"What now?" asked Ganit.
With a huge cracking and rending as metal twisting over metal, the giants took one deep breath together.
"Oh no, not this way" cried Brone and the giants blew. A great and roiling cloud, a lightning burst of ice and snow hovered over Brone and Ganit, waiting to be released, it thirsted for them, hungered as only gnawing wind can hunger. But then, Ganit's love for Brone made him burn. A corposant, a violet sun, a candle unconsumed he sang the death of the ice giants, sibilant and high, the song of the sputtering flame. Whirling, he flew at the icy pillars of the giants. Ganit's arms and legs were flaming spears, bright and streaming with fire, as if his soul had pierced his flesh, a bloodless wound, the burning left for his enemies. Round and round he spun, a whickering warmth that crumbled the winter men, tearing the winds asunder. All around in massive crashing as slumping mountains, melted the rime giants, sliding, caving into snow tunnels, into runnels of clear water over the ice. Brone stared in awe, this living dawn, this warmth without searing. At last he stopped and stood a flaming sun upon the ice. A few moments more the violet light played over his face, lit the mirror of his eyes. Then it guttered and all was dark silence again. Her eyes still blinded by his light, she groped for him. Sliding over the cold ice, calling as she went.
"Are you all right? What happened?"
"I don't know. It was as if my heart was struck by the storm, as if fury burned through my skin. But I am not hurt. It tingles as if my flesh were not my own."
She felt him kneeling in the night, shaking in the cold and held him upright on the ice, her body a living pillar of warmth for him. "Whatever it was, you've made a path for us, another breath, another night. Can you do it again, light the way for us?"
And with her breath upon his chilled hands, her warm palms upon his, he knew his skin for its old self, his arm, his chest, his head still attached to his breath. "I don't think it will happen again. I think I cannot do it without the lightning strike, without the breath of death overhead."
"Can you walk?" she asked.
"I cannot see. The lightning sears my vision still."
"No more can I see, but we must move Ganit."
"Where is there to go? All about us wasteland, hundreds and hundreds of steps. We will never get out." And Brone could feel him shuddering with the weight of the night.
"We have to try Ganit, or the snow will kill us."
Only once, in all his long days, did Ganit doubt Brone. Once in the deep black winter night where the sun had gone out of his eyes as if he blazed one moment only. It had sapped him, his smallness on the giant's sea, and his courage, though it failed him not, was shaken. He sought to do them both a kindness, to sleep entombed in ice on this night out of time.
"To die here, where you have loved me, or farther on, where the fires will burn, the men grow wild with hunger, where I must soon lose you or you me, what choice is that? Here in the uncreated dark, the breathless waiting before dawn, why should we not die on this best of days?"
And Brone laughed, a flowing stream of mirth that broke the cold and her laugh was breath for his heart. Here in the deepest dark, in the center of her, where the lotus ever after grew, Brone believed she might save him, might save herself. "This is madness," she said, "That it should be you instead of me to feel the weight of the world. You have battled the very north wind and won, Ganit. You brought the dawn into the dark. You cannot die here Ganit, not in the night, not in the cold of sadness. The bright morning is coming. We must keep going Ganit." And she laughed again and kissed him there in the coldest winter night of man.Ganit didn't laugh, but clung to her as if he drowned in that cold, moveless sea. He let her raise him from the ice. Followed her into the endless night. All through that long black trek they joined their hands, ever side by side. All was smooth, they stumbled not, met nothing and no one until dawn. They knew not which way they moved, only that if they stopped, the falling snow would make their end.
At last the creeping ice reached Ethon's shore. At last it was solid and thick, freezing the soft bodies of the dead along the shore. Nervous and skittish she waited for the thick ice to grow, to hold her massive weight. She ached with want to stream across the frozen sea to fly at Brone, stop the human from breaking the tide, from turning back the years so man could continue. Her second son was close now, he beat against her bladder, made her sore, they slept not, these fighting children, but constantly reared and kicked, stretching her, pulling her closer to the end. Near dark's high tide she began her trek over the still wide waters, when thousands of steps further, Ganit was burning as a holy flame. The snow had begun, and Ethon had to slow her gait or fall on the treacherous ice. To fall, to die alone and fail when all around was darkling, the horse-beast would not bear. Slow in the chilling night she traveled, her second son pushing, ever pushing her on towards farther shores. It was four days until she reached the World Bridge.
Chapter 5
All the world was gray at dawn, a vast expanse of snow light, unbroken, unending a vast hungry baldness of nipping winds and racing snow. Hours they went on, knowing no direction, not even the sun could mark their way, so dense were the mountains of cloud. At last Brone said, "I'm sorry Ganit. I know not how much farther my feet will take me." Long had she feared to say it, thinking he should give them up for doomed. But at dawn he had seen her face, worn and weary as it was, the warmth of it made his mind to trying, to placing ever one foot in front of the other as long as she drew breath. "I know not how we will rest, where we will shelter, how we will eat."
But he said only, "A little farther, we will find our way"
So she was silent, but after a time began to stumble, though nothing blocked their way. "Ganit," she said,"I think I am in trouble. I see hills where there can be none"
"What? Where?"
She pointed into the wind. Straining he looked and saw the gray shrouds of hills. "I see them too Brone. They must be there."
"What if it isn't hills? What if it is more of the ice men?"
"We will have to take our chances. There is nothing for us here."
Foot by foot, against the wind they walked, each supporting the other against the blow. Neither hills nor ice men did they find, but the peaks of great ships of men. Metal and wood, all caught in the snow. Hundreds of them, in lines, and scattered, larger than temples and small as canoes. Lowering and heavy, gray fog, thick and frozen gobbled the distance and clung in clustered sparkling dust to the ship corpses. "Hello!" called Ganit, and again "Hello" But nothing moved, no answering call came whickering on the breeze. Together Brone and Ganit approached the ships. "Hello," he called again, "We're friends. Hello? Is no one there?"
Now the first ship towered over them, tall as cliff sides, covered in frozen mist, a glinting shell, as dead as snakeskin. "Hello?" tried Brone, and fast her breath came, too fast, too hard. The mist was swallowing them, shutting out the sea. All round she felt the crushing weight of silence, as if indeed, she had reached the uttermost end. But here was no green grove. Ganit kept a hand on the skin of the dead ship, kept them true in the choking fog. At last he felt the metal stairs, his fingers burning in the cold. "Up here," he said, and pulled Brone stumbling up the steps. Into the warmer dark, into the steel belly of the dead boat. "Hello" called Ganit again, but nothing stirred and his words were devoured by the emptiness. "What happened here?" he asked, but Brone could not say.
"We need help Ganit. We need rest and food." So on they walked, feeling for doors, for open rooms. At last at the end of a long corridor the gray light filtered onto the floor. They found the kitchens, the place where men gathered for their meal. All was still and silver statues, gilded men stood pressed against the windows. "What is this? What has happened?" Brone asked. Ganit touched a statue, a child's figure, crouched under the window, looking to the tall man's form beside it. As Ganit's fingers grazed it, the figure swirled away, as loose snow in a mighty wind. Ganit cried out, and all the rest, the long row of silver ice puppets shattered, clinking on the glass.
"They were real," he said and shook as if he might blow into shards as well. Brone clasped his hand tightly.
"The breath of the giants. But why so many? Where have they all come from?" she asked, peering out the long window. The fog was lifting, as if it too must blow away at their touch. Too cold, too dry and brittle to bury the dead for long. "Look Ganit, so many, hundreds of ships. All fleeing, all still."
"The madness of Hadur drove them or the shuddering earth to quiet seas. Why lower the stairs? Why open the doors to the cold?"
"We had a day of peace Ganit, before the ice men came. So they must have too. Perhaps some fled farther."
"Maybe they are yet alive!" He would have departed then, chasing after phantoms, forgotten their weariness and hunger, but Brone recalled him.
"We need to rest Ganit. We won't survive another day without supplies. Thousands of footsteps from either shore, here is the only oasis we will find. If they are yet alive, we shall find them." But her heart said they would find any survivors dead tomorrow, or the next day, for all was death around her, all was at an end.
So Brone found a moving fire, a flameless lamp on a darkened shelf and they moved on into the kitchens to find meals for many days. There were no flames in the kitchen, no warm bread or steaming pots. They found no more death though, and found enough for years of men to eat, though they took only enough for a month. "How will we carry this?" asked Brone, "Already there is too much and it will take us almost a year to reach the farther shore. How are we to go on?"
"I know a way," Ganit said, "But first we should find a place to rest without fear of freezing."
So they broke their fast and went to seek a warmer bed. Many icy figures met them along the way, some cowering, some with hands upraised, all crumbling now, fading as wind and water fade the stone and metal. Ganit could not rest in rooms where these figures stood and long it was before they found an empty place. High they piled the bed wrappings, gathered from many rooms, high against the doors and windows, high upon the bed. Warm and dry, the breath of one flowing into the other, skin heating skin, they slept as ancient mates will, deep and moveless around each other. Long was the night they slept, the sun rose and set and rose again behind the fog. At last they rose and met the morning. All that day they ranged the ship to gather blankets and meals, boxes of medicine, flameless lamps and magic boats. Every hall met now soft sparkling piles of snow where once men stood, huddled together to escape the foul breath of winter.
"Once more outside, just once today, and then rest again before the dawn," said Ganit. "I know how we will bear these weights. But we must go to the other boats."
"What will we find there?"
"We need a sail."
"There is no water Ganit"
"But there is ever wind," he said and smiled. Outside, the frozen ships lay still as battle fallen, some heeled over, some shattered together as if the ships themselves had fled in panic, unsteered, careening unto their deaths. Deep in the ribs of one, Brone and Ganit found rope and cloth, tools and spars.
On the chill of the ice Ganit laid the sail and lashed it to the spars with heavy glue and straps. "My father and I made sails for play ships many times. We will have to be the mast ourselves. A living beam we will take in turn and glide across the sea."
One night more they slept with the silent dead, the moveless dark around them. Countless times would each have panicked if the other had not been a breath span away. Countless times the night reached under the door crack, up through the drains, swirling around their hearts, hungry and cold. Yet as every day before, came the dawn, clear and bright at last. Unfolding a magic boat, it filled with wind and skimmed the ice. Their livelihood they piled inside, these two last stragglers, birds fallen into snow. Ganit strapped himself first to the mast, a living prow, a warm carven god straight and true, holding the wind, and Brone pushed behind. When the breeze lifted them over the snow she ran and leapt into their gliding sleigh. Ganit laughed in the bright sun, glad to be free of the dead ships, glad to be out of the gray, clinging frost. Fleet and silent as the running deer they sped, swift with the trickling thaw.
Chapter 6
Wrapped in bedding, Brone watched the sun play over the ice, the snow snake past in flowing script, the changing story the wind wrote into winter.
"Look at me," said Ganit, though his back faced her, his arms full of the whipping sail."Look at the boat, the sail, anything but the ice. You will go blind."
"I have only been thinking how many days it should take us. How fast can we go?"
"We go many, many footsteps, as long as we can hold the sail. But we will have to rest."
"We have only food for one month."
"It will be enough, if the ice holds that long. Never has the ocean frozen. I do not know how far it goes."
A while they thought, separate in their fears. At last, Brone called him to take her turn at the mast. They broke bread together in the warm sunlight and their fears seemed far and small from them. "After all," said Brone, "Today's worries are enough without tomorrow's." On they went until the evening, Brone bearing the wind and Ganit watching the sky to guide them. With the dark, the boat stopped and Brone laid the sail over the ice. Wrapped in blankets and shielded by the overturned boat, Brone and Ganit ached and worried away the night. Only the first night brought them no sleep. Every day after they went to their rest exhausted by the day, each glad to be safe and warm in the quiet with the other.
Ethon reached the World Bridge that night. It heaved itself out of the sea, a dark constellation spreading over the ice, solid jewels of stone scattered in the wide water. Had she been light and springing, a mare of a century earlier she should have sprung out into the night, racing over the snow. But Enik, her second son, her dearest, the purging flame of her heart, was ready to breathe. And so she waited, pain spilling over the ice, a vibrant scarlet glowing ache. Into the empty dark she brought the fire of the horizon, into the deepest belly of night she birthed the burning noon. Enik roared forth as a flame new fed, as a hearth stealing air. A moment only Enik nuzzled Ethon, her favorite son, her rising dawn, and then across the World Bridge he bounded, blue sparks between his hoof and stone. A blazing star, a purging fire disappearing in the night. And Ethon rested, her twins, her last ones boiling as poison in her womb. She did not move until morning, until the pale, weak sun made the bridge into a thousand rainbows of ice. And then she started to the farther shore. Her heavy, crushing hooves shattered the ice as she went, letting the dark salt blood of the world seep through and burying the World Bridge behind her.
Five days the weather held true, the winds were strong and pushed Brone and Ganit ever toward the farther shore. The first magic boat wore through and they raised another, measuring the distance by the thickness of the hull. The stars were clear and the start of the thaw smoothed their way, made the boat glide soft and swift across the ice. Then, in the midst of the wide waters, the flat unending desert of the sea, the storm came upon them. For some time the wind blew harder, racing across the frozen plain, pushing the tiny magic boat faster, fleeing before the clouds. Ganit's arms ached as a man aflame as he tried to harness the wind. His eyes were closed against the brilliant flashing of the ice, so it was Brone first who saw the gathering shadow. The clouds leapt over the horizon, a dark cat, hissing with rain.
"Ganit, look!" she pointed to the sky as he craned to see. "We have to stop, or you will be overthrown in the wind!"
Ganit's heart grew numb and sunk as a heavy stone in water. They had each thought of winter storms, but quietly, in their dreams, each thinking they would be foretelling their end if they should speak it aloud. "No, we have to outrun it! There is no place to shelter." he had to shout above the rushing wind already he strained to hold the sail. His teeth ground together and he squinted with the beating wind.
"We'll never make it Ganit! See, it springs after us, quick as night devouring day. You must drop the sail."
"If it catches us, that storm will kill us!" And he roared
with strain. Still the storm came on, tingeing the sky a violent bruised brown, and Brone squinted as lightning played in the still mirror of the sea. The thunder rolled for miles over the frozen sea, shaking and cracking the ice. At last, Ganit could stand no more. The sail was ripped away, tumbling end over end, twisting away.
"Get out of the boat!" yelled Brone, "We have to get under it or we'll be struck!" Ganit leapt out and heaved the boat over. The wind snatched at the blankets and their food flew and rolled about, but there was no time. The storm bent its will entirely upon them, sliding over the sky as channeled water. And they smelled the dry tingle of lightning in their breath. Brone grabbed for the blankets and coming away with far too few, ducked under the boat as Ganit too, slid beneath it. Together they held down the boat against the wind. The thunder broke the air around them, insistent, a great weight pressing from the sky, and lightning licked its fingers dancing around them. But the storm could not enter, could not shatter the magic of the boat. The storm rattled as dried bones around them, but Brone and Ganit remained, still and safe. Many minutes the thunder danced back and forth, nearer then farther and Ganit and Brone said nothing, just shivered in the dark. Finally, the cold rain came and washed away the storm's white fire. Brone wrapped them in blankets but ever the thawing ice slipped underneath the boat, chilling them in the flood. The wind tore at the boat, lifting it, twisting it away. Ganit strained to keep it over them, but he wearied and he ached with cold flame. The boat flew free, tethered only by Brone but sheltering them no more. In vain she tried to shield them, but the wind was a wild beast, ever twisting the boat in her hands. The rain flew free and hard as ice, drenching them.
"Get in the boat." Brone said.
"It's no good, I can't hold it down. My very bones betray me," cried Ganit.
"Get in, the flood is coming."
So Ganit sat in the boat. She wrapped him head and foot in the sodden blankets, wrapped him to keep him from the winds hungering teeth. Their sail was gone, flown far, far across the sea. Nothing more had they, neither food, nor light nor means of warmth. The wind would push them no farther and the thaw drew quickly on. So Brone pulled their magic boat, pulled Ganit over the streaming plain and begged him not to succumb to sleep. Through the night she pulled, as long as the rain held, in deepest dark. She talked to Ganit as she walked, she told him every tale she knew, and made him tell her all his stories. They filled the night with dead men's memories, trying to keep him awake, keeping his breath warm in his chest. Ever and again they stopped to empty the boat of the cold rain that had gathered there and Ganit was chilled through. At last, the rain stopped falling and Ganit heard the roaring thaw ahead. "There is swift water ahead Brone. We can go no farther until daylight, step not over the brink."
The Jade Seed Page 4
