Jake & The Gingerbread Wars (A Gryphon Chronicles Christmas Novella) (The Gryphon Chronicles) (11 page)

The others shook their heads.

“Why did she think we were spies?” Dani whispered.

“
Obviously, Humbug lied about us,” Jake answered in a low tone. “That must be why he was so keen to get here before us. I’ll bet he thought that if he beat us here, he could manipulate the situation and use her to get rid of us for once and for all. Then he could continue on his merry way to Halloween Town. But I daresay his little scheme hasn’t quite gone to plan, because she doesn’t seem inclined to let him or any of us leave.”

“Well,
I’ve never heard of anyone called Snow Maiden,” Isabelle said discreetly. “But I can tell you she has very strong emotions. I can sense them all the way from here. Temperamental and rebellious, definitely spoiled. But I don’t sense that she’s evil. If we treat her carefully, I believe we
should
be all right.”

“Well, that’s reassuring,” Jake drawled. “What does she want from us?”

“I’m not sure she knows herself. All I can glean from her emotions is that she’s very lonely and extremely bored.”

“Great,” Jake muttered.

“Can’t say I blame her for that,” Archie said. “Living out here in a snowy wasteland, nothing but oversized toys and a few animals to talk to. Anyone could go slightly batty under such conditions.”

“Hmm.” Jake absorbed this skeptically.

“Well, if she’s going to give us food and shelter, we might as well accept it,” Dani said. “It’s better than freezing to death. And whoever she is, she can’t be worse than the yetis.”

“True,” Jake said.

“Right, then.” Archie stepped toward the doorway. “I’ll take this room,” he bravely volunteered. “Courage, all.”

“See you soon, I hope,” his sister said.

“Goodnight, Arch,” Jake said grimly.

Dani gave him a small wave. “Bye.”

Archie nodded goodnight to them, then the toy soldiers locked him in, ignoring Red’s low growl of protest.

One by one, each of them
in turn was locked up in a comfortable guest chamber, with a fire to bring life back into their bones. Jake saw the girls safely into their rooms. The Gryphon took the next chamber. Jake went last, using the extra time in the hallway to scope out any possible escape route. He had a feeling they might need one in the future.

Unfortunately, he saw none—but he did witness a strange scene when the toy soldiers marc
hed him across an upper balcony to his room.

The balcony
overlooked the great hall, where the Snow Maiden was still toying with Humbug.

She beckoned to the nu
tcracker. “Bring him to me. Now then, Humbug. What are we going to do with you?”

“L
et me go on my way to Halloween Town?” the elf suggested.

She laughed with crystallin
e gaiety. “Oh, I don’t think so! You don’t really want to work for that nasty old Jack O’Lantern fellow. You’re not cut out for that at all.”

“Yes, I am!”

“Nonsense. You’re not nearly terrifying enough. Have you ever even
been
to Halloween Town?”

“Once,” Humbug said
. “I peeked in. Well, it might take some getting used to, but I know I will fit in there.”

She started laughing at him. “You’re such an amusing little fellow! I still don’t trust you, but you do make me laugh. And, after all, you were telling the
truth about this much, at least: there
were
people following you, and they came here, just as you predicted. So, for that, and for your good intentions, trying to warn me about Santa’s spies, you deserve to be rewarded. How it would irritate my grandfather if I managed to turn one of his elves into my own servant. I know! I’ll make you my jester!”

“Your Highness, please, I want to be a goblin!” Humbug protested, but it was too late.

She tapped him with her icicle wand and a silver cloud of sparkling magic snow engulfed the elf.

When the whirling puff of magic cleared away, Humbug’s appearance was transformed.

His brown coat had turned white. His little breeches were pale silver, and instead of a pointy Christmas elf hat, he now wore a blue and silver jester’s cap with jingle bells on its several points.

He saw himself in the reflection of an icy mirror across from the
Snow Maiden’s throne and looked appalled at his makeover.

T
he Snow Maiden clapped her hands in delight. “Much better! Now you’re a proper jester. Go on, make me laugh.”

The
grumpy elf just stared at her, at a loss.

Jake raised an eyebrow as he watched.

Poor Humbug seemed to be asking himself in that moment if running away from Santa had been the best idea.

The
Maiden’s pretty face took on a glower. She folded her arms across her chest. “I said, make me laugh.”

“Oh dear.
” Humbug sighed.

Jake’s humor at the little trickster’s expens
e was short-lived, however. The toy soldier prodded him in the back with the blunt end of his lance, shoving him into the guestroom.

“Watch it!” he shot back, whirling around after he
caught himself from stumbling.

The tall, blank-eyed soldier slammed the door in his face.

Jake heard it lock and forced himself to check his temper.
Blast it, what are we going to do?

He had a bad feeling about this
place, but even if they could escape, only darkness, subzero temperatures, and bloodthirsty yetis awaited them outside. Without Humbug, they still did not know the way to Santa’s. There was no help for it.

T
hey were stuck for now.

Captives of the ice princess.

CHAPTER TWELVE

Chilli
ng with the Ice Princess

Butlers and waiters across the civilized world wore black and white tuxedoes as their uniform; therefore, the children were only marginally surprised when the Snow Maiden’s servants turned out to be funny little penguins.

Jake could not imagine who had trained them, but they were surprisingly efficient, carrying in his meal on silver trays, skating around easily
on their little yellow feet when it came time to clear away the dishes.

Better still, Isabelle was ab
le to communicate with them, thanks to her telepathic gifts, which worked especially well on animals. She reported everything the penguins had told her when they were reunited three hours later, summoned from their rooms for an audience with the bored Snow Maiden.

“You’re not going to believe this,” Isabelle whispered as they gathered at the top of the slippery castle stairs, still groggy from their naps. “She’s Santa Claus’s
granddaughter.”

“What?”
they exclaimed in hushed tones.

“Santa and Mrs. Claus have a
granddaughter?”

“And a
grandson!” Isabelle nodded emphatically. “Jack Frost! That’s the prince Humbug mentioned. This is
his
castle!”

“You have got to
be joking,” Jake said.

But Dani started
laughing in delight.

Archie furrowed his brow. “No wonder that
girl’s so spoiled, then. Santa’s granddaughter? She probably got everything she ever asked for, year round.”

“U
ntil lately,” Isabelle said, beckoning them closer. “Turns out Snow Maiden always helped her Grandfather Frost deliver toys, especially across Russia and Eastern Europe. She’s very famous in those parts.”

“Gigantic country
, Russia,” Archie mused aloud. “A lot of ground to cover. I should think Santa could use a little help there.”

“Right,
and she was always happy to help him deliver toys when she was little,” Isabelle said. “But according to the penguins, now that she’s growing up, she wants no part of Christmas anymore.”

“Santa’s own granddaughter doesn’t like Christmas?” Dani exclaimed.

Isabelle shrugged. “I’m not sure exactly what the penguins meant by this, but they said that these days, the Snow Maiden’s too cool for Christmas.”

“Too cool…?” Archie echoed with a look of confusion.
“As in temperature?”

“
I don’t know. Apparently that’s some sort of slang term in the local dialect or something.”

“Hmm.” Archie tilted his head. “One of my anthropologist friends in the Royal Society once told m
e that Eskimos, or should I say the Inuit people, who live in these latitudes, have fifty words for snow. Maybe this ‘cool’ comes from them. But who knows?”

Dani shook her
head. “I’m still in shock to hear that Santa’s own granddaughter doesn’t like Christmas.”

“The penguins said she’s bored of it
, and jealous of all the care and attention Santa gives to everybody else when Christmas comes,” Isabelle reported. “She’s been undermining him a lot in recent years, but the penguins said the last straw came earlier this autumn, when the Snow Maiden switched a bunch of names between the Nice and Naughty lists just for fun.”

Jake
chortled. “Nice prank.”

“Santa didn’t think so, with Christmas right around the corner. They got into a great fam
ily row.”

“Well, t
he holidays can have that effect on families,” Archie said. “It’s a shame.”

“Anyway, she
stormed out—she lived with her grandparents, from what I understand. But she told them she was leaving to start her
own
winter holiday with no Christmas trappings, no carols, no Christmas trees, no nothing.”

“That’s absurd,” Archie said.

Dani was appalled. “No Christmas?”

Isabelle nodded
. “She threatened poor Santa and Mrs. Claus that one day, the whole world would forget that Christmas had ever existed. Then she left Santa’s compound and invited herself here to stay in a guest wing of her brother’s castle.”

“No wonder Humbug ran straight
to her,” Jake said. “They sound like kindred souls. He also decided he hates Christmas and ran away from Santa.”

“Erase
Christmas?” Dani shook her head, still trying to absorb the Snow Maiden’s unthinkable proposal. “But it’s Baby Jesus’ birthday!”

“Look, our main concern right now is getting out of here,”
Jake reminded them. “What about Jack Frost? Did the penguins tell you anything about him? Maybe he’s more reasonable than his sister.”

“E
r, no, sorry,” Isabelle said dryly. “According to the penguins, Santa’s son and heir apparent is a bit of a rowdy hellion. He’s eighteen. He hasn’t been home in days. The penguins said the last they heard, he was having a skiing party on top of the Matterhorn with some of the Valkyries.”

“Valkyries?
” Jake and Archie burst out in unison.

The boys glanced meaningfully at each other.

“Let’s hope he doesn’t make them angry,” Archie muttered after a moment.

“Y
ou mean like we did?” Jake answered wryly.

After their recent visit to the land of Norse
giants and Viking legends, the boys still couldn’t decide if the dazzling beauty of the tall, gorgeous warrior women outweighed the horror of the hag form the Valkyries could take when they decided to turn nasty.

Just then, the silvery jingling of little bells heralded the arrival of Humbug at the bottom of the stairs in his new jester hat.

“Would you stop dawdling? Get down here!” he demanded. “Her Highness is waiting! And she doesn’t like to wait.”

Jake glanced at his companions, who were staring at the elf in astonishment. They had not yet
seen Humbug’s transformation.

The little fellow
looked more annoyed at the world than ever. “Hurry up.”

“Why does he look like that?” Dani whispered.

“I forgot to tell you, Snow Maiden’s keeping him. She’s not letting him go on to Halloween Town.” He shrugged. “I guess she wanted him to match her décor.”

“She’d better not try
something like that on us,” Archie mumbled.

“Come on. We’d better go before she sends those creepy toy soldi
ers up to fetch us,” Dani said.

“Follow my lead when we meet with her,” Isabelle advised. “
We’re the closest in age. I’ll try to make friends with her, girl to girl.”

“Be my guest,” Jake said under his breath
.

The ice-slicked stairs were too dangerous to walk down, but someone had already thought of that and had had the good sense to have a
n ice slide built right next to them.

The kids whi
zzed down it one by one, while Red flew down to the lower level. Humbug watched and waited below, looking annoyed as ever.

Then the little jester-elf led the way back to the
great hall, his bells jangling. “Your guests, Maiden,” he announced them in a grumpy tone as they rejoined their captor.

She
turned with a swirl of snowflakes flying from her long white skirts. Jake was glad she had not put her eerie white mask back on. For some reason, it unnerved him.

“There you all are. Finally!” She skated closer. “I trust you enjoyed your rooms. Feeli
ng better? Good,” she said, indifferent to the answer.

C
old-hearted, thought Jake.

“Now
then. First things first—and you had better tell me the truth. Are you spies or aren’t you?”

“No,” they said in unison.

“Excellent! I have decided to believe you. If you’re lying to me, you’ll be sorry. But provided you’re telling the truth, now we can get down to the main reason you’re here.”

“What’s that?” Isabelle asked in the friendliest possible tone.

“To have fun, of course!” the Snow Maiden exclaimed, clapping eagerly, much to their surprise. “My brother’s not the only one who can have friends, after all. My blood is as royal as his own. Every princess needs an entourage.”

“Entourage?” Archie echoed.

“But you don’t do me any credit in those clothes,” she declared, shaking her head with a frown. “Let’s see if we can make some improvements here.”

“Oh, no…” After what he’d seen her do to Humbug, Jake started backing away.

“W-what do you mean?” Isabelle asked.

She flashed an oh-so-sophisticated smile.
“I’m going to make you all look
cool
.”

Before anyone could protest, she tapped them all with her
snowflake wand, one by one, in quick succession.

Just as had occurred with Humbug, they were each engulfed in a chilly little whirlwind of magic snow.

It was dizzying, rather like being inside a snow globe when somebody was shaking it. When the puff of magic cleared, they looked around at each other in shock.

Humbug stifled a laugh.

But the Snow Maiden folded her arms across her chest and nodded proudly. “Oh, that’s good. Take a look.” She nodded toward the ice mirrors all around the hall.

They stared at themselves in disbelief.

“I have purple hair!” Dani shouted when she finally found her voice.

Snow Maiden clapped her hands. “I know! You
look adorable!”

Dressed in a puffy white satin coat that ended at her waist, a short lavender skirt, and thick white stockings, with ice skates on her feet, Dani turned away from the mirror with a look on her face like she very well
might cry—until she saw Jake.

W
ho looked just as silly, if not worse.

Snow Maiden had dr
essed him up like some sort of Prince Charming ponce in a white military coat with gold epaulets and a shiny black belt. He had dark blue breeches on and black leather riding boots. Thankfully, she had not put ice skates on him, or he’d have already gone sprawling face first on the floor.

He supposed he should be grateful for that, but he could not get over what she had done to his hair.
She had put some sort of frosty white freeze on it so that the longish blond forelock that usually hung over his eye had been lifted in a swooping wave that curled out from his forehead like a ski jump.

He looked perfectly bizarre, but then, the Snow Maiden seemed to
like
bizarre.

She was terribly fashionable.

Hand on hip, she turned to Isabelle. “Now you look like a friend who’s cool enough for me. What is your name?”

“Isabelle…Bradford
,” she mumbled, unable to tear her shocked gaze off her own reflection.

Snow Maiden thought this over. “Hmm, you’ll need a new name, as my right-hand person in my entourage. Henceforth, yo
u will be known as Ice-a-belle. Much cooler.”

Izzy’s golden ringlets had gone magically into a complicated, upswept hairdo of the sort that only older girls back home were allowed to wear.

Her long, sparkly gown was an understated pink shade, with long, tight sleeves. But she was appalled at how the front of her princess-like overskirts were split to allow her to skate freely.

Instead of a ruff
led petticoat underneath, she had only been given pink woolen leggings like Dani’s white ones.

Isabelle was mortified. Back home, no one ever even
glimpsed
the outline of a respectable female’s leg, other than when young ladies wore bicycle bloomers, which were considered very shocking.

The only othe
r exception was with the sort of costumes worn by female performers in the circus—acrobats, tightrope walkers, and such. A gentleman’s daughter simply did not
wear
such things, but Snow Maiden either didn’t know or didn’t care.

Or,
as Jake suspected, she just liked being shocking for its own sake.

She was beaming with pride at her creation. “Well, Ice-a-belle, what do you think? How smar
t you look! It’s very avant-garde.”

“I feel indecent!” She tried to hold her split skirts back together,
no doubt dreading to think what her governess would say.

“Don’t worry, you can’t see anything,” he
r brother assured her with a sympathetic frown.

“And l
ook at this clever young fellow! Ice-a-belle, who is this?” Snow Maiden asked.

“My brother, Archie,” she managed,
still red-faced with embarrassment.

“How did you do that?” Archie asked Her Highness.

“By magic, of course. We Clauses have elven blood.”

“I see
.”

Snow Maiden had put the boy genius in gray wool trousers, a warm blazer of dark purple corduroy, a silver scarf
, and a gray waistcoat covered in white snowflakes. Actually, Archie didn’t look half bad. Except for his dark hair, which stuck up in all directions in frosted spikes, as though he had just given himself a mild electric shock with one of his scientific experiments.