Copyright © 2015 Alby Stone
Once, long ago, in a village in the marshy land between the forest and the sea, there lived a carpenter and his wife. The carpenter made his living by mending window frames and fences, and making doors and furniture. Although he was good at his trade and worked hard, the village had fallen on hard times, so the carpenter and his wife were as poor as anyone else, and poorer than some.
They did not mind being poor, though. Whatever furniture they needed the carpenter could make from wood he took from the forest trees. His wife harvested flax from the nearby marshes and spun it into linen for their clothes. She made pots and dishes from clay and fired them in a kiln she had made herself. They had a little garden in which they grew their own vegetables. And they kept chickens and goats for eggs, milk and meat, feathers to fill their pillows and quilts, and leather for shoes.
One midwinter day, the carpenter’s wife gave birth to a baby girl. The child’s eyes were bright blue and so was her skin, and when her hair grew it was as blue as the sky above, and so they called her Sky-Blue.
Years went by and Sky-Blue grew up to be a beautiful young woman. She wore linen dresses dyed blue with woad her mother picked in the marsh, little goat-skin sandals tied with strings made of wild hemp, and linen cloaks stitched with white chicken feathers to keep her warm in the winter, because she did not like being cold. All the villagers agreed she was the loveliest girl they had ever seen. And while she heard what her neighbours said, Sky-Blue was so innocent and sweet-natured that she did not let it turn her head.
Eventually the time came when tongues wagged in another direction. Sky-Blue was at the age where young women from the village and the farms round about were usually married. There were a few eligible bachelors of the right age in the village, but Sky-Blue showed no interest in any of them. She was content to help her mother make pots and dishes, spin and weave, harvest the food they grew in their garden, and milk the goats.
Then, on the eve of Sky-Blue’s nineteenth birthday, a stranger came to the village, a young tinker with a handcart filled with metal pans and bowls, knives and forks and spoons. He was not handsome, but he had a fine head of curly black hair and a merry twinkle in his eye. He set up his stall in the village square and cried his wares until the villagers came to buy what they could afford.
Along came the carpenter and his wife, with Sky-Blue at their side. She looked at the goods spread out on the stall and saw a small copper brooch in the shape of a buttercup, which the tinker had polished so it blazed a bright orange in the sunlight. ‘How much is that?’ she asked.
The tinker stared at the blue girl, his eyes wide and mouth hanging open. She was so beatiful he could hardly speak. He fell in love with her straight away. After a while he plucked up the courage to answer her. ‘Two kisses,’ he told her. ‘One now, the second at a time and place of my choosing.’
Sky-Blue considered this, and then she leaned forward and kissed the tinker on the lips. With a flourish, he presented her with the copper buttercup. When she pinned it upon her cloak, it was like the sun gleaming through a gap in a white cloud in a bright blue sky. When the real sun fell upon it, the golden flash could be seen all around, from the sea to the other side of the forest.
Sky-Blue smiled at the tinker and followed her mother and father home, taking the brooch and the tinker’s heart with her.
*
Deep in the darkest and most ancient part of the forest, the flash of sunlight reflecting from the brooch awakened something very old and very cold, something that had been asleep for a long, long time, so long and so deeply asleep that at first it was thought dead, then was quite forgotten. Angry at being wrenched from its dreams and hungry because it had not fed for more years than anyone could count, it reached out with its frosty mind to the crows and magpies and ravens as they flew, and gazed through their eyes, seeking the source of the brilliant golden glare. When it saw Sky-Blue walking home, anger fled and instead the creature was consumed with lust. ‘I must have her and I will have her!’ it cried.
*
Just after sunset, Sky-Blue was sitting with her mother, spinning flax and talking about the young tinker. Sky-Blue had been rather taken with the tinker’s twinkling brown eyes and merry smile, and she had rather enjoyed her first kiss. The carpenter was in his workshop at the back of the house, busy with a pair of clogs he was making his daughter for her birthday.
Suddenly, there was a thunderous noise as someone hammered on the front door. When Sky-Blue’s mother opened it, she fell back with a scream. The creature that stood there was tall and thin and spidery, dressed all in black, white-faced and bald and hollow-eyed. With a long, thin finger, it pointed at Sky-Blue. ‘I must have her and I will have her!’
The carpenter rushed from the back of the house, a large hammer at the ready. ‘You can’t have her and you won’t have her!’ he shouted, and fetched the creature a mighty blow on the crown of its long head. But the blow had no effect. The creature shook itself like a wet dog and laughed at him, then it gripped his face with both hands, so hard that the carpenter fell down in a swoon, his face pale with shock and sudden cold.
Sky-Blue came to the door to help her father to his feet. ‘Who are you?’ she demanded of the creature. It laughed again, a horrible cackle, and said ‘I am Ice-Cold. I must have you and I will have you!’ Then it seized her hand with its own and she was immediately chilled to the bone – to her very soul. It was the coldest thing she had ever known, colder even than the biting, wind-driven snow on the deepest midwinter night. It was the cold of the graves dug before the whole continent was covered in miles-thick ice, thousands of years before.
Sky-Blue’s teeth chattered and her knees knocked together, she was so cold. But, just as she was beginning to fear her eyeballs freezing solid and icicles forming on her nose, there was the tinker, who just happened to be passing as he searched for somewhere warm and dry to spend the night. He drew an iron hatchet from his belt and chopped off Ice-Cold’s freezing hand at the wrist. Ice-Cold screamed and sprang back, clutching the stump of its wrist. ‘I must have her and I will have her,’ it shrieked. ‘And every night until she comes to me willingly, one villager will die by my icy hand.’ With that it seemed to shrink in upon itself and flew away into the darkness like something that was half-wolf and half-bat.
‘Thank you,’ said Sky-Blue to the tinker, gazing into his twinkling eyes. ‘You have saved me from Ice-Cold. You have earned your second kiss.’
‘Not yet,’ the tinker replied. ‘This is not the time or place of my choosing.’
*
The next night, just after the church clock in the square chimed for the twelfth time, the baker was found by his wife. He was dead, frozen solid while kneading wholemeal dough for the next morning’s bread.
Sky-Blue wept when she heard the news. ‘It is because of me that the baker is dead. Ice-Cold has killed him and now we shall have no more bread. Yet I cannot give myself to Ice-Cold!’
The following night, just after the final chime of midnight, the butcher’s wife discovered her husband in his cold room, hanging upside down among the pig carcases, his face iced over, his dead eyes staring.
Sky-Blue wept bitterly when she heard the news. ‘It is because of me that the baker and the butcher are dead and now we shall have no bacon or sausages or meat pies or bread. But I must not give myself to Ice-Cold!’
The night after that, when midnight struck, the greengrocer was found with his head buried in a heap of peas and runner beans he had been washing to make them ready to put on display the next morning. The vegetables were frozen so solid that it was impossible to separate them from the body of the greengrocer.
Sky-Blue wept inconsolably when she heard the news. ‘It is because of me that the greengrocer and the butcher and the baker are dead. Now the villagers will starve. I must give myself to Ice-Cold before further misfortune befalls the village!’
When the carpenter heard his daughter’s words, his heart became heavy. He loved Sky-Blue dearly and the thought of her spending the rest of her life with Ice-Cold was unbearable. He went to the village square and sat down to smoke his pipe, a cherry wood pipe he had carved with his own hand, and think what could be done. As he sat deep in thought, the tinker came along and sat next to him. ‘I have an idea,’ the tinker said.
*
The night after the greengrocer’s death, Sky-Blue went with her father to the village square, where a great bonfire had been piled up. Just before midnight, Sky-Blue gazed up at the dark sky and called to Ice-Cold. ‘Ice-Cold, Ice-Cold – you must have me and you will have me. Come and take me and kill no more villagers!’
There was a sound like a bag filled with cats, and a patch of darkness fell from the sky and unravelled until it became the tall, thin, spidery Ice-Cold, all in black and with its white face and bald head and hollow eyes. ‘I must have you and now I have you,’ it crowed and stretched out its long, thin, spidery arm to grasp her with its remaining hand.
But before it could touch her, the carpenter spoke up. ‘If you’re to wed my daughter, you must have a dowry,’ he said.
‘A dowry?’ Ice-Cold frowned and it was like a thick cloud passing across the moon.
‘It is customary,’ said the carpenter. ‘Until the dowry is paid, the union may not be consummated. You strike me as someone who knows his history. Surely you must know this, Ice-Cold?’
‘Well, of course,’ Ice-Cold lied. For in truth, it came from a time long before dowries or even marriage were invented. ‘What do you have for me?’
‘Why, I’ve made you this fine wooden bed,’ said the carpenter, standing aside so Ice-Cold could see the long, rectangular box, carved with ornate patterns. ‘It’s just the thing for a fine gentleman like yourself. It’s my very best work. Do you like it?’
Ice-Cold peered at the box. The carvings were really very good, even it could see that. And the wood appeared to be walnut, polished so thoroughly that it seemed to be filmed with glass. ‘Yes,’ it agreed. ‘It is very good workmanship.’
‘Perhaps you’d like to try it for size?’ the carpenter suggested. ‘That way if necessary I can adjust it before you take it – and Sky-Blue – home with you.’
Ice-Cold looked at the box again. ‘I’m sure it will fit me,’ it said.
The carpenter shrugged. ‘As you wish,’ he said. ‘But it would be a great shame to drag this heavy bed all the way home with you then have to drag it all the way back if it’s too short. And it is heavy, so very heavy.’
Ice-Cold sighed like a blizzard in an empty landscape, and Sky-Blue and her father shivered. ‘Oh, alright then,’ it said – and lay down in the box and stretched out.
As soon as Ice-Cold was flat on its back, the tinker rushed out of the shadows carrying a wooden lid with wicked iron spikes protruding from one side. He and the carpenter rammed it down onto the box, and Sky-Blue sat on the lid to hold it down while her father and the tinker quickly nailed it fast. All the while, Ice-Cold was screaming horribly from inside the coffin, for that’s what it was – a hideous racket that chilled the blood of everyone for miles around. Then they placed the coffin on top of the pyre – which is what the bonfire really was – and set fire to the wood.
The villagers came out to watch Ice-Cold burn away to nothing and smiled with grim satisfaction as its horrid cries died down until there was only the crackle of burning wood and the winter wind stirring the ashes. And Sky-Blue danced around the pyre in her blue dress and feathery cloak and new wooden clogs, singing ‘You can’t have me and you won’t have me! You can’t have me and you won’t have me!’
When the sun came up and there was only a heap of smoking embers to show where Ice-Cold had met its end, the tinker took Sky-Blue’s hand and told her when he would like his second kiss. ‘The place of my choosing will be the village church; the time will be the day you become my bride.’
Sky-Blue looked into his twinkling eyes and knew she would never be cold again.