He couldn’t remember. The days all seemed to have blurred into one long string of snow and sun and arguments. He shivered, despite his warmth. It was not at all how he had imagined it. Not at all. As an amateur cartographer, he had always dreamt of going on an expedition, mapping isolated regions of the country’s most extreme environments. He had read about this snow. He had imagined it. The soft, crunchy feel of it under his fingertips, the coldness and the stark beauty. Nothing could have prepared him for the reality of it—the icy damp sensation of it seeping through waterproofed clothes. He was an idealist, a dreamer. The romance that had tainted his decisions made real life a pale comparison of what he had thought it would be.
Avery was stoking the hot fire with a stick of ivory when Asa had mustered the willpower to move from the doorway. He nodded to him as he wandered in, collapsing in a soft chair behind the blond’s back.
“Thanks for the fire,” Asa said, taking his boots off for the first time since they had received the clothes. His feet looked strange in the fire’s half-light, alien and ethereal. They were pale, covered in sharp wounds and gashes from the abuse that his legs had received on their journey. He reached forward and touched them with a gentle forefinger. They were less delicate than they had seemed, hard callused skin meeting his careful touch.
“No problem.” Avery dusted his hands off over the hearth and stood up, dumping himself in the chair next to Asa. “You started it.”
“And you finished it,” Asa said wryly. “As ever.”
“Mm.”
They sat in silence, relishing in the warmth and light that their situation afforded. Asa stayed still, too tired and sore to consider moving. Avery was the opposite, cracking his joints loudly and stretching his long limbs out of the chair. As a hand smacked his face, Asa directed a weak glare at his friend, not even bothering to turn his head. Avery stopped instantly.
“I’m thirsty,” Asa remarked idly, looking at the ceiling.
“Me too.”
“Is there anything to drink?”
“Well,”—Avery flushed—”there is some mead.”
“Mead?” Asa was intrigued.
“Like a sort of honey wine,” his companion explained. “I saw it in the pantry.”
“Honey wine sounds great,” he reflected. “Would you mind fetching it?”
Avery sighed and heaved himself out of the chair, stomping to the kitchen and rummaging around in the cupboards. Asa heard the thud of cups on the table, a pop of a cork, then the gurgling of liquid. Avery returned to the room with two old-fashioned wooden cups filled to the brim with an amber substance. He shoved a cup at Asa.
“Here’s his majesty’s beverage.”
Asa smirked. “Without the insubordination, if you please.”
He sipped at the liquid. It had a sweet taste, only marred by a strong alcoholic smell that overwhelmed it. He stuck his tongue in experimentally. It burned in the mead, forcing him to conclude that it was some strong home-brewed stuff. Avery gulped his drink down in three mouthfuls, not seeming to even taste it. He glanced at Asa.
“You going to try it?”
“I have tried it,” Asa said, scowling when Avery raised an eyebrow. “Don’t do that!”
“Do what?”
“Ugh.” Pinching his nose, Asa tipped the cup back into his mouth and poured the fiery liquid down his throat. He gasped at the burning sensation it induced, eyes watering despite his efforts to stay strong.
Avery clapped, laughing obnoxiously. “That’s more like it.”
The room around Asa spun once, then came to a stalling halt. He stuck his tongue out, trying to get rid of the taste. Avery was still grinning moronically. Asa shrank back down in his chair, wanting to disappear. Why were they even on this adventure? He just wanted to go home.
“What do you want to do?” he asked. “This evening, I mean.”
“Nothing, I guess,” Avery said.
“Sounds like a plan.” He massaged his temples. “Nothing is better than nothing.”
“Bit boring, though,” Avery said, after a pause of roughly three breaths.
Asa smiled at him, mocking him. “And quiet.”
“Too quiet,” Avery agreed, missing the sarcasm.
The room was growing warmer and seemingly smaller. He relaxed into the soft chair, hearing his friend’s breaths rise and fall melodiously. Asa closed his eyes, feeling some unknown force pulling him towards unconsciousness. A pair of warm hands touched his shoulders. Someone murmured his name. He lay in a foggy stupor as he was lifted a few feet to a soft and warm surface, a heavy quilt piled on top.
The surface sagged to the other side as a warm presence clambered on next to him. Asa moved towards the warmth, mindlessly reaching out. His hand was caught in another and he squeezed it, happiness showing through every movement.
Asa’s nostrils twitched as he flopped over onto his front, legs tangled together in the quilt. He huffed contentedly, blowing a strand of brown hair from his nose. He couldn’t quite remember, but something nagged at the back of his mind. Something big. But what big happenings occurred inside Brandenbury? He cracked open an eye, greeted with weak, dewy light. It was so early in the morning. Why was he even up?
There was a thud somewhere close by. Asa shot up, blinking in the direction of the noise. If he squinted then the light wouldn’t sting his eyes so badly. The room swam more clearly into view, disorientating Asa for a good few moments as he struggled to regain his bearings. For some reason his head ached badly and his mouth was as dry as sand. He smacked his lips and wiped some sleep from his eyes. Then it all came back to him.
“Well,” he groaned, clutching his head. “I won’t be trying that again. Honey wine, honestly!”
He peeled himself off the soft mattress, wincing at the bright obnoxiousness of the sunlight. His footsteps were muffled on the floor mats, and he padded into the kitchen to see what Avery was making for breakfast. The blond wasn’t there. Asa checked one, twice, just to make sure. No Avery.
He lifted a flap on the woodwork and peered out. Nothing to be seen. He frowned, worried. Had his friend just been going to relieve himself, he would have been back by now. Surely something had not happened?
“Avery?” he called uncertainly, worriedly, as though his companion was within the house. “Are you here?”
No response greeted him, confirming his troubles. Filled with dread, Asa dropped backwards into one of the soft chairs. He bunched up the material of his trousers in his hands and pulled in anxiety. He could hear his heartbeat in his head, thrumming a tattoo against his mind. He ran his fingers through his hair, taken back to the time when he was younger and this same thing had happened.
He stroked the surface of the chair therapeutically, waiting for something, anything that could tell him what was happening. The sunlight grew brighter, spilling through the windows and alighting on the floor and surfaces in the room. As still as if he had been carved from stone, Asa waited.
After what seemed like an infinite amount of time, there was a loud crash on the front door of the cottage. Asa did not startle, as he once would have, but stared at the wood, a small knot of worry in his stomach. This was either Avery, injured from some unknown injury, or it was the being that had managed to subdue the powerful man. Needless to say, neither option looked good. Asa got up out of his chair with cat-like stealth and took hold of the ivory poker. The door creaked open.
“Avery!” Asa dropped the poker, surveying his panting friend concernedly. “What’s wrong? Are you okay? Where were you? What happened?”
Avery looked surprised. “Asa. I didn’t think that you would be up until at least noon time.”
“What?” Asa shook his head. “Where even were you? You’ve been gone for ages.”
“I went on a run,” the blond explained, running a hand through his curly, sweaty hair. “You know, a quick check of the location of the gates in the wall. I can’t have been gone for more than an hour or two.”
“Why didn’t y
ou tell me?” Asa demanded.
“I’m sorry,” his friend apologised. “I thought that you would be asleep. You were out of it last night. I wanted to find out where we are going today.”
Asa’s curiosity got the better of him.
“Where?” he asked in a light, offhand tone.
“Only bit farther.” Avery grinned. “I think we should leave as soon as we can. The snowstorm is only going to get worse, and the wall should provide us with some shelter.”
Asa stepped forward, pressing a hand to the embroidered badger on Avery’s maroon clad chest. He leant into his companion’s torso, biting his tongue.
“You precocious brat,” he muttered. “Don’t make me worry like that, okay?”
The warm weight of Avery’s hand landed on his shoulder. His friend smiled apologetically at him, bashful.
“Fine, old man,” he said, moving away into the kitchen part of the cottage. “Right! I’ve been up since before the birds so we’re all packed. Just need to eat breakfast and then we’ll get going. Sound good?”
Asa followed him in, stomach protesting. “I’m fine.”
Avery checked him out, eyebrow raised. “You’re hungover, that’s what you are.”
“Am not,” Asa huffed, seating himself on a wooden stool.
“And you’re grumpy.”
“I’m not grumpy, you fool!” Asa snapped, before realising the tone of his words. He lowered his gaze embarrassedly and blushed. “Pardon. I guess I might be a bit hungry.”
“Knew it.” Avery pried open the lid of a half-empty crate that he had been fiddling with and withdrew two gleaming red apples from inside. “Breakfast.”
He tossed one to Asa, who caught it and bit into it, too fatigued to argue with his friend. The apple was deliciously light and crisp to his worn mouth. Sweet juices ran over his lips and chin. The inside was as white and ripe as any he had ever eaten. He picked a strand of straw off the skin and continued biting around the outside of the fruit, wiping his mouth on his grubby sleeve. When he was at last left with the core, he broke it in two, pouring a stream of the tiny bitter seeds into his mouth, before crunching up the remaining fruit in two large bites. He held up the stem, in better spirits.
“You want my stem?”
“Gross, Asa.” Avery scrunched up his nose. “No, no one eats the stem.”
“I remember that boy in Salatesh who would eat your stem if you gave him another apple,” Asa said reminiscently. “Do you? His name was . . . Oh, I can’t remember. It was so long ago.”
“Nori Legh,” Avery said.
“That’s it.” Asa nodded. “Knew it. How’s he doing nowadays?”
“I don’t know.” Avery shrugged. “He works in the mine.”
“You work in the mine.”
“My dad never gives me dangerous jobs.” Avery’s face darkened. He stared down at the table, dropping his own stem to the ring-marked wood. “The others have noticed. Legh especially.”
“Oh.” Asa flicked the two delicate twigs reflectively off the table. He stood up, watching Avery for any sign of distress. The blond followed him stiltedly, going to the door and taking their chained vests off the hook. Asa frowned. He couldn’t remember taking off his vest.
“You couldn’t sleep in it,” his friend explained. “I removed it.”
Trying not to dwell on the thought of his handsome friend undressing him, Asa slipped the vest on beneath his tunic, grimacing at the cold against his skin. He put on his boots, flinching at the pricks of pain from his blisters, and stood up. Avery opened the door, pulling up his hood. Asa mimicked the action unsurely, looking out and taking the filled satchel, which Avery handed to him. A cold blast of air and snow hit with all the gentleness of sandpaper.
Exhaling his last shred of warmth as he exited the homely cottage, Asa pushed his way into the torrential snowfall, his only guide the maroon line of Avery’s back ahead.
Avery flung his arms over his face, pulling his hood closed around his face. Asa only had time to notice this when a gust of wind hit his body like a physical wall. He covered his face as best he could, pushing against the cold air with a sense of increasing strain. Avery turned, grasping his hand in his own calloused one, and they somehow managed to pull themselves to the other side of the gust. They glanced worriedly at each other as they stumbled across the snowy land. How much more could the snow build? It was already past Asa’s knees on level ground. The prospect of fathoms-deep snow drifts was not inviting.
Avery called something indistinct, gesturing at the goliath wall just paces from their feet. Asa followed his line of sight, heart leaping when he saw in front of them, carved into the stone itself, an ornate wooden gate. It was huge, as tall as at least three men, and twice as wide. Elaborate symbols were carved into the surface of the gates, criss-crossing like angry scars over the beautiful wood. Asa walked over to it, touching the complex runes. They were dangerous looking, making him want to turn away, to leave. But still he stayed there, frozen to his spot, touching the angry marks on the gate.
His friend approached him curiously, wiping away the slushy ice from the crevasses of his clothes as he did so. “You okay, Asa?”
“I’m fine,” Asa said distantly, before wrenching himself away from the gate. “I’m sorry, what?”
Avery looked spooked. “I said, are you alright?”
“What? Oh, yes, I’m fine.” Asa, against his instincts, turned his back on the gate to look earnestly into Avery’s eyes.
“I know, you just said that.” Avery frowned.
“Did I?” Asa asked, humouring him.
“Asa, are you sure that you’re feeling alright? You look pale.”
“I’m sure,” Asa reiterated. “It’s just—”
“Just what?”
“Don’t you feel it?” He moved back against the gate, feeling the warm wood under his frozen fingertips.
“What, Asa?” Avery just sounded tired. He pushed his friend out of the way and withdrew the ring of keys from his satchel. He found the largest key and fitted it into the lock. His hands were steady even with his shivering.
“The energy.”
“No, I don’t feel it,” Avery replied.
Asa’s shoulders dropped but he resumed his normal composure and smiled as Avery turned the key. “No worries, then. I guess I’m being too imaginative, eh?”
“You think?” Avery winked, before twisting the handle of the gate door to the right. Some mechanism inside clicked like a huge insect’s talons, and the gate opened a tiny crack. Avery gave the wood a small push and slipped through it, pulling Asa along after him. Asa’s satchel stuck for a moment but soon he was through, stepping under the gate into a whole new world.
EIGHT
AVERY SHUT THE GATE behind them with a resonating bang. Asa kept his gaze forwards, marvelling at the change that a human made structure could create in terms of dividing a country. Inside the walls was warmer than not and no snow fell here. The sun was high in the sky above them, but if Asa looked back, he could clearly see a thick line of cloud cover stretching along the wall. A sharp divide was present from the ground to the skies.
“We made it.” Asa breathed, and then louder, excited, he said, “Avery! We did it.”
“It’s so different.” Avery grinned at Asa’s exuberance. “Like another world.”
The grass was crisp and green underfoot, and the sky was a clear turquoise. If Asa had not experienced the bitterness of the cold on the other side of the door, hadn’t still had the ice in his hair, he would have assumed his entire life before to have been some sort of dream. This was too perfect not to be real. Energy surged through his body. He felt well again, fully well. Nobody could be ill here.
They were on a hill, looking down over a rolling green landscape of small clutches of low houses and penned-in fields. At first this confused Asa. Why would anyone live on that side of the wall? But then he understood that no one would do so out of choice, they must be natives to the land. He breathed in the
fresh air with thirsty lungs, heart aching with the beauty of the landscape below. He stepped forward, staring around him as if his eyes could not get enough of the scenery.
“We going to go?” he asked, bobbing on the balls of his feet.
Avery lingered by the gate for an imperceptible pause, hand resting on it.
“Sure,” he said, looking out into the middle distance ahead of them. “World’s awaiting.”
“You’re sad,” Asa stated in what he hoped was a sympathetic tone of voice.
“Not sad,” Avery corrected him in a soft tone. “Just homesick.”
“Already?”
“We’re in a new place, with new weather and a huge wall separating myself from my family.” Avery paused. “I think that it’s natural to feel homesick.”
“I guess so.” Asa paused before laughing. “I hadn’t thought about it.”
He started to walk down the tall hill, but his feet felt lighter on the grass than they had in months and soon he found himself breaking into a bounding run. The light breeze caressed his skin as he ran, winding his hair into untameable knots. He reached the bottom of the slope in a matter of moments, eyes watering from the sudden exercise. Avery stopped dead next to him and his breathing sounded disapproving.
“Where’re we going?” Avery asked.
Asa fished the scrappy map out from his belt, trying to decipher the markings upon its surface. He frowned, humming lowly under his breath as he squinted at what seemed to be a huge smudged black line. It was spiked, running right through the centre of the map, even passing through the wall. If the directions were correct then it should appear in the north if they walked far enough; they couldn’t exactly miss it.
“Oh.” It dawned on him, as he looked up to scan the distant skyline. “The mountains.”
His Frozen Fingertips Page 14
