Frostbitten Past

I V

 SCHOOL WAS bleak as Andorra moved through the halls. Her mind was blank and her body was nearly unresponsive; the effect of no sleep. She couldn't help it though, because the creature from the road was plaguing and haunting every thought that passed through her mind.

Even worse, when Andorra reached her locker that morning, she stared dumbfounded at the words scratched into the metal. GO HOME.

They stared back at her, angry and large, and her mouth went bone dry. She floundered for a moment, trying to figure out who would write that on her locker. Tried to figure out why someone would write that. To Andorra's knowledge, no one hated her.

She heard the snickering behind her back. Stiffened as she realized someone was laughing at her. When she turned her head, she wasn't surprised to see Shaniah standing there amongst a group of friends. Her smile was a little too cruel for a Friday morning.

Andorra didn't know what to say. She turned back around, nearly pressing her face against the locker, tears gathering in her eyes. It wasn't enough that she had been hauled away from her home weeks after her birthday. It wasn't enough that she hated living in Maine. No, now she had to be tormented by her peers?

"Hey, what's going on?" Kyle took one look at her locker, then turned to face Shaniah. "Did you do this?"

Shaniah's laughter was sharp. "No. But whoever did it is hilarious."

Hilarious wasn't quite the word Andorra would use to describe what had happened. She twisted her lock with shaky hands, and then finally pried open her locker door. She forced herself not to look at Shaniah as she put her bag away. If she didn't say anything, would they leave her alone?

"Shaniah," came Kyle's disappointed tone. "C'mon. This isn't funny."

"I didn't know you were such a fan of the new girl. Kinda desperate, isn't it?"

Andorra wanted to disappear. She closed her eyes and chanted in her mind, let me be invisible. Let me be invisible. Let me be invisible.

It didn't work. When she closed her locker door, they were all still watching her. Andorra opened her mouth to say something, anything, but what came out instead was a scream. The walls behind Shaniah and Kyle were beginning to melt.

Panic seized her as everything began to melt, dripping down into the floor. The floor too was melting, swirling around her beat up chucks, and she felt frozen, her back pressing against the cold of her locker until that too began to melt away.

Eyes wide, she looked at Kyle for help, but his face too was melting, dripping down his face as his eyes seemed to sink into his skin and began to slide down his face.

A scream was trapped in her throat as she stumbled back, nearly slipping into the walls around her. She felt terrified as the walls gripped onto her, wrapping around her arms and pulling her into the melted mess. She felt herself sinking into the wall, disappearing from view. She felt her mouth opening for a scream, and she felt helpless and defenseless.

This isn't real! This isn't real!

It certainly felt real. She fell backwards, the school hallway completely gone. She fell through melted liquid, sunk deep deep deep into whatever Hell she had entered.

Her back hit the ground. She let out a gasp, air knocked from her lungs, eyes opening at the impact. She stared straight ahead, up at the sky, and was shocked at what she found there. Or rather, what she was listening to there.

"There's no way. No way I am to marry her!"

"You would turn her away? What will the people think?"

Andorra sat up, realizing that she was no longer in the school at all. No, she now sat on the ground, right beneath the window of a house. But the more she looked around, the more she realized that this wasn't a house at all, but a stable.

She didn't move. She held her breath as the words inside of the stable continued.

"The people would think I was mad for marrying a commoner. I am King. How could I marry a lowly girl from the slums? It doesn't matter what happened at the Festival of Stars. I am not making her Queen."

"I think you're making a mistake, King Lark."

Andorra looked down at her lap, startling when she saw that instead of the jeans she had worn to school, she was now adorned in a dress. When she looked at her hands, pale fingers twisted in her skirts, so unlike her own tan skin.

She reached up to feel her hair, unbinding a strand from the braid she currently wore. Her fingers trembled at the sight of hair that did not match her own golden blonde.

She wasn't herself. She was someone else, somewhere else.

Was it a dream? A nightmare? Had she slipped into someone else's reality?

"You do not tell me I make mistakes. I am King. And no commonor will become Queen. I will never allow it."

There was the cry of a creature inside of the stable. Andorra was shocked to find it was not the whinny of a horse. She heard the creature move towards the exit, around the other side of the stable. Andorra didn't dare move an inch, even when she heard the creature let out a long scream into the night.

She heard it then, the beating of wings. Drowned out by the sound, Andorra scurried to the side of the stable, eyes widening at the sight in front of her. She shook her head, refusing to believe what she saw.

A dragon. Maybe not a dragon? A dragon-like creature with two legs hopped forward, a man on its back. King Lark, she realized with a start when she saw his crown and his thick cape. He was much older than she was, perhaps in his late thirties.

He didn't see her there as he took to the skies. But the man he was speaking to saw her as he left the stable. His eyes grew wide when he caught her there. Andorra didn't move as the man crouched down to her level, an apology in his eyes.

"Maia, what are you doing here? I told you not to return. Come, I'll call for your carriage."

Andorra stood as soon as the man did before her. Maia? She thought to herself. One look at the man before her told Andorra enough: this wasn't the twenty-first century. He was wearing old regency clothing. And when Andorra looked down at herself, she too wasn't wearing anything you would find in a shopping mall.

Had she gone into the past? Was she going crazy?

She didn't really have a chance to dwell on it. She felt something grab her hand, yanking her free of whatever hallucination she was having. Yanking her free of her confinements, and suddenly she was falling into the arms of someone.

As she stumbled, she realized that everything around her was intact - no melting walls, no melted floors, and even Kyle looked normal. She was back at school, in her normal clothes. No two legged dragons, no Kings, no peasant girls named Maia.

"Andorra? Tell me you're alright?"

She barely noticed Kyle putting his hands on her upper arms, giving her a light shake. She was in a daze, terrified and nervous. Was she losing her mind? First the creature in the night, and now this?

"I'm... fine." Even she knew her tone sounded unresponsive and bleak, but she couldn't make herself stop blinking or looking at the walls, waiting for the scene to come back.

"Come on, let's get you to class." Kyle said, his tone nervous. He slung an arm around her shoulders, ushering her away from her locker.

Am I going insane?

It was a fair question, and it haunted her all morning.