Five, ten heartbeats. ‘What?’ Callum presses. Looking off through the night, through the dusted starlight, Erik’s throat is working. ‘You’ve seen her, so what is it?’
Fifteen heartbeats, twenty. Somewhere distant, the breeze rustles, branches creak and sigh. ‘I’m sorry,’ Erik says grudgingly. His small grey eyes meet Callum’s. ‘I am. I found her frozen. Dead.’
The rest is white noise, condensing to a ring. Callum stares through him. Lena, frozen. Lena, dead.
Lena, here because of him. Silence settles on the air. Callum tips back his head. The star-dotted sky is ghostly, and he stares through it as well. He never liked Lena—she was a sharp-tongued, acerbic gossip who snapped more often than she smiled—but she shouldn’t have died. She should definitely not have died here.
She wouldn’t have, if not for him.
For the first time, he understands Kira. Drowned with guilt for him being here, for enduring all they have. He’s her Lena.
And there, their differences are bared. If Kira had her way, he’d be packed off tonight with a promise to keep in touch. Even having kissed him, she’d want him to leave. They’ve known each other less than a week, and she’s dragged him into hell. She feels it all so sharply.
Good thing they’re both that bloody stubborn. Shit, he feels things sharply, too, but while she lets it cut her, he turns the blade. What’s the point of this, all of this, if it ends with him going back, alone? He’d feel like a kid sloping back to his house after threatening to run away. It has to mean something. It all has to matter.
What’s the point of Lena dying if none of it matters?
Shit. Shit. Fuck. Lena died.
‘Why are you here?’ Callum looks back to Erik. A fetid taste lines his mouth, coating his teeth and tongue. ‘If it’s to make us feel bad about Lena, you can leave. You succeeded.’
Erik regards him shrewdly. He looks away. ‘I wanted to make sure you were still alive.’ He slips his rough, grey coat from his shoulders. ‘And to apologise for how your girl was treated. Is she all right?’
Teeth gritted, Callum nods. He’s set to sink through the ground, to the centre of the earth and beyond. Does the centre of the earth work the same in this place? Slowly, he exhales. Jesus. They’re so damn far from home.
Maybe he should listen to Kira. Run now, stop when he’s out, when he’s back in Motalles with its icy ground, its smell of raclette, its ever-present skiers and sledgers and dogs. Better yet, stop when he’s back in Madrid, where this’ll be nothing more than a nightmare Kira got from the Kyo.
Kira. All images of running erode, leaving him stark and cold. In their place is the sense of losing a balloon and watching it take to the sky. Sure, she’s right. He barely knows her. He knows her family less, and doesn’t need to help them. But for one, he’s turning that blade for Lena, and for another, what kind of man would he be if he left a girl alone in a forest—any forest, magically fucked or not—so he could run home to his mum?
‘Good.’ As if he heard the mental skirmish, Erik holds out his coat. Callum takes it, arms dipping at the weight of the wool. He has to stay, but God, he can’t stand to be awake. He can’t. He can’t. He—
‘If you still intend to carry on’—the skier removes his poncho, shades of brown and thickly spun—‘follow the trees with the lowest branches. The ones that scrape the ground.’
Callum doesn’t have it in him to scoff. ‘Why?’
‘It’s the way to manipulate the land so it takes you to the Zaino. A river,’ Erik amends, securing his hat back on his head. ‘You need to cross it to get to the ice plains. Nowhere else has answers to something on the outside. There’s no guarantee the Whispers will, or that they’ll want to help. If you’re following someone, though, that’s where they’ll be going.’
It takes a moment to process that not all of this makes sense. ‘The what?’ he repeats. His voice sounds awful and feels even worse. ‘The Whispers?’
‘Mm.’ Erik sounds like a cautionary tale. ‘If you don’t find who you’re following, they might know what to do. Alternatively—’ He stops. ‘Here.’
Left with a thick, long-sleeved jersey, he hands Callum the poncho. Down, down, down, like an anchor, men drowned. Callum’s arms dip farther. He’s lost the strength to brace. How does Erik walk at all?
‘I’m sorry about my village.’ Erik’s voice turns sour. ‘The treatment you received is shameful. Abhorrent. And’—he puts a gloved hand on Callum’s arm—‘I’m sorry about the woman. More than sorry. Is it Lain?’
Dully, Callum swallows. ‘Lena.’
Silence. It weighs too much. Eventually, Erik sighs. ‘Look at me.’
Callum does nothing. He’s spiralling up, outside his head. Lena, frozen. Lena, dead.
‘Look at me.’ Erik grips his arm so tight that reflexively, Callum does. ‘You can’t let this bury you. Any of it. If you do, you’ll die.’
He searches Callum’s face. A memory fades in, stonewashed with age: Clemence, back when they lived in Shetland, grabbing his arms in the rain. Don’t be a bloody diddy, he barked. Carting him away from the jetty, the old man shook him. His head rattled back and forth. He was only a kid. I know you don’t like it here, but hell, rowing out there would be suicide. His weathered, walnut face leant right into Callum’s. The wind whooped by. Do you not see the storm?
Callum blinks the memory away. He’d rather be back in Shetland than here. He could take Kira with him. They could sit and drink tea, have a beer in the other hand, and misquote poets. That night is now the pinnacle of want.
‘If I could, I’d help you more.’ Erik sighs and steps back. The lines on his face look sad. ‘But I need to get home. I may be hardy’—he smiles, a grave, grumbling first—‘but I feel the cold. As do you and your girl.’ He glances at the hollow. It’s silent, flickering. ‘Get back inside. Keep yourselves warm. The Whispers aren’t easy to reach.’
Wordless, Callum watches as he snowshoes away. The candle sparks, disappearing in the dark as Erik fades into shadow. Callum’s gritted teeth ache.
‘Thank you,’ he calls. It’s a hush through the trees, through the quieting crunch of snow. Callum doesn’t move. If Erik didn’t hear, hopefully he’ll understand. There’s no burden like righteousness.
The morning is muted: no wind, no sound. Not even the crackling fire behind them, which Kira had worried would pop in the night and burn their clothes to ash.
On the climb back to wakefulness, she wrinkles her nose. Maybe it would have been best. Through fleeing and fear and too many days, her sweaty clothes have clung to her for far too long. They could do with exile, or excommunication. Preferably both, and then death.
So could her clammy, tacky body. She can feel the grease on her forehead and the grime building up on her skin. They both must smell atrocious.
At least they’ll cancel each other out. Is that good? Kira screws up her face, smooths it out, and rolls over.
Her eyes flick open. She’s come face to chin with an itch, a grey, woolly one. Eyebrows raised, she lifts it between finger and thumb. It’s not theirs, but neither is it murderous, or chasing her with fire.
What it is is unbearably hot. Shrugging it onto Callum, she smiles, a small, melancholy twitch. Considering their bed of coats and snow, his sleeping face is content.
The thought slithers in like a bad habit, undetected until it’s too late. She should leave.
If Iris was right, he might be here against his will. Because of some unwitting pull. Because of some inherited pull. Because of some destructive pull, leading them both to…what?
It might be the reason he kissed her, too. Something inside her shrinks and quiets. It didn’t occur to her last night—if she’d been dwelling on monsters while kissing, well, the kissing was pretty much doomed—but it would make sense. It would make sense of a lot. After knowing her for two days, Callum followed her to somewhere unknown, somewhere dangerous, and won’t stop trying to help.
Kira sighs, soft and light to let
him sleep. He should have run for his life. Having saved the delirious, frozen Romy and seen the corrupted hotel scene, he should have literally run for the hills. He should have, but he didn’t. He stuck to her from the minute they met.
And Romy? This applies to her, too. The lure of them both must have pulled so hard that Callum had no choice.
And Peter?
Kira squashes this like a bug. God, no. Peter was a species unto himself.
And this is getting too much. Kira breathes deep and sighs deeper. The air is warm, pine and woodsmoke and animal fur. The hollow should be comforting, a cosy claustrophobia, but it isn’t; she can dance away from the ghost of Anna, but that’s the thing about ghosts. They haunt.
Unhappily, Kira stares through the ceiling. Pockmarked snow, matte in the morning in the hollow’s shadowed light. Anna. Anneliese. And her mother is a ghost.
She’s an only child of only children. She has no family at all. No great-aunt Amanda, as on Mathew’s side, who puts socks over shoes and lives on egg. No trying nephews or nieces, who like to draw on walls. Her parents died when she was twenty. After that, she said, the thought of her childhood became too much to bear.
Kira’s eyes sink shut as the truth starts to bite. Anna always said that one day, she’d be strong enough, and they’d look through her childhood things together. They were in storage, out of the house. She loved her parents so deeply, she said, that any reminder just hurt.
Kira never thought that it might have been a lie. Did Romy? Did Mathew? Has he spent nearly twenty years under some kind of—
‘I take it your head’s a fun place right now.’
Kira opens her eyes and is met by Callum’s. His words are so dry, so pre-prepared, that her face must have been more bleak than The Scream. Guilt twinges in Kira’s chest. ‘You look like someone ate your goldfish. And you also’—he throws the woollen something aside, along with a bulky something else Kira hadn’t realised was there—‘look like you want to get going. So come on.’ He taps her leg, a knowing in his eyes. ‘Let’s go, while the iron’s hot.’
Kira stares. He’s tugging his coat from beneath their thighs, but in disbelief, she lingers. He worked out her plan before she’d made it. Not only that, but removing the branches and climbing outside, he’s ensuring it’s fully thwarted. How did he know it was back on her mind?
‘I know how to leave the forest,’ Callum calls back into the hollow. ‘Erik found us during the night. He knows how to work the land to find your way.’ He stretches his night-stiff limbs to the sky. ‘Ahh. We’re meant to follow branches that touch the ground, which I’m hoping will be obvious. He also gave us those.’
He nods at the blankets. Kira tows them out after her, squinting at the whiteness as she clambers into the day. ‘What are they?’
‘A coat and a poncho. Throw me one?’ Callum zips up his coat, bouncing on the balls of his feet. ‘It’s freezing.’
Kira half-drags, half-tosses him the poncho. ‘You trust him?’
She bundles the heavy coat in her arms. Wool on the outside, fur on the inside; it’ll scratch like anything, but oh, it looks warm.
‘We don’t have much of a choice.’ Callum pulls on the poncho. ‘Even if he did say, “Follow the branches.”’
Kira pouts. ‘It sounds like a fairy tale.’
‘It does.’ Callum pauses. ‘Do you need to pee?’ He lifts a finger. ‘I need to pee.’
‘I need,’ Kira says as he trudges off, ‘to know what else Erik said.’
Silence. She sighs for this world, the afterlife, and hell. ‘Callum. Is that all he said?’
Silence. Then, ‘Peeing,’ he calls. ‘Bear with. It’s been a while.’
There’s something he’s not telling her. It gnaws at Kira’s mind as she, too, realises her bladder aches and finds a hefty, hiding tree. It gnaws at her mind as they leave, and Callum sets off out in front. Either that, or he regrets what happened last night. Which, while it would mean she hasn’t unwittingly seduced him, would also be extremely awkward.
‘Hey.’ She jogs to catch him up. ‘What’s wrong?’
Callum cocks his head at a snow-sweeping branch. ‘Nothing, bar the knowledge that we’re running out of snacks. Why?’
Kira’s frown snakes through her skin to her nerves. ‘Well, because you’re being strange.’ She stumbles as he veers toward the branch, close to treading on her toes. ‘Like that, really.’ She resists the temptation to dig him in the ribs. ‘What is it?’
Callum sighs through his nose. One beat, two. ‘My arches hurt.’ He casts his testy eyes around the forest. ‘I don’t have my soles in these boots. Your turn. What were you brooding over when I woke up?’
‘No, no.’ Kira indicates another branch, bowed to the ground in a moss-covered claw. ‘We’re not doing that. You know you already guessed what was bothering me, so it’s still your turn. Your arches hurt yesterday, but you weren’t like this.’
‘Like what?’
‘Moody and evasive.’
He says nothing. Footsteps crunching on the hard-crust snow, Kira aims her full-force scepticism at the impassive side of his head. ‘Did someone else come along, as well as Erik?’ she tries as they tramp toward a distant branch. Here, the trees are so tall, and so lonely, that it’s easy to see what sweeps the snow. At last, something is simple. ‘Did he have an ulterior motive? Intelligence gathering for the village? Emissary from the devil?’
‘He wanted to apologise and make sure we were alive.’
If her arms weren’t full, she’d throw them up. ‘That was a joke!’ she exclaims. ‘If I can make jokes, with my love for worrying, there’s definitely something wrong with you. I’m not stupid.’
A moment passes. Another, and then, to her relief, his impassive mouth perks up. ‘Let’s not say things we don’t mean.’
This time, she elbows him. Smirking, he returns to silence.
Better than nothing. If it’s not Erik, or her, she can wait. At least until her mind slips, boredom nips, or curiosity gnaws her raw.
Branch after branch, tree after tree. On a scale of one to things she’s never liked, walking is pretty high up. The cold is one peg down, just above peanut butter and rum; despite her bundled-up torso, she’s numb. It’s so much deeper than yesterday. Frost is forming on the ends of her hair, starching her collar and the rims of her boots. Even her eyelashes are iced.
A violent shudder ripples through her. She’d been saving Erik’s coat for the last frozen moment, and clumsily, she wrestles it on. It hangs heavy to her knees, and she smiles. She feels like a child in her father’s clothing, flapping around with the sleeves.
Burrowing her head low, she pulls her hair over her ears and pushes out her lips. Twists them to one side, then the other. She can do nothing for her feet, those stumpy, blocky things, but she can damn well make sure nothing else falls off.
Rubbing her hands briskly, she shoves them into her pockets.
With a shock through her chest, she pulls them straight back out. Deep down in both pockets, two somethings lurk.
Her first thought is something alive. Her second is something dead. Her third is that she’s being silly, and she pushes her hands back in.
A stiff, round container, fashioned from hide. A soft bundle, wrapped in a leathery, more yielding material, almost too large to grasp. Did Erik forget to get rid of them? Kira wrinkles her nose. She wouldn’t be surprised; far more pungent than the clothes, they stink of the wild to the moon and back.
Glancing up to make sure Callum hasn’t vanished, Kira gently shakes the container. It sloshes. Rum? Vodka? She shakes it again. A killer concoction unknown to the outside? What would be most likely, here in the—
Oh. Her stupidity is staggering. Water.
‘Callum!’ she cries, jogging to his side. A ruffled-looking ruffian in the poncho, he turns. ‘I think we have more water.’ She waggles the container. How did vodka come before water? ‘And food. No more crisps.’
Handing him the water, she unwrap
s the bundle. Two small animals, cold but cooked, golden and smelling like Christmas came early. If she wasn’t so famished, she could cry.
‘Not so disgusted this time, are we?’ Callum comments once the two little beasts have been scoffed. Stuffing your face has never been more apt.
‘My stomach realised it was emptier than heaven.’ Kira drops the delicate bones to the ground. Bins don’t seem to be a thing. ‘Right now, I’d eat anything. What?’
Silently laughing, Callum shakes his head. ‘Nothing.’
Kira spreads her hands. ‘What, Callum?’
He regards her like she’s given him the best joke gift of all. ‘It’s just…’—he swallows his laughter and rubs his smirking mouth—‘we’ve been together far too long. I’m worrying, and you’re politically incorrect.’
Kira blinks at him.
‘Never mind.’ With a wink, he hands her the water. ‘Focus on the fact that one person’s been kind.’
Kira narrows her eyes. ‘Thanks.’ She drinks. ‘I’d find Erik and hug him, but the rest would probably jump for joy and grab the nearest stick.’
Callum snorts. ‘I reckon they’d stand in a row and take turns to tell me I’m a victim. You know the age-old story: boy meets girl, girl bewitches boy, girl turns out to have a tail. It’s a classic.’
Kira’s mouth pops open. ‘Excuse me?’ She bats at him with an oversized sleeve. ‘I think you’ll find it’s not.’
‘Hey!’ Callum rubs his arm, grinningly affronted. ‘Don’t shoot the jester. Someone has to make light of our murderous new friends.’
Kira rolls her eyes. ‘I’m so glad it’s this that cheered you up.’ She pauses, toeing a tiny branch that squirms across the snow. He may be making light, but it struck her well-played chord. ‘Does it really not bother you?’
Callum snaps up his hood. ‘What, our murderous friends?’
Kira keeps her eyes on the snow, dotted with drips from the trees. ‘More their reason for murder.’
Callum snorts. ‘What, that I’m here because you seduced me? That sooner or later you’ll decide you’re fed up and usher in my untimely death?’ He waves a hand. ‘You’re three feet tall. I can handle you.’
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