The Hall of the Ice Queen
In Juvielle’s fifth Year of the Owl, she had been the Greenwhisper of Little Stoneleaf hardly six seasons. Oviña had declared her time was done after the Green Winter and had chosen Juvielle to guide the village, bless the crops, and direct the harvest. Oviña had returned to the green before the first frost, so perhaps she had been right.
Juvielle had been born in the Year of the Owl, or so Grandpère told her; Mère had left in her coming and Père had left before that. The Year of the Owl wasn’t like the Year of the Flood or the Year of the Fallowfield. The Year of the Owl was when it was, prepared or not.
The Year of the Owl ended. Crops, people, families.
Communities.
Looking up to the sky, the flat, dull grey of a poorly tended ploughshare. She drew a deep breath, then coughed as the icy air stung her lungs and made her eyes water. The next treeline wasn’t far now. It would be warmer there, in the embrace of the slumbering forest.
She snugged her ceinture fléchée around her waist, binding her cloak tight against her thin frame. “Nechta,” she whispered to the killing cold, and resumed her forward march through thigh-high snow.
It had been three weeks since Juvielle had left Little Stoneleaf. She should have left at least a week sooner than that, but she had denied it to herself. It couldn’t be The Owl. She wasn’t ready! She didn’t know how to prepare for The Owl!
She left before the turning of the year, when daylight finally began to linger. Before the Midwinter Feast. It would be a paltry feast this year, anyway. She would not have missed much in the way of celebration. It was the cruellest of Winter’s jests that as the days began to grow longer, the cold grew stronger; mean.
Juvielle suddenly looked around in confusion. All around, absolute darkness. How many hours had she been walking after reaching the next forest? In her memory was a hole. There was frozen, snow-packed plain, then there was frozen, snow-dappled forest trail, and then…this?
She couldn’t see the sky for the forest canopy, but the way her body ached told her the sun had not set recently, it was hours gone to its slumber. She searched around her for familiar signs, any sort of hint that might tell her even what direction she had been walking, but there was nothing. Even the trees seemed strange, familiar bark and needle and dried leaf that somehow weren’t.
And then she heard it; a sound; a song; voices! Raised in song! She thought she recognised the melody, if not the words. The sort of song that would be sung at the Welcoming of the Dawn after the feast!
Impossibly, she found the strength to run.
The voices had dwindled to distant echoes before Juvielle could locate them, but in her pursuit she found something truly impossible. Rising from a natural clearing, a tower of pure, luminous blue ice. She stopped at the edge of the clearing. The tower was impossibly tall, blocking out the stars above, and somehow, she had arrived exactly at the base of a wide, low stair leading to towering double doors.
“Nechta,” she whispered again, steadying her resolve.
The doors opened, smooth and silent, at her touch. Not locked. As if she were expected. Invited.
The hall beyond the doors was bright, and so warm! After so long in the elements, surely anything would feel warm, but Juvielle found herself first loosening her ceinture fléchée, then opening her cloak. It was too warm here for so much clothing.
“Hello?” she called, sounding to her ears like a nervous child rather than a grown woman, Greenwhisper of Little Stoneleaf, no less! Everyone she’d ever known depended on her now! “Queen Nechta? I–” she coughed nervously and started again, trying to sound confident. “I s–seek an audience with Queen Nechta.”
A sound—a voice?—from further down the hall.
The hall was bathed in a soft, ethereal light, despite the absence of visible lamps. It was as if the tower had simply decided to be lit like a field at midday. It was far too long to be within the tower she had found in the clearing, she realised, a trickle of fear running down her back. Finally, she arrived at another set of doors, open, revealing a wide, circular room beyond. It had columns toward the centre, rising up to a ceiling she couldn’t see from this angle, and in the middle a bed, piled with furs and cushions. Strangest of all, the columns and the walls were nothing but mirrors.
“Queen Nechta?” she asked softly as her heart hammered in her chest. It was far too warm now, Juvielle felt a trickle of sweat running down her cheek and so she loosened her ceinture fléchée enough for her to slip out of her cloak, leaving it in a pile on the polished-ice floor. She snugged the wrap around her waist again and stepped into the room.
“I come with respect,” Juvielle began softly while nervous butterflies filled her belly. “I must—” and then she had no words.
Her reflection, in the mirror-clad column to her right, was no longer moving with her. It smiled warmly, knowingly at her. Reflection then turned away and shed her tunic. Juvielle’s eyes widened as she stared at her own naked back, her hair caressing her shoulders. Reflection looked over her shoulder at Juvielle, removed her ceinture fléchée, and stepped out of her trubhás, leaving both the sash and her leg coverings behind.
“What—” Juvielle whispered as her reflection embraced another figure—shadowy and indistinct. They kissed, then again. Spectral hands moved on Reflection’s behind, squeezing and lifting, and Juvielle felt a new stirring as she watched this unfold. Reflection’s caresses soon shifted to direction. Her shadow-lover lowered themselves to their knees. Reflection’s hands settled on their head, and they began a most intimate dance. Juvielle watched intently, one hand gliding absently between her own legs, beneath the trousers she still wore. Her other hand drifted upward, and just before her trembling fingertips touched the strange mirror, Reflection turned her head again, locked eyes with Juvielle, then succumbed to an orgasm more intense than Juvielle herself could ever remember.
She stepped away, heated and panting softly, then moved deeper. The next column was also Juvielle, but this Juvielle was naked, tied to a tree in an orchard she didn’t recognise. Reflection was helpless, exposed, and Juvielle’s breathing grew ragged as her desire built. The mirror was showing her a place near harvest, with golden sunbeams dappled on Reflection’s bare skin—her stiff nipples, her chestnut-brown curls crowning her pussy.
Another figure appeared from somewhere behind or beyond the mirror and approached Reflection. The figure, again, was insubstantial, difficult to focus on despite the afternoon light. It moved toward Reflection with a pair of wild roses. Reflection’s expression was one of pure love and absolute trust as her attention turned toward her companion. Juvielle watched as the rose petals teased and kissed all of Reflection’s most sensitive areas, as the thorns first grazed nipples, lips, and thighs, then did more—drawing shivers, gasps, and cries from Reflection. When one thorn became a switch against Reflection’s hip, Juvielle moaned with desire. Her fingers were slick with her own juices, though she didn’t remember touching herself.
The next column was much more direct. Juvielle was slowly dancing with a woman. She was taller than Juvielle’s reflection, a hand-width, at least. Slim but not skinny, as winter had rendered everyone in Little Stoneleaf. Achingly beautiful. Her skin had only the slightest hint of warmth, the colour of fresh cream. Her hair was a lustrous platinum, flowing freely around her shoulders. Her eyes were flinty and almost colourless; chipped ice. Reflection was dressed as Juvielle was, but the woman wore nothing at all. They both looked out of the mirror at Juvielle as they danced, then as they kissed and caressed, then again as the woman moved to the reflected bed and sat, opening her legs in welcome. Reflection followed, still fully clothed, and knelt before the woman, kissing her thighs, then her hips, until her movements became ones that Juvielle recognised, though she had never witnessed them before. The woman gently placed one hand on Reflection’s head as Reflection pleasured her, but the woman’s eyes never left Juvielle’s.
“All can be yours,” came a soft, but somehow still crisp voice from behind Juvielle. From the bed. Juvielle spun, pulling her slick fingers from beneath her ceinture fléchée, and lowering her other hand from under her tunic. The woman from the mirror was seated on the bed, legs crossed demurely at the ankles, wearing the most marvellous gown Juvielle had ever seen; it sparkled like sunlight on fresh snow. Aside from her position and clothing, though, she was the woman in the reflection.
“Queen Nechta!” Juvielle’s face grew hot with shame, and certainly some lingering lust. This wasn’t how it was supposed to go at all!
“Why do you call me that?” The woman regarded her with an almost predatory calm.
Juvielle was confused, “A–are you not Queen Nechta? The Ice Queen? The Lady of Winter?”
The woman blinked slowly and tilted her head to one side, studying. “Those are all names given to me. By the fearful.” The tiniest hint of a smile. “You are not fearful.”
Juvielle tried to steady herself, though the need remained, buzzing around her head and muddying her thoughts. She’d prepared a speech. “I am Juvielle Wode, Greenwhisper of Froatburn Dell and Little Stoneleaf. I have come to beg your aid.”
“I know what a Greenwhisper is,” she said. “None have come in some time.” The Queen paused, her thoughts impossible to read. “The last one turned back at the high ridge. I wondered about her. Did she find what she sought by other means? Or did she simply learn to live without it?”
“I can’t turn back.”
The queen inclined her chin—approval? “No, you cannot.” She directed her attention to another mirror, just a flicker, but it was enough to cause Juvielle to look as well. Within, Juvielle’s reflection lay naked, glistening with sweat, in the very centre of the bed while Queen Nechta caressed her. One hand twisted and teased Juvielle’s nipples while the other curled beneath her sex. Juvielle could not see exactly what the queen was doing, but she could imagine, had done it for herself often enough. Mirror-Queen brought her lips to Reflection’s other breast, lips parting—“All can be yours,” the queen repeated, drawing Juvielle’s attention back to her. “You would not see, if you did not desire it.”
Juvielle expected another wave of shame, but instead she felt… welcomed? Understood? Needed? “My queen, please. I do! I want that, but my people, I must help them! Please!”
The queen rose slowly from the bed; her movements were menacing elegance. She walked slowly to Juvielle, stopping only when her breasts pressed against Juvielle’s collar-bones. Juvielle fingered her ceinture fléchée nervously. It had protected her all this way, but would its magic work now?
The queen gave it no notice. “There is no choice.” Juvielle gasped, panic gripping her heart, but the queen continued. “All can be yours.” Understanding came to Juvielle so quickly she stumbled back a half step.
“An early thaw, hidden stores will be found; I will take none from Little Stoneleaf this year, Greenwhisper.”
Juvielle laughed as she had not laughed these last six seasons! “Thank you, my queen!” But before she could say more, the queen held a finger to Juvielle’s lips. Her eyes flickered to the mirrors once more, then back Juvielle. “Linger here. For a time.” Juvielle understood this to be a request, an invitation, possibly a promise.
“I will return, my queen,” Juvielle said softly as she finished packing her supplies for the hike home.
“My true name, Greenwhisper. Talvra. I await you.”
