It's magic. Though I'm working on some notions of how light and chemical reactions work -- may just have to leave it at "magic!"
You can move air around and make vacuums, and walking around leaves little gaps in the density of the frozen air.
It may be that there is no light. So it would not be possible to open a dark space and look around inside since you have no mental map of where everything was at the freeze point.
hmmm