Snow Like Ashes

by Sara Raasch

  “I’m Meira,” I manage around a tongue that feels more sand than anything, my eyes darting between Nessa and the door, waiting for soldiers to burst inside and drag me out.

  “If they were going to take you so soon, they never would have brought you here to begin with,” the younger one, Garrigan, offers. He holds some of Conall’s distrust, but his face softens, offering me the smallest bit of kindness.

  “How can you know that?” Conall snaps, watching the door.

  “The same way I do,” Nessa declares proudly, taking my hand. “She’s here for a reason.”

  Conall turns a glare to me, like I’m the one who made her say that. I don’t have the strength to pull away from her hand though, needing her small bit of comfort, and I just stare at him until he swings his gaze back to the door.

  “Where did you come from?” Nessa asks, the question popping out of her mouth like she’s been holding it in since I got here. “Winter? No, of course not—they say no one lives there anymore. One of the other Seasons?”

  “Cordell,” I say. Conall’s glare makes me feel guilty for talking to her, like any word I say will only strengthen her slowly growing hope. Nessa still looks at me with a hint of caution, but the brightness in her eyes is … beautiful. It’s hard not to want to make her happy, and just that word lights up her whole face.

  “Cordell,” she echoes, and releases my hand to face Garrigan. “That’s a Rhythm, right?”

  Garrigan’s mouth twitches in a smile, cracking his face like he doesn’t do it often. “Our Nessa’s going to be a world traveler one day,” he says, and I can’t miss the pride that swells in him. Pride in his little sister, in her ability to still dream beyond these bars.

  “Or a seamstress,” she amends, her face flushing red. Whatever blip of happiness she managed to hold on to vanishes, and she looks at me with a sad shrug. “Like our mother.”

  “Quiet,” Conall growls, a bite of warning as keys rattle in our door.

  I pin my body to the back wall. No matter how Nessa and Garrigan tried to reassure me, or how uncaring I was last night at the thought of Angra coming for me, dread still churns in my stomach, a flicker of survival that’s impossible to snuff out entirely. They can’t take me. Not until I figure out … something. Some way to escape a long, slow death at Angra’s hands, a way to help the others around me escape the same fate.

  The door swings open. Conall and Garrigan march into the sun and Nessa grabs my arm. “Don’t worry,” she whispers, and guides me forward. “It’ll be all right. It’ll be—”

  “You.” A soldier turns from shouting at Conall and Garrigan to watch me emerge from the cage, his eyes a dark sort of greedy, and my stomach turns.

  But the soldier nods toward the end of the road where the uncaged Winterians have gathered. “With the rest for now.”

  Relief surges through me. Angra hasn’t called for me today.

  Nessa pulls me forward and shock fills me up like it’d been waiting outside the cage for me all night.

  This is the first time I’ve seen the Winterians of the Abril work camp. Of any work camp.

  More Winterians join us from the second layer of cages, gathering into a haphazard cluster to march down the road, dust swirling around our shuffling feet. Dozens of people crowd around, frail bodies in tattered rags, clothing brown from years of sweat and dirt. Children too. If Angra had wanted to simply slaughter all Winterians, he would have done so long ago—it would have been a kinder fate. But instead he keeps them locked up, letting families grow and generations spawn under his control. It’s a cruel victory to show dominance over another by destroying them—but it’s crueler still to do so by destroying their families.

  Winterian children watch me as they stand stoically beside their parents. Their faces say they’ve learned not to show weakness. Weaknesses get used until all you can do is scream at the unfairness of a life like this, a life of living in cages stacked atop one another, of growing up in a place where you aren’t even seen as a person. A life of waiting in torment for the twenty-five mythical survivors to set everyone free.

  I meet a woman’s eyes. She’s Dendera’s age, her top lip curling at me, and I flinch back. A man beside her echoes her grimace, and another beside them, so many looks of derision that I feel no safer here than in Angra’s palace.

  Misery wraps around me, hot waves of disgust at myself, at their lives, at everything that happened to our kingdom. How long did it take them to stop hoping we’d free them? How quickly did Angra beat the hope of escape from their minds?

  How quickly will he beat the same sense from me?

  Looking at the faces around me, at their sixteen-year-long suffering … what could I possibly do to stop any of this? What could any of us have done—Sir or Alysson or Mather or anyone? It’s too big, the wounds too deep.

  A soldier cracks his whip into the crowd, throwing a few slower Winterians to their knees. One elderly woman, two old men. Red welts line their arms but we hurry on, pulled by the current of fear. We should fight against the soldiers who whipped them to the ground, stand up for our countrymen and the injustice Spring did to them.

  We should have done a lot of things.

  Nessa squeezes my hand between both of hers. She hasn’t stopped hoping, and any wariness she feels pales next to her faith. I almost prefer the glares, the lingering snarls of the others. Their anger is understandable, something I can accept. But Nessa—

  Did I look at Sir like that?

  The question flies through my mind, a string of words that wraps around my throat and squeezes off air. All the refugees looked at Sir like that, didn’t we? He was our source of hope. He was the beacon that would lead us to freeing our people, to getting our kingdom back.

  And he died. Just like that. Our hope snuffed out in one swift and careless moment.

  I tremble under thoughts of him, his shadows in my mind making every part of me ache and writhe. I can’t be Nessa’s hope. I can’t let her think I’m any more capable than anyone else, because I can die just as easily. I can’t do to her what Sir did to me.

  We stop when we reach a crowded gate. Soldiers sort through us at the front, marching groups off to various areas of the city for work.

  “My brothers and I will be back in the palace grounds,” Nessa whispers, her hand tightening on mine. “I don’t know where you’ll be. I don’t know if—”

  I force a smile. “It’s all right.”

  Nessa’s lips twitch and she nods.

  Minutes later we’re at the front of the line. Conall and Garrigan grunt numbers to a soldier by the entrance. 1-3219 and 1-3218. No names here. Angra stripped them of everything—country, home, life. Why not their names, too?

  The soldier orders them to the group bound for the palace. Nessa, unwilling to let go of my hand, approaches the same soldier.

  “1-2072,” she says, and the soldier consults a list.

  “Palace grounds.” He glances at me and squints, sizing up my appearance next to Nessa. I’m too healthy, too well fed. He checks the list and cocks one eyebrow.

  “Angra has something special for you,” he says. “To the wall, R-19.”

  R-19. R—Refugee? Refugee 19. Because I’m the nineteenth Winterian refugee that Angra will kill. Herod probably saw Sir die in Bithai, so he was the eighteenth. Gregg and Crystalla, seventeen and sixteen.

  Nessa leads me past the soldier into the groups of sectioned-off Winterians. When a few people stand between the soldiers and us, she pulls my ear to her mouth. “The wall is where they send those they wish to push beyond their limit,” she whispers, her fingers digging into my hand. “Work but don’t strain yourself—just make it look like you’re working hard. Maybe you can get through without—”

  “Nessa,” I shush her. Her concern hurts, a heavy expectation I don’t know if I can fulfill.

  “You didn’t come here just to die,” she exhales, half a question, half a promise.

  I close my eyes. Why did I come here?

&nb
sp; Conall puts a hand on Nessa’s shoulder. “We’re leaving.”

  Nessa pulls away and marches to join Garrigan. I suck in a breath when Conall’s shadow shifts, his tall frame looming over me.

  He narrows his eyes when Nessa gets out of earshot. “We’ve tried escaping,” he growls. “Climbing the fences, fighting off guards, digging under the walls. All it results in is more death. The last ones who came promised rescue but vanished before they could do anything; they acted like we hadn’t already tried everything. Nessa wept for weeks when their hope left with them. I won’t see her go through that again.”

  Gregg and Crystalla. My jaw tightens. “I don’t want her to go through that either.”

  “What you want doesn’t matter here. The sooner you realize that, the better.”

  “I know.”

  Conall’s eyebrow lifts sardonically. “Good luck, R-19.”

  He turns and joins his brother and sister in the group meant for the palace. He doesn’t look back, doesn’t care that I’m left standing alone in the sun. Why should he? I’m just one sixteen-year-old girl. I wouldn’t believe in me either. I don’t believe in me. But as Nessa starts up the road with her group, she looks back, her eyes flashing with hope.

  Maybe this is what Angra wanted. For me to instill false hope in them, to raise them up and shatter them even further. Taunt them with escape, then kill me in front of them.

  But it doesn’t matter what Angra wants. Conall was right—it doesn’t even matter what I want anymore. All that matters now is surviving.

  Soldiers lead us to the southern edge of Abril and out of the city via a small gate. As it groans over us, we’re shoved into such a harshly different world that I pause for a breath.

  The wall is a jagged protrusion of black rock that shoots away from Abril into fields of slaughtered forest. Stumps of cherry blossom trees litter the landscape, making way for the newest addition to Angra’s city. This field of stumps, dirt, and piles of black rock is even more barren and hopeless than Abril itself. A testament to what it takes to spread Angra’s kingdom—nothing must remain, no plants, no sign of life. Everything must be dead to make way for Spring.

  I approach one of the black rock piles, leather straps sitting in a mound next to it. They’re holsters that a few Winterians latch around their shoulders and let others load chunks of rock into the cradle against their spine.

  “Get to work!” a soldier shouts, and cracks a whip above our heads. I grab a holster and slide it on. As soon as I do, a heavy chunk of black rock is nestled against my back.

  “Up the ramps,” the rock-giver whispers. His aged eyes have the same flicker of curious hope as Nessa’s, but he bends to lift another rock from the pile and load up the next in line.

  I shift the rock against my back and march for the ramps. Eight stories of platforms stretch into the air, linked by zigzagging ramps that take lines of Winterians up and down the wall-in-progress. The platforms are all made of the same questionable wood as the slums, the kind that could snap in a strong breeze. But if it does break, a few Spring soldiers will be dragged down with us. Some small justice.

  I almost laugh at the thought. Justice would be the Winterians hurling these lumps of black rock at the Spring soldiers. Justice would be us sprinting for the field up ahead, the section of Spring that isn’t yet closed off from Abril.

  The rock grates against my shoulder blades when I pause on a ramp, hovering far above the ground. That field is close. Vibrant green crops billow in the wind, nearly ready for harvest. Proof that Angra uses his conduit for something other than evil, however small that is. The wall’s purpose is to stretch around this barren section of earth and widen Abril to that field’s edge. Soldiers stand between us and it, but for now, for this moment—there is one way out of Abril.

  Conall’s words bounce through my mind. We’ve tried escaping. Climbing the fences, fighting off guards, digging under walls. All it results in is more death.

  I hesitate, biting the inside of my cheek. If they’ve tried … then I shouldn’t? No. I have to, if not for them, then for me. I’m trapped here as much as they are.

  If I can get out beyond the soldiers, I can sneak out of Spring and talk to Hannah again. Or I can go back to Cordell and find Mather and Dendera and the rest.

  The man in front of me shifts the rock against his back as he takes one more step up. But something in his step, or his weight, or the way he jostles the rock makes him teeter forward, his thin boot snagging on a jagged plank of wood. The wood tears through fabric and flesh, cutting apart a section of his foot and spilling blood in a dark pool on the platform.

  The man pauses. Half a heartbeat, half a breath. Barely long enough to even absorb what happened, but in that moment his face spasms in a wince of pain. In its wake, he flicks his eyes to the nearest soldier up on the platform, and just when I realize I’m holding my breath …

  The soldier whips his head to the man. His eyes drop to the blood trail, to the man’s still-twisted face of pain. “The work too much for you?” the soldier asks, his voice catching on a dare.

  I open my mouth to speak, to do something that might let the man fade into the background. As he turns and heads up the next ramp, the soldier yanks the man around, spinning him on the dry wood. He swings out, caught off balance by the black stone, arms flailing to regain his balance. But it’s too late, the movement too sporadic, the rock too large.

  The man wavers on the edge of the platform, five stories in the air. His hands claw in empty desperation, looking for purchase as the black rock in his holster shifts, moves, drags him back. The closest thing to him, the only thing he can grab, is the soldier.

  I fly forward, air stuck in my dry throat, one hand leaving my holster to reach out like I might be able to stop this. But as gravity takes hold, the soldier smiles, lifts one foot, and plants a firm kick in the center of the man’s chest.

  A soundless scream boils in my mouth as the man topples from the platform. His body plummets through the air, the black rock dragging him down and down, soaring past the bottom five platforms in painfully slow motion. He smacks into the dry earth below, a puff of dust and debris obscuring his crippled corpse from view.

  I’m frozen there, trapped against the platform. But no one else flinches. No one cries out that their husband or brother or son just fell to his death. They just keep moving around me, trudging up the platforms and ramps, walking like they can erase the man’s memory with each footfall.

  Someone bumps into me as they pass and I’m dragged back into the current of mindless work, pulling me past the soldier, his eyes flashing at the body so far below.

  The field in the distance thrashes in a breeze I can’t feel from here. No one would follow if I tried to escape. They’d just fall through the air, resigned to the fact that they never had a chance of winning. Or they’d be slaughtered in the wake of my feeble escape.

  My vision blurs, but I keep walking. I keep the image of the man’s face in my mind, hold it against my impulse to run as fast as I can, to kill as many of the soldiers as possible.

  I glance at the ground below, at the dust clearing to reveal the man’s body morphed into a disturbing, haphazard splotch on the dirt. Something wells up in me. Something dangerous and crippling and deadly, something rising from the part of me that flinches whenever Winter’s conduit is mentioned and no one asks the questions I’m always thinking:

  What if it isn’t enough? What if nothing we do is enough?

  But there is no other option—either we keep trying, or our kingdom ceases to exist.

  As the day drags on, the temperature rises to the point where my eyes start to swim around in my head, sweat making everything slick. Stretches of time flash past in which I swear I’m back in the Rania Plains, traipsing behind Sir as we make our way toward Cordell.

  Damn my intolerance to heat. I will not give Angra the satisfaction of fainting. He will not get to see me die so soon.

  The work too much for you today?

&n
bsp; I bite away the memory. Everyone around me seems to react to the heat the same way I do, stumbling, gasping in the stuffy air. They don’t do more than that though; there’s no complaining or collapsing. No matter how it goes against our Winterian blood, they’ve gotten used to the heat of Spring.

  By noon, I’m relieved to see that we get a break.

  Almost relieved.

  The gate leading into Abril creaks open. The Winterians standing in the rock line around me drop their holsters; the rest file off the ramps to stand around us. I follow suit, eyes darting toward whatever is coming at us from Abril.

  Winterian children. Some barely old enough to speak let alone work, all hobbling into the worksite with jugs of sloshing water. They spread out among the workers and offer up their burdens, wide blue eyes gleaming from hollow faces, thin arms trembling under the thick clay jugs.

  A boy not much older than four or five approaches my line of workers and sets his jug on the ground. He dips a ladle in and lifts it to the person closest to him, a man Sir’s age who slurps down mouthfuls of water. The boy repeats the process for each person in line until he gets to me.

  “No water for her—Angra’s orders!” a soldier behind us shouts, cracking his whip beside the boy’s feet. The boy jumps, water sloshing over his hands and splashing on the dirt. His blue eyes dart up to mine as he braces for the impact of the soldier’s next blow.

  I fly back, more from instinct than rational thought. Rational thought vanished the moment I saw water, and desperate, clawing thirst reared up instead. All I can see is that jug, but I take another step back. I don’t need water. I don’t need to draw attention to anyone else.

  “No,” I croak. “He’s right. None for me.”

  The soldier, whip held at the ready, frowns at my retreat. But I turn, grab my holster, and close my eyes when another chunk of black rock is loaded against my spine. The boy moves back to work, water sloshing over the brim of his jug. No pain, no repercussions. No water either. As long as I bow my head and take it, there won’t be trouble.