by Sever Bronny
She led past the abandoned fire that had long blown out. A tent loomed ahead and she scrambled to find the entrance.
“Hello! Anyone in there?” she called. After a few more tries, a woman’s milky face stuck out from a small door flap in the bottom.
“Please, we need blankets, can you help us?” Leera asked.
The women took one look at Augum’s lit hand, scowled, and disappeared back inside.
“Let’s try another one!” he said, moving on to the next tent. He was rapidly losing feeling in his hands and feet.
A tanning rack materialized in the driving snow. Leera immediately started yanking the flapping animal skins. He helped, hoping the Henawa wouldn’t scalp them for thievery. They managed to snag five heavy furs and began dragging them back to the house.
Suddenly his palm extinguished, plunging them into suffocating darkness. “Shyneo!” but he couldn’t feel his hand. “It won’t light, you try!”
“Shyneo!” Her palm fluttered to life.
The pair dragged the furs, battling increasing winds. Augum hoped they were headed in the right direction. A plank, probably from the barn, almost speared Leera as it whistled past.
The pair exchanged a brief look before continuing. At last, they hit upon the wall of the house, right beside the shutters to the room the Pendersons slept in.
“This way—!” Leera dragged her shoulder along the wall.
The wind suddenly switched direction and their hoods blew off their heads. He felt his face and ears numb immediately. One of the furs caught the wind like a sail and was torn from his grasp, flying off into the night.
“Lost one!” he shouted, hoping his limp grip could last the final few paces.
“What!”
“Nothing, just go!”
They got to the door, the wind shrieking fiercely now. Leera turned the handle and pushed, but it wouldn’t budge.
“What in the—” she reared back and plowed into it, but it held firm. She gave him a look that quickened his breath.
“Let me help!” He slid in beside her and the pair slammed against the door together. It still didn’t budge.
“Telekinesis,” he said, taking a step back. He felt weak, but they had to try.
They raised their arms. He didn’t know if it was even working, his hand was that numb. The door pushed back a sliver before slamming shut. They fell against the door, panting.
“Buck, is that you behind there?” he yelled. “Let us in or we’ll die out here!”
There was no response.
“If you’re holding this door then damn you to hell!” Leera screamed, smacking the wood before shrinking against it, sobbing.
He noticed her grip on the furs loosen and jumped on top of them.
“We have to go around!” he yelled just as her hand extinguished.
“I’m so cold,” he heard her say, “I’m so cold …”
He threw an arm around her. She was shivering violently.
“Can’t feel … my hands …”
“I know, Lee, I know.” He repositioned himself, wrapping her in one of the furs, himself in another, feeling stupid for not having thought of it earlier. They were very heavy and thick, acting as great windscreens. “Shyneo,” he said, but his hand did not light.
He hunkered down before her, further blocking the wind. They had four hides between them, and had to get them back to the others. His own teeth were chattering so much he could barely talk. He felt a light pressure, but he couldn’t tell if she had a hold on him.
“You got me?”
“Don’t know …”
He risked letting go of the fur in his other hand to check. She was holding him but he couldn’t feel it at all.
Good enough.
He scrambled for the loose fur. As soon as he thought he had a grip on it, he began leading the way around the house, fighting the wind, hugging the wall, concentrating on his grip on Leera.
The pair struggled for some time, turning the corner before finally hearing the violent vibrations of a pair of shutters about to rip loose. He held the fur between his knees and used his free hand to bang on them. He did this repeatedly, but no one came. He screamed, but his voice was barely a whisper above the roaring blizzard. His eyes stung and he was too frozen to replace the hood back over his head.
“Why … won’t … they … come …”
“Pantry …” Leera gasped.
He cursed himself and got a grip on the fur again. There was still another corner to go. The pair continued to hug the wall, moving at a snail’s pace, the wind constantly battling them. When they turned the corner, they hit a whirlpool of air, threatening to suck them out into the black void.
He drew Leera close. She stopped shivering, and went limp in his arms. He pried the fur from her claw-like grip. “I got you,” he said, picking her up and carrying her, the effort quickly sapping his remaining reserves of energy.
Soon he heard another vibrating set of shutters. He held on to Leera as best he could as he banged on them, hand feeling like a lead brick.
Please oh please let them hear him. This was their last hope. The cold had seeped into his bones and he was sleepy, so very sleepy. He reached up to bang again but instead felt a tug. Someone was yelling. He looked up but couldn’t see a thing. Then he felt himself being pulled upward.
“No! Take her first, take her!” he shouted.
The grip loosened and he fell. One of the shutters was open and slamming itself against the side of the house. It sounded like a giant’s hammer eager to smash his head in. He groaned as he used the last of his strength to heave Leera upward, feeling her body slip by, pulled over the ledge.
Someone yelled, but he couldn’t hear what they were saying above the roar. The fur draped over his back threatened to blow away at any moment. He didn’t have the strength to save it.
Someone jumped down beside him, snatching him in a great bear hug. He felt himself rise. A hand grabbed his neck, then his arm. He tumbled over the ledge, fur and all, coming to a stop on one of the cots. A moment later, he felt the weight of another fur, then another. Someone closed the shutters and the roar subsided.
“Shyneo,” Bridget said, her voice shaking. The room lit up in a green glow amidst a flurry of activity. Mr. Goss was using one of the furs they had toiled over to wrap Bridget and Leland, Leera between them.
“Mr. Goss, your spectacles—” Bridget said.
“The blizzard has them now.”
“Is … Leera … all … right …?” Augum asked through chattering teeth.
“I got her,” Bridget said, “I got her …”
Leland moaned fearfully.
“It will be fine, son,” Mr. Goss said, looking peculiar without his spectacles, like a painting without a frame. He took one of the furs and covered Mrs. Stone in it. “Everything is fine now,” and wrapped himself in the remaining fur. “That was a very brave thing you two did, a very brave thing.”
Family Reunion
Augum woke stiff and sore, but warm. He peeled back the hide to see ribbons of pale sun paint the far wall. Dust lazily revolved within the rays like tiny flecks of gold, catching the light now and then.
Bridget sat quietly beside a red-eyed Leera, the latter tightly wrapped in hide. Mr. Goss and Leland were absent while Mrs. Stone snoozed away under a blanket of fur.
“Morning, Sleepyhead,” Bridget whispered, smiling.
He sat up. “How is she?”
“She’s fantastic,” Leera croaked, “and can talk.” A strand of raven hair fell across her freckled face. Bridget brushed it aside for her.
“Thanks, Mum.”
Bridget only gave her a hug and a kiss on the head. “You two are hero—”
“—don’t say it,” he interrupted, rubbing his eyes. “Just … don’t.” The last thing he cared about was the whole hero thing right now. “Where’s Mr. Goss?”
“He’s gone to boil water over the fire for more soup. Leland’s playing with Ettan. You should see it o
ut there, it’s unbelievable. You can barely get around.”
“We have to find it,” he whispered, glancing over at Mrs. Stone to make sure she was still sleeping. Her breathing was even and slow. “We have to find the pearl. It’s the only means we have of keeping tabs on the Legion.”
Bridget’s smile faded. “I know.”
“Someone held that door last night,” Leera mumbled.
“Maybe it locked itself behind us.”
Bridget gave him a grave look. “There is no lock on it, I checked.”
He recalled using Telekinesis to open it a crack, before it quickly shut again in their dire moment on need. Someone had to have been holding it, but who?
“I’ll help Mr. Goss,” he said, pushing aside the fur, hoping the river wasn’t frozen over.
Bridget stood. “I’m coming with you.”
“What about Leera?”
Leera scowled. “Ugh, I’m not a baby. Go already. I’ll be up soon anyway.”
Augum and Bridget exited into the hall, exchanging a look when passing the closed door of the Penderson bedroom. When he opened the front door, (there indeed was no lock on it), he stopped—the snow was chest high!
“Warned you,” Bridget said, seeing the look on his face.
Henawa children and youths played in it, their milk-white skins sometimes making it appear like clothes were flying about on their own. A rough path snaked to the fire pit, the flames coughing a column of gray smoke into a clear blue sky.
“Certainly something, isn’t it?” Bridget said as they approached the fire, tended to by a youthful woman who avoided their eyes. The bear-skinned chief squatted before it holding a skewered squirrel on the end of a stick. He slowly turned it above the flames, watching it sizzle.
“Chunchuha!” he said without looking up.
Augum gave a friendly wave. “Chunchuha.”
They sat on the log to the chief’s left, breath steaming. The man then started talking to them in his tongue.
Bridget shook her head and spread her palms. “I’m sorry but we don’t understand.”
The chief groaned. “Ettan. Ettan—!” The boy soon appeared holding Leland’s hand. The pair had round snow splat marks all over. The chief started saying something to him. Ettan only nodded now and then. When the chief finished, Ettan turned to Augum and Bridget.
“Chief say crazy woman say you steal furs.”
Bridget’s brows crossed in indignation. “But we had to take them, we—”
The chief held up a hand, saying something to Ettan.
“Chief say he understand. Chief say you keep furs. Chief say you teach him more magic in trade. Better magic. Not boring.”
The chief drew an invisible bow and let loose an invisible arrow, making a grand gesture of it.
“That is kind of you,” Bridget replied, “but we do not yet know any offensive spells like that. The chief grinned, appearing not to understand.
Bridget gave a resigned sigh but smiled.
The chief nodded and waved them off. Ettan snagged Leland’s hand and shot away, while Augum and Bridget walked to the river.
“At least we’ll be warm now at night,” he said.
Bridget blew a lock of hair from her eyes. “Wish I could understand their language.” She stopped to glance back at the tents. “I could see myself living like this.”
“What, as a nomad?”
“As part of a community. I’d be a mother presiding over a gaggle of children, with a dashing hunter of a husband and a flock of dogs and chickens in tow.”
“You’d be a fussy mother.”
Bridget smiled. “Probably.”
Augum gave her a playful elbow. “Nag them kids to death.”
“Oh hush, you.”
“And the husband,” he mumbled.
She elbowed him back. “Double hush!”
After snickering, he added, “I’d come visit you.”
“You’d better. But where would you live?”
He watched Henawa children run about in the snow. He hadn’t thought of what kind of future he wanted at all. He’d been so caught up with just … surviving.
“Don’t think anyone’s ever asked me that. Always thought I was going to become a knight. I suppose I’d live in a small village, but one filled to the brim with friends.”
“And what would you do for a living?”
“Warlock, for sure. Is adventurer-on-the-side a profession? I don’t know. You?”
“Also warlock. I think I’d be a mentor.”
“A teacher? At an academy?”
“Maybe I’d open my own. One for farm boys—”
“—like me?”
She smiled. “Like you. Common folk need to be educated about arcanery.”
“Tell me about it.”
Her face darkened. “Maybe I’d rebuild Sparrow’s Perch. School and all. Then, after living a long life full of joy and laughter, I can be put to rest beside my parents.”
Hearing her say that made his heart constrict. “Sounds like a good life.”
She wiped her eyes. “Sorry.”
He smiled warmly. “Don’t be,” and the two of them embraced.
“One day this will all end,” he said, thoughts drifting to his father and the man’s dark ambitions.
“Hope so,” she said into his robe. “Hope so …”
“Hello, Chief!” Mr. Goss said, walking from the river, holding a slopping wooden bucket.
“It’s us, Mr. Goss,” Augum said, gently letting go of Bridget. He was still trying to adjust to seeing Mr. Goss without his spectacles.
“Ah, good morning, Augum and Leera. Feeling better?”
“That’s Bridget.”
“Oh my, of course it is.” He reached up to adjust his spectacles but ended up poking his nose. “What a beautiful day, is it not? And look at all this snow! Brings the child right out of me, it does.”
“I’m really sorry about your spectacles,” Augum said.
“No need to be silly, I am incredibly grateful for your efforts, Augum, really. We would certainly not have made it to the morning without those hides.”
“I’ll go look for them.”
“Please do not bother. I felt the wind take them. You would not find them in this snow if you had a year to search. Not to worry, I shall commission a new pair as soon as we get to a city. Now excuse me, I have some Henawa soup to make!”
“Can we help?”
“I am not a child, my dears.” He strode past them, making to ruffle Augum’s hair but accidentally hitting him in the face instead. He didn’t even notice, whistling as he walked off.
“How well do you think he can see?” Bridget asked.
Augum watched as Mr. Goss repeatedly stumbled on the path. The pair of them exchanged a look before continuing to walk.
They arrived at the river only to discover it completely frozen over. A Henawa woman had just finished collecting water from a round hole in the ice. She gave them a wide berth as she strode past.
“You haven’t fished with us yet,” Augum said. “Want to give it a try?”
“Definitely.”
He taught her how he did it and the pair took turns until they captured four fish, by which time Leera had joined them.
“I missed the action, I see.” Her hair was askew, nose and ears red.
“No frostbite?” Bridget asked.
“Got lucky this time. If it weren’t for those furs—”
“—if it weren’t for those furs we’d all be dead,” Bridget said. “You two are heroes. What, it’s true, Aug.”
It was Augum’s turn to roll his eyes for a change. “We were just talking about what kind of lives we’d be living after all this is over, Lee. What would you—”
“—I’d be a famous warlock,” Leera immediately said, using her hand to paint the sky with her story. “Known in every kingdom of Sithesia.”
Bridget chortled, hand over her mouth. “You mean infamous. And where would you live? What would you do?”
“I’d live in a magnificent castle. I’d be an … adventurer, yeah! That’s a profession, right? Anyway, the castle would be a fixer-upper, there’d be a gazillion cats, and a dashing—” her eyes locked with Augum’s for the briefest moment. His heart skipped a beat. Suddenly he envisioned himself adventuring with her, repairing Castle Arinthian together … but he promptly looked away, confused by the hammering in his chest, the butterflies in his stomach. He had no idea how to react or what to do. Besides, anything like that was a lifetime away. He wasn’t even a man yet, and there was still so much to learn, and so much to face—
“—prince or something,” she finished, a note of disappointment in her voice. “But not the kind that you’d want to smear with manure.”
“And I’d come visit you in your castle,” Bridget said, giving Augum a particularly pointed look, “just to see familiar face—”
“We should go and make breakfast,” he blurted, hurriedly grabbing the fish by the tails. “Let’s get these on the fire then figure out a way to find the pearl.”
“Right, cause there’s always stuff to do,” Bridget muttered, still watching Augum.
The girls sighed and followed along.
“What if Mrs. Penderson secretly is a warlock?” Leera asked as they made their way back to the fire. “And she’s hiding the pearl arcanely and that’s why we can’t find it—”
He shook his head. “Impossible.” There was no doubt in his mind that he would have known if she was a warlock, that she would have used her powers against him or to benefit her family at some point in the past.
He wondered how his mother felt showing up on the Penderson’s doorstep with a baby in hand, canceling the Penderson debt to the Titan clan in exchange for his safe harbor. Had she judged his fate with that horrible family a better one than a life with his father? Had she even had a choice?
He frowned. “I wonder what debt the Pendersons owed my mother’s family.”
Leera chuckled. “Maybe money for cases of Titan wine?”
Augum recalled Mr. Penderson’s chronic strong breath. “Well, he was a foul drunk … Doesn’t matter anyway. I wish she hadn’t left me here, but it happened. Let’s eat.”
The trio joined Mr. Goss at the fire. They cooked the fish, talking about the blizzard, but avoiding the topic of the door and the pearl. Mr. Goss stared blankly around, evidently not able to distinguish much beyond blurred shapes, for when Leland came near he mistook him for one of the Henawa children. When the boy pawed at his father’s face and discovered the absence of his spectacles, he surrendered a slow moan.