The Ice Castle

How, why, when or where would the next magical transformation be dreamed up, and by who?

Contest Prompt

"The Writer's Cramp" Write a story or poem in which a mountain village wakes up to find that overnight, the season's first snow has fallen in strange, perfect shapes — spirals, symbols, and patterns no one can explain. A child claims the snow is trying to tell them something. What happens?

In the beginning no-one believed but me. The evidence was there but it was weak and simple, childlike in shape and appearance, but then I was only five.

Everyone dreams, not all remember. What I dreamed grew shadows in reality only I could see when I woke. They never stayed long, melting into gray formless smoke, then nothing at all.

What did they look like? When I dreamed of flying in the night sky, what was revealed to my awakening, sleep filled eyes were stars, round planets, moons, and the vague shape of constellations. You know, like the Big Bear, Little Bear, Big Dog, Little Dog, Lion, Bull, and once a Scorpion.”

It was great fun. I wasn’t afraid of the dark. I longed for it. I practiced.

It became a game in my mind. You probably experienced something like it while laying on summer grass, looking up into clouds floating by, and seeing shapes forming in front of your eyes.

It was like that. My dad told me to quit imagining things. My mom laughed at my artistic frame of mind. She bought me a paint set and encouraged me to draw and add color to the visions I behold, so she could see them better.

It spooked my teachers, these drawings I did, these sky blown hidden forms of life embedded within storms, fog and clouds.

We had to move. Kids were bullying me. Others wouldn’t leave me alone. By this time, I’d managed to create the shapes in more than shadow form. They were cold, white as snow, hard as ice, and melted in our hands, but they were dream-like effigies made real. Hypnotic like in appearance. It was like looking at melting water and seeing magical reflections of wishes yet made to be. We all could do it.

Their parents accused me of corrupting their kids' minds. Letters attached to rocks were thrown through our windows. It was not a fun time, but my childish mind could not stop playing, so we moved.

Samantra is a small mountain village so distant from all else, it exists in a form of vacuum, sheltered from all the business of big city life. For a time, the newness of this place calmed my need, until the first snow.

It was a blizzard unequaled in power. Swirls of snow danced in the wind. Ice grew like silver skin over many a rusted old leftover. I was enthralled. When it was time for me to go to bed, my dreams soared, flew with the wind, reached down and touched snow and ice covered earth.

The shapes were simple, then turned into geometric progression, snow and ice castles formed in a wonderland city never seen before. Snow sculptured creatures froze in their tracks along the brick paved streets.

I was shaken awake by my mother. “Come,” was the only word she said. There at the entrance to my magical playground was an arched passageway with my name scrawled in ice upon it. No-one could explain what had happened overnight.

She and my father had told about my talent when asked by our neighbors. In an instant our family turned from foreign strangers, to honored guests welcomed in any home.

There was such an awe in my transformation that we were treated with the utmost respect. Some families actually moved into the new quarters. The rooms in the castles turned out to be warm as igloo’s the Eskimo’s use.

They were shy in asking why and how, where, or when something new might appear. It was enough just to have.

I asked those questions of myself, what were my snow and ice images trying to tell me, my parents, or them?

The answer came the following night.

Our nearest neighbor’s old wooden and rock home had caught fire from blown fireplace embers, destroying much of the structure. They asked if it would be alright to make a new home within the nearest castle.

The next morning all the villagers were agog, standing around the newly formed neighbors home, made better than it’s past.

I had taken their feeling of loss and need, turned it into a magical welcome. They knew the source had been me. My eyes were sunken and red rimmed. I looked half myself. I was the villagers used up treasure, to be treated with utmost care.

My childlike visions had proven my intent, to offer help where it was most needed, but it came with a terrible cost.

The secret has been kept enshrined in fable and lore, taken out only when the utmost emergency requires redeeming, and then only if I reassure it won’t be too much for me.

Others have tried to follow my path. Most have been successful. Their dreams may take longer to mature into something useful, but all find solace in tried and true discovery.

It is a lesson for the ages that no-one should ignore.

Wc 820