by Melody Rose
“Or burying body parts,” Uri replied grimly, so only I could hear.
“Uri,” I scolded internally, “you are not helping.”
“I am helping myself,” she countered. “It makes me feel better to complain.”
“Well, then complain to yourself,” I finally commanded. “I need to lead these others to safety.”
“We never should have left the waterfall in the first place,” Uri challenged.
The sphinx had a point. We rushed out of the camp we found the night before, intent on beating the storm. However, the snow slammed down faster than we anticipated. We could have easily waited out the cold in the cave behind the waterfall, but we were too far from it now to turn around and could only venture onward with the hopes of finding something soon.
“We will fly ahead,” Timone offered. “I know you all cannot see everything from the skies, but we might be able to. If we spot something, we can lead you to it.”
“Sounds good,” I confirmed.
Without giving anyone a chance to refute, I stomped ahead of the group and continued our journey west. We trudged along in a line, with me at the head, Stella behind me, Heloise following her, and Troylan taking up the rear. Uri stayed up at the front with me. She shifted around my body, using it to block the wind as it changed directions.
The dragons were completely out of view. We had no sense of where they were. Eventually, I lost my sense of direction, as well. The snow pounded down, heavy and large. The ground thickened and crunched beneath our feet.
I was in charge of making the footprints that the others could step into. I plotted the safe path, but that method was slow going. With each step I took, doubt stabbed my stomach. I was sure that one of these near steps would break into an icy bottom we didn’t see coming or a ditch that would leave someone’s ankle twisted and useless.
Nevertheless, we trekked on. Uri had to leap every so often, and then she would sink back into the snow.
“Let me carry you,” I offered to the prideful djer.
“You will do no such thing!” she replied in outrage.
“You are going to get stuck if you do not let me carry you,” I warned her.
Uri shot me up a glare, her eyes piercing through the white downpour. She took one more defiant leap and then disappeared completely into the powder.
I exhaled and saw my breath expel in a cloud of cold. I held out a hand behind me and signaled the group to stop. Then I trudged over to the cat-shaped hole in the snow and looked down into it.
Uri stood with stiff legs upright in a box of snow. She shifted her head from side to side but only managed to shave off some of the powder from the sides, so it pooled near her paws. Her face flushed red with anger and cold as she screeched.
“This is ridiculous!” the sphinx shouted so everyone could hear her. “I refuse to die out here for some wannabe queen! I should have stayed at home! I could be bathing in the light of the Menagerie, but no! Stupid lover boy forced me to come with him so that he could play knight in shining armor!”
Exasperated, I reached down and hauled Uri into my arms, like a shepherd would pick up a sheep. I took my scarf off my neck and wrapped it around her head, covering her ears and cropped hair. For safe measure, I put the end of it over her eyes. Uri didn’t seem to mind. She continued to rant and rave. However, no one but I could hear her.
The wind howled louder than she ever could.
We continued on for another long while. Again, I kept as straight as I could, convincing myself that we were headed in the right direction. It worried me that the dragons had not checked in for a while. I knew they would not abandon us, but still, concern pricked at the back of my mind.
No one spoke as we hiked. Even Uri seemed too cold to expend any additional energy to complain. The cold bit through everything. It attacked every exposed part of my skin, making little crystals on my beard and eyelashes. The bitter sting poked through even our toughest layers of clothing, our pants soaked with freezing water as we were up to our knees in snow.
Still, we stomped along, relying on an energy none of us believed we had.
Heloise was the first to fall. She tumbled forward and face-planted into the ground. Her body sunk a little ways into the snow. The caretaker only made it worse when she tried to push herself up. There was nothing stable for her to hold on to.
Troylan rushed to help her. “Stay still!” he called out.
Heloise did as she was told while Troylan tucked her hands under her arms and pulled up. The lanky soldier did not have enough upper body strength to get Heloise out of the hole she inadvertently created. Stella retraced her steps to join the party. I followed but lumbered slower with the extra weight of Uri in my arms. I did not trust myself to be able to pick the sphinx back up again if I put her down. My limbs seemed frozen in the current position, aching mercilessly.
So, I stood helpless as Stella and Troylan maneuvered to get Heloise out. I watched them struggle and tried to shout instructions to them, but no one paid me any mind. I did not know if they could hear me or if they simply did not heed my advice.
Frustration and exhaustion boiled over then as Heloise went limp in their arms. Stupidly, Stella fell to her knees and started shaking her girlfriend. She slapped the caretaker a couple of times in the face and even put their lips together in an effort to wake her up.
Stella looked over her shoulder at me with frozen tears on her cheeks. Her eyes screamed at me to do something. But there was nothing I could do at that moment. We were stuck in the middle of an unfamiliar part of the Cross Woods with no way to contact the dragons.
Had they not seen us stop? Surely one of them could have yanked Heloise out of the snow. They could use even the briefest of fires to warm her up.
But none of them arrived. There were no blazes of red, green, or purple against this white wasteland.
What did appear was a long shape in the distance racing towards us. I did not recognize the shape at first. Its front part snaked atop the snow, like a worm.
A bolt of energy shot through me, and I hoofed it over to the group.
“Troylan!” I shouted with all of my might.
The soldier looked up at me, and I jerked my head to the right so he could notice the threat. Tired as he was, Troylan pulled out his sword and managed the best stance he could on the uneven terrain.
As the shape grew closer, it became more discernible. The back was much larger than the front and seemed to be made of a different material. When it stopped a few yards away from us, I could finally recognize the shape.
It was not a creature at all. It was a large sled. It was raised up on long rods that slid over the snow with ease. The curved back held a wide bench seat where a man sat, covered in assorted furs from head to toe. The whole contraption was pulled by two of the largest wolves I had ever seen. Both of them were as white as the snow so that they blended in almost perfectly, save for their blazing black eyes and cherry-shaped noses.
The man was taller than either me or Troylan. He moved along the snow with surprising grace, given his size. I could only see his eyes through the fabric covering him. He narrowed his gaze at me and then shifted his gaze so he could appropriately assess the situation.
Suddenly, the man pulled down the cloth covering his mouth to reveal a grey goatee that sat on a square face complete with a crooked nose. His lips were chapped, and his skin pickled with red splotches.
“We have to get her inside,” he announced, taking ownership of the situation before I had a chance to respond. “Get in the sled, I will get the girl.”
Troylan and I shared a glance. “Who are you?” I asked suspiciously. Even though we were in a defenseless position, I still wanted to know who our supposed savior was.
“I will tell you at my cabin,” the man said slowly but loud enough to be heard over the wind. “Go. There is not much time.”
The man crossed to Troylan and Stella. The soldier hauled my childhood friend to her feet, an easier feat than getting
Heloise out. He guided her to the sled, but not without some resistance. Stella refused to leave her girlfriend. However slight he might have appeared, Troylan had the strength to urge Stella in the direction of the sled.
I watched as the man stuck his large, gloved hands down around Heloise’s middle and plucked her from the snow as one would a weed. He grunted as he laid her unconscious body along a sturdier spread of snow. Then, he bent forward and hauled her up over his shoulder. The man faltered only a little as he adjusted to the added weight. Finally, he lumbered forward back towards his mode of transportation.
I followed from behind, with Uri still in my arms. She looked up at me with slitted eyes.
“Who is this man?” she asked the most obvious question.
“I do not know,” I answered honestly, “but right now, he is our only chance at surviving this storm.”
“You are saying that we do not have a choice,” Uri translated.
“Not one that I can see,” I replied in defeated.
I felt the sphinx sigh in my arms. “Hopefully, his sleigh is warm.”
The most that the contraption did was block out the wind. Heloise and Uri lay at the bottom of the sled, shielded from the ferocity of the snow as we raced along the landscape. The man stood at the front, with the edge of the sleigh pushing into his kneecaps while Troylan, Stella, and I sat on the bench along the back, where the driver was supposed to sit.
Despite the adjustment, the man guided the wolves through the terrain with a surprising amount of ease. He knew this land, that much was for sure. I could not pick up any more information from the contents of his sleigh. There was nothing in the back, and the whole thing was rather empty.
The man did carry a bow on his back, along with a quiver of arrows. There was a handy lid on the quiver to keep the arrows from moving about while he traveled. The mountain man intrigued me, and I wondered where he came from.
The answer was a humble cabin in the center of some of the thin trees. It was square, one story, and had a stone fireplace attached to the outside. A pathway was paved of snow and seemed to have some magic attached to it because even as the snow fell, none of it gathered upon that path. Orange lights glowed from within the frosted windows and smoke billowed out of the top of the chimney.
Finally, I allowed my heart to hope we would get out of this storm alive.
The man parked the sleigh beside the house. He bounded down without a word to us. Before doing anything else, he unhitched the wolves. The minute they were detached from the sled, they ran into the woods, blending in beautifully with their surroundings.
I watched the wolves go with a sense of wonder and relief that those massive creatures were out of the way. The man ventured back to the open side of the sled and hauled Heloise back up onto his shoulder.
The three of us looked at one another wearily and bumbled out of the sleigh, not having other ideas than but to follow. Uri even hopped out on her own, happy to not have to walk through the snow. She trotted along the path like she owned it, almost daring to run to the door. Though she did not, which did not surprise me because I could not remember a day in my life where I had seen Uri run.
Then, much to my surprise, the door opened. A round woman with a heavy shawl draped around her shoulders poked her head out.
“Deedren, you are back so soon!” she cried in a high-pitched voice. Her eyes grew wide when she spotted the man she called Deedren. “Honey! What have you got there?”
The man grunted in reply, mumbling through the cloth protecting his mouth. While I could not understand him, the woman seemed to be able to.
“Oh, poor dears!” she cried out. Then she opened the door wide, the orange light spreading out onto the clear walkway. “Come in, come in. We must get you all warm now.”
Without having to be asked twice, Uri sauntered into the cabin. The man ducked in the doorway, Heloise still in his charge. Finally, the three of us followed.
Inside was a modest home. A large section of the front room was reserved for the kitchen. Two chairs and a hand-woven rug were placed in front of the hearth, appropriately where the couple spent their evenings before retiring to bed. There was one door, leading to another section of the cabin, but I did not take too much time examining my surroundings.
Immediately, my body gravitated towards the fire. Troylan and Stella followed suit. Uri was already there, laid out directly in front. Xavier popped out of Heloise’s jacket and zoomed once around the room. He spooked the older woman for a moment, who let out a little squeal upon his appearance. Once she recognized what he was, she let out a giggle, and Xavier considered himself welcome. He took a place on the mantel.
“Please sit, sit,” the woman beckoned. She nearly pushed Troylan down in front of the fire, but the soldier plopped right down, not resisting her in the slightest.
“Deedren, put that one in the chair,” the woman commanded. “I will grab some blankets from the bedroom.”
Deedren did as he was told and placed Heloise gently in the smaller of the two chairs. The woman disappeared through the door and closed it behind her. She reappeared a moment later with a bundle of assorted blankets, made from all different furs, yarns, and fabrics. She whipped each one up in the air with a snapping sound and laid it gently over Heloise. Deedren followed up her movements by packing the blanket around Heloise to contain her tightly in its warmth.
They did this systematically with three blankets around our unconscious companion before migrating to us. The woman draped a blanket around each of our shoulders, even offering Uri one, who politely declined.
“I prefer the direct heat of the flame,” Uri said with a purr.
“How about something to drink then?” the woman offered. “I have some mulled wine over the pot just now.”
As she mentioned it, the scent wafted up to my nose, inviting me for a drink. I glanced over at the fire, where I noticed a cauldron hanging over the flame for the first time. I cocked my head curiously, but the smell was so intoxicating, I did not know how I could refuse.
All of us took a mug of it. The woman even put some in a small wooden bowl for Uri, who lapped it up greedily.
The mug warmed my fingers to the point of burning them, but I welcomed the sensation. It reminded me that other feelings existed than cold and fear. The warm wine went down smoothly and delighted my aching belly. I took a second sip and felt my muscles relax under the spell of the delicious drink.
“Now,” the woman said with her hands on her hips as she looked around at the group of us, “do you lot want to tell us why you were out in a storm like this? With no sleigh or sufficient way to travel?”
“Gurtni,” Deedren scolded as he removed his extra garments like his hat and his gloves. “Let them rest before you start the interrogation, eh?”
“I just want to know what they were doing out there, these foolish children,” Gurtni defended as she turned her attention back to us. “What were you all doing out there?”
I did not take well to the fact that she called us children, but I guess she could have been old enough to be our mothers. Perhaps she meant it as a term of endearment. I settled with that answer and took another sip of wine.
“We are headed to the west coast,” Troylan answered her question with a hiccup.
“Whatever for?” Gurtni leaned her head out and forward like a chicken.
I giggled at the thought and surprised myself, stopping mid-chuckle. Something was wrong with me. I hardly ever giggled like that. Normally, I was in more control of my reactions. Donnel’s training was sheer instinct at this point. However, I found another wave of giggles escaping my lips.
Even when I was drunk, I did not exclaim so openly. Wine made me depressed, which is why I hardly ever drank it. So what was this joyful, contented sensation sweeping through my body?
“We are in search of a piece of a key,” Stella said as she took another large sip of her wine. She clutched her cup with both hands and leaned back as if to get every last drop.
“A key to what?” Gurtni inquired with a cock of her head.
“The gate of Rictorus,” Uri replied, absently licking the drops from her bowl.
As the words left her mouth, Uri’s gaze snapped up to me. Her feline eyes were wide and full of worry.
“Kehn,” she spoke to me in my mind. “Something is wrong.”
I looked away from my djer up and up at Deedren and Gurtni, our saviors from the storm. For some reason, I was starting to believe that we would have been safer outside.
“What is it, dear?” Gurtni asked me directly. She smiled wide and blinked rapidly, but the cheerfulness in her voice and on her lips did not reach up into her gray eyes. “Is something wrong?”
“I think you drugged the wine,” I said aloud, the words leaving my mouth of their own accord. As soon as the thought popped into my head, it flowed out into the air.
Gurtni chuckled and put a hand on her belly as she did so. “Well, aren’t you the clever one?” she complimented, though I did not take it as such.
I took it as a warning that we were in more danger than we knew.
18
Night fell swiftly that evening. The moon peeked out, only a sliver showing. We still had a fair bit of time until the Lunar Eclipse. However, the moon hung over my head, like a ticking time bomb. It gave me no comfort, especially considering we were no better off than when we started.
I demanded to see the book the minute Hannan told me there was no key.
“It is back with the dragons,” he told me. “They are looking it over to see if they can make any sense of it.”
“Any sense of what?” I demanded, my voice rising in frustration.
