The Frozen God

“Something is definitely out there watching us.”

“Hansen, give it a rest, would ya?” Clifford said, giving her coat a shake to dislodge the snow that had gathered around her collar.

“I’m being fucking serious Cliff, I swear it’s out there.” Hansen squinted against the darkness and the ever-present falling of flakes for movement in the deep shadows of the forest. The light from their campfire would glance off the trees nearest to them before being swallowed by the depths.

“You know these things only come out during the daytime, right? You do remember that from the briefing? You know, the one that happened like two goddamn days ago? Cap broke it down real simple. Them: forest fairies. Us: humans. Us smart! Us have technology, so we don’t have to sit in the woods like fucking tree rats.” Tired of sitting on her ass, Clifford stood and started to walk around the perimeter of their site, trying to get some warmth back into her bones. The wood here was basically just ice, frozen so deep that it melted rather than burned. They were left with a pathetic fire of dried pine needles and twigs.

The wind blew soft through the trees, carrying the scent of fir, earth, and ice. The air was sharp and taut, with a biting chill that hushed all sensation and touched your core.

“Yeah, I know,” Hansen whined, “But I swear I felt something.”

“Oh yeah,” Clifford chuckled, “Like when you felt something when I passed you the sugar on the flight out?”

Hansen may have blushed, but his cheeks were already a cherry rouge from the cold and the firelight glancing off his face, “Our fingers touched,” he mumbled.

Just then, he locked eyes with a staring figure in the woods. The unblinking gaze was focused, interested, predatory. Unnatural. Hansen couldn’t look away. The eyes of ice staring at him sat in the face of a male creature that was human-like but so clearly not. No human could ever have pure white eyes such as there nor skin the same color and tightness as alabaster. No human could have a beard that looked as though it was carved from a chunk of slowly falling icicles, scaling down off the being’s face and scraping his bare chest. No human could have teeth of broken stone like this creature appeared to have. Sharp, cracked, greyed teeth which hung in a mouth that tilted upward in a half-smile, half-snarl.

No, this was no human at all.

The wind began to pick up.

After three heartbeats, Hansen tried to unlock the air from his lungs to scream, but nothing came out. He tried to reach for his gun in his holster, but his frozen fingers couldn’t undo the safety latch.

“Cl-, Cli-, Clif,” he managed to stutter out while fiddling with the latch.

“Oh my god, what?! Jesus Hansen, you really don’t know how to just enjoy a quiet assignment, do you?” Clifford turned around just as Hansen finally undid the strap and drew his sidearm.

“What the fu-?”

Crack, crack, crack. The snap of the gunshots ricocheted off the trees and rock, deafening the forest spar the wind, which continued to push itself through the woods with the power and consistency to rattle the branches.

As soon as she recovered from the start, Clifford charged her partner, stumbling through their pathetic fire, extinguishing it, and tackled him to the ground, “What the fuck is wrong with you?!” she snarled, smacking the gun out of his hand. “This is supposed to be a covert op to assess the habitation styles of these fairies, not fucking exterminate them!”

“That thing was no fucking fairy!” Hansen’s teeth chattered in his mouth, his whole body shaking from cold. Or was it fear?

The wind was starting to whistle now, sharp in pitch, splitting through the silence.

Clifford stood and pulled her partner to his feet, following his locked gaze into the deep depth of the woods, seeing nothing but blackness.

As she turned away from the woods, she opened her mouth to ask what exactly Hansen thought he saw in those woods but was interrupted by an unusual sensation at the small of her back.

It was as though Jack Frost himself had pressed his lips to her skin. The cold was so intense it burned like fire, frying her nerves and pressing into her core. She felt as though her skin was cracking like slate rock under pressure.

Then a sharp zing shot through her body, dropping her to the ground, frozen dead.

Hansen stared at the long, cylindrical icicle protruding from his partner’s spine.

And Hansen found the air in his lungs to finally scream, but it was drowned out by the loud groans of the wind.

Without the fire, the only light came from the near-full moon shining bright overhead, casting its silvery haze through the branches. Unlike the firelight, the moon’s glow did nothing to add comfort to the woods, rather elevating the darkness, shrouding its secrets in shadows of silver, grey, and black.

The crack of a branch breaking brought Hansen spinning around in a circle, swinging his eyes back and forth across the tree line, seeing nothing. The screaming wind brought more snow with it, limiting his vision to no more than a couple meters.

“I-, I kno-, I know you’re fu-, fucking out there!” Hansen chattered against the screaming wind.

“Do you now?” The voice seemed to be carried by the wind rather than attempting to cut through it.

“I have papers!” Hansen shoved his shaky hand into the pocket of his down jacket, searching for the resource utilization orders that they were sent here with, showing their legal right to encroach on this land.

“Papers? You think papers give you the right to come here, into MY woods? To cut down my limbs and rape my children?!” The wind was howling now, throwing blisteringly cold gusts against the exposed skin of Hansen’s face.

“I-, I-,” Hansen couldn’t form words anymore. He was too cold.

The wind was like a thousand screams, crying out in anger and anguish. The snow spun in circles around the campsite’s small clearing, blanketing the air in a frosty white blankness. And through the deep cover of snow and wind and darkness, stepped the Frozen God.

Naked yet unaffected by the cold, the creature walked barefoot on the snow, stepping on it rather than through it, leaving no footprints in its wake. The long icy beard carried down the being’s chest, ending in a sharpened, piercing point. Deep, spiraling tattoos covered the exposed skin, sitting deep blue against the pale, bone-white of the god’s skin.

Hansen could do nothing but stare as the god approached him, frozen in fear.

With ice white eyes and cracked, broken teeth that did not move, the Frozen God spoke, “When I first got word through the wind of the Wildlife Resource Utilization Notice, I thought it was a joke. A political ploy to show that your government actually cared about its people. When you stripped your Central Park, murdering the creatures that lived within, I knew that this was no joke, and I knew it would not stop there. After Central Park, it was all your other Parks: Zion, White Sands, Yellowstone. So much land. So much Nature. So many resources. So much death. Did you think there would be no consequences? No ramifications? No reparations?”

Hansen couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think. With every passing second, the god drifted closer, radiating an icy aura of frozen air and cold, unwavering rage.

“And when you learned of the fae folk who lived in these Parks, did that stop you? No, of course not. They were nothing more than soon-to-be-extinct creatures, relics of a time long passed. But you didn’t know that there was more living there. Other beings. Other gods. And when one god dies we ALL FEEL IT!” The Frozen God roared, spitting shards of ice like daggers that cut Hansen’s cheeks.

“We-, we didn’t know,” he managed to get out, unable to move, unable to run.

The Frozen God was close enough to touch now, mere inches from where Hansen stood. He could feel his skin crack and break as frostbite overtook it, blackening the already blue skin. The freezing winds were screaming in his ears, deafening him, the snow was blistering all around, blinding him. The god of this frozen forest brought his hand up to touch the young Hansen’s cheek, feeling the blood dripping from his wounds, freezing almost immediately in the sub-zero air. The god’s beard made of ice scratched against Hansen’s neck, cracking his skin wherever it touched.

“I know you didn’t.”

The wind died at the same time Hansen did, given closure with the human’s last breath, his pleading eyes locked upon the god’s cold, unforgiving ones.

-          -          -          -          -          -          -          -          

Later, the sound of car tires rolling over gravel interrupted the peace of the late morning. Bird calls could be heard fluttering around the forest trees while the sun shone through in brilliant, golden rays. The SUV pulled down the long drive, arriving at a lone cabin in the woods. Smoke curled out from the stone chimney, rising high above the tree line. The open windows in the front of the house revealed a homey, used sitting area and a kitchen filled with the smells of a home-cooked meal.

The driver’s side door opened, and Captain Jessup stepped out, filling her nose with the scents of the forest and food. The passenger door opened as well, revealing Investigator Marlow, a short, beady-eyed man who looked about as out of place as one could look in the woods. Marlow pulled out a cloth from his pocket, removed his spectacles from his face, and gave them a polish before returning them to his nose and squinting through them, focusing on the man kneeling next to some flower beds at the side of the house.

“Hey there, ol’ timer,” Marlow called, raising a hand in greeting.

The man didn’t look up from the long, rectangular flower bed, sinking his long fingers into the rich, fertilized soil. The flower box itself was new, with fresh wood and just budding plants, identical to the second box alongside it.

Captain Jessup frowned, feeling unusually unnerved. “Sir, do you mind if we come and talk with you for a moment? We’re looking for some colleagues, you see. They came up this way about a week ago. Have you seen anyone come through?”

The old man mumbled something, barely a whisper on the wind.

“Sorry, didn’t catch that,” Jessup called, walking toward the man, “Do you mind if we come and chat?”

The old man looked up from his flowers, staring at the WRUN agents with cold, unblinking, white eyes. He opened his mouth in a smile, showing grey, cracked, stony teeth.

“Come as close as you’d like.”