Page 6

They circled above, impervious to the squalls. A gust caught Dawsyn in the face before she could turn her cheek and her eyes shuttered, burning with the bite of frost. She felt Maya’s shoulder disappear under her hand. Her eyes snapped open to find her sister gone. Fighting the wind that tried to hurl her back into the curve of the Face, Maya was struggling through snow toward their mother. Dawsyn shouted, her voice stolen by the wind.

The Glacians descended.

Dawsyn lurched forward, frantic. Her boots sank into the snowdrifts, the powder collecting and weighting her down. She cried out again and again, her feet making little progress, the very sky howling in her ears.

Another howl, less familiar. Briar falling forward into the snow as Maya tumbled into her. The talons of a colossal, pale Glacian cut through Maya’s narrow shoulders. One last glimpse of her sister’s billowing black hair, her terror-stricken face, the blood already speckling her neck, and she had ascended into the sky. Gone.

Eight years gone.

Dawsyn awakens in her cabin to the sounds of Briar’s ghosted screams. The fever of the dream has left a coating of sweat along her skin. The lengths of her hair are slippery with the remnants of another restless night.

She sighs, then sits up on her cot. Most days, it is difficult to remember them. Sometimes, she forgets the details of her sister, but Dawsyn knows today won’t be one of those days.

The sun rises and fails to touch even the tallest branch tips. It is the first day of the new season, the fertile season. Warmer, though it will hardly be warm. The Ledge is an endless winter. The two seasons bring the difference between snow and slush, ice and sleet. But it at least marks the time passing. It brings some change to the landscape. It means she can survive the days without the constant stoking of fires. The hours won’t be the sum of wood burned.

Before anyone else, Dawsyn is out of her cabin, her boots against snow. Today, she does not follow the curve of the Face. She makes her way down the gradual slope of the Ledge, through the wooded grove. The light tries and fails to reach her shoulders. The chittering of small animals and birds ceases as she passes. Soon, she emerges on the other side.

There is the Chasm, a crack through the entire world. It spreads before her in either direction, a mere twenty feet away. The wind that urges her toward it is calm, a mere nudge, easy to resist. So different from the day her sister was selected, so similar to the day Briar left her.

Briar, of steel spine, who did not falter at the demise of her own mother or husband, swiftly fell apart without Maya.

Dawsyn has surmised that a heart can crack only so much before it shatters. Or perhaps it was the nature of the thing. Her husband was gone of a tragic accident, her mother to a bout of common lung sickness. But Maya took Briar’s place. A life only ten years lived should not be traded for a life forty years endured.

So, Briar crumbled. Her posture, once so straight, curled in on itself. She became a shadow that could chop wood, boil water and mend clothes but couldn’t speak, couldn’t laugh. For the first few months after Maya was selected, Briar would sleep for days on end and then not at all. And she stared. God, did she stare. What she saw, Dawsyn does not know. Whatever it was that she looked into, it made her face collapse again and again.

In the year that followed, Dawsyn watched Briar disappear by inches and despite it, she would look for signs that things were taking a turn for the better. A glimmer in Briar’s eyes meant that tomorrow would be easier. A night’s sleep without wakening to howls meant that the tide was turning. Small smiles meant that Briar was finally beginning to forgive herself.

And then a morning came where Briar was the one to wake Dawsyn, just like she used to. A Selection Day, no less. There was tea already waiting for them to drink. The fire had been rekindled and stoked. Briar, once so beautiful, turned her drawn, lined face to the window.

“It is calm today,” she said to Dawsyn. “I thought we might walk together.”

Dawsyn bundled herself and followed Briar into the weak sunlight and she wondered if today was the day that she – the leader of the den – would return to her.

They walked through the woods and out the other side, hand in hand, and when Dawsyn spat a cursed insult about the Glacians, Briar threw her head back and laughed.

“You are so much more than I am, my love,” she told her and kissed her hand.

They sat before the edge of the ice, just as Dawsyn has done on every Selection Day since. Briar told Dawsyn stories about her grandmother. She told tales of her childhood, and finally, she spoke of Maya.

“She never listened,” Briar whispered, her eyes turning distant.

“No, she didn’t.”

Briar gave her head a little shake and then smiled at Dawsyn. “You, on the other hand, are a survivor, my love. Over and over, you’ve shown me strengths I’ve never had. You’ll continue to do so. I’ve never doubted it.”

Dawsyn frowned. “I have an excellent tutor.”

Briar chuckled again. “I am not so sure.”

“You did the best you could.”

Briar’s smile turned sad. “I am not sure of that either. But I know that I love you and I loved your sister. In that, I did not fail at least.” Her face turned to the Chasm and she closed her eyes, breathing deeply. “I miss them… and I am tired.”

Dawsyn nodded. She knew the feeling well, and when she looked at Briar, she thought she’d never seen a woman more weary.

Briar’s hand ruffled Dawsyn’s hair. Her cracked lips pressed against her forehead once and then twice. “You’ll do better,” Briar told her, her voice serene. “The cold is not alive, but you are.”

Dawsyn met Briar’s eyes and watched them shutter. The hand against her cheek fell away, and then Briar lurched forward.