"Yes. Though this boy may seem to be seven or eight years old, he is actually eighteen or nineteen."

"Incredible!"

"Do you think he has any gold?" asked one of the other men.

It had indeed been eleven years since Nathan buried himself in the snow to evade the bear, which, ironically, had gorged itself on so many seals earlier in the day that the mere thought of eating Nathan made it queasy. He lay there, skin blue and eyes frozen shut, in a decade-long dreamless sleep.

After a close vote, they'd decided not to use flamethrowers to melt the ice, and instead, after much effort, carved out a rectangular block of ice and dragged it back to town.

Reporters from all over the world showed up. Hundreds of pictures were taken. For nearly three minutes, the news was dominated by the story of The Astounding Frozen Boy.

"Every scientist in the world wants to study him!" Yukon said to the group of men, who were each in the same number of pictures and received equal airtime on the television stations.

"Even botanists?" asked Tyrone.

"Especially botanists! Well, not especially botanists, but they feel there may be some interesting plant life frozen in there with him, perhaps between his toes, and they'd love the opportunity to study it."

"Are we going to let them? I think if we sliced carefully, we could get at least eight hundred strips out of him, and if we auctioned each strip to the highest bidder, we'd make a fortune!"

Yukon shook his head. "Slicing a body like that is not as easy as you would think. But I'm pleased to inform all of you that we have a private individual who wishes to purchase The Astounding Frozen Boy, and he is offering an amount so large that you will call me a liar when I reveal it."

They did call him a liar, several times, but after Yukon produced the paperwork they apologized and rubbed their hands together with glee. The purchaser was scheduled to pick up Nathan's body first thing in the morning. This led to a sudden lack of trust between the men, and after a long dark night of paranoia and double-crosses they all lay dead except for Yukon.

The block of ice with Nathan in it was sold to an heiress named Monika Truant, who loved the idea of the scientific community clamoring for an artifact that she planned only to display to servants who used her walk-in freezer.

Nathan stayed in the freezer for about two months, completely unaware of his fate or even the smiley face that a prankster carved into the ice. Then, one night, Monika woke a servant up out of a sound sleep in order to fetch her a chocolate bar, slightly chilled. The bleary-eyed servant, Candice, left the chocolate in the freezer for a moment, and forgot to close the door after she retrieved it and delivered it to Monika, who instructed her to go outside, find a vagrant, and slowly eat it in front of him.

Throughout the night, the ice melted.

The next day, Nathan lay in a pool of cold water.

"Oh no!" shouted Candice, hurriedly soaking up the water with a sponge and squeezing it onto him, hoping that it would quickly refreeze. "The missus will have my head on a skewer! Whatever shall I do?"

After some thought, she came up with an excellent plan: drag Nathan's body out of the house, ask the gardener to bury him in exchange for twenty minutes of frenzied carnality, and vow to never to speak of the incident again.

Nathan opened his eyes. "Watch out!" he cried. "There's a bear!"

"You...you...you're alive!"

Nathan realized that there was no bear, and that he was no longer buried beneath the snow. He looked around, confused as to how he got to where he was.

"I'm very cold," he said.

"As well you should be! Do you realize that you've been frozen in a block of ice for eleven years?"

"Nonsense!" said Nathan. "What year is it?"

Candice told him.

"That's eleven years after the year I thought it was! How has this happened?" Nathan tried to stand up, but he could barely move except to turn his head. Such cruel fate! Eleven years lost! Eleven birthdays wasted! Jamison must certainly be dead by now. Penny and Mary's memory of him couldn't have lasted more than six or seven years, could it? He was long forgotten by everybody who'd ever known him!

"Your teeth!" said Candice. "Show me your teeth again!"

"My teeth are unimportant!" Nathan insisted. "What's important is that I've been frozen for eleven years!"

"You have the teeth of a demon!" Candice screamed. "That is why you are not dead! You're a blue-skinned, fanged demon! Begone! Begone!" She jammed the end of the mop into his face and began to twist it back and forth.

"Leave me alone!" Nathan shouted.

"Demon! I cast you back to the pits of Hades!"

"Demons aren't frozen!" said Nathan. "They're extremely hot!"

Candice stopped twisting the mop. "But they also practice trickery and deception. What better way for a demon to hide its true self than to hide in a block of ice that would melt within seconds in h.e.l.l?"

"I'm just a regular boy! Please, I can't move, but if you draw me a warm bath and let me soak for a while, I will leave and you'll never see me again."

"I don't know..."

"Please." Nathan tried to give her his most soulful expression, though with his face so badly frozen he wasn't sure if he looked sympathetic or like a twisted mask of horror.

Candice was silent for a long time. Then she nodded. "All right. But you can't use one of the good bathtubs."

There was a lot of hair floating in the tub as Candice eased Nathan into the water. He hoped it belonged to dogs. The initial sensation of frozen skin sliding into hot water was akin to a thousand red-hot needles stabbing into each square inch of his flesh and being jiggled around by a madman, but the feeling gradually improved.

"Where did you come from?" asked Candice. "A land far away?"

"Yes," Nathan replied. "I mean, not like outer s.p.a.ce or anything, but I live several days from here, in a town called Giraffe Pond where the people accept my differences and do not judge me for them, except when..." He almost said "except when they throw me in jail for them," but that seemed to be contradictory to the point he was trying to make, so he omitted that part.

"Is it a beautiful place?" Candice asked.

Nathan nodded. "Very beautiful. They don't have huge mansions like this one, but-"

"Never mind, then. It would be kind of absurd for me to move away without a mansion like this one waiting for me at my destination. Can you move yet?"

Nathan raised his arm out of the water. It was the one that had been dunked in boiling oil, but the eleven years encased in ice seemed to have fixed it up. "Yes. Thank you." His skin was still blue, but now it was a light blue rather than a dark blue, almost turquoise, and he guessed that he'd return to his pinkish state before too much longer.

"What is going on here?" said a voice that was neither Nathan nor Candice, at a volume that was significantly louder than what they'd been using to carry on their conversation.

Monika stood in the doorway to the bathroom, looking positively furious. Nathan, of course, did not know that she was Monika or that she owned the mansion, but he picked up on the general idea of their relationship very quickly.

"Nothing, ma'am," said Candice.

"Nothing? I catch you in the act of bathing the secret illegitimate child you've clearly been hiding in my home all these years, and you say nothing? How much of my food has he eaten? How often have you used the wind in my backyard to dry clothing on his behalf?"

"It's not like that at all," said Candice, doing some quick mental calculations on whether she'd get in more trouble for accidentally melting the Astounding Frozen Boy or for hiding away a love child. She decided that the melting was worse. "All right, I apologize for-"

"She freed me from my prison of ice," said Nathan. "She is blameless in this matter."

Candice smacked him on the back of the head. "Don't call your mother 'blameless,' you disobedient brat."

Monika narrowed her eyes. "It is the ice boy. Did you leave the freezer door open?"

"Oh, no, ma'am, the ice cracked all around him, as if his dormant superhuman strength suddenly rose to the surface, and he broke his way out with a power few could have imagined!"

"She flatters me," said Nathan, "but the truth is that I lay helpless on the floor in a pool of melted ice-water, I suppose you could call it-and were it not for her generosity, I might have died. She should be praised and rewarded."

Candice pointed at Nathan's face. "He is a mutant with fearsome teeth! Run, ma'am! We must run before he kills us all!"

"Stop being so p.r.o.ne to mindless panic. He's only a young oh my goodness gracious his teeth are hideous protect me protect me protect me!"

Candice rushed over to the doorway. "Come with me, ma'am! I shall barricade the doors and protect you from this vicious beast!"

They fled. Nathan wanted to soak in the tub some more, but he felt that wasn't such a good idea, and so he got out of the water, grabbed a towel, and dried himself off.

If you looked in the dictionary under "wretched," you would not see a photograph of the clothes Nathan was frozen in, since the makers of dictionaries are rarely so lazy as to simply include a photograph rather than a proper definition, but wretched and mildewed they were. Even when enclosed in ice, clothes are not intended to be worn for eleven years, and Nathan had no desire to put them back on, despite his decision to wear only cheap clothing. So he tied the towel around his waist and hurried out of the bathroom.

"I'll stand in front of you, ma'am!" Candice shouted from the end of the hall. "If he charges like a bull, I'll throw myself in front of his horns!"

Nathan went the other way.

The mansion was a maze of winding hallways, staircases, and doors that led nowhere, but fortunately he'd been bathing in a room that was right next to a side exit and he made his way out of the house with minimal effort.

He walked away, joints still creaking a bit, skin still light blue, still feeling an inner chill, but at least he hadn't been eaten by that bear.

"Nathan..." whispered a voice in his ear.

He looked around. There was n.o.body there.

"Nathan..." whispered the same voice in his other ear.

"Who is that?" he asked.

A figure, barely visible, materialized next to him. It looked more like fumes than a person.

"Nathan, this is your father."

TWENTY-ONE.

"My...father?"

"Yes."

"Are you a ghost? Or am I going mad?"

"It's actually both. But don't worry, Nathan, the madness will fade before long. Do not be ashamed of it. A man who spends eleven years in a block of ice and emerges sane was mad when he started."

"What?"

"There are things you must know about this new world. It takes more coins to buy things than it once did. If you attempt to purchase a loaf of bread and hand them only a half-coin, as you would have in the past, the grocer will stare at you impatiently and await additional funds."

"Are you in heaven?"

The apparition chuckled. "I'd tell you, but then I'd be killed." What little of its face that Nathan could recognize turned serious. "No, really, I would. A strange thing to say since I'm already dead, I know, but you can also die in the afterlife, which is at least three times worse than dying in the regular life. They're very big on keeping secrets here. I've already said too much."

"Is Mom with you?"

"She's right here. We've been watching over you. Not such an interesting process during your decade in the ice, but we've never left you. Not ever."

"Am I...am I making you proud?"

"Very much so. Your mother and I have never stopped being proud of you. We're up here with a lot of deceased parents who are watching over their children, and while I won't get into the details, there have been many viewing experiences that were extremely uncomfortable, activities that were really never meant to be witnessed unless one was an active partic.i.p.ant, and there will be plenty of awkward conversations when these children join their parents in the afterlife. But you, Nathan, have behaved heroically. You've been compa.s.sionate. I'm not going to lie and say that it was a good idea to bite that kid on the arm-obviously, your mother and I were up here shouting 'Don't do it! Don't do it!' and we both sort of looked at each other and cringed when you did it, but when you consider a lot of the other things you could have done at your age, the level of shame is comparatively low. Now, we do have to acknowledge that the teenage years are where most of the truly distasteful sights occur, and you either missed those years or just haven't gone through them yet-I'm not entirely sure how that works with the whole frozen-in-ice thing, but to answer your question, yes, you are making us very, very proud."

"Thank you, Dad. But what should I do now?"

"Go home. People there still care about you. They still miss you."

"Are they still alive?"

"Well, most of them. It's not as if you've woken into a post-apocalyptic wasteland. Go to them."

"I will!" said Nathan, feeling more excitement than he had in the past eleven years. "I'll find somebody with a car and beg for a ride immediately!"

"No," said the ghost. "You must walk."

"Walk?"

"Yes. This is a journey you must take on foot. It will be a time for personal growth and spiritual reflection."

"I don't think I need any of that."

The ghost frowned. "All right, the truth is, with your skin that blue color, people are going to be somewhat squeamish about giving you a ride, and with your track record there's very little doubt that you'll end up strapped to a table in the laboratory of a mad scientist whose experiments will give new meaning to the word 'invasive.'"

Nathan had to admit that the scenario sounded plausible.

"All right," he said. "I shall walk."

"Take in the beauty of the world as you do. Appreciate every leaf. Actually, no, leaves are best appreciated as a whole, but appreciate the sun, the moon, the stars, the soil, the mountains, the starfish, the art of clever merchandising, the rocks...anything that's not foaming at the mouth and trying to consume you, you should appreciate."

"I will," said Nathan. "I promise I will."