The Snow Ball

snow•ball

noun 1. a ball of packed snow, especially one made for throwing at other people for fun. "they pelted him with snowballs"

verb 2. increase rapidly in size, intensity, or importance. "the campaign was snowballing"

Oxford English Dictionary

The annual Snow Ball was about to begin. It had been about to begin for months. In fact, even before the first of the gigantic ice statues began to thaw from last years parade, they had already begun rolling out criers, fliers, great hot-air-balloon’s dragging village-sized silken banners announcing “Only 11 months until the Annual Snow Ball!!!” As the weeks passed on, the upstanding upper set would sit peering over their telegraph boys’ shoulders, waiting for the invitation they simply must receive, because as they had told anyone who would listen, they “had attended last year!” And the up-and-coming actors and magnates would never dare show such aspirations publicly, but whenever the subject was raised, whenever those balloons passed over head, their eyes twinkled with quiet ambition.

Meanwhile the lesser folk would gossip, as lesser folk do. Would Lady so-and-so make an appearance; who would be the Honored Guest; whose likeness would be temporarily immortalized in the greatest of the ice statues; whose second cousin had snagged a job in the kitchens, or the ferry docks, or on crewing the great icebreaker cruises that ferried the upper crust through the ice sheets…anything to be associated with the pinnacle of society.

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“There’s more than one?” piped up little Jimmy.

“Of course there’s more! There’s hundreds!” Sneered Astin Hughes IV, who often snuck into his kitchen to brag to the staff’s children. He, Jimmy and Annis were nestled together in the thin, yet impossibly tall larder whispering over the muffled hiss, clang and bustle of the kitchen.

“But I thought there was only one Snow Ball a year! That’s the point!” Joined Annis, always taking her brother’s side.

“Not Snow Ball! Snowball! Like, balls of snow. You can pick up the snow on the ground, and roll it together with your hands like this—” Astin Hughes IV cupped his hands and kind of clapped gently— “and you can throw them, like rocks, only they don’t hurt at all but they E-X-P-L-O-D-E in all white! It’s really very awesome! Ha! Of course there’s only one Snow Ball! But with snowballs it’s like, infinity!”

Jimmy didn’t know what that last word meant, and he had never seen snow before, but he knew to be appropriately impressed.

“Wow!” He said.

“What’s finity?” Asked Annis.

“IN-finity,” Astin Hughes IV condescended. “it means, like the biggest number ever. Like, it never ever stops!”

Annis found this hard to swallow. After a moment “Is it bigger than forty?”Astin Hughes IV gave an exasperated euuuhhhh.

“Forty isn’t even that big!”

Before Annis had time to process this world-shattering fact, the pantry door slid open and Sous-Chef Dawson’s bald, and otherwise unremarkable head poked in.

“Oh! Yous gave me a fright! You’re not supposed to be in here! Who’s that then?”

Annis darted out between his bowed legs in a flash and was running out towards the yard and escape. Jimmy, already in for a penny, snagged a fat dried sausage of a hook, and was out close behind his sister. Astin Hughes IV decided to follow, and even if the sous-chef could have made a grab at the tiny aristocrat, the boy had been born with impunity. Dawsons sighed, and began scanning the shelves for the tagliatelle he’d come for.

At that very moment, four floors above the kitchen, Sir Astin Highes III was staring deeply into the pretty, pale eyes of Jimmy and Annis’ mother, Jianne Baker. Their faces were merely inches apart. She stared back, mesmerized, tracing the subtle sharp line of his groomed eyebrows, gazing at the healthy sheen of the hair on his temples falling gently across his smooth, tanned skin pulled taut and wrinkleless, perfectly fitted to the muscles beneath. He, in turn, caught a glimpse of his own reflection in the tiny mirrors of her pupils, and smiled gallantly. Startled out of her reverie, she looked down, bashful, and then after fluttering her lashes twice or thrice, she glanced up again through their gentle weave.

“Do you…” she breathed, “do you—”

“Say nothing my dear!” the tender command slipped easily from his lips. They barely moved. He raised her chin with two fingers, and once again they locked eyes silently, intensely. And then he rose up slightly, like a dam flexing against a great weight of water, that then breaks and surges forward, and they kissed, suddenly, tremendously. His hand slid down her shoulder to her hip, and then lower. She pulled back gently. “Astin—”

“Did I not say to say nothing?” he whispered. Jianne gave an amorous whimper. She did not know what to say.

But he was already drawing up his shoulders, and drawing in a breath, readying himself for his next words, which were to come with great weight:

“I want you to join me at the ball.”

“You can’t mean…which ball Astin?” she gasped, as if too loud a sound would startle him to his senses.

“Of course I mean the Snow Ball. Will you come? I will not take no for answer!”

“But Astin, what will people think! Your mother! Your wife! The people in your circles talk Astin, I know they do! And they glare with such cruelty—”

“Let them glare! Let those old bats do as they please. Let them glare, let them scream even; let them shout! What is that, to love? What is that to you and I? All I want for that night is you on my arm! To spend that one night with you for all to see!”

“Astin I—”

“To share that one magical night with you! To dance with you, and we shall drink and laugh, and you will whisper in my ear—”

“Astin—”

“Oh how they’ll stare! Let them, I say! Let them see how much I value my position in the face of love! Let Mrs. Heathharrow and that bitch Selena see how little their mansions and whispers mean in the face of divine love!” He was gripping her by the shoulders, staring so strongly his gaze seemed to completely pass through the delicate creature in his hands.

“I—I—”

“What do you say! Will you join me, my dearest, and to hell with the rest?

“Oh Astin I—”

“Come! Lets us dance away our names for a night and be but lovers in infinity!” He was out of breath, and held her in his gaze, panting softly.

“Astin, I…I…” His eyes were floodlights blasting her, his hands strong on her shoulders, his heavy rings pleasantly digging into her flesh.

“…Infinity?” she gasped.

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Jianne wrestled Jimmy and Annis into their best clothes, matching blue velvet, and got their hair more or less flat. She had already packed the bags herself. And then they were out of the manse through the staff entrance, and around the front to the long main drive lined with poplars. The Astin Hughes’ stood there, the younger like a miniature of the older, both cutting a striking figure against the tall red and gold steamcoach behind them. The driver was sat at the front in a dapper black suit with one hand on the steering wheel, and the other on the riding crop for the six great white stallions lashed to the front. Even the horses are dressed better than I am, thought Jianne, and it was true: each beast was adorned with matching red and gold coats, trimmed with lines of coloured metal that branched across them like gaudy veins, and converged on the horses temples to rise up in brilliant, dazzling horns. It was all just for show of course; steamcoachs are steam powered. The tall machine hissed and belched up a gout of hot air from the chimneys on its vaulted roof.

“You look radiant, my dear,” Sir Astin Hughes said loudly, as if to an audience, and he doffed his tall, embroidered top hat. His son did the same, with a smaller version of the same hat. Jianne shivered a little at the compliment, and glanced sideways at the lines of servants flanking her approach to his outstretched hand. Faces she had known for years were blank and unreadable. Was that disgust she caught in Alec’s eyes? Let them glare! He had said. She made a show of tilting up her chin just a little, as she had seen Ladies do when refusing something, and strode towards the knight’s outstretched hand.

Annis and Jimmy were walking behind her a ways. Annis was in awe of the steamcoach. Jimmy had been too, but now he was trying to catch the eye of his friend Astin Hughes IV. Astin Hughes IV meanwhile was making a show of not responding.

“I have a gift for you, my darling,” said the knight when Jianne took his hand. He drew a small velvet bag from behind his back with a magicians flourish. “Well? Open it,” He said before she had even touched it. The drawstring loosened, and she drew out a tiara, woven delicately of incredibly fine strands red and white gold that coalesced into an elegant point above her forehead. “It’s beautiful!” she gasped.

“Isn’t it? Put it on.”

Dazed and euphoric, Jianne climbed the seven steps up to the steamcoach passenger car, which was as decadent as the rest of the vehicle, but softer with silk and velvet and wood in place of copper, polished steel and gold. ’ mouth was open slightly for the whole trip, marvelling at the wonders of this new world they had climbed into. And so began the long, luxuriant voyage North.

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Astin Hughes III and Jimmy’s mother slowly, over the next few hours, eased their way out of formal pleasantries and into each other’s arms, where they whispered and giggled. And the children took this to mean that it was now O.K to talk as usual.

“This isn’t even my favourite steamcoach you know,” began Astin Hughes IV . “Great Uncle Bartholomus has one drawn by hippos!” and so on, for the remainder of the trip. Jimmy was content to listen, wide-eyed, but Annis had stuck her head under the thick red curtains long ago, and was completely absorbed in the world that was sliding past their tinted window. And every hour or so, Jimmy would remember with a jolt that he, he, was on his way to the Snow Ball.

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After several hours, Annis gasped from behind the curtain. “Jimmy look!” Jimmy went to join her under the curtain, but Astin Hughes IV pulled it aside. They had topped a rise, and the view below them stretched down to the seaside. It was as if they were in another world: Where the rolling hills, drystone walls, farms and millwheels had been, there were crowds, and crowds of people, milling, swirling, tussling, churning masses of people. The only things not moving were layers and lines of buildings of all shapes, sizes and substances, and they too were nothing like anything the Bakers had seen. Buildings taller than the manse, but as thin as the garden shed, with great wires and antennas that shot out into the sky with purpose, towering structures connected by tunnels stretching through the air above them, made of great shining polished sheets of metal and glass that caught the sun. There a copper-green clock tower whose face was some dragon, and whose hands were great red tongues slowly licking the radius of its glare. There above it, the great dome of an observatory with a huge silver telescope bigger than the manse leaning out of its top; there a lighthouse shining a powerful green beam out across the—the ocean! There it was! Stretching out for—“Astin what was that word again? For like, never stops.”

“ You mean ‘Infinity’.”

“Infinity!” Jimmy whispered it to himself under his breath. The huge steam ships were maybe the greatest marvel of all, all wheels, cannons and chimneys like the corpse of some clockwork god, but even they were only a spec in the vastness of that blue plane. Annis gasped in amazement, pointing at two lines of shining, bronze dancers, adorned with huge metal-feather headdress and great peacock tails. They where moving in perfect unison in the centre of a plaza the coach was passing through. At the head of the line was a rugged, happy looking man winding a music box whose merry, carnivalesque sounds seemed to be moving the dancers. There was a hat at his feet that was slowly filling up with coins.

“Who are they!? Mum who are they!?” She cried, pulling at her mother’s sleeve.

Sir Astin Hughes III answered for her. “They are Automata, dear. That man in the front is most likely the craftsman who made them. He’s a street performer, see? And the people who like his show give him money.”

“Can we give them money mum!? They’re so beautiful!”

“Oh, we’ll see thousands more like them my dear.” And the cart rolled on through the buzzing city.

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“We’re here children! Welcome to the Royal Docks! From here we’ll be on the ferry until we reach the Northern Continent, and The Ball!” That was Astin senior talking. Almost on cue, the coach doors were opened to reveal the bowing dapper driver, and the children got their first smell of the ocean, rank and fresh. Astin Hughes III was first to step onto the red carpet that had been rolled down the seven steps of the coach and onto the wooden boards of the jetty. Jianne followed close behind. The children came last. Jimmy stepped out and gasped, for perhaps the hundredth time that day. Their red carpet was joined by other carpets of different colours, along which various families and entourages were slowly, showily making their way from equally grand coaches towards the hulking, titanic ferry. It had seemed large from far off, but up close the sheer massiveness of the thing was incomprehensible, and it filled jimmy with the same numinous awe as the ocean had. He had to crane his neck to even make out the upper decks, all a heavenly white, with marble and faux gold adornments and pillars, and flags of all colours flying in the wind. The windows where huge, or stained depicting great feasts or heroic nights, or religious figures. Beneath these wonders, the lower decks were all steel and brute strength. Jimmy could make out huge gashes in the polished metal near the waterline, some as deep as his arm was long, which still showed no signs of penetrating that grey hull. And the front of the ferry was armoured by two huge plates of iron that were each as wide as a village, and thicker than a house. They were moulded together into a single gigantic point that looked like it had been forged by god to split the world. It was this prow that would plough the ships way through the thick icecaps of the north, to its destination.

“Keep up Jimmy!” Annis hissed from in front of him. Jimmy closed his mouth and followed, and with each step the leviathan loomed impossibly larger.

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The great purring of the ship, and the constant orchestras, bands, quartets and gramophones all but covered the tectonic crack the ship made with each new field of ice it penetrated. But although the sound was not noticeable, the clash of ice and steel made an unmistakable reverberation that one felt in one’s bones.

Outside the scenery was beautiful, but in a bleak uniform way that soon bored Jimmy. It was inside the decks that he spent most of his time, playing with the younger kids, eating the most decadent deserts served all day, swimming in public baths, watching the automata servers and performers, tricking them with complex requests, eating some more, and indulging pleasures he’d never had before, and never would again. And thus for Jimmy, the fortnight spent aboard the great icebreaker ferry passed quickly.

And then, with a suddenness that seemed unreal, they were docking, then walking past the poor ships engineers who stared longingly after them, down the jetty, onto the landlocked ice of the Northern Continent, and the Snow Ball.

In the distance Jimmy could see the sharp, fine shapes of the ice-crystal palace where the ball was to be held; impossibly tall and thin spires that glowed blue in the new sunlight. Between the ship and the palace there stretched a grand thoroughfare of ice and snow. At its centre was a wide path of clear ice, dusted with snow so the patrons would not slip. On either side of the path, rising from natural, picturesque mounds of perfect powder were the ice statues. Each seven stories tall, perfect in scale and detail, there was a dragon, a unicorn, a clock, a peacock, the King, the Queen, and all sorts of other wondrous shapes, all dyed, tinted and textured by hand over the past eleven months. Some were still being adjusted by teams of a hundred men with cranes, ropes, pullies and chains, all shouting “Forward! Stop! Move! Back!” at each other through hand-held radios. Right in the centre of the thoroughfare a single radio tower rose up taller than the statues. Despite being an already-impressive structure, like a monolithic blade of gently swaying grass, it had been adorned with lights and ribbons to that it glistened and fluttered beautifully. Around it were troops of automata waitstaff, armed with drinks and canapés, ready to activate when the first guests were within range. And snow was just everywhere!

Jianne gave up all pretence of dignified curiosity. Her elegant mouth gaped, and her large eyes stretched wide. She looked little more than a child herself.

“Welcome to the Snow Ball, my love.” Sir Astin Hughes III delivered the line like an actor, sweeping his arm out before him as if with that motion he was conjuring the whole scene before them.

“Its…a-a..it’s…Marvelous!” She sighed.

“Isn’t it? But enough marvelling! Take my hand, my dear, and let us plunder this garden of delights! Besides, it’s a bit …gauche to stare. Just wait until you see the ballroom my dear!” An array of sparkling rockets shot up from either side of the palace and exploded into the sky in red and green flowers. Annis screamed in delight at the fireworks, and her mother gasped.

“Come!” Cried Astin Hughes III, and lead the small group onto the thoroughfare, and towards the Palace.

About them the most powerful figures on the planet mingled and strolled in the same direction like a very relaxed, very glamorous school of fish. The men mostly looked the same as Sir Hughes, but every now and then Jimmy caught a glance of a colour against the neat black of all those suites; a tall dark skinned man wreathed in elegant sheets of peach, red and pink silk that fell about him like many capes, or a man with a funny moustache in large bulbous sleeves and pantaloons decorated with many gold studs, and a tall forked hat with little gold and silver bells on the ends that jingled as he strode.

The women were something else entirely: The older ladies were so heavily decorated that they looked like great flightless birds of paradise, and the younger women, while less grand and complex, were so simply beautiful that Jimmy was sure that they must be angels. Many of them greeted Sir Astin Hughes III with a handshake, or a series of kisses, but very few acknowledged Jianne. Jimmy realised that most of the people around them were staring at his mother, whose new tiara seemed to be the only thing about her to make sense among all this glamour. It made him uncomfortable.

The ice statues, the radio tower and the palace only became more magnificent they grew closer. A gust of arctic wind gently whipped up a mist of snow, and the tiny particles tinkled gently against the crystal pyramids of champagne glasses balanced precariously on the waitstaff’s trays. And then over this tinkling sound, Jimmy caught the barest hints of music on the breeze as well. Annis had heard it as well.

“Listen!” She cried, putting a finger to her gently parted lips.

Now that he was listening he could make out the elegant notes of flutes and oboes, drifting dreamlike through the air…and then suddenly a clash of percussion, and swift exciting violins took up the song, and trumpets joined in, and the music was huge and vibrant, and energetic…

The sound was coming from the great raised ice portcullis that was the palace gate, and from within impossibly shifting lights danced out onto the ice of the thoroughfare. All Jimmy could think of was imagine what it’s like inside!!

The grandeur of the scene before him might have held Jimmy petrified for the rest of his life if not for the snowball Astin Hughes IV sent flying into his face with a pffff. Jimmy gasped, and spat, and fell over backwards, and Astin laughed hysterically.

“See!” He cried, “its just everywhere!!”

Jimmy was in the game in an instant, and was already packing a sizable handful into his own snowball. His first missed, and so did his second. All eyes were on Jianne and Astin Hughes III, although the children didn’t notice, and the partygoers and no scorn to spare for the disruptive children. So no one shouted at Jimmy, Annis or Astin Hughes IV when they darted off the path into the mounds under the statues, and began to chase each other back and forth, laughing gleefully.

Astin Hughes IV topped a snow dune nearest the radio tower, beneath the statue of the king, and matching the icy monarch’s pose he cried “I am king of this mound! I—oof!” because Jimmy had got him square in the face. Astin Hughes IV half fell, half flung himself down the side of the snow drift and rolled giggling through the crisp snow that clung thicker and thicker to his ermine coat, until he was almost encased in the stuff, like a snowball himself.

But rather than stopping at the foot of the hill he kept rolling, blind and laughing, tumbling at last into a line of silver clockwork waitstaff, waiting to surge forward and greet the arriving guests. The automata he struck wobbled to keep its tray upright, stacked precariously with pyramids of golden bubble in crystal glasses. But the shock was too much for the cogs and screws, and the pyramid toppled to the side with a tinkling and a crash, quickly followed by the clockwork man himself. He struck the automata next to him and so on and so on, until perhaps a hundred metal corpses were left twitching in a fortune of lightly fizzing champagne. Jimmy stated open mouthed. By now Astin had stood and was looking very frightened. His father was shouting something at him but he was too stunned to notice at first.

Then came the cleaners, whirring nervously along on three wheels, seeming to appear from nowhere, to dispose of the disruption as inconspicuously as possible. But the champagne on the ice made for a treacherous surface, and sent the little mechanical wonders skidding. One went careening into the radio tower, and sent a strong shudder up the stalk. The lights hanging from the antenna glistened as the thing wobbled, and two internal wires crossed that were not supposed to cross. For a couple of moments the tower boosted all the signals it was radiating, sending the statue-builder’s radio network across the ice and through the thick plates of iron to broadcast across the ice-breaker ferry’s intercom:

“Forward! Forward I say! Can’t you hear me! Bring this monster forward! Break your backs men! Full steam ahead!”

The engineers shrugged, and the helmsman raised an eyebrow, and the engine room burst into action. The captain rushed back and forth, flicking switches and shouting in tubes, desperately trying to regain control of the intercom and his ship, but to no avail. In minutes the ships engine woke up and began to roar. An immeasurable pressure of super-heated steam urged the great iron plates of the bow towards the shore, into the ice and deeper, into the land itself. The earth gave a hideous rumbling crunch and tremored. The statues nearest the shore began to shiver. The engines moaned and whined like a cyclone, and the ship pushed ever forward. With a deafening crack, the ice of the thoroughfare split, and the crack branched out quick as lighting towards the palace. The earth shook, and the first statue began to topple. Impossibly slowly it leaned steeper and steeper and steeper, until it was falling, striking the one next to it, to the utter dismay of the onlookers. The next fell and the next, each with a splitting crash that shattered glass and burst eardrums, crushing or impaling party guests with crystal shrapnel. The ship was still heaving forward, driving its pointed prow into the crack, and in a flash, and another resounding moan, the ice split wider into a crevasse. The cries for help were as futile in the face of that sound as the long manicured nails scrapping against the split ice; both the aristocrats and their screams were swallowed by the opening earth. From this distance the palace seemed like a sandcastle, and it was coming apart just as easily. With a final moan the ships engines were spent, and seconds after the cry of “She’s gonna blow!” she did well and truly blow. The explosion was heard through the splitting ice, blasting a hole in the hull. Water rushed in, and the ship began to sink. The land was faring no better, with wild cracks and crevasses racing over the ice faster than sound, the only shelter being the Palace, which was now no shelter at all.

Just over half the guests survived the incident uninjured, including the Bakers and the Hughes, but with the ship and radio communications destroyed, they dined on caviar and lobster until gout, or the cold, claimed them one by one. Not a single soul escaped that icy continent.

Without its monarchs, governments, leading merchants, scientists and philosophers, the world was plunged into a terrible dark age for the next half a century.

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‘Snowball’ is also a common cat’s name.