HEART OF ICE

CHRISTOPHER'S INTRO

My name is Christopher Nicholas. I'm one of those weird kids with two first names. But that's not the thing you'll remember most about me. I'm not exactly your average teenager. Just before my sixteenth birthday, I found out that I'm the heir to the legend that is Santa Claus. Yes, the Santa Claus. The jolly, old, fat guy in the red suit that supposedly goes down the chimneys of kids houses every Christmas Eve to leave presents under decorated Christmas trees and then devour a plateful of cookies drowned by a glass of room temperature milk.

It seems laughable, I know. Especially because none of that is true. That's not how Santa works at all. Trust me. I've had the crash course in Santa basics-and I mean that almost literally. There's no sliding down chimneys. Instead, there's this magic chalk that lets you link from any blank wall to any door you can imagine. Though, it helps to have a clear mind otherwise the door you open may not be one you were expecting. There's even different colors and kinds of the magic chalk that open and create different kinds of doors. As Claus, I was given a stick of dark red chalk: hearthfire chalk. It's this crazy chalk that lets Santa pass through any fireplace-or wall-that may stand between him and his appointed Christmas rounds.

The whole thing about cruising the December sky in a magic sleigh with flying reindeer...well, so far I have to say no on that one, too. I've only been in one sleigh so far. It wasn't magical and I wouldn't exactly claim it flew. More like plummeted is how I would describe its path through the air. The cargo plane it fell out of was definitely flying. Well, at least until the fight with the Russian mobster and his big henchmen. Then, one of the airplane's engines caught on fire and...yeah. As for the flying reindeer, I've barely seen live regular deer in my life, let alone any flying ones. Fast ones, maybe? As in super-sonic reindeer? I should get back to that another time. There's a lot more to tell first.

I did deliver some gifts, but not to every child in the world. It turns out that is also not really part of being Santa Claus. The gifts Santa gives are not always toys or bikes or video game consoles. Sometimes, they aren't even physical gifts. In fact, as I've come to learn, those typical kinds of gifts you might expect from Santa are the rarest of all.

As it turns out, Santa is a whole lot more than what the cartoons, movies, soda cans, and story books make him out to be. He's more than a delivery man for the nearest toy department. His meaning is far grander. His purpose is far more important. Everything I've seen so far, everything I've learned and everything I've experienced tells me that's true. Knowing and understanding the meaning of Santa Claus has become easy. He's a symbol of good and hope in dark times and dark places and against dark forces. Santa's presence in a place is meant to inspire belief-in one's self and in something greater than you might have ever known. The menacing, and seemingly unstoppable, force of evil known as Legion had tried to squash out that belief. Breaking down their walls and cracking open their manipulating and powerful shadows required believing that I and my new friends were not as weak and helpless as they wanted us to think. Taking down a powerful foe can be an impossible task. The whole world can seem against you. But I've come to believe that the impossible is almost always, somehow, possible.

Like, for example, the seemingly impossible situation of outrunning a hungry, bloodthirsty yeti that's twice as tall as me and at least three times as strong. Add to that the recently learned knowledge that yetis tend to hunt in packs, they are extremely territorial, and they don't give up a good chase easily, especially when they can smell the blood from your wounds in the air and see it in the snow. Oh, and their pursuit of you is happening on the frozen side of a really tall mountain!

Getting out of this seems impossible, right? So far...absolutely.

I've already been running for a few minutes. I don't know how long. At first, I thought I had lost them. There's something about their bodies, the way they are lots of thick, smelly fur, heavy jaws of razor sharp teeth, and knife-like claws on big, meaty hands, that I can't sense in my mind like other animals and people. Maybe it's this place more than the snow-colored monsters. I don't understand it. It looks like any random mountain in the world you and I might know pretty well. Gasping for breath in the thin air, I glance back at my tracks in the snow. I've stumbled down another embankment into a shallow, rocky gully. My skin is cold. It burns where the snow covers the hot, red scratches on my arms, back, and face.

The air above the boulder-lined slope quakes and rumbles with the sound of the white-haired monsters. The noise is softer than it has been. They're not close. Not yet. I slump against a tree behind me, its rough bark biting at my damp shirt as I slouch down, too exhausted to move anymore. I have to, though. I have to keep going. I have to find my way back. This place is not home. It's not any mountainside in the world we know. The tree, the dense tower of coarse wood and piney branches is not even on Earth. This is a world next to ours.

I wasn't supposed to be here yet. I had to come, though. Crossing the boundary was like walking through or a doorway, or going under a bridge, or wading through a river. If you didn't know where you were going, you'd never know you entered a whole other realm of existence. You see, this isn't the beginning of my story. So much has happened already. I need to take you back in time, to how I ended up half-frozen and bleeding on the side of a mountain in another world.

I have to take you back eleven months. It was a long series of events that began with an old elf on a long journey, a girl quietly overlooking a river, and a mysterious boy watching her from the other side.

I'm so excited you read this part!  I hope you liked it.  If you did, please be sure to vote!  And, if you can, please comment.  I'd love to hear from you!  Thank you, so much!