Trapped Beneath Ice

I.

A bitter winter’s wind whipped around the lone three bodies standing in the white abyss. Snow blanked the ground, the mountains, the houses, and the town well. The wind howled warnings as the ocean tried desperately to crack the chains that kept it trapped. Two little girls buried their heads into their mother’s sides as she continued to stare blankly down the well. The cold tickled up her spine, wrapped itself around her heart, tightened at her soul. She felt sure that if she stood there any longer, absolutely everything would freeze. Her blood…her tears…her life. She clenched her teeth and squeezed her daughters’ hands tighter, trying to keep alive, trying to stay sane, trying to keep from breaking apart like a block of ice knocked over by a disobedient gust of wind.

A rough and terror-soaked voice cut through the woman’s dissociated state, but the exact words were held in the whistling wind. Through the fog, she saw an old woman running, as much as she could manage, towards her. “Ellie!” The word found her and she cringed at the sound. Puzzling letters, all strung together to whisper lies in her ears and pound poison through her veins. A wave of shame shook through Ellie, just another constant reminder of her illness.

There were many daily reminders of her illness, but Kieren was a very dedicated husband, keeping a close eye on her behaviors and how she moved around their home and how she spoke to their children.

He would often remind her that she’s sick or tired or just wrong, and she just needs time to adjust to her new home and focus on being a good wife and mother.

Perhaps he’s right, but she can’t seem to remember a time when she wasn’t fighting to “adjust”.

She can’t help but miss their little shack in Ireland. It was small and dingy, and every time she stood inside it, she felt like the bricks were shaking, threatening to fall all around her, and she hated it. She hated the color, the feel, the smell. She hated how she couldn’t breathe, even when she was sitting completely still, it all felt so wrong, but they had lived right on the edge of the Celtic sea.

Kneeling by the rushing water was the one thing that made her feel truly connected to her body and this land, with its dewy, green grass, and sunlight that pulled gold to the surface of her hair and pink to her cheeks.

She spent so many “wasted” hours by the water, feeling on the brink of uncovering secrets she didn’t know she had. If she listened close enough, she swore she could hear the waves whisper stories across her skin.

She would often leave her children and abandon her chores to lean over the endless life source, begging to connect, wishing she could grab hold of its wet fingers, feel it, be a part of it somehow.

Kieren grew worried, telling her she was very sick, so he packed up their life and moved them to this desolate land of death, where the only water she can feel is pouring through the taps.

Every time she would bring that bucket to the well, she could feel every cell in her body, begging for …. Something. It would build and build, until it broke through, and suddenly…

“Ellie! Ellie!” Mrs. Potts grabbed Ellie roughly, her throat burned with the effort of shouting over the screaming wind. She searched desperately for life in the young woman’s eyes, trapped behind a wall of tears. “Dear, are you alright?!”. Mrs. Potts began to lead Ellie and her daughters to her little hovel.

The young woman shivered beneath her fur cloak, her jaw clenched in defiance against some unknown foe. A small, blonde haired child with a pointed chin and round green eyes squirmed against her mother’s grip.

“You were screaming again mammy,” Bernadette’s little pink lips trembled with fear and uncertainty, her fingers loose around her mother’s hands, trying to pull away from the crushing grip.

Ellie looked blindly down at her daughter, suddenly remembering the girl’s existence. She released her daughters' hands and searched around her new surroundings. The never ending planes of snow and black ice were replaced by a small, open room with one couch, an uneven table, a small kitchen corner, and a rickety old woman, staring anxiously into her eyes. Mrs. Potts carefully walked Ellie backwards, setting her gently on the discolored couch that smelled of old fish. Ellie sunk silently into the lumpy cushions, staring deep into the unknown, while Mrs. Potts clunked around in the kitchen and the girls settled in at the table.

The old woman waddled back out of the kitchen, dropping a plate of biscuits in front of the girls, and setting a hot cup of tea gently in Ellie’s hands.

Ellie looked down into the swirling brown liquid, trying to crawl back up from the well inside, desperately grasping at any real world connection she could find to bring her back to the living.

“Drink,” rasped Mrs. Potts.

She sat down next to the meek woman, watching her sip her tea through trembling lips. The empty eyes and sallow cheeks looked back at her like a mirror from her memories. Her heart cried for the woman. “Fishermen hardly have long lives in these parts, out in the freezing cold all day.” Ellie looked over at her, behind furrowed brows. Mrs. Potts met her confused gaze and took her hand, leaning in close enough to whisper harshly like she was giving life saving information to a soldier on the run, “Keep your head down, find a productive outlet, do your work, love your girls, and just wait. If you’re lucky like me, you’ll be free before you turn 30.”

Ellie looked down again, shaking her head slightly, “I’m sorry-” she started, softly, “I -- I don’t think I underst--”

“We won’t speak of it again. Just know, you always have a safe couch and a warm cup of tea waiting for you.”

The women spent the following few hours in silence, sipping their tea and listening to the soft crunching of little teeth on lemon biscuits. As the sun began to fade, the old familiar anxiety began to creep in, as if her long dead husband was about to stomp through that door once again, so Mrs. Potts gathered Ellie and her girls out the door.

“Don’t forget this,” Mrs. Potter added briskly, handing Ellie a full bucket of water. Ellie blinked down at the water, watching a hazy memory of her bucket falling down the well as she stared silently, unfeeling.

"Take it," Mrs. Potts urged, "You can’t go back home empty handed."

Ellie nodded, with closed eyes, taking the bucket from Mrs. Potts and beginning the trek back home through the snow.

II.

A banshee screams as Zeus throws his thunderbolts through a circling storm. Ice cracks beneath an unseen power, the water singing songs of freedom, the wind howelling, trying desperately to re-contain the running sea. Ellie throws her head back, eyes closed in ecstasy, breathing in the chaos around her, she ignores high pitched screams of two frightened little girls, struggling to keep their heads above the freezing water. They beat and fight against their mother's arms, like strong and unwilling glaciers.

Their desperate pleas turn to gurgled nothingness, as their fight leaves their tiny bodies and they sink obediently to the bottom of the darkening Ocean.

Ellie startled awake, fighting to catch her breath, her heart beating wildly in her clammy chest.

Her fingernails dug into the coarse sheets beneath her, as she fought to breathe against the vision. She searched frantically around her as the storm faded away and left her cold and alone in the dark and suffocating room. Her husband continued snoring undisturbed beside her, and Ellie felt a red hot rage building in her chest, she imagined tearing off an icicle from the roof and stabbing it through his meaty chest, Marcella and Bernadette's frantic screams still lingering in the frigid air. She bit back the violent urges, remembering his hands on her shoulders after a fit, "I am not the enemy," he would say, "you are sick, you need help!" He promised to stay with her as long as it took and watch over her always to keep her demons at bay. She tried reminding herself he is a good husband, caring for his wife as other men would have thrown her to the freezing night, but the words bit into her neck, leaving her shaking, bile rising in her throat.

Ellie's arms burned with the phantom scratches from her daughters, fighting for their lives against her stone-like grip. It all had felt so real. Like an omen.

Ellie carefully pulled herself out of bed and began to make her way down the hall to the children’s room. A few steps shy of her goal, an icy drop of water fell from a leaky beam. She stood, transfixed by the salt-less drop rolling down her cheek. She looked up to the cracked plaster ceiling, another drop forming on the brink, ready to drop down. Her heart ached for the little drops. Lifeless, void of salt, cursed to plink down to rotting wooden floors, just a minuscule, pathetic piece of what they once were. The bile rose higher in her throat, she burned hot, her skin prickling under the weight of her undefined rage. The rushing of hungry waves still thundering in her ears, as remnants of her nightmare vision thrash around her brain like an impatient child begging for attention. Ellie shook herself free of her spot and continued on to her daughters’ room.

Carefully, she turned the knob and snuck in. Kneeling between the two beds, she laid a gentle hand on Bernadette’s pale blonde hair, stringy and matted against her iridescent skin. She turned her hand to stroke away any harmful energies that may be trying to chew through the innocent child’s cheeks. The girl snorted and turned peacefully under her mother’s touch.

Marcella was deathly still, like a sleeping princess in one of those horrid tales in her father’s old books he had insisted Ellie read to the babes. She could hardly get the words out before the red, hot burning began again. Young Girls being cursed into endless sleeps, trapped in towers, impregnated while they slumber, married off to the first blubbering royal who swings his sword just right… It’s enough to make a mother tremble with fear for her daughter’s future struggles.

The waves of her vision came back again, but suddenly they didn't seem so fearsome. It felt more like a long awaited escape, and Ellie’s heart swelled with wanting.

Marcella dared not open her eyes, confessing her trickery. She could feel her mother’s stare burning into her, and she already knew she must have seen it too. Did she feel the fear? Did she feel her lungs screaming inside her chest? Did she feel her life slipping away from her?

Marcella tried to keep still, but the vision was holding her tight, and all she wanted was to flee into the night with Bernadette. She knew how much her mother loved them, but there was always this creeping feeling in the back of her head that one day she would die at the woman’s hands. Now this vision confirming her worst fears hung above them all. Marcella wondered if Bernadette saw the same thing, but listening to her innocent snorts in the still night softened her heart and chased off her worries, for but a moment, until the icy memories came crashing back.

III.

Ellie had spent the last few months trying to obey Mrs. Potts’ advice. She found a productive outlet in her house chores and her girls. She worked hard everyday to keep their home clean, keep the fire stoked, get dinner on the table for Kieren, and focus all of the raging energy inside of her that begged to be freed to some unknown home it yearned for, into caring for her daughters.

Marcella watched her mother, hunched over, on her hands and knees, scrubbing the dinghy wooden planks. She found herself watching her mother a lot over the past few months. She hadn’t had any more visions, but the last one still stalked her brain, replaying the crashing waves and angry skies over and over. Her baby sister's tiny voice begging for her to save them both. Every time Marcella closed her eyes, she saw it again. Felt that sinking helpless feeling in her stomach as Bernadette's lips stopped moving, her eyes frozen open as her body sinks to the deep below. Every night, she tries to save her. She tries to fight her mother, the sea, Poseidon, Zeus, whatever evil is plaguing them, but every night, Bernadette sinks, her face forever a mask of terror.

Ellie scrubbed the floors with such desperate vigor, her fingers cried red teardrops into the soapy ground. She barely noticed, let alone cared, her eyes affixed on one invisible spot. She stopped blinking, her face almost completely blank, barely betraying an overwhelming anxiety rising and exploding through her body. From behind a curtain of deep red hair, Marcella watched her mother’s unblinking eyes and her determined hands scrubbing at nothing, as she lifted the teapot carefully over her sister’s cup.

Marcella gasped in unexpected pain, the teapot falling to the floor and shattering in several pieces.

Her cheek burned red like a memory buried deep. Her world faded back into the little shack in Ireland. Her back, still vibrating from being thrown into the brick wall. She had only a moment to process before his hands were on her once more pulling her up and pinning her down. The cap looked like it might tear apart in his angry grip. Her cap.

The memory broke like a rubber band. Marcella met her mother’s shocked eyes. “My cap,” the woman whispered.

Marcella breathed against the pain of the vision, her cheek still tingling with betrayal, but looking into her mother’s eyes she saw a meek and broken woman burn away, her dull skin melting off her brittle bones, and from the puddles and ashes rose a fearsome creature with blazing green eyes.

IV.

A fearsome creature rose from the ashes of an imprisoned woman, her eyes burning with focused chaos.

Reality crashed down around Elevania, her skin burning with the power of a thousand vengeful sirens. She stood tall on heavy feet like a thunderbolt throwing god, wondering if she could still sing this villain into an agonizing death with her broken voice.

Marcella ran after the foreign creature, who was silently and frantically tearing their tiny house apart, searching for her stolen cap.

White hot flashes of broken memories violated Elevania's mind as she tore at the crumbling bricks around the fireplace. The bricks tore her fragile skin from her raw fingers, but she was blinded to the present. All she saw was a bright blue sky, the sun shining harshly down into her eyes, her skin prickling under the heat only to be cooled immediately by the spraying sea around her boulder, and then men. Like from her grandmother's old fables, they moved around on a mutated tail, split down the middle, covered in baggy grey skin that pulled over their other pale skin, supported by long straps on their shoulders. The bright white light stole her sight and suddenly there were hands. Rough but scale-less hands grabbing at her tail and her torso. She tried to twist away, back into the safety of the water, but the hands held her, scratching at her back and pulling at her hair. She was just about to escape when suddenly her body froze, her blood tingling in a way she had only heard of in nightmarish tales. She turned her head, her eyes wide with horror as she caught one of the strange creatures staring down at her, a disgusting grin spread across his face, his eyes hungry and victorious, he drooled over her, her cap crushed tightly in his grip. Her heart quickened. She had been warned so many times in her young life not to let her cap be taken, but never in her wildest nightmares could she have imagined being trapped in this situation. Her heart quickened, tears rolling down her cheeks, she looked around wildly for some escape, but all she saw were more of the oafish creatures, laughing. At her. They were so joyous at her capture. So elated at her loss of freedom.

Back in her Greenland prison, Elevania choked on the air around her. She knew she was getting closer, but he had made her so weak, she couldn't reach anything beyond the stone.

Marcella watched in horror as her mother bounded up from her spot in front of the fireplace, blood dripping down her hands and smeared across her face. She ran after her, out to the back yard where her father's spare ice picks leaned against the side of the shed. The woman grabbed one, rushing back inside. When Marcella caught up, Elevania was already beating the stone into submission. In a cloud of dust and broken brick, Marcella's mother stood, her cap in her delicate hand.

Elevania stood, staring down at her beautiful red cap, stars in her eyes, she finally cried.

Bernadette had seen her mother cry many times, hunched over a seemingly clean floor, still scrubbing, or stirring her stew into a tornado, or lying face first, stretching her arms across the ice, trying desperately to reach the water trapped underneath. But never had she seen her mother cry like this.

She didn't crumple, she didn't break, she merely sank with a deep sigh, knees on the dusty floor, head bowed, eyes closed, lips parted, like she was thanking God. Bernadette stood transfixed among the broken porcelain and spilled tea, watching tears of relief dripping off her mother's chin.

The room began to spin, sweat forming on Marcella's forehead, and her heart thundering in her ears. She could hear water licking against the ice, like it suddenly woke when Elevania did. Marcella's pulse quickened, she could taste the salt water filling her lungs, the nightmarish vision of her death still playing in front of her eyes. She turned, running over to take Bernadette's hand.

"Please!" Cried out the merrow, "don't leave." Her eyes bore into Marcella's, pleading. "I know I can't take you with me. I know that's why I was given that vision. I know you belong here…"

Marcella's heart yielded to the desperate cry. She had never heard her mother sound so soft and yet so strong at the same time. She kneeled in front of Elevania, taking her hands, and leaning her forehead to hers.

Elevania looked into her daughter's eyes and she saw the truest love and she knew it had to end in heartbreak. "I don't want to leave you. I know I can't take you with me and I know I can't stay here, but I - I can't leave you"

Outside, the sky darkened, clouds rolling in, and lightning bolts lit the air around the crumbling home.

Looking out the window, Bernadette thought how familiar this storm felt. She squinted into the swirling grey, trying to force the hazy memory back to her. She remembered a storm just like this one, before they moved here. She had heard water crashing against rocks outside and something being thrown against a wall outside her room.

She crept quietly out to see her father picking her mother off the ground, a strange, red, funnel-like thing in his hand. Mammy was seething, her lips pursed, and her eyes squinted up at Da. He began to shift for a moment, his hands twitching on her shoulders as if they were made of fire.

"I am not the enemy, Ellie" Bernadette heard him say.

To which her mother hissed back, "that is not my name!"

His face went red and he slammed her back against the wall, still holding onto her shoulders.

"This thing-" he spat, holding the cap up, "is making you sick!"

Bitter tears formed in Elevania's eyes, but she never changed her gaze or softened her face. "Is that why you stole it from me?"

"I am protecting you!" Kieren loosened his grip, looking into his wife's eyes with feigned worry, "look how upset you are now that you found it. It's power is too strong for you to resist. It's taking you over, making you forget about your love for this family."

Elevania shook her head violently, "I don't love you, you stole me! You forced me into this "family"!"

Kieren chuckled lightly down at her, like she was a temperamental child begging for an extra sweet. "That's the poison from this cap, lying to you." Leaning in closer, he whispered, "don't worry, love. I'm going to take you out of here, away from temptation.".

IX

A banshee screamed as Zeus continued to throw his thunderbolts through the circling storm. The purple sky shook as the spirits screamed, rushing through Elevania’s hair and skating back across the black ice. She threw her head back, eyes closed in ecstasy, listening to the water cry out to her. She breathed in the chaos and let out a long, high note. The wordless command rippled across the dead land, breaking her chains and tearing through the thick ice keeping her from her true home. The ice broke apart in immediate obedience, the trapped waters underneath rushing towards her.

The harsh winter wind whipped around three lone bodies; an elderly woman stood strong against the screaming, holding tight to two young girls. A small blonde head pushed deep into her one side, as her sister barely hung on to the other. Marcella choked on the rushing wind and fought to hear her mother’s song through Zeus and Poseidon and the banshees in this war against trapped souls. The creature who once tucked her into bed every night, crouched close to the newly freed waters, her tainted skin melting off. The creature shimmered in the light, her grey and blue scales dancing against each other, as she crawled back into the ocean. Her legs vanished beneath the Arctic, leaving the frozen beach empty, save the three bodies. Another ear-shattering crack and the creature shot out of the middle of the ocean, twirling in the storm, before diving gracefully back down, her green tail slicing through the screaming spirits.

X

Many rumors soon flew of the poor fisherman who tried to save a mermaid and give her the gift of a family, only to find that the dangerous call of the sea was too much for her weak heart to ignore. People whispered about the woman who was forced to abandon her children to rejoin the ocean, though there were some rumors that the woman, in a spell-like haze had tried to take her children with her and now the girls were rotting in the bottom of the Arctic Ocean.

Mrs. Potts shook her head and tsk-ed at the silly tales as she made her way back to that little beach. Spring was finally here and most of the ice had melted away to reveal a sparkling ocean beneath. A tall and lean redheaded woman sat next to her sister, weaving fresh flowers into her golden braids. Mrs. Potts lowered herself carefully on the blanket Marcella had laid out and handed the girls fresh lemon biscuits. There they stayed until the sun kissed the water. A long ripple caressed the surface, sending foam lapping onto the women’s toes. They looked up to see a glimpse of a green tail and shimmering grey and blue scales.