The Long Thaw

“DanniDanniGeddupGeddupGeddup!” Without thinking, Danni cracked open a bleary eye to the bright, hopeful little faces of her charges. That was her first mistake. The little horrors took it as a sign of proof of life, more than enough to warrant an escalation of joyful hollering, vigorous bed bouncing, sheet pulling, and a stellar test of the resilience of Danni’s belief that, if she ignored them for long enough, they would cease and desist. She lost. Again.

Reluctant nanny to Thing One and Thing Two, otherwise known as Toni and Terry, Danni is willing and ready to tell anyone who will listen that the five year old twins are a real handful. Anyone in this case is no-one, because everyone else in the world only ever sees the sweet, cuteness that the twins exude like maple syrup when in the presence of any other adult on the entire planet.

“What?” moaned Danni struggling valiantly to free herself from the hopelessly tangled sheets. “Fire? Death? Volcano? Spiders in the loo? What?”

“You’re funny,” giggled Thing One who, Danni firmly believed, possessed shapeshifter genes because of her remarkable ability to morph from sugar and spice to bat-poo crazy in the blink of an eye. “You gotta get up”, Toni repeated exerting freakishly strong pulling power on a sheet-wrapped arm while bathing Danni in a radiantly angelic smile.

“Yeah, Danni. Stop messing around and get up. The pond’s frozen! You get to take us skating! Lucky you!” This last from Thing Two, from whom all snips and snails are most definitely not safe. ‘Lucky’ was perhaps a minor exaggeration.

“Botheration. Fine. Go ask Mrs. Brooks to pop the kettle on for my morning cuppa, both of you. I need to get dressed.” Danni managed to release herself from the death grip of both the child and the sheets, and stretched. A stifled giggle made its way to her nanny bat-ears as the trying twosome scampered out of her room and headed downstairs. Assuming the giggle was due to their dual successes of getting her out of bed and surrendering to their planned pond junket, Danni allowed herself a small condescending smile. That was mistake number two.

She managed to get quite far with her dressing before the truth struck her, or rather, stuck her. It was all quite uneventful up to a point. Her underbits had not been tampered with, nor had any creepy-crawlies been stuffed into her shoes, her dress pockets, or her hat - a frightening experience never to be repeated. She was feeling positively chipper. Then she tried to pull up her zipper.

Not only had the twins glued her zipper, but they had done so recently. With super glue. The zip was at the back of her dress. Of course it was. The glue was still wet. Of course it was. Her hand was stuck to the zipper at the back of her dress. It was a relatively small dress and the zipper went all the way down the back to about four inches above the hem. Danni couldn’t put a jacket on to go for help because she was now sporting the quintessential one armed bandit look. She tried, she really, really tried to unglue her fingers. She even thought about just ripping the dress to free herself. But it was a nice dress.

It took fifteen minutes of serious vacillation before Danni bit the bullet and with head held high, sedately made her way down the curving main stairwell. She swanned past the po-faced butler and less than po-faced footman into the library, steadfastly ignoring the raised eye-brows of her employer and his eldest twenty-something son. As she somewhat jerkily made her way past the conservatory she heard a gaggle of outraged gasps followed by a serious bout of elevated tittering from the Ladies Morning Tea Society (because, of course, it was Tea-Day-Tuesday). Finally, and not a moment too soon, she swung into the kitchen where Mrs. Brooks, bless her little cotton socks, had managed to get the twins to confess all, and was waiting for her with a stripper - the glue type - a hot cup of tea, and two slightly mollified children.

Mrs. Brooks freed her and proceeded to fuss around while Danni gratefully sipped her morning tipple. Hot and sweet, it was a marvellous pacifier despite sorely lacking in the alcohol department. Reluctantly resigning herself to the fact that the zipper had to be replaced and she had to change, Danni was by no means up to running the gauntlet with her undies bared for all to see a second time. Mrs. Brooks’ solution was to tie a long apron around her neck and pat her arm in a gently supportive way. Sighing deeply, Danni glared at the Things, and with the apron flapping behind her, pulled off a passable impression of the Caped Avenger as she strode purposefully back the way she had come, ignoring all whispers and vigorous eye signalling as she headed unerringly toward her bedroom.

All went swimmingly until she reached the stairs. The apron ties were unfortunately, and inexplicably, longer than Danni’s 5’1 inches in height, and as she stepped regally onto the first stair, she trod on one. In one fluid motion the cape ripped off and Danni flailed frantically and ineffectually at the footman who scarpered ninja-like out of reach of her grasping fingers. Having completed a near perfect half somersault, Danni landed in a heap with her bum in the air, her under-frillies bared to world, just as the Morning Tea Society ladies were making their way through the foyer on their way out. Of course they were.

Well and truly enraged and mortified, an interesting mix of feelings to be sure, Danni shot to her feet and stormed up the stairs thinking dark and vengeful thoughts. It took her a further twenty minutes to breathe herself back to some form of normality, redress, and sneak back to the kitchen, carefully avoiding everyone in the house.

Sure enough the two little rat-bags were wrapped up like small Michelin men, ready for the crisp winters day. Despite her bruised ego, and bum, their eagerness to get outside and go skating was really quite endearing. Danni patted them both on the head, their accepted way of communicating that all was forgiven - for now. She donned her jacket and oddly loose beanie, and headed outside thinking she really did love the little terrors, but tried very hard not to let them know. Her life was barely worth a plugged nickel with them thinking she was the enemy. Heaven only knows what they would do if they thought she was getting mushy.

There were perhaps two inches of glistening virgin snow covering the grounds. Down the hill, past a line of evergreen bushes, and through the branches of the weeping willows, Danni and the children could just see the shimmering surface of the pond. It really was quite beautiful. Peaceful even.

Hedley, the groundskeeper, had kindly readied the toboggan and placed their skates in a basket on the ground. With the twins and the basket settled, Danni started to gently push them towards the pond with her foot from behind while holding the anchor rope in her hands. The hill got quite steep after the first hundred feet or so and Danni needed to control the toboggan’s run. After a blissful five minutes of happy prattling and squeaking from the children, they made it to where Danni needed to start exerting pressure on the rope. Just as they did so Terry yelped, “Danni! Hedley packed mom’s skates instead of mine. I need to run back and swap them.”

“I’ll go too,” hollered Toni (there is no such thing as volume control with small children). The two of them leapt up, high-tailing it back towards the kitchen door, and were quickly hidden from view by the bushes.

Danni reckoned she had about ten minutes of peace before the twins returned. She pegged the rope behind the toboggan and sat on it to wait, taking in the quiet beauty of a truly wondrous winter world. It must have been less than thirty seconds after taking her first calming breath, just as her muscles started to relax, that she heard the muted rush of small rubber soled boots, a maniacal mixture of sniggers and heavy gasps, a ‘pop’ as the peg was pulled out, and felt a massive jolt as two small bodies hurled themselves at the back of the toboggan, dug in and started to push, grunting with effort.

Danni’s beanie slipped over her eyes. Now, too late she understood why it was loose. It was all diabolical planning on the part of the Things. They had her pegged from the beginning. Unable to move her beanie because of the death grip she had on the the sides of the toboggan, Danni couldn’t see a thing. She could however feel. What she felt was an ever increasing rush of wind as the toboggan gained speed at an alarming rate, until suddenly she was flying sideways. Well that couldn’t be right. The ice! She was sliding out of control across the pond. It was a rather liberating albeit terrifying sensation that lasted for all of four second before a chilling series of crackles ended her brief flight of fancy, and she disappeared unceremoniously into the freezing cold hip-deep water.

Gasping and struggling upright, Danni yanked her beanie off her head and pawed at the pond muck around her eyes, opening them just in time to see four little snow boots disappearing over the top of the hill. Raucous yells of laughter reverberated off the surface of the pond in their wake. The pond which quite clearly was not frozen. Of course it wasn’t. Little horrors.

Danni thrashed her way to shore, muttering unspeakable things, and decided it was time for a different approach. It was time to take the fight to them. It was time to thaw their frozen little hearts. In other words, her time had come. Or it would after a hot toddy, a warm bath and some of the sympathy that only Mrs. Brooks could provide. As she sloshed back up the hill, the blurry outlines of a fiendish plan began to solidify. The long thaw was about to begin...