Page 16

M ost nights she slept dreamlessly. The darkness surrounded her, edging in around the light of the lamps and candles, creeping close in the corridor.

At night, when she blew out the lamps, she felt it like a thick weight.

Day by day, it grew more impossible to even guess the passage of time with any certainty, and she felt this not as freedom, but as an unmooring from reality.

She slept when she was tired and woke when she was rested.

She painted. She embroidered another rich collar for her mother to sell.

She read one of the books, a book of fairy tales and legends, but the others were too obscure and written in a hand that was difficult and frustrating to decipher.

She sat hour by hour curled in a chair by the fire.

Sometimes she fell asleep and woke to the same firelight.

It might have been moments, or might have been days that she had been asleep.

She could guess only by how much she ached from the awkward position.

Magni’s clothes were simple, only one layer of decent fabric, not nearly warm enough for the chilly cave palace.

This was what finally convinced her that he was not human.

The ears, the teeth…perhaps human people from the far north were different.

She knew little of different peoples except that their differences were said to be shocking.

Designs tattooed on faces, dark skin, even dark hair!

Traders from distant lands told of many things a girl from a small town might never see.

But all humans would shiver in this cold, would eventually get sick and die without proper clothes.

Cold like this was inevitable death without the fires in the grate.

Magni never seemed to feel the cold at all.

He did not draw close to the fireplace, did not wear layers, did not shiver.

The darkness and the silence wore upon Gytha until she wept.

Then her heart steadied, and she resolved that she must go home and see her family.

She had lost count with her flowers; she was sure she must have embroidered flowers when she had only napped and the stranger had not entered the room at all, and had also missed embroidering some flowers when he had definitely been there.

But there were over two hundred tiny flowers of dozens of species, of colors both realistic and fantastical, and she could barely remember the sound of the bear’s voice.

She felt like she was going mad. The long winters had always tested the ability of humans to endure confinement and darkness. But never had she been so alone, with no sound of a human voice, for so long. Talking would not ease the gnawing in her mind.

Gytha carefully folded the embroidered collars on which she had spent so many hours and put them in the largest pocket of her trousers.

She added to this her cloth of embroidered flowers by which she had counted the days and as many skeins of fine thread as she could reasonably fit in the pocket without it coming open as she walked.

She dressed in every layer she could find, with the thick fur cloak wrapped around her and three layers of socks stuffed into her warm fur slippers.

She strode into the kitchen as if she owned it, but the servant who was so often there was not even present to be impressed by Gytha’s confidence.

She wrapped bread and cheese and dry sausage links with cloth and stuffed bundles into the other pockets of the trousers.

Finally she was ready, or as ready as she could be. She picked up the lantern and walked resolutely down the long hall she thought led to the outdoors.

Magni and the bear followed her silently.

She passed through the darkness with her head high.

At last she reached a set of dark wood doors. When she placed a hand on the handle, it was so cold her skin stuck to it for a moment. It opened with a crack of ice, and the air beyond was so cold that each breath stung her lungs.

Magni caught her sleeve between two fingers and shook his head in protest, drawing her back toward the relative warmth.

“No. I want to go home, just for a visit.” Gytha bit her lip and held up the lantern to see his face better.

His eyes were wide, and the light gleamed in his irises as if she were looking into a pale gem. He shook his head emphatically and tugged on her sleeve again.

Gytha hesitated. Would it break the terms of the magic? It would be a shame to waste all the time she had already spent here.

Her reasons for wanting to help Alexander had not changed just because time had passed and she was stir-crazy and desperately lonely. The truth was still the truth. Right was still right and not wrong, even if it had grown more uncomfortable .

But she felt that she was going mad, lost in isolation so that her thoughts spiraled and flitted like snowflakes on the wind, dark and hopeless. If she could visit her family and regain a little perspective, it would do both her and Alexander good. Wouldn’t it?

“If I come back, will the bargain have been broken?”

Magni bowed his head and sighed. Then he shook his head.

“If I go, then I can come back, right? I can come back to finish the nights of a year and a day.”

Magni stared at the ground.

“I can come back, right?” Gytha repeated, wanting some kind of response.

The air was frigid but deathly still around her, and she felt that it had always smelled of stone and ice.

Could she even remember the smell of pine?

Of spruce? Of good clean frost in the morning on green spring grass?

Of her mother’s soap and new lambs? The soft, sweet-salty smell of her little brothers and sisters after a long day playing outside?

A fox might gnaw off its foot to escape a trap. She felt like that fox, ready to suffer any pain to escape this prison.

Magni nodded.

“I’ll just go for a visit. I’ll come back.”

The goblin tugged at her sleeve gently, urging her back toward the living quarters in the interior of the caves.

She pulled away. “I wasn’t asking. I’ll walk if I have to.” Gytha yanked her sleeve out of his grip and strode away with her head high.

He followed, his steps quick, but he did not touch her again.

The darkness of the tunnel grew gray, and the rock floor slanted upward until at last she turned another corner and sunlight spilled down the corridor, bright and dazzling .

Gytha set the lantern down on the floor. She pulled the hood of her cloak over her hair and cinched it down as well as she could. She pulled on her gloves and set off. The chill of the air struck her like a physical force.

The nearer she got to the entrance to the cave, the more ice and snow clung to the walls and in the uneven spots in the stone floor.

The tunnel opened abruptly to the small outcropping she barely remembered through the haze of fever and exhaustion when she had ridden Alexander so many months earlier.

The flat area was nearly as large as her family’s lodge, scoured smooth of snow by the frigid wind that whipped up from the sea far below.

Gytha crept carefully to the edge and looked down.

The cliffside was just as steep as she had feared, and just as tall. Several hundred feet below, the sea thundered and hissed against the sheer rock face. The water showed a deep, cold turquoise as it frothed, and Gytha drank in the color for a moment before turning her attention to the path.

The way up to the top of the cliff was not quite twice as wide as her shoulders, and terrifyingly steep. It was a wonder that Alexander had been able to descend it without falling into the seething sea below.

The bear gave a low, menacing growl when she turned toward the path.

Gytha rounded on him, her pent-up frustration and grief overflowing in sudden anger. “I need to see my family! Do you understand that? I love them, and I miss them! I need to know they’re all right.”

She stared him down, her bright blue eyes against his dark, unreadable gaze. Then she turned her back on him, deliberately rude, and set off up the path .

She climbed until her legs burned, her eyes brimming with tears. She ignored the tears, letting the wind freeze them on her cheeks.

Her muscles protested the unusual exercise, and soon she was huffing and puffing her way up the hill. Each breath burned her lungs like cold fire, and her face felt like a frozen mask. Her eyebrows grew thick with frost.

At last she reached the top of the cliff, and she turned to look out at the vast sea. This was the very end of the world, an immensity beyond sense and logic. There was no sympathy or humanity here, only endless cold and water.

With the wind pulling at her cloak and sneaking between the layers of her clothes, the cold was like a living thing. It would freeze her from the inside as well as the outside, her face and her lungs at the same time.

She turned to look at the land. That was south. It looked just as endless as the sea, an immeasurable expanse of cold and ice, but if she could walk far enough, endure long enough, there was life. Family and love were there, somewhere beyond the snowy tundra.

With a deep, stinging breath, she set off.

Magni and the bear followed.

Hour upon hour, she strode over the ice.

The wind died away for several hours, and the silence was broken only by the crunching of her feet upon the ice and snow.

Her breath made clouds before her. The world was glittering ice, blinding white and pitiless, and she squinted and pulled her hood down to block as much of the light as she could.

Snow-blindness was a real danger, and she had not thought to make goggles to prevent it.

The light meant it was summer; this land must never thaw.