The Winter Riddle Read online

  The Winter Riddle

  Sam Hooker

  This Book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, duplicated, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior written consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

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  ISBN Print: 978-1-7324007-0-2

  ISBN Ebook: 978-1-7324007-1-9

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  Cover design by Najla Qamber

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  Cover Illustration by Dragan Paunovic

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  Edited by Melissa Ringsted

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  Interior design layout by Rebecca Poole

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  Black Spot Books

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  All rights reserved.

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  This is a work of fiction. All characters and events portrayed in this novel are fictitious and are products of the author’s imagination and any resemblance to actual events, or locales or persons, living or dead are entirely coincidental.

  For Shelly. If each heart sings a single note, yours is the perfect harmony to mine. May we bask in our song from now until forever.

  Contents

  Acknowledgments

  Preface

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Afterword

  About the Author

  Acknowledgments

  I don’t know many authors who’ve gotten a second chance at their first novel. I am beyond grateful to each and every one of the immensely talented people who have applied their crafts to this book. They are the difference between a good manuscript and a book worth publishing.

  This book would be an utter mess without the brilliant staff at Black Spot Books. Melissa Ringsted, Najla Qamber, and Rebecca Poole did phenomenal work on the editing, cover, and layout respectively. Lindy Ryan, publisher and trusted friend, has set our course and navigated us through the torrential waters of marketing, printing, distribution, and more with great success.

  To my mother-in-law, Dee Dee, for her endless support, and for watching Jack so I could get some work done. She’s babysitting as I write this, in fact.

  To my parents, David and Ann, for seeing to it that I contracted some sort of literary madness at a young age.

  To my beautiful and charming wife, Shelly. Had she not thrice winked at me, we would not be where we are today.

  And, last but not least, to Jack. Naps are for suckers, am I right, son number one?

  Preface

  I’ve always been fascinated by the North Pole. I wanted to live there when I was a kid so I could be Santa’s neighbor. That desire never changed, but I’ve been soundly outvoted by my wife and son who prefer the climate of southern California for some reason.

  The working title for this book was Santa vs. the Frost Giants. I’d always thought that there was more to old Saint Nick, and every Yuletide season I’d indulge in flights of fantasy. Where was he from? Could he have been so jolly if he’d never known sorrow?

  I decided that this story was going to be the one. The first novel that I would see through to the end. Sure, the dozen or so novels lying unfinished in my drawer had each been the one in their day, but this time I meant it. Sure, I’d meant it before, but … oh, shut up.

  Try as I might, I just couldn’t make a main character of Santa and maintain his mystery. I have too much awe and admiration for the old man to lay him bare, so I searched the story for a character who could weather the scrutiny. Volgha was clearly the best choice, but a little bit too close to home. I’d based her loosely on myself, and I felt a particular connection with her. Spilling her secrets was essentially the same as spilling my own.

  That was the realization that clinched it. The thing that makes a story worth telling is truth. The author’s truth. If this was going to be the one, the first novel I finished and one of which I could be proud, it had to be her. It had to be Volgha.

  And so, because we hurt the ones we love, I’ve dragged Volgha out of her comfort zone and forced her to deal with every nightmarish situation that could befall an introvert for a few hundred pages. For your amusement. Enjoy!

  1

  Most southerners alive today have never heard of the Kingdom of Aurora, especially if one permits the people of that kingdom to define the term “southerner.” Given that Aurora was built almost exactly atop the North Pole, they use the term to mean “everyone not from the Kingdom of Aurora.” They also extend it to any native Aurorian who won’t shut up about how cold it is. Use of the term in this context is understood to be pejorative.

  It shall be accepted as fact that the royal family ruled over Aurora from Castle Borealis since time immemorial, given that no credible evidence to the contrary exists. From the parapets of the castle’s impossibly tall and permafrosted towers, one could gaze out over the little villages and fiefdoms nestled into the snowy pine forests, stretching off into the horizon.

  Likewise, anyone standing in one of the aforementioned villages and fiefdoms could look up at the impossibly tall towers of Castle Borealis, and think … well, whatever they wanted.

  “Those towers are impossibly tall,” an average Aurorian subject might think.

  “The people who run that place are absolutely nuts,” another might think, though he’d do best to leave that thought locked inside his head. If it escaped within range of the wrong ears, the royal family might have the aforementioned head removed and examined, just to be sure that no further heresies lay within it.

  “I can’t see it right now because it’s too dark.” While stating obvious truths has never made anyone popular or rich, it would be accurate for several of what we know as “months” out of every year.

  At the North Pole, one day and night take place over the course of one year. The sun rises in late March, kicking off the spring. It continues moving upward until the summer solstice, and then starts working its way downward until it sets in early November, ringing in the long dark night of winter.

  It should be noted that while there is a summer season, it is generally only included for the sake of tradition. The “summer” part of the year is only slightly less snowy than the other seasons, and anyone seen wearing a bikini is forced to undergo a full psychiatric evaluation.

  Other than perpetual snow and the passage of a single day per year, the subjects of the Kingdom of Aurora had everything in common with the subjects of southern kingdoms, especially if the monarchs of those kingdoms happened to be stark raving lunatics.

  All of the Aurorian monarchs throughout the history of the kingdom have called themselves the White King or Queen, generally in step with the standard definitions of gender, but there were exceptions. Monarchs get to do what they want.

  The title came about because the first of their line was said to rule over everything that had snow on it. The first White Queen had been a great warrior and military s
trategist. Back in those days, the land was just silly with foreign powers who were all too happy to go to war with Aurora; but one by one they fell, until only the Vikings of Midgard might have taken up arms and marched on Aurora, but they never did. For reasons known only to the leaders of the two great powers, there was a lasting peace between them that hadn’t been broken in hundreds of years.

  In those centuries of peace, the need for the White Kings and Queens of Aurora to be great warriors waned, and they became more and more decadent, though “decadent” in this case is simply a polite way of saying that they went entirely mad. Of course, they had money, and rich people become eccentric in lieu of going mad. In the case of the White Kings and Queens of Aurora, the vastness of their wealth qualified them to identify as delightfully eccentric, which took the edge off of labels that might have been more accurate, such as sadist, tyrant, or despot.

  At best, they might have smiled upon being referred to as libertines, then quietly had the referrer dragged off to the lower dungeons. People needed to be dragged down there from time to time anyway, according to the Aurorian monarchs. Very effective tool for keeping everyone on their toes—literally, for those having been dragged and subsequently chained to a wall, and figuratively for any bystanders on the verge of getting the wrong idea about their social standing.

  Not so very long ago, the White King and Queen were a particularly ridiculous pair of libertines named Roderick and Beatrice. They spent most of their time drinking, gossip-mongering at court, and having people dragged off to the lower dungeons for gossiping either too well or too poorly. Back in those days, the art of being just good enough at gossiping was one of the most popular programs at the universities where nobles and aristocrats sent their children.

  Between rounds of gossip, King Roderick and Queen Beatrice occasionally remembered that they had two daughters: the Princesses Alexia and Volgha. Alexia was the kind of girl who was hard to forget, though anyone who met her would certainly want to, as quickly as possible, and at any expense. She was well-versed in the art of screaming bloody murder upon not getting whatever she wanted from her parents, and she’d never had a mild reaction to anything in her life—much like the average teenager, only she’d managed it practically from birth.

  Volgha was very different. Different from her sister, but also the sort of person who was referred to as “different” by people who were too polite—or afraid—to call her weird. She would have done well in a gaggle of teenagers who wore lots of eyeliner and took strolls through graveyards and said things like “woe is me” a lot, only she found that sort of teenager to be utterly ridiculous. At least she shared their complete lack of self-awareness.

  While Alexia only communicated at the top of her lungs, Volgha was a mumbler and a glarer. She was the only member of the royal family who didn’t care for the adoration of other people; in fact, she preferred to be left alone entirely.

  There was one person whose company she didn’t mind, and that was Osgrey. He was the court wizard, or at least that was the office that he held. Osgrey was actually a druid, not that it mattered to the ridiculous White King and Queen. He could have been nothing more than a moderately skilled juggler, and they’d have been impressed. Or not, depending on their mood, but Osgrey was consistently able to refrain from being dragged off to the dungeons. That skill alone qualified as magic in the minds of most people who knew the king and queen.

  Osgrey worked with the royal gardener to keep the castle’s winter garden teeming with vibrant colors. Strange and wonderful flowers, berries, foliage and trees grew together in great clumps and rows, weaving a wonderland of delights undreamed of in all the world. It was Volgha’s favorite place in the castle. She’d spend hours there, finding little alcoves in which to lurk, or begging Osgrey to tell her the stories of all of the plants—where they came from, which ones could kill you, or which ones made the best potions.

  He talked to trees. It seemed as though they talked back to him, but Volgha could never hear what they were saying. He grew colorful fungi on the brim of his pointy hat, and he was friends with a snow lion named Sigmund. Sigmund was all white, except for his piercing blue eyes. Volgha wasn’t exactly afraid of Sigmund, but she worked hard at presenting herself as being poor for digestion whenever he was around.

  Osgrey encouraged Volgha’s love for all things natural and supernatural. She’d spend hours leafing through the Witches’ Grimoire in the impossibly tall wizard’s tower. He’d promised to teach her how to summon a familiar, an animal companion that could help her with some of the more powerful spells, as soon as she was old enough. Volgha was enraptured with the idea, and spent a lot of time learning about animals, figuring out which ones would make the best companions.

  Both Volgha and Alexia grew up—as girls are wont to do—to become highly opinionated women. They were other things besides opinionated as well, but most of the adjectives that could have been applied to Alexia are very impolite.

  Alexia was the apple of their parents’ eyes, a spitting image of their mother as well as an impressive spitter. They’d always thought that Volgha would come around, join them in debauchery and gossip, but she never did. She fell in love with the mysteries of nature and learned all that she could from Osgrey.

  That wasn’t to say that Volgha didn’t love her parents. She loved them very much, and cried when their mother passed away. Queen Beatrice expired of excess during a masquerade ball, in the course of scientifically proving how much wine was too much. Volgha cried, though she didn’t cry as much as Alexia, who looked on that sort of thing as a competition. Alexia had stamina, and she played to win.

  It wasn’t long after their mother’s death that their father succumbed to the same scientific experiment that claimed their mother, and all eyes turned to Alexia and Volgha to see which of them would take up the White Crown of Aurora. Volgha cried again, though Alexia gave mourning a miss and launched herself whole-heartedly into pestering Lord Chamberlain, the late king and queen’s most trusted advisor, to read the royal will.

  As expected, the crown passed to Alexia. She was the older daughter, and she had her parents’ temperament. King Roderick had often implored Volgha to have a few bottles of wine and relax, but she’d been obstinate. He and Queen Beatrice acted as though their feelings were hurt, insisting in a very pouty and churlish way that she loved dusty old books and not them. It was this sort of talk that had made Volgha very skilled at rolling her eyes as a teenager.

  After Alexia had taken the throne, things started to change. Anyone who’d ever slighted her—including many people whom she’d never met, but looked similar to people who’d slighted her … well, not slighted per se, but certainly hadn’t been first to wish her a happy birthday—wound up in the dungeons. One of them had been the royal gardener, who’d been given no warning that the new Her Majesty required a hedge maze in the shape of her favorite pony, but was punished for failing to provide one all the same. Ignorance is no excuse, according to Her Majesty.

  Volgha was angry that the royal gardens were left to wither with the lack of care. That anger aided her in moving right along to fury when Alexia tried to imprison Osgrey, though he escaped and fled the castle. He’d left without saying good-bye to Volgha, and while she’d understood that he didn’t have a choice, it made her very sad. She hoped to find him again someday.

  The post of court wizard was given to an old necromancer by the name of Ghasterly. He smelled like death, always wore black, and snarled from beneath his long, black beard as he glared at Volgha. His first act as court wizard was to forbid Volgha from ever entering the wizard’s tower again.

  It’s hard to tell whether he did it just to be mean, or simply because that’s the way necromancers are. Magic, to them, is a powerful secret to be hoarded as jealously as possible from everyone. Druids and witches held a very different view: that magic is a powerful secret to be hoarded as jealously as possible, with the strict exception of the one or two people you really like. Druids and witches
tended to be introverts.

  How dare he ban her from the tower? Volgha was a member of the royal family! But Ghasterly had convinced Alexia that it was for her own safety, and wouldn’t Her Majesty prefer it if her sister lightened up? Forgot all about this magic business, put on a fancy dress, and drank until everyone else had passed out but the two of them, and then passed out just before Her Majesty did, making Her Majesty the winner?

  Fortunately for Volgha, Ghasterly never changed the enchantments that kept people out of the tower, and so she was able to sneak in one last time and steal the Witches’ Grimoire and a few other books, namely the ones having to do with the Witching Way. She doubted he’d even notice that they were gone. All the same, she kept them hidden at the bottom of her underwear drawer. He’d have a lot of explaining to do if he’d been caught looking for them there.

  As time went on, life at the castle grew more and more intolerable for Volgha. Ghasterly convinced Alexia that Volgha wanted the crown for herself, and she insisted that Volgha formally renounce her royal status to secure her rule. Volgha had never cared about ruling the kingdom, though nothing she said could convince Alexia. She ultimately relented and renounced her title, taking as a consolation prize the title of “Winter Witch.” It didn’t really mean anything, but according to the Grimoire, witches rely quite heavily on mystery and intimidation. A name like “Volgha, the Winter Witch” would carry a lot more weight if it were backed by the crown, and was frankly much better suited to her than “Princess Volgha, a Witch.” With nothing remaining to tie her to the castle, she left quietly one evening, under cover of darkness at the winter solstice.