Cobweb Bride (24 page)

We’re going to run out very soon. . . . Out of rolls, out of time, out of warmth, out of everything
.

“I
—this body—cannot walk—any farther,” whispered Claere Liguon.

They were drowning in snowdrifts waist deep. The Northern Forest was a sea of whiteness and bare tree trunks, with nothing but vaporous haze on every horizon, so that the sky and land blended into a uniform pallor. The only frame of reference was the rare fogged-over glimmer of the risen sun. Its disk appeared to be sliding through the cloud-mass overhead, fractured into angular shards of light against the dark silhouettes of infinite branches.

Vlau Fiomarre knew they were lost, had known it for some time now. And yet he followed the small pitiful shape of the dead Infanta as she stiffly and relentlessly moved forward for the last few hours of the night.

He had lost all sensation in his appendages. At first his feet and hands and face burned with the cold fire. Then all went numb, limbs moving through conscious will alone, as though not his own—
someone else
was making him put one foot ahead of the other.
He
was going to die very soon now; there was not the faintest doubt. . . . And yet, just as
she
remained undead,
he
was going to also become neither one thing nor the other, suspended in that hollow place between life and death.

Death is the loss of sensation
 . . . he pondered, taking shallow and ragged breaths of freezing air, each breath scalding his lungs.

And then the Infanta stopped. And she admitted she could go on no longer. “My body is—a corpse,” she uttered, each word issuing with a grating hiss of forced breath. “It has no warmth of its own—and has become too stiff—too frozen to allow movement in the joints by my will alone. Soon, I will be unable to talk. Once that happens, simply leave me be. Go back, find a road
 . . . and save yourself.”

“We are lost, and there is no road,” he panted. “Even if it were right behind us, I would not leave you now. We perish together—”

In response, came a faint terrible
creak
of laughter.

She stood, like a pillar of salt, faintly shaking in place in an effort to maintain vertical balance. “Perish?” she gasped. “There is no such relief in store for us! Unfortunately we will
not
perish, but we
will
freeze, and then malinger, yes! Covered by endless snow, unable to move, going softly mad, eternally, in the prisons of our bodies . . . until the spring thaw. And then, we will regain the use of our carcasses, and, as it warms up even more, we will perhaps start to rot, and worms will come to eat tunnels through this flesh and crawl throughout, and birds will come to peck—”

“Then I will
not
perish!” he snarled. “And it looks like your mouth is not frozen enough, and you can still talk quite well!”

Fury at
himself
—at
her
—it was the thing driving him onward, he recognized suddenly.
Fury
was all that remained.

And just as he was certain that all he could do was be consumed with it, alone within his own hell, there was something else.
 . . .

From a distance came the sound of wolves—nay, it was the baying of hounds in the forest, and then a distant noise of men perpetrating damage, comprised of breaking branches, crackling snow, and footsteps crunching, voices low and subdued.

All together—after the infinite white silence—they seemed like thunder, as they awkwardly
broke
the forest.

“No
 . . .” whispered the Infanta. “Oh, no . . . Please, you must cover me with snow, then run!”

“No!” he replied harshly, and suddenly lurched forward with all his remaining strength, narrowing the space between them. And he put his arms around her (around the lump of cold, the pillar of salt, the lifeless burden), and he lifted her up—and she was a dead weight, yet she was weightless in his hands and in his mind, like a dry withered stick—and he carried her, crashing forward, gasping for air, lungs convulsing with impossible effort.
 . . .

Snow was all around, coming to swallow him in its wintry quicksand; sharp branches struck his face, drawing thin ghoulish scratches upon his nunb, battered skin. And the sound soared on the wind, still carried in the distance, and drew closer
 . . . as yet he moved forward, wallowing, running . . . wallowing again.

He carried her thus, deeper into the Northern Forest.

O
nly an hour before noon, just as the girls approached the outskirts of the Northern Forest, and drew close enough to see the frozen white shores of Lake Merlait through the sparse trees in that direction, Betsy stopped in the middle of the road and refused to move any further.

Behind her, the cart rolled to a standstill.

“Whoa, Betsy!” said Percy, clucking and gently snapping the reins, to no avail.

Lizabette, taking her turn walking next to the cart, meaningfully stomped her feet in place to stay warm, while Sybil and Regata, walking next to her, decided to take the opportunity to use the nearby shrubbery to answer nature’s call.

“What’s the matter with her?” said Emilie, whose nose, red from the frost, was running. She had been sniffling and wiping it with the back of her mitten all morning.

“I don’t know.” Percy tied up the reins, removed her own mittens, and then slid down from the cart. Pulling her shawl back, she leaned down to examine each one of Betsy’s legs, then the hooves and shoes. Nothing seemed to be amiss.

She then checked the harness, the bit, and made sure the blanket was not chafing any of the spots where the leathers were tight.

Betsy’s nose was normal and lukewarm to the touch, vapor curling from her great nostrils. She moved her dark gentle eyes wherever Percy moved, and was as calm and healthy as anything.

“What in heaven’s name is wrong with her? We should be moving!”

“I really don’t know,” replied Percy, continuing her examination, walking around the large horse.

“Maybe she’s hungry too?” Jenna piped up from the back of the cart. “Should I could give her a roll?”

“No!” said Lizabette, Percy, and half the girls simultaneously.

“She has her grain in the bag, plenty of it. If we feed her rolls, we’re not going to have enough food for us, Jen,” explained Percy kindly.

“Want to try leading her, maybe? Pull her forward?” said Emilie, sniffling, and wiping herself with her dirty yellow coat sleeve.

Percy nodded, then took the bridle lead in the front of Betsy and attempted to pull the large draft horse behind her.

Nothing. Betsy made several unhappy snorts, and merely braced her legs against the beaten ground of the thoroughfare.

While they were occupied thus for several long minutes, several other strangers, mostly girls, passed them on the road.

Finally Percy climbed back into the driver’s seat in frustration, and took the reins, pulling and releasing them repeatedly, while making more clucking noises. She then wiped her forehead and pulled her shawl closer about her. The lump of cold fear in her stomach was back.

“Betsy,” she said at last, gently, relaxing the reins. “Where would you
like
to go?”

And suddenly, like a miracle, the draft horse moved. She took a few steps forward, but then started to lean them to the right side of the road—the side away from the lake and closer to the forest. Finally Betsy approached the shoulder of the thoroughfare, and continued walking, directly into the shrubbery at the side of the road.

“Whoa!” exclaimed Percy, pulling the reins hard, thinking they were about to plunge directly into a snowdrift. But as they neared the very edge, the bushes parted around them. Percy realized that Betsy had found and followed a small but solid path off the main road. It meandered around tall drifts and trees, but it definitely led north and into the forest. And the amazing thing was, it was entirely
invisible
from the main thoroughfare, unless you
knew
to look for it.

“Smart girl, Betsy!” said Percy, with a grin of relief. “So this is why you stopped! You knew about this path, didn’t you?”

“But why would we want to use this tiny path leading Lord knows where, instead of the nice big road?” grumbled Lizabette. “It is unsafe!”

“Not so,” responded Percy. “Just think about it, everyone can see you on the big road. Anyone can ambush you. But here, we are on our own secret little walkway. Besides, I think Betsy knows exactly where she’s headed. Grial was right, Betsy
would
know the right direction!”

“That’s ridiculous,” Lizabette said. “How would a horse know the way to Death’s Keep? Is the way, perchance, lined with hay and carrots?”

“And how would
we?
” retorted Percy. “I think the horse has as good a chance as any of us, and likely better. If you don’t like it, you are welcome to continue on your own along the big road—the one that’s lined with broken carriages instead of carrots.”

“Right!” Lizabette snorted. But she grew silent and continued walking with the cart.

They proceeded moving along the path for a quarter of an hour, frequently making sharp turns as it meandered around trees (which appeared denser and denser) and shrubs and tall snowdrifts that had risen into winter hills.

Jenna and Sybil periodically whistled—Sybil raising her ruddy brows up and down in time to the tune, so that her pale freckled face was in constant fluid motion—while Emilie wiped her nose and broke into more and more frequent fits of coughing.

“Emilie, you need to cover up with that blanket, keep it over your face, and stay in the cart for the rest of the day,” said Percy, pointing to a bundle of their spare belongings in the back.

Emilie nodded with visible relief, breathing hoarsely, and climbed deeper in the back of the cart, then curled up under some burlap.

As the bleak sun rose higher, stopping to cast its fog-diffused glow from directly overhead, indicating noon, they noticed a change in the general silence.

It came from within the forest. Far away, echoed the sounds that only men make, when men are soldiers on a hunt.

“Oh, this is just perfect!” Lizabette hissed. “Look where this accursed path is taking us! Directly into danger! If only we had stayed on the big road!”

“Hush!” Percy hissed, right back at her. “No one has seen us yet, and no one says they must—if we stay quiet and take care! We have to go forward
into
the deep forest at some point or another, you knew that very well all along, didn’t you? It’s the one thing we must do eventually, is go into the forest!”

“So then we’ll just get caught, sooner than later!”

In that moment, as the two of them were facing off, just up ahead, and from very
nearby
, came the soft sound of shifting snow. Then, a single branch cracked . . . but it was enough. It had originated directly off the path, a couple of feet away from Betsy.

Everyone, in the cart and walking beside it, froze.

Percy grabbed the reins to pull up Betsy, and held them tight. So tight, she could barely feel her fingers. . . .

The snowdrift fell apart to reveal two possibly human shapes—and maybe the shadow of a
third
, but no, there was no one else, Percy blinked—that had been completely buried in the white powder. A man wearing shabby inadequate clothing, with dark hair and skin that was wan from the cold, held close to him another tightly bundled shape, vaguely female. She was covered in a faded and worn red cloak over grey spun wool, and appeared motionless.

“Please
 . . .” said the man in a croaking voice, then was interrupted by a fit of coughing. “Please do not be afraid, I am unarmed! Please . . . help us! My—
sister
here is very ill, and I beg a stranger’s kindness only—”

He took a few steps forward, and Percy watched him hold on to the bundled girl—if that is what it was—with extreme care.

For one tense moment, everyone in the cart and around it stared.

“Are you Jack Frost?” said Jenna suddenly. “’Cause if you are, and you look all blue, I am not scared of you.”

“Stop! You say you are unarmed,” Percy said, ignoring the youngster. “Put your ‘sister’ down and show your hands.”

Another long pause.

Then the man very gently lowered the precious bundle he was holding, so that she lay on the path at his feet in the snow. One death-white hand could be seen, as it slipped from under her covering. He straightened, putting both his arms out slowly so they could see.

“His hands are blue too!” Jenna was fascinated, forgetting all fear. “And look,
her
hand is pure white, like clean snow! She must be the Snow Maiden! I knew it, Jack, admit it, you are Frost himself!”

“Oh, hush already, Jenna!” Flor spoke up, though not unkindly. “Lord, but you have a mouth on you, child!”