The Frozen City

Astraea walked through the frozen landscape and snow spilled over the tops of her boots, freezing her toes inside her stockings. In the distance she could see the outline of the city, its many towers casting shadows along the horizon. She had been moving towards it for some months, and at last it seemed very near.

Astraea had come to a frozen pond, such as it was. It was a little larger than a pond and a little smaller than a lake. It had been frozen for a long time. The ice was thick, and even the trees that bent over the water were covered in layers of clear ice like frozen tears.

An irrational fear gripped her and she did not want to cross the ice. She did not have to go on. No one had forced her to come this far. No one had coerced her into going. Yet if she turned back now she would have failed utterly. She knew this was her life's only chance to accomplish what she'd set out from her little town of Plattbridge to do. Astraea was looking for something, after all. Something that could only be found in the city ahead, and if she did not make it there, she felt she would die trying. She comforted herself; when she reached the stone towers she would find answers. Answers which she had looked for all her life, but had never found, never had a hope of finding, until the day she had met Pyrrhus.

Astraea had begun her journey feeling almost glib. She had decided so abruptly to go that it seemed as if she had put no thought into the decision at all. But then, there had been no need for thought. It hadn’t been a choice, not really. The journey had seemed necessary, though on reflection the reasons seemed complicated and deeply twisted. It had started one evening in Plattbridge, where Astraea ate dinner in a tavern with her friend Marion.

The atmosphere was bright, as it always was in the tavern. Marion sat across from her chattering on about something or other; Astraea didn’t know what because she wasn’t paying attention. Marion had a penchant for chatter, a quality which could be both irritating and endearing.

Rather than try to catch up with Marion’s train of thought, Astraea stared instead at a stranger who had just arrived through the kitchens. It was an odd place to enter from, unless he was a cook. But the man was wearing a long cloak, soaked and dripping, its colour resembling that of old blood. He had come from outside somewhere, and somehow slipped in unnoticed. Or almost unnoticed. Astraea thought she knew everyone who lived in Plattbridge. But she didn’t know this man. No one else seemed even to glance at him as he drifted across the floor.

Astraea watched the stranger as he found a table close to the fire. He removed his cloak and hung it on a peg near the fire. It would have been claret velvet when it was dry, Astraea thought. The man sat abruptly on the bench at the table he had selected and glanced suspiciously about the room. He seemed remarkably alert considering the shape in which he had arrived. Alert enough to notice Astraea was staring at him.

Fire shot through her as their eyes met and she quickly looked away, nonplussed. Had that been real? She could still feel his eyes on her, so she pretended to listen to Marion and she smiled and nodded as her friend spoke. The heat faded at last and Astraea dared to glance at the stranger again. She saw that he was eating now, his limp, red hair hanging into his face as he devoured his food. She had to speak with him. She didn’t know why.

“Excuse me a minute, will you?” Astraea said to Marion as she rose from her seat. She stood up swiftly, trying not to notice Marion’s hurt look as she rose. Her friend had taken umbrage more than once to Astraea’s poor listening skills.

"I'm sorry," Astrae said, smiling in genuine apology at Marion. "I'll be right back. I promise." She crossed the room quickly to the mysterious guest.

Astraea sat down across from the stranger.

“What do you want,” the man snarled without looking at her. He looked strangely anachronistic up close, something like a caveman or an ancient warrior, or maybe a combination of the two. But that was probably because he had let his dripping hair fall over his face so that he looked more feral than he might have.

“I’m not sure,” Astraea replied, which was, at least, the truth.

He looked up at her again, and again there was the fire, but this time Astraea did not look away. “Who are you,” she asked. It seemed safe to ask questions now.

“I am Pyrrhus,” he said. He narrowed his eyes at her. “And I believe I know who you are already.”

Astraea clenched her hands under the table at that, not wanting him to see her fear. He didn’t need that encouragement, she felt sure. “Surely not. I’ve never heard of you before,” she said.

“You are Zephyr’s daughter,” he said. “He never told me your name, but there is no mistaking you.”

Astraea resisted the urge to laugh. Her eyes sparkled with anger. She couldn’t say why Pyrrhus bothered her so much. Perhaps it was the way he seemed to think he knew everything, like everything he said was the final, awful word. “I know no one called Zephyr. You’re mistaken,” she hissed, a great deal of asperity in her voice.

Pyrrhus smiled now, in a twisted sort of way, as if it were painful to stretch his muscles in such a cheerful gesture. “I know I’m not. I know because your eyes are his, and there could be no person alive or dead with eyes like those unless they were part of Zephyr.”

“Who are you,” she whispered.

“I told you that already,” Pyrrhus replied.

Astraea shook her head. “No. You told me your name. You didn’t answer the question. Names mean nothing,” she said. She braced her hands on the table top and leaned forward as she spoke.

Pyrrhus looked rueful. “It’s no surprise that you would be unreceptive to this news. But you knew me too. You felt the fire, did you not?”

Astraea was taken aback, yet again. How could he have known that? She furrowed her brow, perplexed. It seemed as if what he said was the truth, and yet she knew she did not know him. It didn’t make sense, but neither, she thought, had her urge to come talk with him.

“Who are you?” she emphasized once more.

“I am fire.”

Pyrrhus. Fire. Purple-red cloak. Red hair. Names did have meaning after all.

“Zephyr is the wind,” Astraea said suddenly, surprising even herself at the words. She wondered at that, but even as she spoke it she knew it to be true.

Pyrrhus merely nodded. “You do know. So at last my journey is complete. I have found Zephyr’s daughter and I have told her who I am, and she knows who she is. She must find her father. She has always wondered who he was, and what. And now she will know.”

“How! How will she-- I mean I-- know?” Astraea said. The answer seemed urgent, important. But Pyrrhus was already moving to the fire for his cloak. The cloak had dried remarkably quickly, as if it had only been waiting for Pyrrhus to fulfil his purpose.

“You’ll find him in Ilmatariel. The city of the stone towers. You know where it is,” he said, his voice low as he swung his cloak around his shoulders. It seemed to send a brush of heat and flame at Astraea’s face. “I hope we do not meet again,” he added. But he smiled. He was being facetious. Or was he?

And so Astraea drew in a breath and held it while she stepped onto the ice, and skated her way across. She seemed to float the rest of the way to Ilmatariel. The city of the stone towers was upon her far too quickly. Astraea stood in front of the silvery, frosted gates and looked a the city which seemed itself to be made of snow. She breathed in and looked up at the sky. Strings of blue, diaphanous clouds seemed to swirl with particular attention above the turrets and balustrades of the city. Zephyr would be there, and Astraea thought she knew where to find him. It was time. Astraea stepped through the gates.