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I cannot tell how far away they are, but they are ahead of me at least. The wind is in my favor, carrying their howls back to me, instead of my scent toward them.
The rain starts to fall again, but strangely. It’s softer, colder, feathery. I put a hand out, watching it land against my skin, slow and milky. I have heard of this. Father said that in the northern lands it happens sometimes. The water in the sky is so cold it changes shape and texture, forming this odd, feathery rain they call snow. I push on as it grows thicker, muting the world around me.
Then I round the next bend, and let out a gasp. This white rain, this snow, has coated everything. It lies thick on the ground and edges every tree-branch with white. The sky is white, the earth is white. How is anything supposed to survive in such a place? How amIsupposed to survive?
My wet clothes are beginning to freeze, and the chill is making me shake enough that the quiver of arrows strapped to my back rattles. Only three of the cedarwoods are left now. If only I had been able to collect those left behind in the harpies’ field.
I walk on, the wind at my back, the world like crystal. There is fog, now, as well as the snow. I seem to trudge through it for avery long time. And then I stop, hearing a noise at my back. It’s almost muffled by this snow-covered world—but not quite.
I turn, and see him. A young wolf, perhaps born just this year. But large enough already to kill me, quick enough to corner me with one spring. He bares his teeth at me, his hackles all risen. A deep growl curls from the back of his throat.
Danger. The word comes into my head as if someone else has placed it there: as though it’s not my thought, but the wolf’s. And though it’s surely just a fancy, it makes me remember something useful. He may be just as scared as I am, and may attack, not for food, but because he sees me as a threat.
I drop my eyes a little, bending my body lower so as not to look like I’m challenging him.
Pass, I think, and step away from the path. I push the word at him, an invitation, not a command, pushing it toward the place the worddangerseemed to spring from. Maybe if I think it hard enough, my whole body will show it; somehow I will make the creature understand.
And perhaps somehow he does, or perhaps it is the fact that another great chorus of howls drifts now from some distant place. The young wolf snaps his gaze to the hills beyond me. He darts one last, brief look my way before darting forward and disappearing into the shadows and the thick snow. Only then does it strike me that I could have used the knife. I could have thrown it as he ran, and had a pelt tonight, to keep me from freezing.
But it’s too late now, and besides...the wolf may not have heard the promise I made him in my head, but to me it was a contract.I will not hurt you if you will not hurt me.
If only I could make such a contract with the winter air. My breath’s coming fast, and each intake chills my throat, a cold burst that flares in my lungs. The light is not yet gone, but thesun is below the horizon, and the moon is out. I wonder if I will survive the night out here.
Is it better to keep walking, or try to find a place to bed down? But if I bend down in the snow, it is surely a guarantee of never waking. And every step is a step closer to my goal.
To reaching him.
Will he be glad to see me? Will he berate me for how I left him, for the fall of his temple? Memories flash through my mind of my first days in his palace. His haughtiness, his amusement. As though because I was mortal, and a woman, my emotions must be flimsy things. At least, that is how it seemed to me then. But there were assumptions I made, too, about his intentions and his character. I did not understand how much he had risked, all to offer me the one contract that would stand between me and death.
And what now? Even if I reach him; even if I free him?
Eros belongs in the Olympian halls, where I could never be welcome.
I shake my head.One foot in front of the other.
The snowy landscape grows bluer, the fog thickens. The sound of my feet on the icy ground is like crystals breaking. Ahead I can see where the path narrows and dips into the earth, a gully of sorts, though any water that once flowed at its base is dry now. Rocky walls rise up on either side, banks of sheer stone with trees at the top.
I cannot see how far it goes on like this, before the path returns aboveground. I will be sheltered from the wind, which is an advantage, but I don’t like the idea of being down there for very long, unable to run except along a straight line, and exposed to anything that might be prowling above.
I walk on, and hear my footsteps grow louder as the walls of the gully rise on either side of me. The snow on the bottom muffles my step a little, but not fully. It’s a fraction warmer downhere at least. Above me, the trees climb higher, almost meeting in the middle over the ravine, black shapes against the foggy sky. It will get dark much sooner down here, I realize. Perhaps if I don’t see light after this next bend I should turn back.
I put my hand to the steep wall, feeling my way. The stone is cold and hard. That’s what’s making me shiver, I suppose, and causing this sudden prickling feeling.
When I round the bend, instead of more light, there’s less. The world is almost black. But there, in the darkness—I stop in my tracks. Pinpricks of light, forty or fifty of them, hovering there like tiny, greenish stars.
Until a pair of them blinks.
Chapter Thirty-Three
A howl rises out of the ravine. Shadows, black shapes charging through this dim underworld, all in my direction. It’s not like with the young wolf: I know exactly what these wolves see in me, what they smell on me.
Prey.
I turn and run, but I know each step is only closing the gap between us. One step of mine is five of theirs. I have moments, only a matter of moments, and I can’t escape them like this. I need to get out of here—up these walls, and over the top. But the walls are sheer, hard stone. Nothing to give me purchase…
Then a wild idea crosses my mind. Will it work? It’s all I’ve got.
I pull my mother’s knife from its sheath, and then, panting, I ram it into the stone wall, knee-height. It buries itself deep in the ice and rock, right up to the hilt. Despite myself I shiver at the feeling. Stone might as well be soft flesh to this blade.
