Chapter Text
The world was white. Frozen like the tales of the hells that come. The trees shivered and the ground was lost. There was snow everywhere.
The river, the river, the river, the woman thought. She ran through the frozen world as a wolf did their wood, tearstruck and blinded as her rotted feet plunged into the buried earth, kicking up snow and icy shards of cracked ice. Above her the world was strangely beautiful, pale with light sprinkled across a blanket of black clouds, like false stars painted upon the sky, watching and watching like their terrible white eyes. The river was ahead, somewhere, so close. Rushing and rushing with the last of her people headed for the Wall. She could almost taste the summer sun in the south.
Her family had long left. But she had chosen her home. Like the old, whose winter death was their sacrifice to love.
The dead one’s snarls were louder than her tears. Cutting through her soul easier than their blades did flesh. “My love, my love, my love,” they cried. With voices that were theirs no longer. Pleas of a mother. Cries of a sister. Echoed and echoed from bodies that had once loved. She almost wanted to scream back. Howl as a wolf did, and turn back to save her family. But the loves that were hers were long and gone. Far from the little hovel they had called theirs with their red-leafed god to stand guard. Claimed by those worse than death, with names that mattered no more.
The forest broke apart in the remnants of another village scattered and buried like a giant’s hollowed corpse. Corpses more hiding beneath with swords that sprung from the snow to cut her down. They would find her now. They would, they would, they would. Her breath curled from mist into solid ice the moment it left her lips. Her toes had cracked away in her panic, hands and nose and ears half-gone to winter’s bite. Hoarfrost rose from the ground like dancing devils, twisting and turning as her vision blurred. For a moment she reached for a forgotten bronze blade to defend herself. It shattered in her hand, and the laugh that came died as the wetness of her throat froze, and a terrible sleep was forced upon her.
When she dreamt she saw her mother, smiling with her lip turned around the scar on her chin. When she woke, her mother was there, blue-eyed and dead.
“My sweet,” her corpse mother said, voice like rattling bones. Her mother’s scar was gone, and her smile was the gaping hole in her lifeless face.
“Come and join us,” said another corpse. Little sister, littler in death. A dead baby hid in her cavernous stomach, chewing on her stringy black guts. “We love you, we love you. Won’t you join us?”
All her life she had cherished those voices. How cruel, how cruel, to sing of death with them. “Leave me alone…”
Her words were lost on them as their rotted faces fell silent. Snow was falling above. More and more came. Village elders and spearwives and little dead boys as old as the oldest stories. The river was only a few feet away, frozen so deep the waters had become the earth, and the earth had become ice. But she would not give in. Even as their ghastly voices sung a song as terrible as the dying world. Even as their shades formed a ringwall for which there was no escape. Even as her blood poured through the cuts of her leg to freeze and hug her in a blackened hoarfrost. It only made her shiver and weep, but never break.
They watched her as she crawled away. Stones were strewn about a dead campfire. Crack, crack. The woman would smash them against another, strong despite her legs that slowly fell away. The dead would watch, and say together, “Won’t you join us?”
The woman was silent. But the cold was not.
It sung with the wind that kissed her like tiny icy knives. Colder than the snow and the air and the terrible games the dead played with the living.
The cold came again. Again they asked her, “Won’t you join us?” The woman seemed far away. Crack, crack, stone against stone, praying for a single spark. For fire, the kindling of life. She could feel it. She could see it. Her father’s words. Her brother’s spears. Her mother’s stew steaming her face wet. Her sister’s laugh with winter rose petals tucked into her braid.
But then the cold came again, for the last time. Shimmering through the woods in colours of snow-white and river-blue and a strange gold like sunshine upon frost. Its skin changed as its icy flesh caught light and life and blackened the world around it. It left no steps in the snow. No sound in the air. Only the cold, the cold that left the woman’s skin screaming. Her lips were two icy worms broken as she screamed, her tongue the same, melted in her mouth. Only her eyes remained to see the winter. The Other, with hair like a white water river and a woman’s face enchanted with soft ice.
“No…” The woman’s voice was a strangled death throe. The stone cracked against the other once more and set aflame the ends of her furs. But the fire was gold only a moment until it paled to white and died after a few short breaths. She clamoured for it, even the memory of it. Those fleeting moments…
The Other’s eyes were two white stars, brighter than any sun and more beautiful than any love. Its smile like shifting snow was on her. Slow and gently, it caressed her cheek with fingers like shards of glass. As it touched her, its crackling voice formed into something sweet, Why, it said, Why fire?
The woman had no mouth to reply. Her once brown eyes were swirling with blue, and her last fearful tears forever marked her dying skin.
Do not cry, it said into her heart. This is a mercy. Fire is fleeting. But ice… ice preserves.
When its mercy reached into her soul, it burned. But then there was no pain. And come the end of day when night had promised its eternal rule, a free woman rose again, reunited with her loves.