The King of Snowtopia | Writelink Creative Writing Challenges

The King of Snowtopia

White. Everything was white.
The children collected what they needed from their mothers? kitchens. Up they trooped to the top of the road that overlooked the valley. Here, beneath the shelter of the Hanging Tree, they got to work. It was here, the previous Christmas, the father of one of the children had been found dead.
They compacted the soft snow into three parts. With these they formed his legs, his torso and his head. Two black olives they inserted as his eyes, for his mouth a half-moon of coffee beans, and for his nose, a carrot. His arms they fashioned from long twigs, on whose ends they put a pair of mittens. And lastly, upon his head they placed a ring of holly with red berries ? the youngest boy?s idea. An undersized kid named Joshua, Josh to his little pals, the boy whose father?s dead body had been found in that very spot last Christmas.
Bluster Blizzard, the name they always gave him, was complete.
Around their creation they danced and laughed until creeping darkness scared them and they ran home. All except, Josh, who stayed with Bluster Blizzard so the snowman wouldn?t be alone in the scary darkness. Besides, Josh?s mom was still in work, and he didn?t like being by himself since his daddy left them. He moved in close to the tree for shelter.
Daylight, pure and bright, slunk off at the approach of her shadowy stalker the Night. The realization that the kingdom of Snowtopia would soon awake came to Bluster Blizzard as a fuzzy feeling. The previous year, Snowtopia, like Bluster Blizzard, had lain dormant.
The snowman, the king of Snowtopia, trembled at the consequences of his absence. Without their yearly period of respite in Snowtopia, the world of mortals would have forgotten its humanity. And the birds and animals, too, would have been corrupted. Perhaps he was already too late.
Silence, no sound save for the far-off whispering of a million tiny voices told the snowman king his loyal army was on its way.
From the skies they fell, a myriad of snowflakes. Into his ears they whispered confirmation of his fears. Mortal mothers and fathers, they told him, had neglected their parental duties. Instead of bonding with their children last Christmas, they?d abandoned them, left them with nannies and child-minders so that they were free to make merry in public houses.
The king lowered his head, his dark-eyed gaze locked to his own blue shadow. But he looked up quickly when a robin landed on his outstretched arm.
?Ah, my little friend. Good to see you?re still thriving.?
The robin hopped onto the king?s shoulder. ?Sire. For eight seasons I have awaited your return. I have much to report.?
?So. How fares the birds and beasts??
The robin broke into a sweet melody that told Bluster Blizzard of the changes his absence had wrought upon the animal kingdom. The bird sang of how Winter, the goodly white giant, confused when the snow-king failed to greet his arrival the year before, departed hurriedly. The little bird sang too of how the goddess Spring came early. And following her the buzzing of a billion wing-beats. The bees pollinated the flowers that had bloomed too soon. And so formed seed and berries that swelled beneath Spring?s tender touch.
In their thousands they came, the Scandinavian winter visitors, ravenous flocks of redwings and fieldfares. But they were too late. Stripped of winter food supplies, the land offered no sustenance. A deadly change came over these winter migrants. Those that rejected the change in diet from fruits and seeds to flesh and blood succumbed to Mac Tire, a wolf known to all the birds and mammals as the Black Beast. Death.
As he listened to the robin?s tale, the red berries in Bluster Blizzard?s holly crown began to melt. He wept crimson tears.
A voice, unknown to the snowman king, speaking from within the tree, refocused his attention.
?My son Josh. You?ve got to help him. The cold has put him to sleep. He?s freezing to death.?
As familiar with and fearless of the dead as he was the not-yet-dead, Bluster Blizzard summoned his second in command, the North wind. A feisty old fellow, he appeared from nowhere.
?Quick,? Bluster Blizzard said. ?Carry to the boy?s mother his father?s words.?
The North Wind sucked in his cheeks and with them the plea from the silhouetted figure dangling from a rope above. And with that the old man sprinted off down the hill, and off to the factory where the boy?s mother was working late.
Another surprise awaited the snowman king. Talk of death had lured from the shadows a creature with amber eyes: Mac Tire. The dark wolf skulked forward towards the tree to where lay the boy called Josh.
?No,? the king said. ?It?s not his time.?
The great wolf turned his pointy muzzle to the king, his jaws open in a canine smile. His tongue he drew across his lips. First Mac Tire licked the boy?s neck, and then his face, until Josh made audible breathing sounds.
?You are a noble creature,? the snowman king said. ?Sometimes all of us, immortal or immortal, are as blinded by mythology as we are in a whiteout.
Another voice, a woman?s, calling out turned the heads of snow, feather and fur alike. That old lank grey hair, the North Wind. Back already. From his toothless and gaping mouth came the boy?s mother?s voice.
At the far end of the whitened street came the voice?s real owner.
?Sylvia,? a strangled voice called from the branches overhead.
The snowman king craned his neck as the voice called again his wife?s name, his words sounding as though a pair of huge hands were wrapped about his neck, her name choking in his throat. The silhouette of the hanging man than grew faint and disappeared.
?Help her,? Bluster Blizzard commanded the North Wind.
In a huge leap, the old man was next to her. He took her by the hand and helped her climb the icy incline. The birds and beasts melded into the shadows on her arrival.
?Josh,? she said, with outstretched arms. ?My baby. Josh.?
The boy awoke as though from a dream-filled slumber. He smiled at her a smile so bright and filled with the greatest love that exists: the love that bonds a mother and a child.
From the surrounding bushes and shadows there began a chorus of chirrups, whistles, hoots, grunts, clucks and cackles. A sound so wondrous, so sublime, parents and children, from the warmth of their homes in the valley below, pulled back curtains and opened blinds. And they watched through lighted windows the swirling snowflakes dancing and spiralling from the sky. Perfect. Christmas as it should be; Christmas, a time for families to be together, to stay indoors, to share stories, to play games, to reconnect through laughter, fun, and magic.
The snowman king, from the top of the hill that overlooked his kingdom, Snowtopia, closed his eyes, exhausted yet elated that his arrival hadn?t, after all, been too late. And he dreamt. For even snowmen find time to dream.

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