The Necromancer Trilogy - Black Magic

Chapter Fifteen - Ice

Blue woke up to cold and a sluggish mind. Above him, a smooth blue ceiling arched into high pockets of darkness. He was numb all over, his thoughts moving slowly.

“Finally,” Adele sighed, in relief. “You’re awake.”

Blue turned his head to see her kneeling beside him, wrapped in a thermal blanket with a woollen hat pulled down low over her head. She offered him a cereal bar. Blue took it eagerly, forcing himself to sit up and chomp it down in three quick bites.

“Careful,” Adele warned, while he coughed. “You don’t want to waste anything.”

“Where are we?” Blue asked, eyes watering.

“Look around,” Adele gestured with a gloved hand. “Take a look.”

Blue looked at the smooth, polished walls and curved ceiling and flat floor seemingly all around them.

“We’re…in an ice cave?” he frowned.

Adele nodded. “We were lucky. But we’ve been in here hours now. I kept waiting for you to wake up and you wouldn’t. I thought I’d lost you.”

“Were you worried?” Blue asked, hopefully.

“Of course I was worried,” Adele snapped. “You’re our only hope of getting out of here!”

Blue groaned and dropped his forehead to his knees.

“Of course,” he moaned. “You want me to teleport nice and easily out of here.”

“That would be nice,” Adele agreed.

“I can’t,” Blue confessed. “I’m tired and I’m cold and I’d be taking the both of us a long way. I’m not sure I can do it.”

“Couldn’t we just pop outside the cave?” Adele clung to hope.

Blue shook his head. “I need to visualise it. The nearest place I can remember is the cabin and that’s too dangerous. Anything might have happened. I’d need to hop us all the way back home.”

“And you can’t?” Adele sighed, her breath creating a puff in the air. “Typical.”

She didn’t sound angry, not really. But she was hopeless, listless.

“You know,” she complained, “I always thought I’d die a more romantic death than freezing in an ice cave.”

“It can still be romantic,” Blue countered. “The scenery is actually pretty good.”

“Yes, the downside is the actors,” Adele shivered. “Blue, you’re freezing. Pull a blanket out of the bag.”

Blue wrapped one around him, huddling up and rocking back and forth.

“So,” he shrugged. “Got any good ghost stories? Songs to sing? Anything to pass the time?”

Adele laughed bitterly. “You want us to die during a singsong as we freeze?”

Blue shut his eyes and found it hard to open them again.

“Can you think of a better idea?”

Adele sighed. “Alright then. Are you ok with a story you’ve heard before, little Bluebird?”

Blue nodded.

“Well then,” Adele shuddered hard and bit her tongue. “Once, in a beautiful wooded country, there lived a huntsman…”

Blue let the words roll over him as it became harder and harder to stay awake. His head drooped further and further, until Adele rolled her eyes and pulled him so that his head lay in her lap. Gently, bordering on affectionately, she ran her hands through his frosted hair while she spun the story.