Wadding my skirts in my hands, I jogged up the mountain, its jagged surface jabbing my feet through wearing soles. I wound around a steep cliff and navigated over thick pine roots before the first spring came into view—a small river formed from mountain runoff.
It clung to the brae like a sheet of glass, netted like lace around the rocks interrupting its path. The entirety of it was frozen. Sadriel was right. I had stayed here too long.
I heard a howl further down the slope—not the call of a wolf, but of a hound, much like the red-haired basset Ashlen’s father took with him on hunting trips.
My cold heart leapt into my throat. I could barely breathe. But why would they have sent out hunters rather than assume the winter had hit harder than usual? Did these unknown villages know of me? Had my curse become a rumor left in my frozen wake across the land?
I thought of all the malicious rumors I had spread in school to diminish or get revenge on my fellow classmates. The irony almost made me sick up.
The springs had frozen, which meant the towns at the base of the mountain had no water to their newly planted crops. I had a feeling these hunters had not brought their dogs along for the mere purpose of asking me to leave.
I bolted back down the mountain, slipping on frost and patches of snow, tumbling over loose rocks. I skidded and fell, skinning my knee. I winced as cold blood trickled down my leg and froze, but I pushed myself up and sprinted to the fire. I collected my cold, damp clothes, pulled on my coat and gloves, and shoved the rest of my things into my bag before throwing it over my shoulder. I scooped up as much dirt and debris as I could and put out the fire, patting down the flames with my hands. I ran back to a patch of snow and scooped up an armful of it, dropping it onto the coals. They hissed, sizzled, and smoked. I dashed away.
The hounds brayed behind me—three of them—as I hurried across the mountain, running until my path dropped into a steep incline, forcing me to climb rather than hike. I slid and caught myself on the rough trunk of a fir, then carefully picked my footing until I could run again. My narrow, rocky path opened up into a wide, tree-rimmed clearing, its muddy soil dotted with grass and clover.
Men’s voices sounded beyond the excited dogs, though I could not make out their words. I pushed my stiff legs faster, willing my frozen joints to bend, begging them to carry me. My right foot sunk into mud. I wrenched it free, leaving my shoe behind.
The dogs’ barks hung in the air. Glancing behind me, I saw two harriers and a basset—just as my clearing ended in a steep landslip, free of trees. I struggled to climb the loose rocks, but for every two steps up I slid one back. I didn’t realize the dogs had reached me until a harrier snapped its jaws onto the hem of my skirt and yanked me down.
“Whoa, whoa!” a man called, and the other two hounds waited beneath me, growling. I fought off the harrier, slapping my hand across its muzzle. It yipped and released me. Flinging myself against the landslip, I started to climb again, feeling tiny rocks dig into my hands and my one bare foot. I heard one of the men behind me curse. The other bellowed something about an ice witch.
“You’ve caused us trouble for too long!” the first shouted as he grabbed my shod foot and yanked me off the steep incline. I fell hard onto my hip and cried out. The same harrier who’d snapped at my skirt grabbed my coat sleeve and tossed its head back and forth. I clawed at it until its master called it off. I couldn’t breathe.
I met the master’s eyes—a man in his thirties, perhaps, a short hat strapped to his head around his chin. An axe in his hands. He and his companion were bundled against the mountain chill with boots, long pants, coats, and gloves, only their faces and necks exposed.
“Leave me alone!” I screamed, kicking with my back against the landslip. The other man—much older—managed to get an arm around my thighs, clamping my legs shut.
“If you wanted to be left alone, you shouldn’t have brought your spell to Mayshaven,” the younger spat, adjusting his grip on his axe. The hounds yipped so loudly around me I could barely hear him say, “Let’s do this quick and get gone.”
I shrieked and writhed in the older man’s grip, his arms like a bench vise, as the younger shooed the dogs. I screamed for help, cried out for Sadriel, but no one answered. I was alone. I had been alone since the day Mordan took me to the willow-wacks and set this curse upon me.
My curse.
As the axman neared my shoulder, I bit the middle finger of my glove and ripped it off. I could not reach the axman, but I could grab the hunter who held me.
Clenching the muscles in my stomach, I bolted upright and grabbed my captor’s exposed neck with both hands. He immediately released my legs, but I clung to him, my nails digging into his flesh as frost stemmed from my right hand, tracing up his jaw and down his neck, beneath his layers of clothing. He screamed, but I did not let go, even as he fell backwards with me on top of him, even as his hands tore at my back and shoulders. One of the dogs bit my calf, and the animal yipped loudly as ice shot into its teeth.
A hand grabbed a fistful of my hair and yanked me back, but the axman was too late. His comrade already lay as a statue in the mud, his arms bent at the elbow and frozen in place, his eyes wide and mouth agape. His skin shimmered with frost, his skin pale, lips blue.
The axman released me and ran to the frozen man’s side, then turned to ogle me with wide, quivering eyes. I backed away, limping, but instead of coming after me, the axman ran back across the clearing, his hounds fast at his heels. The dog that had bitten me—the basset—limbered behind slowly, shaking its head, its tongue dragging across the earth.
It happened so quickly I could barely register it, even with the frozen man lying before me, even with blood caking over my knee and oozing from the puncture wounds the hound had left on my leg.
I sat there, soft snow falling around me, panting, cold air passing in and out of my lungs. Angry moths flew circles in my gut. I shivered and held myself, trembling at the sight of the frozen man. A man who had come to kill me. I had no doubts about that.
The air to my left darkened and took shape. Sadriel stood beside me, though I did not look at him. I only stared at the frozen man, still rigid in his desperate form.
“I had to,” I whispered between chattering teeth, my heart folding around itself. How very cold I felt. The blood from the bite wound had already frozen to my skin in forking trails, stopping just above my heel. “I-I had to.”
Sadriel walked around the man, inspecting him like he were an entry to the town fair. “He’s not dead,” he said, tapping his fingers against his lips, “just dying.” He grinned and looked at me. “See? You already have a taste for me.”
Crouching down, Sadriel touched the man’s forehead and then lifted his hand, tan and cerulean smoke following his fingertips. I recalled the day I first met Death in the Hutcheses’ home, when Sadriel had done the same to Bennion. Even with the hunter truly dead, his body remained unchanged. Still frozen, still screaming, still gaping. His frosted eyes peered into the world of Death and feared what they beheld.
He looked like me.
A tear ran down my cheek, freezing before it reached my chin. “I called for you!” I shouted, rising to my feet. My leg throbbed and the mountain teetered, but I ignored both. “They wanted to kill me! I called for you, but you didn’t . . . you didn’t . . .”
I shook my head, wiping away a second tear that froze to the side of my hand.
“You handled it well enough, hmm?” Sadriel said with a grin. “And I warned you, didn’t I?”
I didn’t answer, only continued to shake my head as I limped past the corpse and into the clearing. By the time I found my lost shoe and jerked it from the mud, Sadriel had, once again, disappeared.
I did not look back at the hunter. I did not need to, for his pained face had carved itself into my memory. I have never forgotten it, though my dreams of him have subsided, thankfully. My fear of dogs, however, lingers with me to this day.
I had to keep moving, and I had to
stay far away from any village, far enough that I could not so much as see one, for I deeply feared a repeat of that day. If stories of the “ice witch” had reached this far, I did not think I could be safe anywhere. I could not settle down, and I dared not stay in any single place more than one night. I didn’t even dare steal from another town again, even when true winter hid my presence.
I had never been a good hunter—my father had never taught me because I was a girl—but I learned to catch frogs by freezing their ponds and chipping them from the ice. The ice did not melt in my hands, and as long as I kept it away from my infrequent fires, the meat stayed fresh. I built several caches for myself for the following winter, places I could return to when I grew desperate for food. Nuts, apples, tubers, and any eggs I could find, whether robin or snake. I focused on survival, and my early preparations pulled me through the next year relatively unscathed.
But my third year in the wilderness, the third year of my unrelenting curse, would bring one of the darkest times of my life. I would stand on the very brink of death, wanting only to be welcomed into the black abyss beyond.
CHAPTER 7
In late spring I traveled east, away from the mountains and closer to the coast. I had no specific destination in mind; I only knew that I had to keep moving. If I lingered in one place too long, I feared the storm that followed me would form a pillar of snow towering to the heavens themselves, with me crushed into its foundation. The mountain crests of inland Iyoden often hid my storm. They also gave me a wide view of my surroundings, so abandoning them invoked anxiety in me, but I trekked east anyway, hoping to outrun the rumors that had sprung up along my trail. Hoping to stumble upon some sort of technology or magic that could relieve my curse. I had once pondered on traveling this way once I became an established playwright—but such fancies had long been buried.
In my journey I passed very close, uncomfortably close, to Heaven’s Tear Lake, but Euwan resided on its southwest side and I passed over its north. The lake is large enough that even the best eyes would not be able to see my crawling storm as I passed by. I took comfort in that, even though my heart ached for home.
Other than Sadriel’s infrequent visits, I continued to travel alone, which gave me a great deal of time to spend with my thoughts. Mordan still weighed heavily on my mind, but I began to think beyond the moment he’d wrapped his fingers around my neck and used his last magic to thrust me into an eternal winter. I realized I had never truly known him. Yes, he had cursed me, and I hated him for it, but perhaps he was not entirely evil. Everyone in Euwan had seemed to like him, my father especially. I imagined myself in his stockings, as the saying goes, a lone stranger hoping for a fresh start in a small village where no one knew him, trying to break away from the horrors he had witnessed at the gate to magicked territory. It must have been hard for him. I realized I might have misjudged him. Admitting that to myself helped eased the weight of hatred in my heart.
Unfortunately, my journey did not remain entirely in its solitude, for as the warmer months settled in Iyoden, the reach of my cold alerted new men, and though I distanced myself, I was a cursed being, an “ice witch,” and a party far larger than the two men with dogs began to pursue me. Whether in anger or perhaps in sport, I do not know, for I dared not linger long enough to ask. But they came for me, and I turned back for the mountains, running when my body could run, crawling when it could not. I wore through the soles of my shoes and had to discard them. But even with bleeding feet, I could not stop moving.
Once I feared my pursuers had obtained horses, I began to travel into the night, running until my chilled body could not run anymore, and then only sleeping until dawn awoke me. I had to move constantly and quickly, for I could not hide, not with ever-present storm clouds flagging me. I barely had time to forage, and I grew too thin. My clothes—old and in need of mending—became tattered with my constant movement. During that time I rarely saw my own snow, for it only fell when I stayed in one place too long.
It took me three months to finally lose the hunting party, and by then the peak of summer made the world blossom green around me. But those three months had fatigued me to my bones, and the persistent fear had torn my heart open. I had lost myself somewhere between the end of Iyoden’s mountain ranges and where the wide rivers cut through the land, perhaps not too far from the Unclaimed Lands that walled the Southlands from the north. I recognized nothing; I was hungry, and I was alone. My heart and my resolve had broken, and I could not find the strength to start a new day, to forage, even to read my beloved books, which had become memorized bricks in my faded schoolbag. A darkness seeped into the cold that flowed through my veins, and it gradually consumed me.
One day I sat on summer grass white with frost, delicate snowflakes dropping in silence around me, my legs curled up to my chest. My skirt fell in tattered strips around me, and my unbound hair curtained me from the world. I had folded my arms against my knees and leaned my forehead against them, sobbing, crying as I had never cried before. I cried every ounce of my misery until I could barely breathe, but even breath did not cease my despair, nor the endless, frozen tears that clung to my dress and sleeves, neck and breast.
I knew Sadriel had come—even through my own darkness, I could feel his presence, but I could not stop the tears. I felt only the shards of what I once was and the bitter chill that tortured me.
“I can’t do it anymore!” I managed through choppy sobs. I shivered, gasped for air. “I can’t . . .”
Sadriel did not smile at me, nor did he frown. His lips held a flat line, and his brow knit over bright amber eyes. He seemed almost sympathetic in his silence, almost . . . sad. He sat on the frosty grass with his legs folded before him, untouched by the dust of my snow, wordless, mirthless.
“I just want to die,” I whispered through trembling lips. “It hurts . . . It hurts so much.”
Even without tears I wept. When I finally spoke again, my voice sounded hoarse and aged. “I c-can’t touch anything without . . . I can’t touch anything, anyone. I’m . . . I’m a monster. I just w-want it to end . . .”
And then Death knelt before me, his eyes like molten fire. He reached out his long fingers and touched the side of my face.
I gazed at him, his ageless features, those bright amber eyes.
“Come with me,” he whispered.
I didn’t answer. His fingers lingered on my face, and I was filled with the wonder of feeling someone, anyone, touch me. Beneath that I felt empty, void of emotion, void of thought, void of spirit. I watched him, frozen tears on my eyelashes.
And I nodded.
The brim of his wide hat brushed the top of my head, and his lips pressed against mine, strong and indelicate. His hands slid over my jaw and entangled themselves into my hair. I opened my mouth to him. He kissed me fervently, breathlessly, his teeth grazing my lips, his tongue tracing my tongue.
I fell back onto the earth with him on top of me, his hair falling against my cheeks, his mouth on my lips, my neck, my lips. His hands caressed my sides and flowed down my thighs, moving under my ragged skirt. In that moment I lost myself to him, savoring him, the one man in the world whom I could touch and who could touch me.
But then a draining sensation engulfed me as his arm snaked behind my back. My life slipped away in smoky wisps with each kiss, with each touch of his hand. I was dying, and though it scared me, I almost let it happen, let him take away the pain and the darkness, let him pull me into the realm beyond this one.
Almost.
Mordan had taken away the life I had known, but even his curse had not taken my life. Without that, I would be truly frozen, unable to change. Unable to save myself. My life, albeit a hard one, was the only thing I had left.
And no one—no one—could take that from me.
I found the last dregs of my strength and pushed Sadriel away from me. “No!” I cried. Screamed. “No! You cannot take it from me! I will never go with you!”
He gazed at me in shock, his eyes as wid
e and mouth as open as the hunter I had left frozen in the mountains, but the surprise receded and his eyes blazed with fury. One moment he sat on the ground beside me, and the next he stood, a raging shadow. He cursed me in his old tongue—“Shiksha, Obiden, Tyar!”—and vanished in a swirl of maroon and black.
The setting sun colored the horizon a bloody red, and I found enough strength to pick myself up and crawl to my schoolbag. I changed my chemise and my dress, took a bite of a half-frozen apricot, and slowly, hazily, began collecting wood. For the first time in three months, I lit a fire, and though I could not feel its warmth, I savored its light.
By the time the true snows of winter came once more, I had restored my old routines and returned to the mountains. More importantly, I had learned to recognize the mercies Mordan had allotted me, even in his rash anger. I still had my mind, my memories. I could still move, even if my frozen muscles made my limbs sluggish. Most importantly, I still had my life.
Staring up at the wisps of silent, falling snow, I forgave Mordan. It was that resolve—a strange sort of hope that I could change for the better, one way or another—that fueled me through the years to come.
CHAPTER 8
Sadriel, whose company I both craved and despised, did not visit me that winter, and I had come to believe I would never see him again, save on my own deathbed. But our confrontation had ignited within me a new will to live. Where once I had gripped on to life with white knuckles for fear of death, I now cherished life for the love of it.
I reflected often on my life before the curse. Rather than bestowing me with comfort or joy, the memories often made my heart heavy with remorse. Even the smallest things, like the time I had eaten both brownies Ashlen’s mother had sent home with me, when I was meant to share one with Marrine. Or when I had mercilessly teased a young woman at school for her ill-fitting dress. I pondered on every chore I had skipped or completed haphazardly, on every piece of misleading advice I had shared with friends, on every boy I had ever made empty promises to and then discarded like an empty flour sack.
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