Aarez smiled at the polar nature of his actions. One woman’s neck he pressed into to seek out life; the other, he squeezed to end it.
He felt her struggle under his snare. Her fingernails dug trenches in his arms and scored his cheeks, but he ignored the stings as he would a gnat, instead focusing his attention on suffocating her.
Eventually, she slackened under his grip. Her hands fell back, no longer attempting to pry his fingers apart. Just as he thought that the woman had resigned her fight to live, she smashed something sharp under the side of his ribs. He gave no care to the butterflying pain searing through his side. He shook his head to clear his mind. The matriarch lay dead under his hands, her last action taken with no design to secure life.
Aarez picked himself up and stumbled over to where Cleo lay. He fell, rather unceremoniously, on top of her, his blood spilling onto her clothes. A bloody hand pressed on her neck, though he was careful to dampen the anger that had fueled its previous actions. Feeling no pulse flutter under his fingertips, he rested his forehead on Cleo’s. Fatigue crippled him before he even passed an ounce of life to her.
His essence seemed to move of its own accord into her small body. But where previously, she had welcomed him with eager anticipation, now he felt it stagnate under her skin.
“Come on, damn you!” Aarez placed a hand over her heart, pushing his life directly into her chest. All the while, he was aware of the nagging pain rippling through his torso. Between the pain and the cold, he had lost all feeling in his body.
His eyes faltered, fatigue lulling his mind. Sleep called him to rest. Still he persisted, concentrating fully on dripping his life in, hoping with all his might that Cleo might wake, her heartbeat strong as ever. He imagined her smile, a sight he so rarely saw during their few months together. The curve of her lips revealed the rarest pearls of teeth.
A heat, warm like the air on a lazy summer afternoon bloomed in his chest. It rippled through his body, washing over his torso and expunging all pain as it worked over him. It flooded his fingers and curled his toes, pushing out the prevalent cold.
Aarez smiled as the warmth flowed through his hands into Cleo’s chest. He felt his eyes close, darkness finally easing his mind into rest.
Chapter 34
Of all the people that Gnochi owed explanations to as he rode away from Gideon’s camp, it was Fester, Harvey’s stoic mount, whom evoked a wish for speech from the solitary rider. Not only did he wake the retired warhorse in the middle of the night, but he forced Fester to rush off, north into the night’s dangerously cold air.
He wanted to tell the horse all his secrets and fears. He longed for the release from bemoaning the sadness and misfortune that tore at his heart. He also knew that if he tried, Fester would shoot him a look asking whether he was sucking on rocks.
If Fester could read, Gnochi would have tried rationalizing his actions that way, as he had attempted to with Roy and Harvey. I have something I need to take care of, Gnochi had written to the two young men. I’m borrowing Fester. Please do not try to follow me. I’ll be back within a week.
None of the guards stopped him on the way out. He was not a Lyrinthian prisoner anymore.
After a long night of riding at a brisk pace, a quaint cabin welcomed him with evidence of vandalism. Two of the glass windows were smashed open. The door was left ajar. A trail of snow swept into the room.
He knew that the library’s sensors would have been buried, so before he entered the cabin, Gnochi dug them free from their snowy tombs. They would not reunite with sun until the winteryear clouds broke apart, letting in the first light of spring, but he was not planning to enter the library. He could not, even if he had wanted to.
The sole feature of the cabin, a hatch on the floor, opened to reveal a ladder leading belowground. It had also been tampered with, though Gnochi feared naught for the sanctity of the library beneath.
He mounted the ladder and stepped down. A column of light from a particularly bright moon above guided his descent. Down in the cellar, he found the library’s door largely undisturbed. Whoever trespassed had found the stash of hidden supplies had written on several sheets of paper. Gnochi saw the marred papers scattered on the floor, leaning between the handle and the door, and had been jammed under its seal.
How do I get inside?
What is in there?
Is anyone reading these?
He smiled, inspecting the library door by giving it a mild tug. It was exactly as he remembered. A worn wood, braced by thick bolts, as though it were a cell door. Gnochi shivered at his mind’s analogy. He realized after all the time he had spent behind bars in the past few months, that library could very well be considered a prison.
The door was older than the dirt around the cellar, but the keyhole, which he had added, was new. He blew dust within it to ensure it would work as designed. The lock was specially made for this door with only one key created. He sat down in the moonlight and pulled several sheets of the paper onto his lap. With a tap on his tongue, he wet the pen’s nib.
He stared at the blank sheet of paper for over an hour, willing his jumbled thoughts to form into legible words that could adorn its soft surface. Eventually, he contemplated no more and words came from his hand. The pen danced across the pages until his mind relaxed, his soul, pacified. He folded the letter on his chest, then leaned back against the cool earth and fell asleep.
Chapter 35
There was no one moment when Cleo realized that she was asleep, for she had drifted into a state of being where her mind floated away from her body. She felt neither comfort, nor pain. She tried wading through the abyss to find her body, but her thoughts came sluggish. She tried snapping her mind into focus, but she still felt tired.
Out of the fog surrounding her mind came a feeling: a sharp, yet minuscule prick of cold. It hovered well below her conscious, but it followed her mind in its attempt to escape the fog, growing colder by the moment. As the sensation expanded, she realized that it was not floating in space, as she thought, but was resting. Her mind regained its spatial awareness. The chill lay right over her heart.
Cleo’s eyes flickered open, then shut as a stream of bright light flooded them with an intensity comparable to no other. Through her eyelids, she watched the blood thump through tiny vessels, a grisly, blood-tinted light reaching her retinas. Groaning, she opened her eyes again, picking her head up from its hard place of rest.
Aarez’s sleeping face, blue-grey as the sky on a quiet morning, rested a hair’s breadth off her chin. All at once, delayed signals from the rest of her body shot into her brain. Struggling to breathe, she realized that his body, however frail and light, was lying on top of her chest. A cold pressure from his bones pressed into her hips, torso, and chest, eliciting a cry from her lips.
“Okay. Get off me.” Cleo’s voice sounded harsh, but she was sure the ventriloquist had heard her and was ignoring her. She heaved him off, wincing at the thump his body made falling from the cot. He had made no movement to lessen his fall.
She sat up fast, too fast for her brain, as it felt dizzy from the rush of blood. Cleo leaned over, horrified at the sight of her friend, crumpled on the ground. “Aarez?” She crawled to his face, cupping his cheeks with her hands. She frowned at the frigid skin greeting her fingers.
With a feverish effort, she rubbed on his arms to pass warmth. “Not the best time to go shirtless,” she said, choking on a stale laugh as she noticed his bare chest. Tears itched at her eyes. “What did you do?” She pushed at his neck, but it felt long abandoned, hollow, and devoid of life’s rhythmic beat. Cleo pulled Aarez into her arms, wrapping his stiff body in a hug. Frozen chunks of blood that had scabbed on his side broke off as she shifted him. “I’m sorry, Aarez.” She buried her face into his shoulder and wept tears that froze as they trickled down his skin.
A stretch of leather drew her attention. It was the necklace he had made. Cleo lifted it over his head. She stared at the screw. Lucas’s screw. The metal was s
o cold, it pained her to touch its ribbed surface.
She remembered the pinprick of chill that had righted her mind and allowed her to return to the waking world. “Aarez, you saved me. And you, Lucas.” Cleo sniffled, wiping her nose. “You worried about your heart, tried to convince me that you were only in it for the money and prestige. I know your heart is good. It’s better than mine.” Cleo ducked her head under the leather cord. The screw came to rest on her poncho, its stark, tarnished, slate-grey surface contrasting with the marred reds and oranges in the poncho. It lay over her heart.
After rubbing her cheeks dry, Cleo stood and took a shaky stock of her situation. The fires had all but died, so she hastily built them back up, burning whatever scrap she could manage to find in the camp.
She then found and rescued Perogie from where the mare was tied to a nearby tree. Their captors blinded her in a similar manner with a sack covering her face, though they had at least thought to tie extra blankets around her to keep some semblance of warmth. Perogie hovered near the fires, though she looked distraught upon seeing Aarez’s corpse.
She wondered what she should do with the four bodies. When she tried to break the soil with a spade, she found its frozen surface unforgiving and unyielding. Instead, she lit two pyres. Into the first blaze, she dumped the three corpses of her captors without a word of farewell other than, “You’re lucky you’re getting a fire.”
Using snowmelt, she cleaned Aarez’s body as best she could, then dressed him in their nicer, but thinner clothes. “You’ll never feel the cold again, my friend.” She stood close enough to the burning pyre that her hair curled from the heat and her eyes burned from the smoke. She kept vigil over the pyre, watching it with a protective love until the cold finally snuffed out its final embers.
At some point, Cleo drifted off to sleep. She dreamt up a horrifying nightmare, feeling a ventriloquist’s hands manipulating her limbs and forcing her to run on an endless loop of non-descript tundra. After running forever, the hand tossed Cleo’s puppet body to a fire as though she were trash.
After waking, she munched on a scrap of smoked meat, then loaded their packs onto Perogie and rode east. She knew not where in the swamp she was, but she knew that ahead, the vast horizon sat eager for her return. As she expected, the camp resided close to the tundra and was only riding several minutes before the familiar stare of pale, unobstructed snow met her gaze. After venturing several hundred feet onto its endless surface, Cleo realized that she saw neither her previous lean-to, nor the dogsled path they had been following. Scattered in the immediate area were potholes of clear ice that somehow avoided the plague of the opaque snowy downy. A scary reflection stared back up at her from one of the frozen pools.
Dismounting, she untied her staff from Perogie’s back, an action that knocked an object to the ground. She stooped, retrieving the journal and brushing snow off its tired leather cover. Holding the journal close to her chest, she walked out further into the tundra, commanding Perogie to stay. She ambled until she could not stand the wind lashing at her face, then collapsed to her knees, the entirety of the tundra plain before her. That same wind pulled open the journal’s delicate pages, fluttering in the sudden gust. She spotted a line of text and thumbed back through to the page. When she read what was written, she choked on a sound that was part sob, part laugh.
Cleo,
Remember to keep your emotions off your transcriptions!
Love,
Gnochi
She did not know if she wanted to cry, laugh, or shout to the sky. She stood and leant on her staff, gazing to the north along the invisible lines of the path as she imagined it. She suspected that the camp from which she had just come might have been north of where she and Aarez had decided to ride out the storm. As she gazed north, a column of smoke drew her eye. It faded into the drab overcast sky, but she knew she had not seen the smoke in the sky before the storm.
Her proximity to the roving, ever-growing forest of winterbush also led Cleo to the conclusion that she was farther north than when she began. She led Perogie over to the nearest winterbush tree, marveling at its skeleton-like branches and thin frame.
The smoothness of the bark beneath her gloves reminded Cleo of ice. The winterbush jutted impossibly out of the tundra’s rock-hard surface like scars on the air. While it wore no leaves and bore no fruit, she knew that it alone held the distinction of sustaining all life in this second age where winter’s roar stops oceans dead.
Perogie relaxed the nearer she stood to the fabled bush. Cleo, too, noticed how at ease she felt, the pain of grief no longer throbbing in her chest. She took a deep breath, noting the faintest hint of springtime pollen on the air.
With a surgeon’s intent, she sliced a branch no longer than her hand, marveling at the creamy woodgrain, the color matching that from Gnochi’s guitar. A pungent odor from the untreated wood aggravated her gag reflex but then forced a drowsy yawn from her mouth. She quickly offered the branch to Perogie who gnawed on it as though it were candy, her tongue licking her lips long after she had swallowed the last piece.
“Funny how something so potent to me is delectable to you, eh, ‘Ogie?” The mare offered no response, though she swished her tail gaily. Cleo reined her back, preventing her from nibbling on more of the tree’s smaller limbs. “We still have to find Gnochi. But it’s good to know that you can eat this stuff. We can conserve the grain and oats then.”
After a long day pushing Perogie, Cleo steered her off to the border between the tundra and the swamp where she set up a camp. She ventured back out to gather a few thick branches of winterbush to supply her fire and feed her mare. On a second trip out, she dug a large chunk of ice that she melted down to supplement their drinking water. Once settled, she sat before the fire in silence.
“I don’t suppose you have any stories to tell?” She asked of the mare, though Perogie offered no response. “I don’t either, girl.” Cleo rooted through her bag, taking mental note of her supplies and nonessentials. She found Gnochi’s coat of arms pendant with its jagged edges, unaware that she had not been wearing it. She slipped it over her head and put both pendants: the coat of arms and the screw, under her poncho. They tangled together and settled below her collarbone. The pair initially chilled her skin, but she eventually acclimated to their feel, embracing their cool touch.
Fearing that she had forgotten something at the camp, or that their captors had destroyed anything, Cleo spent an hour rooting through all their packs ensuring that their belongings were present. Content that nothing was missing, she retrieved Gnochi’s journal. The brown leather cover, once smooth and unblemished, now sat scarred from frequent use. A rogue splattering of ink marked one of its corners. She dragged her fingers along the surface, then opened it and leafed through pages, smiling at the memories.
She swiped at a tear that had the nerve to inch down her cheek, then slammed the book closed and stuffed it unceremoniously into the bag. After a long moment, she peered inside to ensure that none of its pages creased and that the book was safe. Satisfied, she lay back, looking up at the sky.
“If only these clouds would go away so we can look up at the stars,” she said. Perogie shuddered and forced a burst of air from her nostrils. “Will you let me know if trouble approaches?” she asked. “It’s just you and me now, ‘Ogie.”
The mare snorted as if saying, Someone has to keep watch when you humans sleep all night. I protected Gnochi and I’ll protect you.
Cleo allowed her eyes to drift closed, though wild thoughts chased sleep around in her head. At last, abandoning all hope for rest, she sat up and rebuilt the fire. The additional warmth worked to lull her into a drowsy state, her eyelids heavy.
Perogie’s warm nose pressed into her cheeks. The mare was shuffling her feet and tugged on her blanket to make a rustle of noise.
Waking fully, she noticed the dark cover overhead and the still warm embers in the dying fire. She wished to relax in the warmth and sleep, but she trusted the mare’s jud
gement.
Cleo sat still, listening to the dead swamp around her. No sounds out of the ordinary reached her ears. She chanced a movement, allowing her hand to drift to, and clasp around her staff. She stood slowly, tuning her ears for any sound.
A minute passed with only the wind’s whispers as passing company. Then, just as she relaxed, easing her stance, the sound of a dog’s bark split the night air.
Cleo crouched, angling her staff and readying her nerves to fight. She pictured in her mind, her battle in the woods near Mirr when she and Aarez had fought against the trio of wolves. At the thought, she wondered again if her chance meeting with the white wolf later was real, and if it was that wolf who was coming to visit her.
The wolf’s cowl still warming her head seemed to shiver as if it sensed her thoughts.
In her moment of contemplation, a team of soldiers sprung upon her, circling close. They ensnared her in a circle of blades with little space for her to breathe. “Drop the staff,” a gruff voice sounded in her ear. Cleo complied, hearing it thud to the hard ground below. “All clear, sir,” the voice called.
Cleo watched a man, prim in military regalia walked into view from the direction of the tundra. The moment he stepped into the fire’s meagre light, she recognized the uniform. As her eyes trailed to his face, she gasped.
“Hello, Cleo.”
Chapter 36
Sleep came with hallucinations and sweats. When he woke, Gnochi felt too weary to move from where he had slumped over, so his mind quickly retreated beneath the veil of fatigue. He could only guess at how much time had passed since he wrote his letter to Cleo, imagining days at least. Upon exiting the cabin, he discovered that Fester either had pulled free of his reins and left, or was stolen, likely by the same person who had left the notes. There was a sliver in his dulled mind that wondered why he was not upset by his own carelessness. Fester no longer played a role in his future, so to see the animal off on its own path, was, as he reasoned it, for the best.
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