Excerpt: Rise of the Ice Queen

The Christmas music was starting to burn a hole in my brain. It was only midway through November, for crying out loud! I could understand sneaking in one or two songs here and there, to brainwash the holiday shopping public into abandoning the contents of their wallets, but when it got to the point where the ratio of Christmas music to real music leaned about ten to one…something had to be done. I wasn’t sure what methods other people were using to combat this atrocity, but I had chosen a nice pair of noise-isolating earphones and an iPod loaded up with the loudest, heaviest music I had. Unforunately, it seemed to upset my boyfriend, who possessed an unnatural immunity to the music. A necessary evil. I’d warned him beforehand that I couldn’t stand holiday music, it wasn’t really my problem if he hadn’t listened.

I wasn’t really sure what had possessed me to tag along on this particular trip downtown. All I could assume was that I really needed to work on not letting my boyfriend coerce me into things that I normally wouldn’t dream of doing. And attending some sort of Christmas bash in the middle of November definitely counted among that. It wasn’t that I was some sort of uber-Grinch, who hated any mention of the season. I enjoyed it on my own terms, but the over-the-top zealotry with which it was shoved in the public’s face from late October until the end of December was just stupid.

I had to admit, though, with the music and excessive commercialization, it wasn’t a bad time of year. Especially here, in the downtown plaza where a Christmas gala was going on. It was a treat to see kids running here and there, shouting with joy. Lights were strung from almost every tree, and when darkness fell, would illuminate everything into nothing short of a winter wonderland. A line of kids was already starting to grow to unthinkable proportions, triggered by the arrival of Santa Claus no more than five minutes earlier. The poor guy had barely had time to sit down. The only thing that really put a damper on the festivities was the cold. It was really, honest-to-goodness freezing out here.

But there was always the possibility that the cold was all in my mind. I should probably pause here to introduce myself a little. My name is Morgan, and I happen to be what is known as a Fire Elemental. I’m sure that brings up visions of epic fantasy, impossible quests, etcetera, and for that, I hate whoever it is that decided to call us Elementals. It’s hard to be taken seriously when it sounds like you’ve taken your last fantasy novel just a little too seriously. No, Elementals in my world are little more than humans who, for some reason we still haven’t figured out, were born with the ability to manipulate natural forces; Light, Shadow, Fire, Water, Air, and Earth are the classifications we know of so far. Like I said, I’m a Fire. That means, for aforementioned reasons not yet figured out, I can manipulate fire. I can either manipulate it from the outside – anything from a campfire to a candle flame – or produce it from my own body. That last method, by the way, is excellent for scaring the heck out of people who might otherwise feel the need to harass or bully you. Nothing says ‘leave me alone’ quite like suddenly bursting into flame. Though it comes at a cost, because people on fire has an odd tendency to bring the city emergency services running. And believe me, nobody will stop to ask if there’s a good reason for the fire before trying to put it out. Best bet is to just douse it and run.

One unfortunate side effect – well, other than the emergency services thing, which really gets on my nerves more than anything – is that I’m kind of sensitive to particular kinds of weather. Rain is always kind of a downer, but for me, it literally drains away my energy. I can barely function when it rains, and there have been a few occasions where I’ve outright fainted when caught outside in a rainstorm. The other is cold. It should be the other way around, I know. Fire chases away the cold. But it’s one of those more subtle mysteries that may have to wait to be solved until they figure out the big mystery, which is of course, what causes us to be born this way.

The music blasting in my ears suddenly died, and I pulled out my iPod with a groan of annoyance. Sure enough, I had forgotten to charge it this morning, and it was fresh out of power. “Damn it,” I muttered, yanking out my earbuds. “I need to get an AC adapter for this thing…”

“Finally,” my boyfriend, Landon, muttered. “I thought that thing would never die. Now there might actually be a chance for conversation.”