

“Don't be silly, young one. You don't have anything down there that could possibly offend me.”

He walked behind her as she led him down the hall, and was startled to find that she was much smaller than her strong personality would indicate. Bill was not a large man, but the top of Polina's head would barely reach his chin.

Child's height, adult's will, he thought with amusement.

The floor of the hall was tiled in colors of pink and pale blue, and was frigid against the bare skin of his feet. Somehow, though, neither the freezing tiles or the cold air of the hall made him cold. It was as if the temperature was a fact which had nothing to do with his body.

Wouldn't even have to worry about “shrinkage,” if there was anyone around who could possibly appreciate it, he thought.

She led him into a large room, which in contrast to the hall, was filled with warmth. Wisps of steam rose from a huge copper tub in the middle of the room, filled to within inches of the brim with water. Towels and soap lay nearby.

“Clean yourself. When you are done, come and find me, and I will feed you. To find the kitchen, go past the room that you woke in, then take the right-hand turning.” She smiled, the expression surprisingly young on her seamed face.

“Or simply follow your nose.”

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Bathing was an unimaginable luxury. After weeks where the sweat of hauling the makeshift sledge had mingled with the acrid smell of desperation and fear, the sinful pleasure of washing (In hot water! With soap!) seemed to be the height of decadence.

He washed himself all over, rinsed, then did it again. He dunked his greasy hair repeatedly, and scrubbed it until his fingertips were raw and his scalp tingling. When he was done, he dried himself in a wonderfully warm and fluffy towel, then looked for his clothes.

They were nowhere to be found, which did not surprise him in the least. If Polina had any sense at all, she would have had them burned. Instead, he found a heavy pair of dark trousers, which fastened at the waist with metal buttons rather than a zipper. A bright red shirt with bone buttons followed, overlaid by a vest embroidered with intricate patterns of green and blue. Thick wool stockings and a pair of light boots lined with fleece were set on one side, ready for his feet. He put them on and grinned. He had thought he would never walk without pain again.

He took care of his hair with a wooden comb he found laying on a tray, then brushed his chin with his fingers, feeling the ragged growth of two weeks' worth of beard.

This, he thought, will have to go. There was no sign of a safety razor anywhere in the room, but he did turn up an old straight razor, still sharp. Coating his face with the soft soap from the tub, he lathered his whiskers, then carefully shaved, scraping his face clean.

When he was finished, he examined his face, startled to see a reflection that reminded him of how he had looked in college, before a sedentary lifestyle as a weatherman had put too many pounds around his waist. His hand dropped to his ribs, feeling the prominent bones, then the solid muscles in his abs. His chest and arm muscles were also much bigger than they had ever been, he found to his pleasant surprise.

He snorted. You could make a mint off this. Want to lose weight and gain muscle definition, guys? Just survive a helicopter crash in the Russian Arctic, then haul a sledge made of a door mechanism fifty miles across a frozen sea. No problem. Supplies are limited, call now.

He cut off his giggles before they could mount to full-fledged hysteria. He took one last look in the mirror, then went in search of something to eat.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Mother Snegurochka was satisfied so far. A quick perusal of the kitchen had turned up some dried grain, which she was busily making into porridge. The icebox gave her bacon, which she was frying with potatoes from the pantry. There was even honey to sweeten the porridge.

She glared at the kitchen. It hadn't given her honey for nearly thirty years, and it had been at least ten since she had tasted bacon.

You know the rules. You are given food and clothing and resources that match the world's faith in you.

She decided to forgive the house, knowing it was bound to the same laws which governed her. She smiled slightly, running her tongue inside her mouth, delighting to feel all of her teeth back where they belonged. They felt slightly straighter than they had been just a few moments ago, when she had checked on the young man in her care.

He was a happy surprise so far, she thought. Too many of the sacrifices had been hulking brutes from the native tribes, rancid with the reindeer fat they wore to keep off the cold, angry with their fate and violent. Others were small children, left out to die when starvation and plague stalked the land, terrified of their new home. And far too often than she cared for, the sacrifice would be an unwilling one, a terrified young woman, bound and bleeding. Or dead.

She did the best she could for all of them, but not many survived for long here in the World Below. The children, torn away from all they knew, soon pined and died. The men, too often, went mad with hate, seeking to kill her or to take their pleasure on her unwillingly. None of the women had survived a season with her, their life force giving out against the opposing forces which bound Snegurochka here.