The wind howled, a mournful cry across the desolate Icelandic landscape. Snow, driven by the gale, lashed against the windows of the small farmhouse. Inside, eleven-year-old Brynja huddled closer to the hearth, the fire's warmth a small comfort against the encroaching chill. It was December 24th, and the darkness outside was not just the absence of light, but something more.
Brynja's grandmother, Amma, sat across from her, her gnarled hands busy with knitting needles. The clicking sound was a steady counterpoint to the storm's fury, a small semblance of domesticity in the face of looming dread.
"They come tonight, Amma?" Brynja asked, her voice small, barely a breath against the wind's scream.
Amma did not look up. The needles kept moving, silver flashing in the firelight. "Yes, little one. They come."
Every Christmas Eve, since time immemorial, they came. The Icicle Angels. Beings of frozen beauty and unimaginable cruelty, they descended upon Iceland, their appearance heralding a night of terror. Nobody knew why they came, only that they did, and that to survive, one must hide, be silent, and pray they are not found.
Brynja looked at the windows, now frosted over with intricate, skeletal designs. The frost seemed to press inward, like eyes trying to peer through the glass, seeking…
She shuddered, pulling her wool blanket tighter. This year felt different. The usual fear was there, of course, the bone-deep dread she'd grown up with. But there was also a thread of something else, something she'd been hiding herself.
The farmhouse was old, built of thick stone walls and heavy wooden beams. The doors were reinforced, the windows shuttered. It had withstood many a Christmas Eve. It had to, it would, it always did.
"Are you alright, elskan mín?" Amma asked, her tone more concerned. The clicking of the knitting stopped.
"Yeah Amma, I'll be ok." she replied. She didn't tell Amma what happened during last night. She kept that dark memory a secret.
The wind rose in intensity, shrieking like a banshee. It was as if the storm itself was their herald, announcing their arrival. The fire flickered, casting dancing shadows on the walls, turning familiar objects into monstrous shapes.
Brynja felt it then – a coldness that had nothing to do with the winter weather. It was a glacial chill that seeped into your bones, a presence that made the hairs on your arms stand on end. She closed her eyes tightly, waiting for the impact.
There was a sound, a high-pitched keening, like crystal grinding against crystal. It was the sound of the Icicle Angels' wings, razor-sharp edges cleaving the air.
A thump on the roof, heavy and deliberate. Then another, and another. They had landed.
Amma stopped knitting. She placed the needles and wool carefully on the table beside her, a final, calm gesture. Her hands, now empty, rested in her lap, clenched. She met Brynja's terrified eyes. "Be silent, child. Not a whisper."
Brynja nodded, her throat too tight to speak. She squeezed her eyes shut, trying to block out the sounds: the creaking of the roof timbers, the delicate, yet deadly tink-tink of ice against the shutters, the low, guttural groans that seemed to vibrate in the very air.
The sounds moved, circled, probing, searching. It felt like an eternity, each second a stretched-out torment of anticipation. Brynja's heart pounded in her chest, a frantic drum against the silence.
Then, the tink-tink sound came from directly outside the window next to her. Brynja bit her lip so hard she tasted blood, but she did not cry out.
There was a pause, an unbearable stillness broken only by the howling wind. She could feel a presence on the other side of the shutters, cold and immense, radiating malevolence.
Suddenly, the shutters exploded inward, splinters of wood flying like shrapnel. Brynja screamed, a short, sharp burst of terror before Amma's hand clamped over her mouth.
Framed in the shattered window was an Icicle Angel.
It was breathtakingly beautiful and utterly terrifying. Tall and slender, its body was formed from pure, crystalline ice, reflecting the firelight in a thousand dazzling points. Its wings, enormous and delicate, were edged with icicles sharper than any sword. Its face was smooth and featureless, save for two empty sockets where eyes should have been, holes of black nothingness that seemed to drink the light.
The Angel did not move. It simply looked at Brynja, or rather, through her. And in that void, Brynja saw not just her own fear reflected, but something far more ancient, more terrible.
"We know," the Angel's voice was a chorus of icy whispers, "about your sin."
Brynja, eyes full of her terror. Stared at the monster before her, she couldn't see the details. Not truly. But in her mind she still held onto that horrible memory she kept in hiding. It had played over, and over for a full night.
Last night. She'd done it. She broke tradition. She looked through a forbidden window. Her best friend had disappeared, that morning. Her only true friend in all her youth. He said his name was Leifur, but on that day they disappeared his body was different. He wasn't made of flesh and bone. But of ice, he too had ice shard wings, that's how she remembered that day anyway, she thought.
Leifur didn't answer her that day, that was yesterday morning. All he said was that it wasn't his time, it was the next night. Then her friend vanished into a thousand flecks of wind-born ice, no words to be spared to her at all.
"You...know...?" She was shaking so hard that Amma held her tightly and with more strength than should have been possible from the old woman. Amma had warned her. The story of how to keep hidden, safe. To remain invisible, you do not acknowledge their world.
"Of course...dear one." The Angel reached towards her through the empty hole of the window. Brynja squeezed her eyes shut as the creature entered.
"You thought hiding this...from us...would help him?" Another Icicle Angel asked. This one had landed through the newly formed hole in the roof.
The Angels were gathering inside now, the small room filled with their unearthly, glacial presence. Their wings dripped water onto the stone floor, freezing instantly into intricate, thorny patterns. The air temperature plummeted, the fire in the hearth flickering violently.
The lead Angel's icy fingers touched Brynja's forehead. The cold was excruciating, a burning, searing pain that went straight to her soul. It lifted her up without any more touch and Brynja tried to fight it.
"Where, little one...?" It tilted its head in question to her, knowing the truth but it was as if it required the answer in order to continue its work.
"Tell them…and it will go quickly. Otherwise…?" another voice called out. Amma stood before the new entry. The woman had a gnarled walking stick raised, threatening to use it on a winged nightmare.
The woman stood defiant, "You foul fiends, she will never-" But before Amma had finished speaking another angel formed behind her, it shoved its ice-form hand into the poor old woman.
Brynja's scream pierced her eardrums, it had pierced through her. This whole thing was her fault, her mistake. Tears began to form, "The window...to my attic!" she pleaded.
Brynja continued to sob, and then they stopped forming. Frozen tear tracks formed down her face, a sign of what was to come.
Without saying a word, one of them had grabbed Amma. She was encased in blue. Not just frostbite blue, the woman turned entirely to perfect reflective ice in mere moments. The look of horror, her scream and stance caught frozen for eternity, perfectly formed to the finest detail.
Brynja could not handle that memory, her body just went into acceptance of the inevitable. Her screams turned to wails, her wails turned to weeping, and those just stopped too.
Then more appeared in front of her, out the window she betrayed, He returned to her. Her friend Leifur. Except he was dressed and made as an Angel. This must have been why her old Amma warned against looking out forbidden windows, never to interact, never to break the rules on this day, Christmas.
"Brynja." He spoke in a different tongue, cold as ice. It echoed, boomed, rattled. She had been a bad child, selfish, and for that they will always be taken to a fate she'll be forever unable to share with normal humans.
All three took her. All three were there. Not one, not dozens, but precisely a trinity. The three held onto her small form, she gave herself over, her mind could take no more and gave into fear completely, frozen she was now.
The others went on their mission throughout the country, her grandmother lay shattered on the stone floor. They didn't take her grandmother, that one's final fate was on her. That's what Amma had tried so hard to prevent.
As the first light of dawn broke, it found a new Icicle Angel in the attic. She floated amongst many, all waiting, unmoving, perfectly frozen, for next Christmas Eve. Her face contorted, like all of the rest, in pain, with her hands reaching outwards, towards where a single window still intact offered the outside world. It's tradition now, Leifur told her before the pain took all her ability away to think on her own.
Leifur explained everything to her after his three grabbed her out to be taken into a new realm, to suffer the unknown, where only these creatures exist. Each one chosen to live this torture forever and each time more are taken than last time. "Christmas Eve, always grows larger here. The ice fields grow."
And all Icicle Angels have the exact same form, size and features, a collective mass of painful, hateful, fear. That is why forbidden windows need to be forbidden. They become what they see. A cycle of forced selection, not everyone is forced to choose, it must be a decision. She chose. They were the consequences.
Leifur and his three lifted Brynja, and there was a rush of wind and frozen, sharp feathers and things. No sound. Nothing to feel. Just emptiness. Here.
Brynja would serve out the fate of an angel that needs an ending every cycle. One to create new tradition, and continue this horror. All of it would come back, like her tears when next Christmas came. The new rules, the horror, would come soon. Very, very soon.
Amma tried her hardest to save that poor little girl, to avoid the truth of an eternity that Brynja had invited. It's a bad fate, but only to humans. For that's why she knew so much, why all Amma's always knew. Because a child has more power than most believe, even a very bad one.
All alone in the darkness, there would never again be an escape for this one, there are other places. They found her, here, always and forever. That final Christmas will last all her eternities.
A nightmare made real, only her heart. It's there, she's somewhere, in her head screaming in that new and vast empty prison. All around, there's ice-carved statues that do not die, for each statue shares its soul with her.
It lasts. All her time. But it is always broken for a few seconds on Christmas. A return of her to feel, think, cry and weep for the old ones, that will, always, come soon. Her pain renewed. Until her service begins, that day all over again. A never ending cycle. This is how it always grows, the fear that never ends, for Christmas.
Leifur explained this so kindly to her on that flight into the end of her light. Then he became, once more, perfect frozen statues with all his kind. A terrible gift on Christmas day, indeed. One given, by bad children.