"Frostfire" - by Kai Meyer, Chapter 3 (Part 7/7)

[Finally!  I finished the chapter!  You finally get to find out if Mouse makes it around that darn hotel.  Personally I find this chapter to be a bit poky, but if you've stuck with me this far, you're in for some treats.  Soon.  I promise.]

            Her feet sank deeper and deeper into the snowbanks at the hotel walls; she had long since lost the feeling in her toes.  Just a few more steps to the Nevsky Prospect.  The main street might just as well have been on the other side of the world.  It was too late.  Too cold.  Too Outside.

            Her sight blurred completely as she stumbled with the last of her strength past the corner of the building into the flickering gas light.  Here she fell down, rolled in the snow onto her side, saw at a distance the light of the main entrance, gold and brass and the glass revolving door.  Much too far.

            She was so tired.  And now she was warm.  So that was what Kukushka had meant.  Freezing was not terrible, once you were past the worst.  She was so hot.  So cozy, so relaxed.

            Someone was next to her.

            Impossible.  Not so late at night, and in this temperature.

            But indeed, someone was there.  Bent over her.  Stroked her forehead.  And suddenly it was as though the warmth she felt was runnning out of that hand.  Many colors were there at once, bright as a rainbow before her eyes.

            “Poor thing,” whispered a female voice.

            Then the woman’s actions seemed to stiffen, as though all at once she had found something, sensed something.

            “You smell like her!”

            Like who? thought Mouse.  But then it did not matter anymore, because she was being lifted like a half-starved puppy and carried through the light of the lanterns, towards the high entrance crowned with awnings.

            Soon she would be inside again.  In the Aurora again!  The thought gave her new strength.  “I can walk…by myself,” she croaked.

            “Certainly,” said the woman, but made no move to put her down.

            “Please…I…”

            And then she really was let down to the floor, stood on her own feet, right in front of the revolving door that in the summer led to a red carpet.

            Light.  Warmth.  Walls.  Ceiling.

            Safety.

            Mouse stood there, still uncertain, half staggering.  She looked around herself.  The woman had disappeared, but the warmth inside Mouse stayed.  She was no longer freezing.

            Somehow she stumbled through the revolving door.  The long coat caught on it.  Mouse cast it off while walking and let it lie like a lost shadow.  The night porter looked back at her in surprise and called something but she did not heed him.

            Then she was in the stairwell that led to the cellar, held fast to the handrail, hurried downwards.  There could not be enough stone and wood and mortar around her, sprawling into the heights.

            The memory of the woman blurred together with the warmth in her body.  It was still cold in the cellar, but at least not as frosty as the open air.

            Soon Mouse reached her room, the walled cave in the depths of the earth, where she slept during the day and cleaned shoes in at night.  She crouched in front of the hot coal oven, listened to the hiss of the fire, and felt the frozen tears on her cheeks melt away.

"Frostfire" - by Kai Meyer, Chapter 3 (Part 6/7)

(Not that this has anything to do with Valentine's Day.  There's snow, but that's about it.)

            Step by step.  Agonizingly slow.

            The cold would do her in, if she did not walk faster.  She knew that every night people froze on the streets of St. Petersburg.  People without money, without a place to stay.  She, on the other hand, had an entire hotel for herself.  If not for this wall that separated her from it.  And the endless distance to the front entrance.

            She would not make it.  Never.  With every step that she overcame, another one seemed to be added underneath her.  An endless descent into the pitch-black Nowhere.

            She did not even feel hatred for Maxim and the others.  In her was only panic.  All-consuming panic and cold.

            And then she arrived at the bottom.  The tips of her feet tested for the edge of another step, but the next one was sunk deep in the snow.  She had reached level ground, the surface of the mass of snow that covered all of St. Petersburg.

            She sank in, but not especially deep:  She was too light.  She stumbled over the hem of the coat, let out a sob as she fell against the wall of the hotel, and yet somehow kept herself on her feet.  If she fell now, she would not get up.  The emptiness above would press her down into the snow, like the boot of a giant.

            Onward!  Go onward!

            She pushed herself along with her back to the wall.  The wall gave her a bit of support and kept the outside world far away at least in one direction.  That way she did not feel so entirely unprotected.

            It was cruel torture to battle her way to the next corner.  The narrow swath led into a wider alley.  If the fire escape was found on the back side of the Aurora, then this had to be the side wall. From here, the way along it to the Nevsky Prospect and the main entrance seemed to Mouse to be as endless as if someone had demanded for her to walk to Siberia on foot.

            Hopeless, whispered a voice inside her.  You won’t make it.  You’ll die.  Better to just lie here in the snow. Freezing doesn’t hurt, Kukushka had said; you simply go to sleep.

            She did not give up.  Not yet.

            Behind driving curtains of snow she saw a distant shimmer of light:  the end of the alley, the shine of the gas lanterns on the Nevsky Prospect.

            The soft snow under her feet and the much too long coat hindered her.  With her back against the wall, both hands with fingers spread out on the stone, she pushed herself sideways.  She kept her eyes closed now, to block out the Outside World.  The cold ate at her like fire.

            In the blackness behind her eyelids emerged a picture, like a painting, that drifted up to the surface of the dark ocean depths.  A sharp-edged outline.  Towers and battlements that thrust like knives into the raging sky of snow, high up on a harsh rocky cliff.

            Mouse tore her eyes open.  The vision faded away.  Dream snow became real.  The light had come closer, but she felt that her steps kept growing heavier.  Would someone punish Maxim and the others, if she froze out here?  Unlikely.  No one would blame them.  She was, after all, only the Girl-Boy, easier to replace than a broken window pane.

(Translation note of the day:  There is a word in German, "weiter," that can be translated as wide, far, another, or high/stoned.  I definitely got it mixed up in my first draft before I caught myself.  Still, it's hard to decide whether a path is leading to a "distant alley" or a "wider alley" or "one more alley."  Headache.)

"Frostfire" by Kai Meyer, Chapter 3 Part 5/7

            She still had the faint hope that the prank had lasted long enough.  That the door would swing open again at any moment.  That someone would pull her back into the warmth, indoors, and chase her down the halls amid peals of laughter.  But the door stayed shut.

            And Mouse was alone in the open.

            She stood there and shivered, though the cold was only partly to blame for that.  It seemed like someone was tightening a strap around her chest, she could hardly breathe.  Her stomach wanted to turn inside out.  Everything about her trembled and shook, her voice failed her.  The tears froze on her cheeks, were thawed by ones flowing after, and solidified anew.

            It was so dark that she could only with difficulty make out the top step of the iron stairwell.  But in any case, it was unthinkable for her to set foot on it.  She could not.  The emptiness of the outside world hardened around her like a resin, held her fast, let her stiffen into motionlessness.  Her muscles cramped and refused to obey her.

            She did not know how long she stood there like that.

            As she finally overcame her paralysis, and very, very carefully placed a foot on the top step, it was as though she had to break through an icy armor that had laid itself around her body.  She stood standing once again, grabbed hold of the coat and pulled it on.  It was much too big, a garment for a grown-up.  The hem dragged on the ground, and her hands disappeared deep in the dangling sleeves.

            Her movements were so shaky that she nearly slipped and fell.  Again she had to hold fast to the icy railing, and even through the cloth of the coat, the cold was gruesome.  She had spent her whole life in the heated rooms of the hotel. Only now did it become clear to her that she had not known at all what true cold meant.

            Her gaze searched the sky, but there, too, was only blackness and millions of damp-heavy snowflakes that fell noiselessly to the ground.  Down looked like up to her, everything dark, everything empty, everything frighteningly wide and boundless.

            Her eyes slowly adjusted to the gloom, and now she saw that the stairs were situated in a narrow alley.  A brick wall rose into the sky right across from the back wall of the hotel, high up to God knew where.

            With her back to the wall, she began her descent.  One step after the other.  Not even the terrible cold could bring her to go faster.  She had greater and greater difficulty drawing breath.  The panic nested in her ribcage, threw out tentacles that laid themselves over her muscles and imposed their own motions, like the threads of a puppeteer’s marionette.

            Stumbling, she moved down the stairway into the depths.  Four stories could be an endless abyss, when they led through ice cold darkness with snow driving about.  But it was neither the blackness nor the height that affected Mouse so.  It was the awareness of being outside.  In the open.  She had often spoken with Kukushka about her fear of the outside world, but not even he knew an explanation for it.  Something in my head, she had thought then.  Now, though, now that it was so wide, she thought no more.  In her mind was only emptiness, just like the sky above her.

"Frostfire" by Kai Meyer - Chapter 3, Part 4/7

            The door across from him was opened as well.  Then two others, farther to the front of the hall.  In the space of a moment the dark corridor filled with half-grown boys in pajamas.  Whispers and giggles pierced Mouse through.

            “What do you want?” Her voice sounded hoarse and breathy.  Her throat was suddenly as clogged as the corridor.

            “Girl-boy,” one of them said.   Others chimed in, and in no time at all there was a whispered chorus of it:  “Girl-boy!  Girl-boy!  Girl-boy!”

            Mouse pressed her back against the iron bar of the emergency exit. Its cold cut through the jacket of her uniform like a blade.

            “Girl-boy!  Girl-boy!”

            “The grown-ups say that you’ve never left the hotel,” said Maxim, and took a step toward her.  “Is that true?”

            Yes! she wanted to shout at him.  Yes, it’s true!  Because I’d die out there, and that’s just how it is!

            Nothing, absolutely nothing, gave her such fear as the world Outside.  She could not imagine herself standing on a street under the open sky.  The thought of this vastness, this emptiness, cut off her breath.

            She did not make another sound.  Not even a whimper.  Her heart galloped.

            Maxim’s tone stayed amiable.  “We have decided that you’ll miss out on a lot if you never go outside.  It’s high time, don’t you think?”

            “Girl-boy!  Girl-boy!” whispered the husky chorus.  More than a dozen boys, most of them with their voices breaking.

            “Please,” whispered Mouse.  “I haven’t done anything to anyone.”

            Maxim shook his head, smiling.  “Nor do we want to do anything to you.  Just understand – we want to help you.

            He gave the other boy a wave – he worked in the kitchen, in the butchery – and the stout fellow immediately grabbed Mouse by the shoulders and lifted her high like a bouquet of dried flowers.  Maxim stepped past her, unbarred the door, and shoved her out.

            Snow drifted about.  And a cold, that caused the throng of boys to give out a groan and flinch back a step.

            “It’s not far to the main entrance,” Maxim assured the wide-eyed Mouse.  “Really, it isn’t.  You don’t even have to go all the way around the hotel.  At most half.”

            Tears popped into her eyes.  And then she kicked the butcher-boy’s knee with all her strength. He howled, let her go, slid down the wall and held his leg, whimpering. A few others laughed hatefully, but Maxim motioned them into silence.  Two other boys jumped up – pages from the entrance hall – grabbed Mouse and turned her face to the open door.  In the darkness, she could recognize the landing of an iron fire escape.  Nothing else.  Only night and driving snow.

            She began to scream.  She struggled, thrashed about, scratched, kicked, and bit. 

            “…want to help you,” she heard Maxim say again, then she received a shove and stumbled out onto the iron stairs.  She stumbled, and was only at the last minute able to grab the railing.  Never in her life had she felt such a cold.  With a wail she tore his hands away, whirled around – and stared in Maxim’s smiling face.  A bundle of fabric flew out at her – the old coat that he had held in his hand.  In the same moment, the door slammed shut, and the iron bar on the inside latched back in place with a crunch. 

            “Let me in!” she cried in panic, and hammered with both fists against the door.  “Please!  Let me back in!”

"Frostfire" - by Kai Meyer (Part 3/7)

            Some distance away, Mouse’s shoe-wagon waited, a steely law on four wheels.

            “You would really just give it to me?” she asked doubtfully.

            He beamed like the imitation gold on the walls.  “I can’t do anything else with it anyway.”

            “I don’t have any money.”

            “I want to just give it to you.”

            He doesn’t like you, her inner voice warned.  No one here likes you.

            “Agreed!”  she burst out.  Her heart raced yet again, as fast as it had when the Roundsman had grabbed her.  Only now for a better reason.

            “Right then,” Maxim said, stepped with her into the hall, closed the grate from the outside with a key, and affixed a metal sign on it with the label Out of Order.  Mouse found that to be rather daring.  But presumably one such as Maxim could be allowed such escapades.

            Mouse followed him down the hall, to a door whose inscription pointed out that only hotel personnel had entry.  Behind it lay an even narrower, darker hallway that led to the dormitories of the employees.  No carpet, no pictures on the walls.  Here pipes lay in the open over the plaster, not behind wood paneling.

            Maxim went with Mouse to the end of the corridor. An emergency exit was located there, a heavy door with iron bars; Mouse had no idea what lay behind them.  She knew the outside of the Hotel solely from the paintings in the ballroom, and there only the splendid facades were to be seen, not, however, the backs or other sections of the buildings.

            “Wait here,” said Maxim.  The doors of the bedrooms were located on the left and right of the hall.  Every six men had to share a room.  The rooms of the female employees lay a floor below. 

            Mouse nodded to him as he disappeared with an encouraging smile behind the last door on the left side.  A musty cloud of bedroom scent wafted over to Mouse.

            Here she felt anything but well, and already regretted taking the offer.  If anyone chanced to come out of one of the rooms, she would not be able to flee out of this dead end.  The door of the emergency exit to her back seemed at once to be even taller and heavier.

            She had no fear of a beating – the other girls and boys never went that far – but it would be enough that they would keep making fun of her.  Mouse had long ago stopped wondering why, even though she had never done anything to harm anyone.  Her only sin was her lowly work. And the way she looked.

            Perhaps Maxim’s uniform would change something about that.  If possible, she could win a little respect with it.  This fantasy alone was worth the risk of standing around in the corridor of the men’s quarters in the middle of the night.

            The door of the room swung open again.  Maxim stepped into the hall.

            “That was quick,” she said, with a shy smile.

            In his hands he held an old blanket like a bundle of rags.  Completely tattered and rumpled.

            “The moths were quicker,” he said, and it sounded just as friendly as he had before in the elevator.  For the first time Mouse realized that treachery did not always have to accompany malice and mockery; sometimes it hid itself behind a façade of courtesy and charm.

"Frostfire," by Kai Meyer (Chapter 3, Part 2/7)

            After Maxim had closed the lattice gate, she placed herself next to him so that she did not have to look him in the eyes.  But from clamorous excitement – and she was still a bit breathless from her flight – she had forgotten the mirrors on the walls of the cabin.  And no matter where she looked, the blond elevator boy seemed to be watching her.

            Mouse hated mirrors.  She was too small and thin for her age, and when she looked at herself like this, there was really not much girlness to her.  She was pale, even in this light that made every other person look healthy; even her lips seemed to her to be colorless and thin.  Her dark blue eyes always appeared a bit tired, perhaps because she always was tired.  The Concierge, who presided over all the lowly hotel attendants, had determined that she had to look like a boy, or else the fine guests might take offense that they let her work through the entire night.  That had been back when she was very small, and so she knew nothing else.  Mouse, the Girl-boy.

            The elevator set itself in motion with a jerk.  Above them in the shaft, the steam-works hissed.  Powerful gears crunched.

            “That’s a pretty uniform,” she said because the long silence was making her all restless. 

            “Thanks,” Maxim said, and then his gaze swept over her own clothes.

            You deserved that, she thought bitterly.  He will see right away that your shoulder-pieces have been mended with carpet threads.

            “Would you like one like it?” he asked

            She still could not look him in the eyes.  “Like it?”  she repeated uncertainly.

            “A uniform like mine.”

            “I’m no elevator boy.”  And also would never be one, she added in silence, namely because the Concierge did not like any girl, not even if she looked like a boy.

            “That doesn’t matter.  I grew almost a head last year.  You can have one of my old ones.”

            “You’re not serious!”

            “Why not?  In my trunk they’re just being eaten by moths.”

            Hard to imagine that there were moths in the dormitories of the pages and elevator boys.  In the hole in the cellar where Mouse slept, there were in fact rats. But that did not bother her.  She liked just about everything that was small and crawled on the ground.

            “Well?”  Maxim asked.

            The elevator came to a halt.  In front of the cabin grate lay a corridor that was only imperceptibly less magnificent than any in the suite level.  Everything in the Hotel Aurora was precious, expensive, and elegant.  Except for the behavior of certain employees, when no guests were present.

Frostfire - Chapter 3, Part 1/7

[Dear Readers:  Sorry this took so long in coming.  After my time in Arschderwelt, Deutschland, I wanted nothing to do with the language for a couple months.  However, I am now recovered and resuming my work, though school starts soon and I might not have as much time for it.]

The Chapter About A Betrayal And The Terror Of The Outside World

            Maxim, the elevator-boy, stood in his cabin, one hand on the the open sliding grate, the other on the long lever that sent the elevator on its trip through the landings.  He smiled across to Mouse.

            She stayed a few steps away from him.  The interior of the cage was lined with polished brass, gold, and mirrors.  Electric light filled the narrow box with the glow of an eternal sunset.  Its radiance flowed out of the interior of the elevator into the hall and touched the tips of Mouse’s feet.

            Maxim looked past her down the corridor.  “Where is your shoe wagon?”

            Strange for him to ask about it.  The elevator-boy hated it when Mouse occupied his cabin with the clumsy cart.  Mouse herself had not been able to  notice the scent of the shoes for a long time, but the boys claimed that the elevator stank of sweat and leather for an hour afterward.  Annoyingly, there was only this one elevator in the hotel, and the use the wagon on the stairs was impossible.  In fact, this was the first elevator of its kind in all of Russia, imported from America, where the new technology was being developed by a man named Otis.  The board of directors of the Aurora was tremendously proud of it.

            Maxim was not just any elevator-boy.  At sixteen years old, he as the oldest and most experienced among them.  And pretty, besides.  Mouse had once been secretly in love with him – until the day she had seen how, for a few copecks, he had let the rich daughter of a hotel guest kiss him.

            “Well?” he asked.

            She sought vainly for mockery or deceit in his tone of voice.  Perhaps he really did just want to be friendly.

            “Well what?” she asked crisply.

            “Your wagon.”
            “Oh, that…I left it a few floors below.”

            “Shall I take you down?”  All the elevator boys were immensely proud of their task, nearly as much as though they carried the cage on their own shoulders through the floors.  Besides that, they had the best-looking uniforms.  All velvety red and set with the same imitation gold that decorated their cabin.  In the elevator, they melted entirely into the sparkling, mirrored area.  My golden boys the Concierge called them, whose darlings they were.  But Maxim was everyone’s darling.

            “I’d rather take the stairs,” Mouse said, and wanted to turn away. 

            “Oh, just come inside.  In the middle of the night, no one uses the elevator at all.  I’m bored.”

            And she of all people should change that?  Maxim had never given her any more attention than a dirty footprint that a guest had left in his elevator.

            Carefully, she went into the cabin and stepped completely into the golden light.  For some silly reason, she suddenly seemed to herself to be a real girl, as though this time the unearthly light made not only the elevator boy but also her much prettier.

            “Fourth floor?”  asked Maxim, and took the lever in his hand, as though the Czar himself had walked into his cabin.

            Mouse hesitated briefly, looked around the deserted corridor one last time, then stepped over the narrow crack into the interior of the cabin.  She became a little dizzy as her feet made a faint, high sound despite the carpet.  The certitude of the deep, black chute under her always filled her with unease. 

"Frostfire" by Kai Meyer - Chapter 2, Part 4/4

            Kukushka had explained to Mouse that some in the hotel entertained the suspicion that the Roundsman worked for the Secret Police as an informant.  That was a rumor that Mouse was all too ready to give credit to. The men and women of the Secret Police were hated in the entire Czardom because of their malice and cruelty.  The idea that of all people Mouse’s archenemy should be one of these seemed to her to be so obvious, that she had sometimes wondered if she had not come to it by herself.  A spy!  Of course!

            And this monstrosity of a man, this cunning traitor, had selected her for his personal favorite victim. Mouse, who had no other name than that; who had been born in this hotel and had not left since; who all called the Girl-Boy because her body was so thin and her hair was short stubble; of all people, she had drawn his wrath and his all-knowing eyes upon herself.

            She was done for.  Had she really thought that she could trick him by hiding her stolen good in a shoe?

            She closed her eyes and waited for what would happen next.

            The pressure of his hands on her upper arms eased.  Right away the hope began to creep up on her that he would be gone like some kind of phantom when she opened her eyes.

            But of course he was not gone.  He stood there and stared at her.  Completely motionless, his features so stiff as though they had been molded from clay.

            “I’m watching you,” he whispered.

            She nodded clumsily.

            “And I always know what you’re doing.”

            At that she was shaken by such a shudder that she instinctively whirled around and fled.  She ran back around the corner, down the long, ice cold landing, and past the Czar’s Suite without throwing a second glance at the shoes.  She could come back later and take them for cleaning.

            The Roundsman stayed back behind the bend, but she could tell by his shadow that he still stood there, waiting, motionless.  And perhaps it was only his shadow, and he himself was long gone somewhere else.

            I’m watching you.

            She took his word for it.

            She swept around another corner, along wood-panelled walls, away under chandeliers, the diadems of glass stones clinking in the draft from her flight.

            I always know what you’re doing.

            She was wretched by the time she reached the elevator grate.

            “Hello, Mouse!”

"Frostfire" - By Kai Meyer. Chapter 2, Part 3/4

[Dear Readers:  I apologize for the hiatus in translation.  My copy of the book was due at the library.  The good news is that I have been able to purchase a copy of "Frostfeuer" (secondhand and paperback; quite reasonable), so that the translations will not stop when I return to the States, even if it might take me a while to post them.]

            He grabbed her under her arms, lifted her effortlessly from the floor, and waited until she had stopped struggling. Her face was now level with his.

            “Mouse,” was all he said.  The way and manner with which he intoned her name suggested that her final hours were at hand.

            He was the watchman of the hotel.  Each night drew him alone on his rounds through the Aurora, just like Mouse, and no one knew what his real name was.

            He was big – almost twice as tall as Mouse – and his shoulders seemed to her to be as wide as the corridor.  His hands were like shovels, and seemed to have been made only to tear off the heads of thieves like her.  He had an enormous, flat face, whose cheekbones were so far apart from one another that from close up, Mouse could see them only out of the corners of her eyes:  His body, coarse as though it were carved out of solid rock, took up her entire field of vision.

            “Mouse,” he said again, and this time it sounded even more threatening.

            “Let me go!”  She tried to kick him with her feet, which despite her fear seemed a little ridiculous. A gnat would hardly have been more dangerous to him.

            In fact, after one more unfathomable look, he set her on the ground, but still held her arm fast with his left hand, while his right began to search her uniform.

            “The pockets,” he said.

            In fact, she was quite happy that he was holding on to her.  Who knew if her trembling knees could have held her of their own power?

            “Pockets,” he rumbled again.

            It took her a moment to realize what he wanted of her.  It was a little bit as though she were trying to decipher the gruntings of an animal.

            With shaking fingers, she turned out the insides of her pockets.  Out of one fell a hazelnut.  That was all.

            The Roundsman raised an eyebrow.

            “That’s hardly anything,” she said sharply, because she remembered that attack was supposed to be the best defense.  But whoever had come up with that saying had probably done so in the comfortable safety of an armchair, not in a moment of greatest danger.

            “Hmm?” he grunted, and bent forward threateningly.  She grew dizzy at the sight of this human tower.

            “I didn’t swipe anything,” she said doggedly.

            That was stupid, it occurred to her.  He had not even accused her of stealing something.  Now he knows that you have a bad conscience.

            The danger of the Roundsman was not so much his size and power.  It was more the fact that one underestimated him.  Sure, he was big, and could send you to the beyond any time with a single blow.  But at the same time his monosyllables make him appear clumsy as an overgrown child – and Mouse could not let go of the thought that he generated this impression entirely on purpose.  Secretly, she was convinced the Roundsman possessed a razor-sharp cunning.  When he wanted to, he could move noiselessly as a cat despite his colossal form.  Sometimes he unexpectedly stood right behind someone when they least expected him.  Not to forget each moment when he seemed to be in several places at once.   And even when he was not actually there himself, his eyes and ears were ever-present.

            In his eyes, she read the knowledge that she had stolen the brooch.  He knew it, like he did every time.

"Frostfire" - by Kai Meyer, Chapter 2 (Part 2/4)

            The path ahead of her seemed nearly endless and was furnished with only two lonely commodes.  All the drawers were glued shut.  The only door in the entire corridor led to the Czar’s Suite.  There was a spittoon – even that had a gold rim – but that was a miserable hiding place.

            Mouse was sweating, and not just from running.  Bit by bit, the situation was becoming serious.  The Roundsman had been trying to convict her for a long time.  He would drag her through the corridor by the scruff of her neck and present her triumphantly to the Concierge in the lobby.  “Here, a thief!  The Girl-Boy!” and then, yes then, she would be thrown out of the hotel, out into the cold of the Russian winter night.  Without a space she could crawl under.  Without a single copeck to buy a piece of bread or a hot tea.  To say nothing of the others who would finish her off outside.

            Mouse had to act.  Right now.  For a moment she played the the thought of swallowing the brooch.  But the thing was bigger than her thumb and had a stick pin attached.  Not a good idea.

            She had left a third of the corridor behind her when the shadow of the Roundsman loomed over the last bend.  The entrance to the Czar’s Suite, exactly in the middle of the floor, was a grandiose portal, with ornate columns on both sides and the relief of a roaring bear above the door.

            In front of it stood two pairs of shoes.

            Up to this point, Mouse had not gone on her daily collection tour.  Her cart which she pushed through the halls with the shoes of the guests – often a hundred pairs or more per night – stood on the floor below.

            Mouse had been responsible for the shoes of the guests for many years.  She was well-versed in the shapes, sizes, types of leather.  But in her entire life, she had never seen such curious specimens.

            The one pair was two costly lady’s shoes, worked with much filigree, with high heels, and made out of a material that looked like crystal.

            In harsh contrast to them stood another pair.  Two old leather shoes, flat and unadorned like those worn by the street boys who begged for leftovers at the kitchen entrance.  The strange thing about them was their condition – they looked as though an animal had chewed on them, after they had lain about a year in wind and weather in the forest.

            Mouse had no more time to wonder about them.  Following a sudden inspiration, she stuffed the brooch in one of the two ragged leather shoes – something warned her to leave the crystal pair alone – before she turned to face her pursuer. The Roundsman was not yet in eyeshot.  For a moment she had gooseflesh, and in that moment, it occurred to her for the first time how unusually cold it was here.  As though behind the door lay not a heated suite, but the snow-covered boulevard with its dancing whirlwinds of ice crystals.

            She jumped up and ran on, leaving suite, shoes, and brooch behind her.  She reached the next corner, wanted to breathe out a sigh of relief –

            And ran straight into the arms of the Roundsman.

"Frostfire" by Kai Meyer - Chapter 2, Part 1/4

The Chapter In Which We Meet the Girl-Boy Mouse.  And The Dangerous Roundsman.

            It is true that Mouse was a girl.  But only a few knew that.  Most took her for a boy.  And when Mouse looked in a mirror, sometimes she even believed it herself.

            It is also true that she was a thief.

            As though harried by a thousand devils, she ran through the corridors of the venerable Grand Hotel Aurora.  The man that followed her was hard on her heels.  Not a good day for a hotel-room thief.  Not even when she committed her theft with such great dexterity as Mouse.

            The upper floor of the Hotel Aurora was reserved for special guests.  At the front facing the boulevard, the famous Nevski Prospect, lay the splendid Czar’s Suite; a single night there cost more than Petersburg’s simple citizens earned in a year.

            Mouse rushed swiftly under the silver candle holders that emitted electric light.  The spittoons in the corners were of the finest porcelain.  Heavy commodes of mahogany stood against the walls of the corridor.  Lacy doilies fluttered in the backdraft as Mouse was chased past them.

            Sometimes she looked over her shoulder to see whether her pursuer had caught up to her yet.  But she still held on to her head start.  It was not the first time that she had escaped him.

            Mouse wore a page’s uniform that was patched in many places, if not so many that one of the highly esteemed guests would notice at the first glance.  Pants and jacket were of violet velvet, set with gleaming buckles and even shoulder loops sewn of golden carpet fringe.  Her patent shoes were immaculately cleaned – because that was Mouse’s task here in the Hotel Aurora:  to collect the shoes from the doors of all the guests at night, bring them into the celler, there to polish them bright and distribute them in front of the rooms before dawn.  Without switching a single pair, you understand.

            That took talent, claimed Kukushka, the dancing partner in the ballroom.  That took absolutely nothing, Mouse said.  Only the willingness to spend the night on your feet and to sleep during the day.  And not even that was an achievement, when one had no other choice.

            The footsteps behind Mouse grew louder.

            Was there a particular reason why, after all these years, she was about to be caught?  That evening she had cleaned her plate of the guests’ leftovers, and silently let the teasing of the pages and chambermaids pass over her. “Girl-boy,” they sneered.  “There goes the girl-boy, and it stinks like old shoes.”

            All this she bore every day.  She had done nothing to call blame upon herself, really nothing.

            Except perhaps this tiny theft.  Not her first by any means, but until now she had always gotten away with it.

            She looked back again.  The heavily carpeted floor almost entirely swallowed up her pursuer’s footsteps.  Mouse took the golden brooch out of the pocket of her uniform and tightly closed her fist around it.  The door to the room had been unlocked – that wasn’t her fault, was it? – and the brooch had lain out in the open on a heap of clothing.   And thieves were warned of everywhere at that, especially in such bad times.  Couldn’t the owner have paid better attention?

            No, Mouse was really not at fault here.  She had only accepted the invitation to put the thing in her pocket.  And what had happened, had happened.  Apologies, madam.

            It was a question/matter of honor to bring her loot to all the rest in the cellar.  Later, anyway.  For now she had to get rid of the thing.  Namely, a place where no one at all would stick their nose.  First of all, away with it, so that none but her could find it.  Certainly not the Roundsman, who had been waiting to catch her in the act for ages.  No evidence, no theft.  No punishment for Mouse.

"Frostfire" Translation - Chapter 1, Part 3/3

            “What do you intend to do now?” he asked.

            “I will  arrange for her to find me.”

            “And then?”

            “Well – I will finish my assignment.  That is what my family should have done many generations ago.”

            “And take revenge for the death of your father?”  He sounded disappointed.

            Tamsin took umbrella and suitcase, but stayed standing before him.  “She wants the ice-heart back.  And she knows that only I can give it to her.  Therefore, she will come to me.”

            “You want to set a trap for her?”

            Tamsin gave no answer.
            “What a stupid, stupid idea,” he said.

            “Take care of yourself,” she told him as a farewell.

            “Wait!”

            She turned her face to the ground, then looked at him.

            “You should know something else.”  He let out a deep sigh, like that of a grown-up speaking to an unreasonable child.    “This sudden onset of winter, all the snow, this cold…it has to do with her.”

            “And?”

            “You believe that she brings all this with her, like a trail of winter weather, don’t you?  But it is not so simple.  What is here is a different kind of cold.  And only a taste of what is to come.”

            Tamsin looked at him questioningly.

            “Ever since you stole the ice-heart, her power has been fading,” he continued.  “The cold of the Beginning that was there before the world is flowing out of the Queen and reclaiming the place that once belonged to it.”

            “Then it will get worse?”

            “Much worse,” he said grimly.  “Only if the Queen gets the icicle back and regains her old power can she put the cold back in its place.  Otherwise, a winter like no other threatens us.  Not even I would stand against that for long.”

            “How much time do I have?”

            “To return the icicle and stop the cold?  Or to destroy the Queen?”

            “How much time?”

            “A few days.  At most.”

            Tamsin’s hand closed tighter around the rainbow umbrella. In her battered suitcase, something moved, rumbling quite softly.

            “I thank you,” she said, and left.

            Father Frost sadly opened up the pouch and carried on feeding the snowflakes with forgotten magic.