The boy and I exchanged smiles of relief.
The dark girl pulled on Rudy’s chain. “I’m gonna miss tickling you with my knife, boy,” she said. “You look so cute when you’re afraid, but never mind. I’m gonna let you go, and I want you to take this lady to the house of the Snow Queen, and you help her get him out of there. And if you run out on her, I’m going to come and find you myself. You got that?”
He nodded. “I’ll take her there.”
“Okay. I’ll get you some food.” She moved behind me with her dagger, and cut the rope that bound my wrists. Then she handed me the key to the boy’s copper neck ring, and nodded for me to unchain him. “Okay,” she hissed at us. “Get over to the fire escape. I’ll come back with the food when it’s safe for you to go. After that-anybody asks, I ain’t seen you.”
Rudy took me back to the part of town where he had been before the dark girl’s gang had captured him. “There’s an old lady here who might help,” he said. “She’s been on the street so long she knows everything.”
He led me down an alley to an old packing crate propped up against the side of a Dumpster. The sides of the crate were decorated with faded bumper stickers, and an earthenware pot of geraniums stood by the opening, which was covered with a ragged quilt. “This is her office. Well, it’s her home, too. We have to knock.”
We got down on our hands and knees to enter the tiny hovel that was home to Rudy’s friend. When my eyes adjusted to the dim light, I saw a grizzled old woman cooking fish in a pan on a camping stove. She wore a grimy Hermés scarf wrapped around her head, several layers of cast-off designer clothing, and a pair of men’s Nike running shoes.
Rudy gave the old woman a hug and immediately began to tell her the long tale about his troubles, which he apparently considered much more important than mine. At last, though, he had run out of complaints, and the woman’s sympathetic clucks were becoming more perfunctory. Then Rudy said, “And this is my friend Gerda. She got me away from the gang, but she’s looking for a guy named Kay who went off with the Snow Queen. You know what I’m saying?”
“Poor child!” said the old woman, nodding. “You still have a long way to go! You have a hundred miles to run before you reach the hill country. The Snow Queen lives up there now, and she burns blue lights every night. I will write some words for you on a paper bag, and you can take it to Finnish Mary. She never could get the hang of city life here, so she lit out for the mountains. She lives up there in an old mining ghost town now. She will advise you better than I can.”
She gave us a little of her fish, and some produce from the grocery store Dumpster, and then she scribbled some words on the paper bag, gave Rudy directions to the mining town, and sent us off to the hill country, wishing us luck in our quest.
We walked out to the big highway, and started thumbing for rides. We were able to hitchhike most of the way into the hill country, so we made it by nightfall. The evening light was soft and silvery as we walked the last couple of miles from the highway into the ruins of the old mining town. We found Finnish Mary’s shack by following the trail of wood smoke back to a crumbling hovel that was built over the basement of a demolished house. We crept into the hot dark room. Finnish Mary was huddled next to her stove. She wore an old cotton caftan over a layer of dirt. On a clothesline close to the ceiling hung bunches of dried herbs and crystals suspended from bits of fishing line. Finnish Mary was obviously into New Age arts and holistic medicine.
Rudy explained who had sent us, and handed her the paper bag bearing the message from the packing crate lady in the city. With her lips moving, Finnish Mary read the words on the paper bag three times until she knew the message by heart, and then she opened the door of the woodstove and tossed the bag into the flames. “Paper is fuel,” she grunted. “Never waste anything.”
We nodded politely.
“Talk,” she said.
Rudy told her his story first, and then mine, and Finnish Mary smiled a little but she didn’t interrupt or ask a single question. When Rudy had finished explaining, he said, “This is a dangerous job. Is there some kind of herbal medicine or maybe a crystal that you could give Gerda to help her? Maybe something to make her stronger in case she has to fight her way into the Snow Queen’s estate? I figure she needs to be about as strong as twelve men to get her friend out of there.”
Finnish Mary smiled up at him. “The strength of twelve men. That would not be of much use!” She took a parchment scroll down from a dusty shelf near the door, and read it silently, while beads of sweat ran down her forehead. We edged away from the woodstove, but it wasn’t much cooler anywhere else in the shack. We waited.
Finally she said, “The Snow Queen isn’t home right now. She’s gone south to make another delivery of the white powder. Probably took most of her guards with her. So you won’t have much trouble getting up there, but getting what you want is something else again. Kay is going to stay with the Snow Queen because he’s hooked. He’s got that mirror crack inside him, and as long as he’s into that, then he will never feel like a human being again, and the Snow Queen will always have him in her power.”
“Right. That’s clear enough. What I’m saying to you is, can you give the girl something so that she can cut him loose from the habit? Some kind of potion that will break the spell, you know-”
Finnish Mary shrugged. “I can’t give her any power greater than what she already has. It takes love to break a spell like the Snow Queen’s. And sometimes even that won’t do it. Gerda has to get into that house, and then try to get Kay to see what he’s doing to himself. If that doesn’t work, there’s nothing else that you or I can do to help her. Here’s what you do, boy: walk Gerda down the road until you come to the iron fence. That’s the garden of the Snow Queen’s estate. Leave her by the bush with the red berries on it. You going in with her?”
“Me? No!” Rudy’s voice trembled, and for the first time I could see how afraid he was. It had taken all his courage to get me this far. “The Snow Queen may be gone, but who knows how they’ve booby-trapped that compound! I already lost one fight with a gang like hers. I’m playing it safe for the immediate future.”
“You don’t have to go with me,” I told him. “I’m in this alone.”
“Then leave her at that berry bush, and get back here fast, before anybody sees you. I’ll come outside with you and show you the way.”
It was nearly dark by the time we started on the dirt road that led up into the hills. I could see blue lights up ahead of us, and I knew that we were going in the right direction. I was a bit afraid of the Snow Queen and the guards that she might have around her estate, but I had come so far that I was eager now to reach journey’s end, and to find Kay at last. I didn’t know if I could save him, but I wasn’t going back without trying.
Rudy walked with me as far as the berry bush beside the wrought iron fence. He kissed me on the cheek, but before I could thank him, he turned and began to run back down the hill toward Finnish Mary’s ghost town. I was alone.
As I slipped between the bars of the iron fence and began to creep toward a thicket of shrubs, I noticed that it had begun to snow-a welcome change to me from the hot dusty city down on the plains. Maybe the snow helped me get past the Snow Queen’s guards, too. As the wind picked up, it became darker and colder, not a night to be out patrolling a peaceful compound. I decided that they didn’t get too many visitors in this remote mountain outpost. Or maybe there weren’t any guards. Maybe they all went with her, for I sensed from the silent, dimly lit grounds that Finnish Mary had been telling the truth. The Snow Queen was not at home.