Whatever After #6: Cold as Ice by Sarah Mlynowski

Didn’t you pack carrots? To eat?”
    “I did!” she exclaims. She reaches into the bag and pulls out a bag of carrots. “Perfect. We’ll wear our snacks.”
    “How are we going to attach them to our faces? I don’t think the tape will hold them up.”
    Sharon sticks one up her nose. “Like this?”
    “Ew!” I yell, but I can’t help laughing.
    She snorts, and the carrot falls out. “Maybe not.”
    “I hope you’re not going to eat that now,” I say.
    She looks at it with longing. “I’m actually pretty hungry. I never got my bagel and cream cheese.”
    “What if we just put the carrots in our mouths?” I ask. “Not the gross one, but one of the others. There are so many snowmen, the Snow Queen won’t look at us that closely. I’ll even tape a mustache to my chin!”
    “Perfect.”
    We grab some branches to use as fake hands, and finally, we’re ready. We step out from behind the pine tree and march toward the igloo castle.

I t’s beautiful,” Sharon whispers as we step through the arched entranceway. “It’s the most beautiful place I’ve ever seen.”
    Once inside, it is kind of nice. If you like white. Because there is a lot of white. I would not want to drink anything around here that stains. Like grape or cranberry juice. Although, if it’s all made of snow and ice, it’s probably not that hard to clean. You just scrape.
    The main floor seems huge. There are tons of ice corridors leading off in the distance. Off to the side, I see a dining room with an ice table and ice chairs. Off to the other side, I see an ice couch. That does not look very comfortable.
    The floor is hard and I feel like I’m stepping on packed snow. It’s a little slippery, though. It doesn’t help that I’m wearing one boot.
    Ice columns are everywhere. There’s even an ice mantel. On top of it is some sort of broken mirror. Actually, it looks like a mirror that was broken and then glued back together to make a mosaic. It’s about twice my size. I wonder if that has something to do with the creepy troll mirror from the original story?
    “I’d sleep amazingly here,” Sharon says. “It’s so cold.”
    “I would not sleep well at all,” I admit. There are not enough fuzzy socks in the world to keep my toes warm.
    “I wonder what the Snow Queen is like,” Sharon says.
    “I’m really hoping you’re not going to meet her now,” I say.
    We creep a few feet more into the house. A snow staircase is up ahead. That must be what leads to the roof.
    “So what’s our plan to defrost them?” Sharon asks.
    “I read, um, somewhere that crying is the key. It melts the ice.”
    “Us crying or them crying?”
    “Both.” In the original story, Gerda shows up, hugs Kai, and starts to cry. Her tears seep onto Kai, melting the block of ice in his heart. Then he starts to cry and melts the rest.
    “Do you have any onions in your duffel?” I ask Sharon.
    “Yuck. Who eats plain onions? That’s disgusting.”
    “They’re not that bad,” I say, remembering that I had to eat them during my last fairy-tale trip.
    Sharon skids on the ice and then steadies herself. “I guess I can always pinch you to make you cry.”
    Maybe that will be our last resort.
    Quietly and carefully, very carefully, we begin to climb the icy staircase. At the top, we see a hatch that’s already opened. I step out onto the roof.
    Gerda, Jonah, and Kai are all building snowmen beside a frozen Prince.
    “Jonah!” I call in a loud whisper.
    He looks up at the sound of his name, stares at me for a split second, and then looks away.
    “He doesn’t recognize you,” Sharon says.
    “I am dressed as a snowman,” I say. I take a step closer to him. “Jonah! Jonah, it’s me! Abby!”
    The truth is that even though I knew he was in a trance, I didn’t really think he wouldn’t recognize me. How could he not?
    Jonah looks back up at me. Our eyes connect. Instead of the usual black pupil in the middle of his familiar eyes, Jonah’s eyes are