by Amber Argyle
Elice took some meat out of a pack, thawed it, and set it before Adar. Just looking at it made him want to gag. Even the smell . . . he felt bile rising in his throat and looked away. Elice checked his arm, seeming relieved when no more pus leaked out, only clear fluid. She massaged his shoulder, and he winced and grimaced as he worked it in circles and up and down.
When Elice was satisfied, she flooded his shoulder and arm with cold. He sighed in relief and asked, “Can we look out?”
“See for yourself,” Elice said. He let her help him up, surprised by how weak he was. “Are you coming, Sakari?”
The girl settled down on some of her furs. “I will rest.”
Elice narrowed her gaze and opened her mouth to say something before seeming to think better of it. She and Adar climbed up a corridor, and he had to stop often to catch his breath. At the end of the corridor, she had made an opening near the top of the glacier—a shelf just high enough for them to crawl through. It was wide enough for three people to lie side by side.
In the distance, Adar caught sight of a fleet of icebergs and ice floes. A massive iceberg jutted out like a cliff. One side of it extended out into the water, which had carved a delicate arch large enough for a ship to pass beneath. Their iceberg seemed to be moving faster than the ones around them, leaving the others behind as they pushed past.
“Adar, I’m frightened,” Elice said.
He studied a small iceberg that came into view. It was black as onyx, with brilliant aqua bands gleaming in stark contrast. “We’re going to make it, Elly.”
“It’s not that. I’m worried because I don’t know how to help you. I don’t have my medicines.”
He removed his mitten and took her hand in his. Immediately, he felt the cold backing away. They floated past another iceberg. It looked like a misshapen head atop a thin neck. If Adar turned his head to the side and squinted, he could almost make out eyes and a mouth. He wondered how long before the head toppled off completely.
“I told you, I’m pretty hard to kill,” he said teasingly.
Elice eyed him. “The scars on your body? You said something about a chariot race.”
He wished she’d forgotten about that. “Next time I’m muttering while in pain or near unconscious, gag me.” She gave him a look. “Some other boys were saying some pretty awful things about one of the girls at the temple,” Adar explained. “She has certain . . . deformities. I wanted to hurt them—teach them a lesson. So I challenged them to a chariot race.”
When he didn’t immediately continue, Elice gestured for him to go on. He sighed. “They cheated, cut the straps of my harness. The chariot flipped. One of the wheels broke, and the spoke stabbed into my side. I would have died, but my mother was nearby and managed to save me.”
Elice’s mouth came open. “And the other men?”
Adar grinned. “They didn’t win either.”
“I don’t understand.”
“They had a problem with their axel.”
“But how could you do anything to their axel? Hadn’t you already crashed?”
“Let’s just say I have a really good aim.”
She opened her mouth to ask more questions, but he held out his hand. It was time to change the subject. “You know I’m too sick to run,” he said evenly. “If you need to leave me behind, I want you to do it.”
“I won’t.”
“Elly . . .”
“Adar, you’re the only friend I have.”
He studied her. “What about Sakari?”
Her gaze hardened with determination. “Sakari is trapped inside herself. I’m going to coax her out. Like Chriel coaxed me out.”
“Elice, what’s happened to her family—it’s the Sundering.”
“Isn’t there even a chance this is caused by the Summer Queen?
“If that were true, the destruction wouldn’t be just as bad in her realm. And it is.”
Elice bit the inside of her check. “I can’t, Adar. I can’t believe that she—that I—could have caused this.”
“You said that before. I don’t understand.”
She wrapped her arms around herself as if to hold herself together. “Whether because of the Sundering, as you say, or sabotage from the Summer Queen, what hope do we have?”
Adar cocked her a grin. “I can hope for you.”
He could tell she didn’t really believe him, but her gaze was soft and open. She trusted him, completely and without guile. Her mother had been right about that. Such innocence, like newly fallen snow graced with the golden light of morning. Again, he wanted to kiss her lips, to know if she tasted as fresh and clean as she always smelled. To see for himself if her mouth was as giving and open as the rest of her.
Yet he hesitated. He shouldn’t be doing this. It wasn’t fair to her. Then she closed her eyes and tipped her mouth up, and he didn’t care about kingdoms and enemies, fire and ice. There was only her.
Just before his mouth would have met hers, there was a sound like a sudden gust of wind. They both started. “Stay here,” Elice said softly. Had the fairies found them? Was that the sound of their rushing wings as they charged?
Adar tensed as she crawled a little farther through the hole and stuck her head out. But then she looked back at him and grinned. “Look!”
Chiding himself for a fool for trying to kiss her, he pulled himself up alongside her. Backlit by a passing iceberg was a pod of humpback whales below the surface of the sea. They churned in a circle, releasing rings of bubbles that turned the black water jade.
“What are they doing?”
Elice smiled knowingly. “Just listen.” Adar could hear them then, their haunting wails, almost like music. “They’re calling to each other,” she said.
They watched as the circle tightened until the whales were swimming head to tail. Then they disappeared altogether, leaving the ring of jade. Adar opened his mouth to ask where they went, when they suddenly breeched. Totally exposed, three mouths gaped large enough to swallow a ship whole. Inside, he could see squirming masses of fish just before the jaws slipped closed, water pouring from the animals’ baleens.
Adar and Elice lay on their bellies, watching the creatures perform the same technique over and over again until he started shivering even while holding her hand.
She rested her chin on her laced fingers. “We’re like them you know—we work together, and all the facts stacked against us don’t stand a chance.”
Then something appeared on the horizon—rivers of green undulating across the sky. Adar’s mouth came open in wonder, for it was beautiful and ethereal and primal.
But Elice drew in a quick breath. “My mother is looking for us.” After sealing the hole so only a little air snaked through, Elice insisted that Adar retreat into the depths of the cavern.
Sick with worry, she stayed beside him, keeping hold of him to stay the cold while he slept. She looked up when Sakari slipped into the cavern, the other girl’s movements made a little clumsy by her bulky clothing. Elice wondered what Sakari looked like under all those furs. Did her body match her round face, or was she lithe and graceful?
“How’s Adar?” Sakari asked.
“Still sleeping.” Elice pressed her lips together. He’d been sleeping almost constantly for two days, only waking long enough to eat the food she and Sakari had forced down him. Elice was grateful for the other girl’s help.
Sakari crouched beside Adar and brushed back some curls from his forehead, then held her hand there. “His fever has broken,” she said finally.
Elice let out a breath in relief. “Then he only needs to regain his strength and he’ll be fine.” She reclined against the wall of snow. “Has the current started to take us east yet?”
Sakari looked back in the direction of the corridor that led to their viewing shelf. “It’s hard to tell. Everything appears the same from this far out to sea.”
When she fled the palace, Elice had lost all the landmarks she normally used to gauge the time of day by the pos
ition of the sun. So, not only was she feeling lost, she was also disoriented, with no idea what time it was, or even whether it was day or night. It was enough to make her dizzy. “Did any of it look familiar to you?”
Sakari shrugged. “I was a small girl when last I passed through this village. But it can’t be much farther.”
“Did you come through with your family?”
Sakari’s expression closed off.
“I know what it’s like,” Elice said softly.
“You couldn’t possibly know.” Sakari’s voice was bitter.
Elice gave a long sigh. “When I was thirteen years old, my father died. All these years, my mother has blamed the Summer Queen, but it was really my fault. I spent the next six years trying to make it up to her, but . . .” Elice let her words trail off.
“How could a child be responsible for the death of a man?”
Elice studied Adar’s face, the dark circles under his eyes, his thick, curling hair, which he always wore pulled back. Her father’s hair had been even curlier, turning frizzy when he would pull his hands through it. As he had done that day. Elice tried to stop the memories before they went any further. But it was like trying to bottle up a blizzard.
“My queen,” the wolf fairy Lowl had said in her growling voice, “this is a trap. It has to be. Nelay will never forgive the deaths of her par—”
Ilyenna had shot the wolf fairy a look that silenced her mid-word. “Leave us.”
Slouched in one of the chairs in the library, thirteen-year old Elice had glared at the fairy. After all, it was Lowl who took her mother away at summer’s end. And it was Lowl her father always called “warmonger” under his breath.
With a cool glance at Elice, the fairy dropped her long nose in submission and flew from the room. Elice’s mother waved a hand, and a gentle wind slipped from her fingertips, shutting the doors after the fairy. Then the Winter Queen resumed staring out the windows, her eyes dark like the depths of the churning sea. Elice’s father stepped away from his daughter and cupped his wife’s face in his hands.
Ilyenna’s eyes slipped closed. “I’m so tired, Rone. Tired of war. Tired of leaving you for six months every year to oversee the battles.”
“Then seek for peace.”
Ilyenna let out a long breath. “Nelay killed my brother—she killed Bratton.”
Rone’s thumbs stroked her cheeks. “No. The war killed Bratton.”
“That hasn’t stopped Nelay from blaming me for her parents’ deaths.”
Elice was so tired of this argument. It seemed her mother and father had it every year, but nothing ever changed.
“Remember what I told you that day so long ago? You still have the same soul, Ilyenna. The soul of a healer.”
Whenever the Winter Queen got that unyielding, sharp look to her eyes, Elice’s father would talk about Ilyenna’s soul.
Rone ducked down, catching her gaze. “War cannot stop war, Ilyenna. Only peace can do that.”
She sighed. “What if Lowl is right? If this is a trap and Nelay manages to kill me, you and Elice will be helpless.”
He grunted. “Do you have so little faith in me?”
Elice’s mother pursed her lips. “You’ll be at the complete mercy of whomever the fairies choose as their new queen.”
Elice held up her own hands, and a blizzard raged from one palm to the next. “I’m not exactly helpless, Mother.”
Rone grinned at her. “Neither am I.” Ilyenna didn’t look convinced, and Rone gathered her into his arms. “It won’t come to that. We have been at war with Nelay for over three decades. You said yourself the magic is starting to deteriorate. Nelay has to have sensed this as well.”
Ilyenna let out a long breath. “I hope you’re right.”
Rone smiled and kissed her forehead. “You’ll see. Everything is going to change after this.”
Ilyenna seemed to melt under Rone’s gentle gaze. “For you, I’ll try.” She made a sound low in her throat and they kissed—this time on the mouth.
Elice curled her upper lip in disgust, wondering if she would be able to keep her breakfast down. Her father turned to her with a twinkle in his eye and burst into laughter.
Ilyenna gazed down at Elice. “Promise to look after your father while I’m gone? Don’t let anything happen to him.”
“It’s not like you care, Mother. You’re never here anyway.”
Ilyenna’s gaze hardened. “I have a war to run.”
“And that war is more important than your family.” It was not a question.
“Elice,” Rone warned.
She pushed herself up from the chair. “You run your war and your fairies. But let me go. Let me see the world.”
Rone rested a calming hand on Ilyenna’s shoulders. “We’ve talked about this. It isn’t safe.”
“Because of her,” Elice spat. “If she made peace, I could have a future. But instead, I’m trapped in her past.” She turned on her heel and stormed from the room.
Harpoon and knives in hand, she left her cave in time to see her mother’s enormous purple-and-green wings fill the horizon and then slowly fade. But she left behind a smear of color in the sky to keep back the dark. Elice trekked along the shore. She knew she could survive on her own—she’d hunted by herself enough times. And though her mother refused to let her have a map, the queendom had to meet up with Svass eventually. Elice had decided then and there to start walking and not stop. To never go back.
She had followed the shore, the dark sky cut nearly in half by the huge glacier that rose up beside her. She walked for hours, until she was tired and hungry and her feet hurt. She should have brought something to eat. Something to sleep on. But she could make do with a bed of snow, and she could hunt along the way. She swam out into the ocean and worked a few mussels free. Back on shore, she pried them open with her knife and ate her fill.
Her back against the glacier, she watched the waves coming in. She heard footsteps and turned to see her father’s dark silhouette against the light reflecting off the textured velvet of the waters.
“Elice, it’s time to come home.”
She pushed herself to her feet. “I’m never coming home.”
Her father tipped his head to the side. “But you don’t know where you’re going . . . or what you’re leaving behind.”
“Like Mother leaves us behind?”
“I’m tired and I’m worried about her. Let’s go.” He turned, obviously assuming Elice would follow.
“I’m not going anywhere!” she screamed.
Her voice echoed off the rough face of the glacier—echoed all around them. There was a bone-rattling rumble.
“Elice!” her father cried. “Run!”
A crash tore through the night. The glacier face collapsed, rushing toward her. Elice gaped up at it, frozen with horror.
“Elice!” her father yelled as he ran for her. “Wrap yourself up in ice!”
A thousand times, she had obeyed her father as he’d trained her to fight. A thousand times she had trusted him. She did so again, wrapping herself up in ice as the avalanche of snow blocked out all light and sound.
Elice woke to a fairy hovering over her, calling to someone out of sight. At first, Elice couldn’t connect the fairy with a name or how she knew her, but eventually Elice recognized Chriel and understood the words she was saying. The sky beyond the fairy was the inky black of midwinter, bands of a poison-green aurora shifting above her. “Send for the queen!” Chriel was shouting.
Elice was trapped in ice. She pulled it into herself and braced herself on one arm, trying to understand what had happened. There were dozens of snow fairies, all hovering, watching her with impassive gazes. Chriel darted in front of her, blocking her view. “Princess, I need you to come with me back to the palace. Now.”
Elice rubbed at the ache pounding behind her forehead. “Where’s my father?”
The fairy darted toward Elice and back again, as if trying to herd her. “To the palace, child. Now.”
Elice started to push to her feet when she caught sight of her father’s hand, sticking out of the snow. The rest of him was buried. Suddenly she realized what the fairies had been doing, and why they had stopped. Scrambling to his side, Elice sucked the snow into herself.
“No, Princess,” Chriel pled, tugging on Elice’s hair.
The snow stormed back inside Elice, revealing her father’s face, blue and covered in a layer of frost. “I can save him!” she cried out. She took his hand in hers and drew the cold into herself. His body went limp, but his eyes didn’t open. He was so still. And somehow, he didn’t look like her father.
Elice knew healing—her mother had taught her all that she knew. She held her fingers under her father’s nose, waiting for the reassuring puff of breath against her skin. But there was nothing. She pressed her ear to his chest, waiting for the thump of his heart to sound against her ear. There was only silence.
He was gone, and he would never come back. It was Elice’s fault. If she hadn’t run away—had thought to wrap him in a pod of ice instead of herself—he would have survived. She couldn’t cry. The tears wouldn’t come. So she had sat in the absolute silence of winter, not even a breeze playing across the mountain, and had waited for her mother to come.
Elice shuddered and shut the memory down. Twin tears plunged down her cheeks. Sakari’s forehead rested on her drawn knees. Elice thought the other girl might be crying. “My mother believed Nelay lured her away so she could start the avalanche that killed my father,” Elice said pensively. “She would never believe me when I told her it was me.”
Sakari finally spoke. “You were a child. You didn’t mean to hurt him.”
“Doesn’t matter what I meant, my father is still dead.”
Sakari swallowed loudly. “That I understand. I tried so hard to give my brothers my share of the food.” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “Why is it that they should die and I should live?”
Elice stared, her eyes unfocused. “I ask myself that same question every day.”
They were quiet for a time, and then Sakari said, “Does it ever get any easier?”
“Yes,” Elice answered softly. “But it never gets easy.”