The Frostmothers Chapter 1

Chapter One
When I pushed the blankets on my bed off one morning, I felt a chill hit me, and looked out the window.

Everything was blanketed with at least three inches of snow, a sign that today would be interesting.

I got out of bed, dressed in a red waffle shirt and gray sweatpants, ate breakfast, put on my snowgear, and headed outside.

The snow covered everything, from the trees to the porch to the yard in front of me. 

Our yard wasn’t very big, but it had two trees and a spindly dogwood bush that never got any bigger. 

I crunched through the snow, pushing it down and out of my way, and decided to dig down through the snow to see how deep it really was.

I pulled out my ruler and started to push snow away from the area I had chosen to make my hole in.

The snow persisted, making my arms ache with soreness, until I really looked at my hole.

It went as deep at my arms, deeper than the snow, definitely. 

I was confused - I had been walking on the snow, I was sitting on it right now, but if I dug where I was sitting, I found the ground about - I measured - three inches deep.

I stuck my face into the hole. Probably not the smartest move, I know, but I wanted to try something.

“Um,” I called into the hole, “anyone there?” It echoed like I was standing at the entrance of a giant cave, with many passages all leading to darkness.

“That’s weird,” I said, pulling my head up from the mouth of the hole. 

Then I put my face down to the hole again. 

I shouted different things into the hole for a few minutes, then I thought of something.

What if this strange, uncanny hole led to…. I almost wouldn't think about it, afraid to get my hopes up. What if it led to another world?

I considered this, then decided it was very unlikely. Still, I tried shouting passwords from some of my favorite books and TV shows down the hole: “Open sesame! Abracadabra! Eternia! Pig snout!” but to no avail.

Then suddenly, I remembered the story of the Frostmothers. I didn’t know why, it just popped into my head. 

The Frostmothers were like frostkissed angels, who built sculptures out of snow and encased souls into them, then after a few days, destroyed them in specific ways to set the soul free. 

If the soul was to become a Snowflake, a peasant or servant of the Frostmothers and their god, the Frost God, they would pull, claw, push, crush it any way possible. It just had to get out and begin work. 

If the soul was to become a future Frostmother, they would stick their fingers into it and pull it apart from the inside. They never felt the cold on their fingers when they did this, they were the cold.

But if they deemed the soul unworthy, felt evil or blandness inside it, then they would dance upon it, crushing it with their tiny, frozen feet and send the soul to become a human, animal, or simply send it to hell, with demons and fire. 

It was a terrible fate, but it happened often.

Each Frostmother was swirled out of the snow fully grown at the first snowfall of each year. There were one or two Frostmothers for each town in the world, creating as many sculptures as they could before winter ended. 

Once they had created as many sculptures as they could, blessed them with a lick or a kiss, and destroyed them each day, they would whisper to the sky, “Wintermother, take me home,” and be swept away into the clouds heavy with the next snowfall. 

This I all remembered my grandmother and mother after her telling me, in front of the fireplace, warming up after a long day of sledding or snowman-building or long, crunching walks as I sat before the hole.

What if I try the Frostmothers’ password?

I considered it. It was unlikely that this hole was actually magical, and I wasn't a Frostmother, so it was very unlikely that it would work. 

But I wanted to try it anyway. 

I didn’t put my face into the hole this time, but instead sat in front of it and tried to direct my mind into the hole somehow as best I could. 

Then I whispered the words that would change everything.

“Wintermother, take me home.”