Kira drops her hand. No people. Nerves pluck her strings and sing. She’s still too far behind.
Fastening the coat ties, she scans the ice for Maja. The horse meandered away, and now, burying her mouth in a hole, she’s drinking for her life.
Averting her eyes from the innocent mountains, Kira carefully treads toward her. Damn mountains. How white they are now, how august, how pure, like the view of the Alps from the plane. Kira turns her back. ‘Maja,’ she says, to focus herself. The horse is gulping from a water hole.
Kira’s thirst is suddenly ferocious. Sandpaper? No, it’s a desert, starving, as though the baked tunnel air has made her its home. Kira’s eyes snag on a second hole a few metres away. It’s tiny. It’s blue.
She shouldn’t trust it.
Maja does.
Kira’s moccasins slip on the powder-brushed ice. If it’s good enough for wonder-horse, it’s good enough for her, and crouching by the chipped hole, she braces.
The water is the coldest thing her hands have ever touched. She dips her cupped fingers, quick enough for her skin not to burn. Again, and again, and again. She drinks until her lips are numb before pulling up her hood, pushing her purpling fingers in her pockets, and, shattered but determined, pushing to her feet. Time to go.
In theory. Maja looks up as Kira approaches, chewing on her cheek. The blankets formed both stirrups and saddle. She’s going to have to jump.
For once, it’s a godsend to be so alone. Planting her hands on Maja’s back, Kira bends her legs to spring.
One, two, three, and up. Landing hard on her stomach, winded and gasping, she squirms around before she slips off. One leg on either side. Hands lodged behind shoulder blades. There. Pushing herself upright, Kira wriggles her hips for balance. Done. And unless it’s a dire emergency, she’s never doing it again.
What a jinx. As Kira retrieves the dangling reins, Maja pricks her ears.
‘Hmm?’ Kira wriggles back a bit more. Maja whinnies, fretfully shifting her feet. As comfortable as she can be, Kira looks up. ‘Oh.’
The dark specks she saw before have left the far distance. Narrowing her eyes, her strained heart jolts. They’re loping toward her and, with their fur grey-black and their long tails flat, they’re unmistakeable. Wolves.
‘Oh, shit.’ Kira fumbles with the reins, digging Maja with her heels. The horse kicks into a trot, a canter, veering away across the empty plains. The wolves curve toward them. ‘Oh, shit.’
From a canter to a gallop. Kira’s hood whips back. Snow flies up to spray her feet, her legs, her frozen fingers, her freezing face. She slits her eyes against the wind, but it stings. Maja neighs in panic, slipping off balance, wildly careering over patches of ice. The plains slope up. Maja’s legs quake. A wall of ice looms tall against the sky.
Still, the wolves curve closer.
Oh, God. Tongues lolling, paws pounding. Everything’s a rush of white and grey and blue and spray. Kira can hardly breathe. The terror’s back like it never left. She can barely see, whirling, blurring, but suddenly, they’re here.
Tongues lolling, paws pounding. Darting in front, the wolves cut her off.
With a cry, Kira jerks Maja to a halt. Three in number. Gargantuan in size. Panting, they trot to stand together. Maja skitters back, back, back.
Nothing moves. Maja stops. Kira’s breath is loud and shallow. The wolves are only watching, gold irises thin. Their focus is anthropomorphic. Kira can’t think. It’s disconcerting: the wolves stare straight into her face, each pair of eyes unblinking on her own. They lull her into a state of hypnosis, lull her into a state of trust.
One by one, they break away and turn tail to trot.
Kira blinks, hard. Heading toward the ice wall, the wolves don’t look back. A whirl of unreality, she watches them go. Was that all they wanted? A chase? God, if she could think. Bewilderment, exasperation, fright, relief. Do wolves attack people unprovoked? Can she go?
The foremost wolf stops dead. Its patchwork face turns back toward her, and poised like a dog whose owner is dawdling, it seems to be waiting, expectant.
Bewilderment overcomes everything else. Kira stares. It can’t be waiting for her to follow. No chance. The birds did when they took them to the cabin, but this is different. These are wolves. Huge, folkloric, winter-wild wolves.
Knowing her luck, that’s exactly what it wants. The wolf doesn’t move as the others pass by. Its eyes latch onto hers again, and tensing each muscle, dredging every ounce of will, Kira prepares to squeeze Maja’s sides.
Maja moves before she can. Kira’s eyes widen. ‘What?’
Maja grumbles a whinny but walks on. The wolf turns away, trotting off in satisfaction. Kira shuts her eyes. Wonderful. They are meant to follow—the horse understood that and took it upon herself. Kira swallows, lifts her chin, and breathes, gritting her teeth to a grind. Wonderful. At this point, life can’t get better.
At least they have a direction. The wolves break into a sprint, and Maja speeds to a gallop, making a beeline for a gap in the ice wall. Kira shakes her head, rueful, wry. If Maja’s not afraid, they must be safe. Everything here is so much more intelligent, so much more alive, that she shouldn’t be surprised anymore; even when it’s hunting her, it’s alive. Even when it’s trying to kill her, it’s alive. The land, a thing in itself, is alive. The animals are intuitive in a way that humans miss, and even though Whiteland is dangerous, merciless, it has something the outside has lost.
Kira lifts her eyebrows. She’s referring to her home as the outside; after a few days, Whiteland has taken her over. Who knows how she’ll ever readjust.
A flash of textured white catches her eye. Meandering close to the edge of a ridge, off to her left, is a bear.
A polar bear. In a way she’s only read about, Kira’s mouth drops. She’s seen bears in zoos—brown bears, pandas—but never a polar bear. Vast and proud, it gazes over the plains and, as she watches, shifts to reveal a smaller, rounder companion.
Kira’s breathes hitches. Awestruck, dumbstruck, thunderstruck. Two? Two polar bears? How will she readjust? Lips apart, she twists around to watch them fall behind. Peace, in the midst of chaos. Something else she’ll never forget.
A cold shadow falls over her. With a wistful sigh, she turns back to the ice. The gap in the wall is upon them.
It’s not a tunnel. She breathes her shuddering relief. One is enough for a lifetime and a half, and thankfully, this is more an open-air pass. Two opposing swathes of white stretch high into the sky. A stone’s throw apart, as if they can’t stand to touch, the path in-between creates a valley. Snaking to the right, it could last forever. Unflagging, the wolves plunge in.
Kira’s nerves are plucked like a harp, but she doesn’t have a choice. Maja follows.
Blinding whiteness on three sides, scudded blue on the fourth. Time passes, and passes, and although it curls, and coils, and curves, the valley doesn’t change. Flurries of snow trickle down the walls. A small grey creature shoots across the floor, but the journey is as constant, as smooth and unthreatened, as the windswept grasslands gallop. The wolves never tire. The horse never falters. Kira’s nerves steady to a constant thrum. Battered by air, buoyed by speed, they run, and run, and run.
Romy, Mum, and Dad. Kira’s spine stiffens, and her legs start to numb, but through everything—exhaustion and mayhem and terror and grief—there’s hope. By now, unless she’s been lured off course, they must be close. Everything must be ending. She can finally—finally—get out. Away.
Romy, Mum, and Dad.
Away.
Anna knows she’s arrived when the Whispers start to sigh. They’re soft at first, lilting breaths, before growing louder, more urgent, some close, some far.
The first of them brushes her legs. Anna stops. Approaching from all sides, in blurs of rustling, physical sound, they stroke her face, lift her hair, drift around her gloves. If she wasn’t sure before, she knows now.
She’s arrived.
It’s just as she wa
s told when Whiteland was still her home. Bleak and barren, there’s nothing for miles; nothing but the Yunavida range, but once you’re through the ice wall, they’re so faint they hardly exist. All she has is white.
The ice plains dwarf her. Their endless nothingness shrinks her inside, their uninviting arms opening wide to meet the sky. She fights the urge to shiver, to push her hands in her pockets. She can’t seem weak. Is it almost finished?
She’s deflated since the tunnel. Every creature knew her, and most of them stopped her, hissing that she’d soon be one of their own. It wore her out. What she used to be is scalding, peeling back her skin, as raw and sore and oozing as though it’s not been twenty years.
What infects the wound more is her family. They were never meant to know this, see this, touch this. They were never meant to have the slightest thought that it exists. Anna tenses her face and grits her teeth. However she’ll be punished, let it come soon. Maybe, if she surrenders herself, the Whispers will be pleased. Maybe they’ll make them all forget.
Anne…
Anna slides from her thoughts. The Whispers are coming. It doesn’t hurt to be alert.
Another thing that scalds: how easy it is to remember. She’s forgotten so little of Whiteland, a fact that’s ached and grown and ached since she stepped into Atikur. She’s forgotten so little, but still…she keeps her teeth gritted and her face composed. She lacks so much. The Whispers are an authority, living in the ice plains and watching the worlds. She should never underestimate them, and as keen on justice as they are, they’ll have had something to do with Romy.
But that’s it. That’s all she has. She’s bringing a knife to a gunfight, if it counts as a knife at all.
Annel…
The Whisper flutters through the air to her ear. Anna focuses at once. It’s not quite real, not quite in her head; and as it softly repeats, it’s whole. Anneliese.
She stares ahead at the ice and the sky. A snow-hare bounds in the distance. Yes.
You are different.
If her life wasn’t in the Whispers’ hands, she’d laugh. I’ve been gone for twenty years, she says. Of course I am. She lifts her chin. I’m not a huldra, which is all I wanted.
That’s not true. You killed for fun.
Another Whisper caresses her neck. You made a mistake, Anneliese. You shouldn’t have let curiosity win. It sighs, trailing breaths along the top of her spine. We’ve been watching for a very long time.
Close to a chuckle, it’s sinister, soft. Did you not realise we would be waiting?
Inside and out, Anna shivers. It’s cold, colder than anywhere else. Cold enough that her mind spins, her skin burning blue. The air is almost physical. Maybe, she says. But I had to go back. Just once. Just to see.
She blinks, hard. Her eyelashes frost, her eyes growing heavy, but she can’t start to weaken. Not here. Not now. When my husband suggested Switzerland, I couldn’t…
Just once. To see. I couldn’t.
The Whispers don’t repeat it but she hears it again, again and again and again. How feeble will it sound for Romy, Kira, Mathew? She endangered them because she was curious and took Mathew’s suggestion as a sign. She hid her past because she used to be a monster and couldn’t bear for them to find out. Burrowing her neck deep into her collar, she blows out against the Gore-Tex. It warms her lips but not her mind, freezing to ice. Did she really not think they’d be waiting?
She could lie. They’d hear, though, and call her out, and it might make everything worse. I tried not to think about what might happen. Anna shakes her head. Denial; it all comes down to denial. I felt it pulling, and I had to go back. I did think you’d be watching, but I didn’t let myself think you’d be waiting, too.
Humourlessly, she huffs. I figured out who you were using as soon as I got to Lally. Your female helpers aren’t exactly subtle, but I accepted them. After a couple of days, I ignored them. I didn’t expect an unremarkable return, but I never—she thins her bitter lips—thought you’d involve my daughter.
A hiss of a laugh. Air trills on her cheek. One was involved, a new voice says, a damp, misted breath. The other made a choice.
One second. Two seconds. Three, four, five. Slowly, Anna’s stomach drops, along with the penny. The other made a choice?
Yes.
Her head rotates to follow the voice, tittering across her skin. She stamps down her wash of alarm. What do you mean, the other made a choice? Are you talking about Kira?
Another laugh. The Whisper wisps around her ankles, chilling the rims of her boots. She flinches. Maybe.
The word is thoughtful, teasing. She came with the boy that found her sister, even after we sent the mist. She is close.
They both are.
Another murmur chuckles, flitting up to her ear. Anna’s breath slips back into her lungs and stays there. No, she says faintly. They’re not. You’re—
Lying? She can almost imagine the Whisper shrugging, matter-of-fact and amused. Because of you they are linked to Whiteland, so Whiteland let them in. You cannot blame us for that.
Kira. Romy. Anna shuts her eyes. Kira in Atikur, Romy on the Zaino. Both of them caught near Al-Sanit and packed off to Skarrig as playthings. The images run wild. They were never meant to know about any of this. They were certainly never meant to come here.
At least if they’re close, they’re alive.
I know what you want, Anna manages over the drowning horror in her head. You want to punish me for killing and punish me for leaving. I’m not stupid.
Yet still you went back.
I don’t need reminding. Clenching her fists in her pockets, Anna makes herself breathe. Whatever it is you’ve chosen, do it. Before Kira and Romy get here. If it’ll give them and Mathew back their—wait.
She breaks off. A question has struck her, so obvious, so catalytic, that she can’t believe she hasn’t asked. Before they take her from herself, she has to know. What did you do to—
She is hosting a woman of the Kyo.
A new voice, snaking inside her collar before her question has formed. When the entrance in Atikur opened up around her, the Kyo were ready to take. You know how we despise them, but they served us well.
The Whisper is smug, almost gleeful. Anna’s skin crawls. Why Romy?
It could have been either of your girls. It smiles. We simply waited until one of them felt the pull and ventured out alone. Whiteland would have opened its doors for them both and closed them just the same. We had to enable the girl to be found.
The Kyo. The crawling intensifies. The women are a thing of dread, and to know they were lying in wait for her girls…Anna swallows a pincushion of tears. Oh, Romy.
The Kyo. If they took over Romy, is that where she’ll go? A wave of purebred panic grasps her, and she has to grit her teeth, clench her jaw, ball her hands into fists to break its fingers and shove it away. She’d rather be nothing than become one of them. She’d rather be trapped in a cave of trolls, slowly withering away, or eternally wandering the forests with a leshy. Anything but the Kyo.
You will not join the Kyo. The Whisper swirls around her neck, its eager breath brushing up and away. It will be the desert; drifting and alone, lost among the souls above the sands. It is what you need for the men you killed.
The men. The men. It swells to an echo.
Again, Anna has to push herself to breathe. I know, she says shortly. The words gnaw at her insides, and she tries to block them out; there’s no way she’ll let herself remember. She’s worked to the bone to forget. I know exactly what I did. I know that I revelled in it more than I should, but I had to get away. Whiteland was too oppressive. Too much.
You were weak, the first Whisper buzzes. Anna jumps; angry in her ear, it’s a sting. You were born here, and you should have found the strength to stay. You know it’s forbidden to leave, so now—it hisses closer, almost spitting—you make amends.
Before she can stop herself, Anna snorts. So it’s not about the men? Her caution slips away. I sho
uld have known. You don’t care about morality; that only matters to the people. You just hate that I got out. She pauses. I’m right, aren’t I?
Nothing jumps to stop her. Nothing says she’s wrong. Anna shakes her head, incredulous. All of this for envy? I’m not here because I killed. Her mouth contorts. I’m here because of your fancy that nobody can leave. That nobody should leave, even when there’s a way.
We can’t mix, the second Whisper says. Less angry than the first, it flicks across her cheeks. It’s less about leaving and more about collision. Down the hair curling pale from her hat, it rests cool on her lips. The colliding of the worlds. You know that; everyone knows that, as much as they might disregard it. Whiteland is not a place for outsiders.
It lifts up again at an echo of assent. They are not wanted, and they are not needed. There are too many dangers. If they knew—if they were brought here by one of our own who’d escaped, and they saw, and angered, and died—it would cause an uproar on the outside.
Another echo, a crackling agreement. A summer storm, power lines. More would try and come. If they succeeded, they’d interfere.
It works the other way, of course.
A new voice murmurs in, faint and far away. Anna strains to hear. Static rustles in her ears. A draught drifts about her boots. Atop the ice, the Whispers are gathering.
She suppresses a shiver. What other way?
If others leave as you did, the distant voice murmurs. Ones who can’t pass as human. Where would we end up? There would be more interference, more chaos, more death. Outsiders would die; we would die. Everything we all have now would die.
But if both are separate and the outside is ignorant—another sighs—then both are safe. Surely, Anneliese, you can see?
Anna can. She can also understand, perfectly well, but the Huldra are reviled. Rejected if accidentally born to humans, they’re exiled, left to cluster in the forest’s heart. They could be killers. They could be innocent. Either way, if they’re spotted, they’re threatened with death. There’s no mercy or a sniff of a chance of a life. It wasn’t enough.
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