Foxfire in the Snow

by J. S. Fields

  “Thank you for saving us, Sorin.” She reached a hand from her cloak and grabbed my left. Although she winced, she gripped tightly. Scabbed fingers traced the top of my knuckles, and it was warmer and more intimate than anything had a right to be on this glacier. I unclenched my jaw.

  “Would you distract me? Tell me about your apprenticeship with the smiths?”

  Magda blinked, then smiled. “That’s pretty boring. How about a story of the first ball the queen made me host, and the outfit she made me wear? That’ll keep you laughing for hours.”

  I chuckled, although doing so made my hand throb. I could almost picture the gown the queen would have picked for her, and I could clearly imagine the look Magda would have had on her face the entire time. “I think that will work just fine.”

  Magda looked up to her left at the aching whites and blues around us. We were at the base of a small ice hill, and just at the top, I saw a black-cloaked figure. It turned when it caught sight of us, then fled down the opposite side of the hill, and out of sight.

  This time, fortunately, Magda saw it too.

  “Sameer?” She pointed. “Friend of yours?”

  “No idea. Keep walking and…distracting. Whatever keeps Sorin upright.”

  “Magda, if they’re a snowsick guilder…”

  Magda smiled tightly. “We’re not going to chase after them on ice. The edge of the glacier isn’t far. They probably just wanted to meet us on more solid footing.” She tugged at my hand. “Focus on me.”

  We kept walking, Magda all but pulling me up the slope. We paused at the crest of the hill. I couldn’t see the traveler, but the end of the glacier loomed ahead—only a few hundred meters away—and beyond that, the start of the shrubby trees that would eventually transition into a real forest.

  Sameer walked back to me and pointed at my hand. “When we make the sharp transition to temperate forest, the cold that’s keeping your pain at bay is going to snap as well.” He turned to Magda, his forehead wrinkled in…worry? I scoffed. “Maybe keep at that story,” he said. “Add a little…huzzah. I don’t know.”

  Magda chuckled. “Something dirty?”

  The tips of Sameer’s ears turned red.

  Magda leaned in conspiratorially. “The most recent ball, well, the last one we had before the guilder situation started… I was fourteen. I begged to have you at that party, but the queen shot me down so many times I thought she’d gone mad. Then she invited most every noble-blooded female in the three countries, I think, as some sort of apology. My gods, the amount of silk. You don’t think about it with everyday clothes, and we’re so fond of cotton in the three countries, but fifty people in a ballroom with swirling gowns? You could drown.”

  Sameer changed direction without warning, and I sidestepped to follow as I tried to imagine Magda in a silk gown, with the lace trim of her shift flaring from the sleeves. The pebbles gave way under me, and my foot slid out. It was only Magda’s hand on mine that kept me upright. She pulled me up with a yank on my wrist. I found my footing again, and then Magda was right next to me, one hand holding mine, the other around my waist.

  “Yes,” she murmured next to my ear, “I ended up in one of those horrendous dresses. Yes, it had a low-cut front. But that’s no reason for you to kill yourself daydreaming. No more injuries.”

  My heart skipped, and I turned to her windswept face, her forehead wrinkled with worry. Magda pulled back before I could say anything, refusing to release my hand, and we continued walking. A distraction. I’d wanted a distraction. With my heart thudding in my chest, it was easier to ignore everything else, including the stupid wind.

  Except my hand would not stop throbbing. No redness dripped from the soaked bandage, but the pain was deeper now, joining the ache in my heart and head and hips. I could have been at that party with Magda, cracking jokes and being just as uncomfortable in silk as she was. We could have grown up together. I could have seen more of Sorpsi, and the guilds, and maybe gotten a reasonable education. And here I was, having given up everything, everything, chasing the mother who had assigned me this life in the first place.

  Maybe Sameer was right. Maybe Mother… I shook my head. Second-guessing a woman who was likely wandering the glacier, confused, or dead, would get me nowhere.

  Eventually, the seracs faded behind us. It wasn’t until we hit the glacial edge—perhaps two meters raised from solid dirt below—that Magda spoke again.

  “Here?” she asked Sameer.

  “Here, or in a few meters. We will hit the full forest in less than half an hour. By the time we reach Miantri, we won’t even need our cloaks.” His eyes flicked to mine. “You ready then, Sorin?”

  I couldn’t imagine the pain being much worse, so I shrugged.

  Magda hopped down from the glacial edge and had her arms under my knees and arms before I could squeak out a response. The temperature change was immediate. Warm air that blew in the breeze and the sun—blinding on the glacier—were hot enough now to make me break into a sweat. As Magda set me on my feet, sharp little pinpricks dotted my arm, then into my hand as the warmth filtered back to my fingers.

  I cried out and fell to my knees onto the hard gravel. I retched once, twice, and finally had to lie, belly first, on the stones until my head stopped spinning.

  Magda’s hand brushed across my back and neck. Her soothing words and Sameer’s gruff encouragement buffered around me, but it all sounded felted, like my whole head was wrapped in cotton.

  “Sorin?” It was Magda, and even through the haze, I could hear her worry. “Can you sit up?”

  “Ehh,” I groaned. I pulled my knees underneath myself and managed a hunched position, keeping my head tucked to my chest. It kept the world from spinning quite so much. On the bright side, the nausea and vertigo were excellent distractions from my hand. So was the crunching sound coming from the south. Sameer handed me a tincture of laudanum from his pack, which I quickly downed. The relief was immediate.

  “The other traveler,” Sameer said. “Heading our way. And that’s all I’ve got of that, so hopefully, we find a doctor before tomorrow.”

  “It’s enough. Thank you.” Instead of looking at him, I watched a woman in a long, embroidered dress and brown cloak approach us. Mud stained the hem of her cloak, but the remains of white lace peeked out beneath it. A leather strap crossed her front, and the top of what looked like a lute or violin poked over her shoulder.

  “Whoa,” Magda called out. “Who are you?”

  The woman stopped and knelt a few paces away. She looked up at the sharp blue sky, then down to the ground, then at herself, as if she couldn’t see how she fit into the world around her. Curls of thin, black hair tumbled from her hood, and her fingertips were red and scabbed. “Watchara, of Puget. You?”

  “Sameer, master of textiles,” Sameer said, cutting Magda off. “These are my traveling companions. I live in Ankatt, on the glacier. What business do you have here?”

  Watchara stared at Sameer for a long moment, her lips moving but no sound coming out. I managed to sit up a bit more, leaning heavily against Magda.

  “I’m Watchara of Puget,” she repeated, more slowly this time.

  “Are you a musician?” I managed to croak, pointing at the whatever she carried on her back.

  Watchara’s eyes fluttered to me before she looked back at Sameer. “Yes. No. I…was. I think.”

  Sameer cocked his head to the side and studied Watchara. “Are you sure you want to go on the glacier? You seem…disoriented.”

  “Can you still work?”

  Her words took Sameer by surprise, and he stepped back a few paces. “Yeah. Yes, I mean.” He glanced at Magda, whose face had turned grim. His voice sounded deeper, or more serious, or the laudanum was mixed more strongly than I’d thought. “You can’t? Were you on the glacier long?”

  Watchara shook her head and looked down at the pebbled ground. “No, only just now. Just the preamble. I thought… I’d heard there were guilders up here. I wanted to find o
ther guilders because this—” She pointed to the wood strapped to her back. “My violin. I know it’s mine. I remember making it with my father from a half-rotten log.” She pulled it from the strap and placed it between Sameer and herself. It was a beautiful piece of wood—highly polished with a mother-of-pearl inlay. I was certain if she pulled down her hood, I’d see a guild mark.

  A sob rose from Watchara’s throat. “I can’t play it. I know I did play. I must have because when I see this violin, I remember clapping, and laughter, and the smiles of my parents. But if I draw a bow across, it only screeches. My fingers fumble on the strings. I don’t know where to put my chin or how tightly to hold it.”

  “It’s a beautiful instrument. We had a guild violinist at court for most of my childhood. I remember him so well.” Magda moved her arm from my waist, making sure I’d not topple, and scooted close enough to Watchara that she could stroke two fingers over the violin. Jealousy bloomed, unexpectedly, in the way she touched the instrument, like she was caressing some Puget god. I berated myself. Jealousy of a violin was about as stupid as walking across a glacier.

  “He’s there now?” Watchara asked.

  Magda shook her head and sat back. “He left two years ago. Said there were better jobs, though I can’t believe he found work for more than what the queen paid him.”

  Watchara wiped her running nose on the sleeve of her cloak and put her violin away. “I haven’t seen another from the musician’s guild in over four months, and I’ve been travelling.” She pulled down her hood, exposing a bass clef tattoo just under her chin. “Before this…I was a master. I remember getting my tattoo. I remember how proud my parents were of my journey piece, but…I can’t remember the piece itself.”

  She bit her lower lip and tears swelled in her eyes. “I can’t remember music!” Her eyes moved to the glacier. “There’s supposed to be magic in the glacier, right? Old magic, old amulets, leftover from the old king’s reign? A woman in Celtis said maybe I could find my memories there. But I saw you three, and I…it suddenly seemed stupid, walking on a glacier alone.”

  “That’s because it is stupid,” Sameer said. “You’re not dressed for it at all. You’d have died within an hour.”

  Watchara hung her head. “It seemed really important that I go. A woodcutter woman said the glacier was where others went when they forgot.”

  I snapped my head up. “What did she look like?”

  Watchara started to sob.

  “Not the time,” Sameer said. He stood and then knelt next Watchara, covering one of her hands with his own. “Come with us, back to Celtis. You should see a doctor. Preferably one who doesn’t buy into this snowsickness nonsense.”

  “I tried,” she argued as Sameer helped her to stand. “No one knew anything. They said it was pandemic, without a cure. But I…appreciate the offer to take me back to the village. Maybe it’s best I’m not walking alone.”

  I managed to get back on my feet as well, although I didn’t mind Magda’s assistance in the matter. “Why would Mother be in Celtis?” I asked no one in particular. “There’s no reason.”

  Sameer snorted. “Except for magic. Everything about this reeks of magic. Has no one seriously thought of that? Gods, do the doctors as well as the guilders have their heads up their asses?”

  Magda let out a low sigh as we continued walking, Watchara guided by Sameer, Magda at my side. She had her arm around my waist, and her fingers stroked my hip bone just enough to keep me from floundering in pain—what little there was left—or conjecture.

  “There are too many parallels to ignore, anymore,” Magda said. “I need to get these treaty talks done. After that, I may need to hire you to take me farther up the glacier, Sameer. Something is rotting up there.”

  The ground transitioned smoothly from pebbles to moss, which Sameer kicked at. He shot back at Magda, “If something is rotting, try the woods of Thuja. No part of me is surprised about this.”

  Magda gave him a sharp look. I groaned.

  Sameer stopped walking and spun to face us. He crossed his arms over his chest, and with the way his jaw set, he looked exactly like Mother. A shiver ran down my spine.

  “Apologies, Watchara, but you two”—he pointed at Magda and me—“let’s talk about Amada the master woodcutter. Really talk about her. I’m tired of dancing around the devil. Even if she isn’t the same master woodcutter sending guilders off to die on a glacier, do you really think she’ll let you go, Sorin? How do you think she’ll react when you end up in Celtis instead of hiding away in the Thujan woods?”

  I decided to look up at the canopy of conifers that now engulfed us, instead of my brother. Everything he was saying was ridiculous, even with my mind fuzzy from the laudanum. Mother was domineering, but she wasn’t cruel, and there was no way she was a witch. Mother hated witches as much as I did.

  “She doesn’t control me, Sameer.”

  Sameer laughed. “Yeah, she just kept you penned in a forest for your entire life through guilt and fear. I’m sure an injured hand will be enough to keep her away.”

  “Enough, Sameer. I made the choice to come here. I left our home, despite what Mother wanted. She does not control me!”

  “Sure.” Sameer eased Watchara over a moss-covered log and shook his head. “She doesn’t control you, or our futures, or the wandering, magicked guilders of Celtis. Keep telling yourself that. See if it keeps you from the wrong side of Amada’s sword in the end.”

  Twenty-One: Separation

  There were no witches near the old stone wall of Celtis, but enchanted foxfire fairy trails lit the stone an eerie green as we approached. It was just after sundown, and the nagging weight that I’d carried in my stomach since the crevasse and the loss of my binding surged up past the opium that fuzzed my mind. I choked on air, coughed, but waved Magda, Sameer, and Watchara off when they looked at me with concern. They’d forgotten, likely, the origin of the fabric wrapped around my torn hand. I had not. I forced myself to look at the town, the old wall not good for anything anymore save perhaps keeping out ranging cattle. Anything to take my mind from our walk to the inn and the eyes that would see me and make assumptions. Only one walk, at night. Surely no one would notice. And if they did, would it matter? They didn’t know me. What did pronouns matter, especially from a stranger?

  It did matter, of course, and denying the effect it would have on me was foolish, but I’d never get the courage to enter the city otherwise. It was best to focus on the mundane. The wall was easy enough to climb even with one hand. We wandered first through the outlying houses of the poor, myself once again with an arm crossed and pressing my chest down. The shacks were of wood beams and bark walls, but as we progressed in, the buildings changed to stone and, finally, clay. Every house we saw, from the smallest hovel to the grand guildhalls, was decorated in green lanterns for tii.

  Woodwind instruments could be heard from all around. Watchara swayed with the music. Her eyes, when I could catch them, looked distant as she tried to force memories that would not come. Multiple times, she reached for her violin, just to draw her hand back and stare at her twitching fingers.

  A spirit house, fully built from birch and cedar and inlayed with silver, sat prominently in the city square. Well-lit with candles, its walls did not meet at ninety-degree angles. The roof sloped too gently. The silver inlay sank too low beneath the wood. It had not been guild-made, and it hurt to see something so sloppy in an otherwise cheerful festival.

  The people were less formally dressed than in Miantri and, while friendly, not even passably interested in our haggard appearance. That helped settle my nerves, but I kept my arm high, regardless. Magda did notice when a young girl’s eyes stayed too long on us and I turned to a sideways shuffle.

  “We’ll get some cloth tomorrow morning,” she whispered into my ear. “And a doctor for your hand. I think tii ends tonight.”

  “You’ll be hard-pressed to do that and negotiate a treaty, I think,” I returned, though I smiled at her. She h
ad the same look in her eyes now that she’d had on the glacier, right before we’d kissed. If she looked at me like that much longer, I wouldn’t be able to hide my blush.

  “Just because the talks start in the morning doesn’t mean you can’t see a doctor right away,” Magda said. “You and Watchara. I’ll be tied up for at least two days. But for right now, let’s focus on getting some…some sleep.”

  Get sleep, after she’d looked at me like that? After everything that had happened on the glacier?

  Magda winked. “A meal, and a bath, and a bed. We will go from there, assuming your hand isn’t bothering you too much.” She touched the back of my neck—a surprisingly intimate gesture—and we once again fell to silence.

  We passed easily through town to the Celtis Inn—a two-story stone structure with a clay tiled roof and pigs mucking in a side pen. The inside of the inn was bright but still smelled somewhat musty, likely from Puget’s ranching heritage. The tables were of a formed silver metal, and across them lay tablecloths of woven grasses in a multitude of colors and textures. Ornate tapestries of wools and silks covered the walls, all brightly dyed and expertly woven.

  The people wore cotton almost exclusively. Magda, Sameer, and I stood out in our leathers, but the dinner guests again took little notice. The air was thick with the smell of beef bouillon and onion, and my stomach growled loudly. Sameer’s did the same a moment later.

  “Rooms for the night?” Magda asked a girl, perhaps ten, with her hair in looped braids. The child had three bowls of soup and a loaf of bread balanced on her arm, which she deftly spread onto an empty table.

  “Not me.” Sameer sat in the bone chair next to me, slipped his cloak from his shoulders, and let his head fall back. “Just dinner.”

  “Obligation fulfilled?” Magda patted her pocket where I knew a fat satchel of stones rested. “I can pay you a bit now, and more fully when I return to Sorpsi.”

  Sameer rolled his head to the right and scanned my face. “Come with me, Sorin.”