IT IS OF NO use, boss, I cannot budge this from its frame,' cried Butter, sliding his back against the door to the floor. He rubbed furiously at his eyes with the palms of his hands, frustrated at his lack of progress. 'Would you like try?'
Cornelius Quaint did not answer.
'Perhaps you will fare better than I,' called out Butter in the darkness of the ice box, crawling on his hands and knees. 'Boss? Mr Quaint?'
The Inuit patted his hands through the air around him, searching for Quaint, and suddenly they found purchase on the man's shirt. Panting as if he'd just run a mile, Butter clamoured at Quaint's chest. He laid his head down onto it, listening for the beat of the man's heart.
Nothing.
Scratching along the cold, icy floor of the ice box in the complete blackness, Butter found Quaint's arm. He wrenched the sleeve open at the cuff, and rushed to check the man's pulse. It was incredibly slow, but just about there. The cold was slowing down Quaint's body functions to a crawl.
'Curse my stupidity,' Butter yelled at the ceiling. 'I should not have turned my back on you…now you suffer!'
Again he clamoured at Quaint's chest, and thumped his fists upon it. In truth this was more a way of him releasing his frustration than anything. To all intents and purposes, Butter was now alone in the ice box, and his curses fluttered in the air like confetti at a wedding. He had not realised just how much he relied on Quaint's company for all these many years, and now it was being painfully driven home to him.
Without Quaint, the tiny man would surely have died alongside his wife back in the icy wastes of Greenland ten long years before. Walrus poachers had encroached upon Butter's land, and when he had tried to defend his family, they beat Butter to within an inch of his life, before brutalising and then murdering his wife. The poachers' final act of evil was to kidnap his young daughter, and they stole her away from him aboard their icebreaker ship, mocking the injured Inuit as he clung onto his life in the snow. He very nearly died that day, and surely would have if Cornelius Quaint hadn't stumbled across him and dragged him to safety. What on earth the conjuror was doing out in the middle of nowhere that day, Butter didn't know and didn't care. He was salvation.
Quaint had promised to help Butter find his kidnapped daughter, and they became united in their dedication. But over the years, the world changed. Borders and countries expanded, empires were formed, and suddenly the globe seemed such a very large haystack within which to find his needle. Butter's precious daughter had simply vanished off the face of the earth, and despite the best efforts of both men over some years; they eventually had to admit defeat. It was not long after that when Quaint adopted Butter into the circus, but still the Inuit refused to mourn his daughter. The fire still burned inside him to find her, and he had never given up on his hope. As he sat by Quaint's side on the freezing floor of the wooden ice box, he realised that hope itself was fading fast.
Lifting Quaint's lifeless body up onto his lap, Butter wept openly, freely and loudly. The air was extremely thin now, and soon he would join Quaint in unconsciousness. He cursed at the door, finding the last, ethereal scrap of strength still left within him. He held onto it tightly within his clenched fists, nurturing its potency, cultivating it. Rocking his head back, Butter released his anger and bellowed with all his might. His tear-filled eyes were clamped tightly shut, and he prayed for a merciful release.
Suddenly, a flurry of scuffling footsteps outside the ice box door distracted him from his silent wanderings. Had the Lord sent him help already? That was quick work, even for a God. Butter inched himself closer to the metal door, but recoiled instinctively as a thought struck him. Perhaps it was his captors, come to finish the job? Maybe that merciful release would come soon. He listened intently for more sounds with his ear to the metal door, and sure enough, in the warehouse something stirred. It hammered a succession of heavy blows upon the door from the other side, and Butter felt a further chill rip through his nerves. He moved nearer, and pressed his worn hands flat against the freezing cold metal.
'Hello?' he called weakly, forcing back his tears. 'Please, you must help. My friend…he is near death! Release us…please!'
'Stand away…from the…door, laddie,' yelled a man's voice from outside.
The door shifted a little in its frame, accompanied by a rending scream of metal, as someone-or some thing-tore at the door's hinges. A thin seam of moonlight was slowly visible all around the door's edges. Butter felt his mouth quiver in anticipation. A sudden shock worked its way through his bloodstream as the door that he had spent nearly an hour hammering upon was forcibly ripped from its moorings and tossed aside as if it were made of balsa wood. Landing with a dull clang of metal against stone, it skidded across the warehouse floor. Heavy footsteps again pounded against the wet stone floor, drawing ever closer. Butter squinted through the onrush of sudden moonlight, trying to define what he saw.
A silhouette of a great, towering man stood in the ice box doorway, almost filling the entire space. Bathed in wistful light as if surrounded by a ghostly aura, the voluminous figure stooped down and gathered up Quaint.
His eyes still fighting to adjust to the light, Butter had no choice but to gawp at the large mountain of a man with Cornelius Quaint's inert body in his enormous arms. He rose to his feet, and cautiously clambered from the ice box and followed the huge man, as he gently laid Quaint's body down onto a nearby table. In a daze, he watched anxiously as the shadowed form of the man rubbed busily at Quaint's chest.
'Got here…just in time, lad,' said the juggernaut.
'Indeed,' answered Butter automatically.
'He's…in a bad way. Need t'warm him…quick,' said the bulky man in a thick, interrupted staccato drawl. Each word seemed to be a foreign language to him, and he fought to grasp each one clumsily between his huge fists. 'Butter, are ye injured?'
'How do you know of me?' questioned Butter, squinting into the darkness. 'Who are you?'
The giant of a man smiled, his thick, bushy beard hiding much of his broad mouth. He stepped into the shafts of moonlight streaming into the market through a crack in the wall, and Butter instantly recognised the face illuminated before him.
'Is it really you?' he gasped.
'Yes, lad…last time I checked,' said Prometheus.