Frosty, Part I

Part I | Part II | Part III | Part IV | Part V | Part VI | Part VII

Author’s note: I’m writing this as I go. Which is nerve-wracking, because it’s totally not my normal process.

I’m hoping to have the whole thing finished and posted by Christmas, but I can’t make any promises…

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Part 1

The first to know anything was wrong was a sentry elf named Kane. How differently the war might have turned out had she sounded the alarm a little sooner. But she recognized the lumbering shape of the living snowman as a friend to Santa and the North Pole, and thought nothing of his presence that winter morning.

By the time she saw the rage burning in his coal eyes and the armor of enchanted ice that covered his snowy body, it was too late.

But Kane was a veteran of the war with the Snow Queen, and had served at the Pole for close to two centuries. She darted forward, avoiding the first swing of the snowman’s broom. He was powerful, but slow and clumsy by elf standards. She rolled past, and by the time he recovered, she had drawn her own weapon, a blade of ice with a candy cane handle. But what use was a frozen blade against a living snowman?

She parried once, twice — by the Star, he was strong — and then the broom dropped low. Kane took advantage of the opening, driving her sword into the crack where the bottom and middle spheres of the snowman’s body joined.

Booming laughter chilled her elfin blood as the snowman bent forward, trapping the blade in place. The broom swept her feet from beneath her.

Kane looked up at the snowman who used to dance and play with the children of the world. “Why?”

He didn’t answer. The last thing Kane heard was the thumpity, thump, thump of Frosty’s broomstick.