The Iced Curse: Part Seven

      "Oh, so you're awake," Logan said. "I thought that the blow from my tail would have knocked you unconscious."

      "Where are you taking me?" I hollered over the whistling winds of Logan's icy wings beating against the air. He started propelling forward at a speed much too fast for me, and it was all I could do not to throw up.

      "You wouldn't understand," Logan snapped back. "You never have, Lodowaty. You've always been clueless, as clueless as that cloud of yours. If you could only know what I've been through."

      "Don't call me by my full name," I threatened. "Or else I'll let myself fall and you would never see me again."

      "You're forgetting that it's not you holding on Lodo," Logan said. "I'm the one that's holding onto your wrists, and I wouldn't let anyone drop to their doom, because that's just not right."

      As we flew along the skies, it was getting noticeably colder. Snow began to fall around us, and I could feel my fingertips freezing. I curled my large tail around my legs and scrunched up into a ball to try and keep at least some of the warmth of the blanket inside of me, but it didn't do anything. I was still freezing cold.

      All too soon I could feel Logan begin to spiral down. I saw a mountain peak looming in the distance, growing bigger with every passing second.

      Suddenly I knew exactly where we were going.

      I looked behind me and could faintly hear the distant shouts of Flames, Pacina, Harpier and Aluendi calling for me, but I knew that they would never be able to find me where Logan was taking me. I was on my own.

      I struggled and lashed my tail at Logan's hands and the ropes binding me together, but he just tightened his grip and flew on. There was no way I was going to be able to get out of this while we were still in the air. But maybe once we got there, I could manage to escape once again, while Logan wasn't watching me.

      The icy mountain started growing and growing until all I could see was miles and miles of rock and ice. The scene was all too familiar to me, and since I knew exactly where we were going, there was no need for me to see it all again. I shut my eyes for the remainder of the flight there.

      ***

      "Where are we?" Flames asked as she gripped Harpier's shadowy ruff tighter. She squinted her eyes and tried to see into the distance. "This blizzard is making it so I can't see more than three feet in front of me."

      "Yeah, you try to be the one flying," Harpier grumbled.

      "I hope that Lodowaty is okay," Flames said quietly as she stared down at her hands, ignoring Harpier.

      "So you really do care about Lodowaty?" Aluendi asked. "I thought that you had an argument with her and got all mad at her. I saw you avoiding her for the past two days in favor of your writing room instead. You were avoiding all of us, actually."

      "Besides, her owner would be devastated if you decided to keep her and not bring her home," Harpier said. "How would you feel if someone found your prized, well-named blue Lutari that was actually created on Lutari Day and not zapped by that phony lab ray and that person decided not to give her back?"

      "I have to tell you guys something," Flames said. "I've been noticing that every time Lodo mentions something about her owner she always frowns and gets all jittery. I don't think that she actually has an owner, and she just wants us to believe that she does so we don't report her to the Pound somehow, even though Lutaris can't even be placed in the Pound."

      "You think that she doesn't have an owner?" Pacina asked. "But that's so sad! Why do you think that she would lie to us like that? If she just told us that she didn't have an owner than we could have found her a nice owner."

      "To tell you the truth, Pacina," Flames said, "I don't think that Lodo actually wants an owner. There's something odd about her, and she seems really uncomfortable around other Neopets and owners. She's a loner for sure, and it seems like she would rather go back home and just keep living on her own."

      "Wait, wouldn't that mean that Logan was lying about all of the stuff that he said?" Aluendi asked. "If Lodo never had an owner doesn't that mean that Logan would never have had one either?"

      "Come on, Aluendi, I thought that you were smart from reading all of those books," Flames said. "Logan has something mysterious about him and after stealing Lodo right from our living room I think that it's pretty obvious that he was lying about everything."

      "He seemed like such a polite kid," Harpier said. "I can't believe he stole Lodo right from our living room while all of us were still in the house."

      "Let's just all forget about this," Flames said. "What's important right now is that we find Lodo."

      "How do we know that Logan really did kidnap Lodowaty?" Aluendi asked. "How do we know that he isn't just taking her back home? She did say that she lived somewhere cold and snowy, and obviously this place matches that description."

      "Hey, is that a mountain?" Pacina asked, interrupting the conversation.

      "Wait, where?" Harpier asked. She squinted forwards.

      Flames flailed around as Harpier's right wing clipped a jagged rock. She grabbed back onto Harpier ruff with one hand and dusted some snow off of Harpier's gleaming black hair with the other. "That couldn't have been the ground," she said slowly. "We're thousands of feet in the air, we can't be landing already."

      "Ack!" Pacina shouted as her foot hit a stone resting on the dirt. It tumbled off what looked faintly like the edge of a cliff.

      "Uh, guys? Perhaps we should pull up a little?" Flames suggested.

      Harpier, Pacina, and Aluendi angled their wings up slightly, but before they could get higher up in the air, a large mountain peak loomed in front of them.

      "AUGH!" Flames yelled. She gripped onto Harpier's ruff as tight as she could so that her hands were starting to hurt. Harpier smacked her paws into the mountain face as she ducked and swerved away in a spiral. She flipped around trying to right herself and landed face first in a snow bank. Flames flew off of her back and flopped to the ground a few feet away.

      Flames glanced up and saw Aluendi swerve down and land in a cloud of powdery snow. She staggered through the snow over to Harpier and Aluendi.

      "Oooooooggggghhhhhhh..." Harpier groaned as she stood up. Aluendi feel off of her back as the Eyrie stood up.

      "Why did you have to land on me of all people?" Harpier asked angrily as she regained her composure. "Why couldn't you have landed in your own snowbank?"

      Aluendi got up and slightly brushed some of the snow off of her sweatshirt. Her wings were lying a few feet away and there were a few tears around the edges. The vines beginning to turn blue with cold but still miraculously in one piece. Aluendi herself was staring right at Harpier, her mouth moving slightly but no words coming out. Her hair was encrusted with snow, as was Flames's and Harpier's.

      "Aluendi, are you okay?" Flames asked, placing a hand on the Cybunny's shoulder, having to stretch her hand up because Aluendi was taller than her. "You're eyes are kind of glazed over and stuff."

      "I-I'm j-just not u-used to this k-kind of c-cold," Aluendi managed to stutter out through chattering teeth. She was rubbing her hands together as fast as she could and then placing them on her cheeks. "I-in my o-old k-kingdom it was a-always w-warm and we n-never had s-snow, k-kind of like M-Mystery Island."

      "I know what you mean," Flames said as she rubbed her shoulders. "This snowstorm is even worse than the one we just had on Mystery Island."

      "Hey, I was thinking," Harpier said.

      "T-think?" Aluendi interrupted. "S-since when do you d-do that?"

      "You know, you're sarcasm isn't helping us in our current situation," Harpier snapped at her. "But anyways, I was thinking about that storm on Mystery Island. It started right when Pacina brought Lodo to our house saying that she just needed a day's rest before she went back on her way. About three days later, the storm was still going just as strong as it had been when it first started. We told Lodo that we would be bringing her home after the storm stopped, but it didn't look like the storm was ever going to stop. Do you think that Lodowaty had anything to do with that storm starting? It seems fairly logical to me."

      "Well, it doesn't seem very logical to me, but I guess that it does make a little sense considering the storm did start right when Pacina found her," Flames said. "Well, since it was you that found her, Pacina, what do you think?"

      "Um, Pacina?" Harpier said, turning around.

      All three of them were spinning their heads around, looking for a blur of desert color mixed in with all of the white snow. But all they saw were the jagged rocks and themselves.

      "Oh no, where's Pacina?" Flames finally said, tugging on the end of her braid.

      "Umm, I think that I saw her swerve the other way around that mountain while we were still in the sky," Harpier said sheepishly. She shrugged her shoulders and squared her wings.

      "What do you mean?" Flames asked.

      "I th-think that it's pretty o-obvious what h-happened," Aluendi stuttered out. "W-we l-lost Pacina."

      ***

      Pacina stumbled into a snow bank on the opposite side of the mountain. She got up quickly and dusted herself off. She turned and looked out expectantly at the sky, waiting for Flames, Aluendi, and Harpier to come crashing down behind her. But none of them came, and after about five minutes, Pacina remembered that she had seen all three of them swerve the other way and to the opposite side of the mountain before she smacked off of the side of the mountain and was sent rocketing to the left.

      A quiet angry sound occurred from not too far away. Pacina looked up in surprise as she saw an icy shape zoom past her, with a grumbling blue blob behind it. There was no doubt in her mind that the translucent icy figure was Logan, and that blue blob behind him would have to have been Lodowaty.

      Pacina realized that even though she was lost and separated from the rest of her family, she had seen Logan and was probably closer to his destination than Aluendi, Flames or Harpier, that meant that if she wandered around for a bit she would probably be able to find the house, cave or wherever it was that Logan was taking Lodo.

      Pacina took a few steps forwards and realized that she was freezing cold. She tried to flap her wings to warm herself up. When nothing happened she peered behind her and saw that her wings had broken off of her back and had probably snapped and fallen off of the cliff when she bounced off of the mountain. It disheartened Pacina a little to know that she would never see her beloved wings again, but she knew that she could use her puppy-dog eyes to convince Flames to buy some Neocash to get her a new pair of wings.

      She wandered forward, resting against the slick ice-covered rocks every chance she got. The cold air and altitude was taking her breath away and her lungs were screaming for air.

      She quickly came up to a cave in one of the mountains. Pacina peered inside but she couldn't see much past the entrance because the inside was pitch-black. She figured that even if there was nothing in there but freezing cold cave walls, absolute darkness and sharp icicles hanging from every part of the ceiling it was better than standing out in only jeans and a short-sleeved shirt in a snow storm like this.

      Pacina snuck inside the cave, taking care to make sure that she didn't slip on and ice on the ground. She wandered deep to the back of the cave, seeking as much refuge from the snow and wind as possible.

      She waved her hand along the wall for balance when she felt something like a light switch run under her hand. She looked up in confusion as a light bulb dangling by a thin icy rope on the ceiling flickered to life.

      The ground was covered in ice, just as Pacina had predicted. But the lighting showed a small torn up mattress resting in the corner of the cave, the edges frosted with snow. Stuffing was spilling out of a tear in the side. A rope was thrown messily by the bed, and sharp icicles were strewn across the ground.

      As Pacina walked closer to the suspicious bed, she noticed a small picture just barely sticking out of a small hole in a grubby pillow that was lying on one end of the mattress. She pulled it out of the pillow and flipped it over.

      In complete confusion, Pacina realized that it was a picture of Lodowaty sneaking out of the front of the cave Pacina had just entered in the midst of a raging blizzard. And then it just clicked in Pacina's mind.

      She was in Logan's cave, and when he got back and found her, he wasn't going to be happy.

To be continued...