Frost (2 page)

One adult member of each household was required to attend each week, and since my parents were dead, the responsibility fell to me. But our farm was at the very brink of our small civilization, and the trek into town was cold and dangerous. Sometimes I didn’t go.

“I’m sorry. My sister was being difficult like always. She wanders off and forgets her chores. I barely made quota this week—”

Normally I wouldn’t throw my silly sister to the wolves, even if my lateness was her fault, but Ann was my friend. She knew how Ivy could be. We often shared an exasperated laugh at our younger siblings’ expense.

But this time, Ann only frowned at my excuse. She bit her lip and looked over her shoulder. “The Elders noticed, Lia. My father noticed.”

A shiver of suspicion tickled the back of my neck. As the daughter of our village leader, she had access to information that I did not, like whether or not the Elders really thought I was capable of taking care of my siblings now that my parents were gone.

“Did they say something?”

A faint blush spread across her cheeks. “I can’t…I really shouldn’t be talking about this. I just wanted to tell you to be sure to do your part, that’s all. Important people are watching.”

My stomach twisted into a knot. If the Elders thought I was unfit to take care of my siblings, we’d be separated for sure. “I’ll be there this week, Ann, I promise. Thank you for telling me.”

She nodded, and the curls framing her delicate face quivered.

I glanced at the sky again. The clouds were closer, and the light was growing grayer. Time to head back to the farm. “I must be going—”

“Lia Weaver,” another voice interrupted loudly from across the yard, and I turned to see Everiss Dyer, a curvaceous brunette with a loud voice and perpetually stained hands from her family’s profession, sashaying toward us. She’d always been more Ann’s friend than mine, but I gritted my teeth into a smile and nodded to her.

“Hello, Everiss.”

Everiss brushed purple-stained fingers over her hood, which was not nearly as fine as Ann’s embroidered one. But it was ten times nicer than my ragged, ice-blue cloak with the fraying seams. I could see her mentally making the comparison, and I dropped my eyes.

“Did you hear the news?” she asked me.

I shook my head.

Ann and Everiss exchanged wistful glances. “The Tailor family’s oldest son announced his intentions,” Everiss said, wetting her lips with her tongue. “Can you imagine it? Me, courting? And such an older man...”

“Don’t be silly,” Ann said with a laugh. “He’s less than a year older than you, you goose.”

They both looked at me for my reaction. I forced a smile and nodded, trying to feign enthusiasm. Good for her. Making a match and forming a family was one of the most important things anyone could do here in the Frost. It ensured your survival. It ensured your place in the village. It was every girl’s dream, I supposed.

It was my secret dread.

“Don’t look so jealous,” Everiss said, smirking as she misinterpreted my expression. “Your time will come.”

She and Ann both shifted their gaze to someplace over my shoulder. “Speaking of which…” Ann said, giving me a conspiratorial smile.

I turned. Cole Carver was heading straight for us, his sack of supplies in one hand and his cloak flapping behind him. Here in the village, he looked more ridiculous than mysterious.

“Ann…” I said, sighing.

“He likes you,” she murmured. “He’s always asking about you.”

Cole reached us and stopped, smirking at me just like he’d done in the forest. “Hello, girls. Hello again, Lia.”

“Again?” Everiss arched her eyebrows.

“Lia and I ran into one another on one of the forest paths. We walked here together.”

I was suddenly uncomfortable with the way Everiss and Ann were grinning at me. I gestured at the sky. “A storm is coming. I really should get back to the farm—” I edged away, trying to escape their predatory matchmaking attempts.

Ever since I’d been orphaned, every idle villager had decided I was in need of a husband, it seemed. I was sick of it.

Everiss blocked my way. “If you’d been at the last Assembly, you would have heard that there’s going to be a winter social next month.”

Ann’s gaze shifted from me to Cole. “Do you think you’ll attend?”

“I don’t know,” I said irritably. “My brother and sister...”

I didn’t have to finish the thought. Everyone understood. Freshly orphaned, with a cripple brother and an impetuous younger sister, I had my hands full without counting quota and the upkeep of the farm. If anyone had a reason to skip socializing, it was me.

The wind blew between us, and a few snowflakes brushed my face.

“I should get back to the farm,” I said again. I began to walk, and this time they followed instead of trying to stop me.

The girls murmured together about the social while Cole fell into step beside me. The village streets had already begun to empty as the weather drove people indoors. Unencumbered, we passed the houses of stone and wood with their narrow, rounded doors and shuttered windows. I saw a merchant from the south in the streets. Trinkets and gadgets made of cogs and gears from Aeralis and the Dark Lands to the south covered his chest and hung from his belt. A shiver rippled over my skin. Carrying things with that kind of technology in the Frost was dangerous. Didn't he know?

“I wish you would come,” Cole persisted. He was matching my strides with his, and with each step the shock of brown hair on his forehead bounced. “We hardly ever get any fun around here. It’s good for a body to have some relaxation.”

I sighed. I was tired of making excuses. “The farm absorbs most of my time and energy now.”

Cole followed my eyes to the merchant, who was now heading toward the gates of the village. I frowned as I realized the man intended to head deeper into the Frost tonight.

“Surely he knows better than to go out there with those Farther things strapped to his chest?” I muttered.

Cole frowned. “Fool. He'll be eaten by the Watchers for sure.”

I winced, thinking of my parents. Cole was oblivious to the distress his words had caused me as he watched the disaster unfolding before us.

But before the merchant could slip out the gates, a slender, dark-haired figure stepped forward and pressed a hand against his chest, intercepting him. My lungs squeezed tight, because I recognized the second figure at once.

Cole drew in a sharp breath. “What is that scum doing here?”

“He has quota just like everyone else,” I said quietly. I watched as the young man pointed toward the inn and then at the Farther things the merchant carried. He mimed burying them, and his lips moved as he explained the danger. He was too far away to hear, but I knew what he was saying—the creatures in the forest were drawn to the strange technology from the south, one of the reasons we had so little of it. Anyone carrying it in the forest at night would be hunted for sure. He was explaining to the merchant what would happen if he left the village now, with darkness approaching.

A sigh slid from my lips. Was this some kind of act to make us think he cared what happened to people out there?

I knew from personal experience that the opposite was true.

“I can’t believe him,” Cole continued viciously. “Your parents’ graves are barely cold, and still he walks around as if we’ve all forgotten the part his family played in their deaths.”

Ann and Everiss broke off their conversation and drew closer. “What is it?” Ann asked, seeing our expressions.

“That idiot Adam Brewer is here,” Cole said. “Acting as if nothing is wrong.”

Ann avoided looking at me as she spoke. “We don’t know that his family is responsible for what happened to Lia’s parents. We don’t know what happened that day—”

“We know enough,” Cole interrupted. He scowled.

“Please,” I said. “I don’t really want to discuss it.”

“Hello, Lia.”

I looked up quickly.

Adam Brewer
.

He’d left the merchant heading for the inn and approached us instead—had he heard our words about him? My face flushed. My friends were frozen in quiet. Beside me, Cole’s eyes narrowed, and I saw his jaw twitch out of the corner of my eye.

But Adam was looking only at me. I straightened my shoulders. I would not cower under his gaze, even though it was wild and sharp as a hawk’s.

He was slender, with dark hair that fell into his eyes, and he wore a thick blue cloak as ragged as mine. We were both from farms outside the village walls. Like me, he knew the dangers of the forest because he experienced them firsthand.

Adam’s eyes cut to others and then back to mine. “I hope your farm has been free of Watchers lately?”

The word slid through the air, sharp as a knife blade. I sucked in a sharp breath. He was waiting for me to speak to him about the vicious creatures that prowled our forests at night as casually as we might speak of the weather.

I could just say it.
No, I haven’t seen any Watchers. And I won’t be so foolish as to trust you to protect me from them, either
. The words burned hot on my tongue, but I couldn’t spit them out.

My friends shuffled their feet, looking at him with thinly disguised hostility. Nothing had been proven, and there were no charges made against the family, but it was clear what everyone thought. And now here he was, bringing up that word—
Watchers
—like nothing was wrong.

The Brewers were part of the village just like everyone else, but they were not originally from the Frost, and their skin just tanned enough to keep everyone from forgetting that fact. They kept to themselves and didn’t mingle much. Although nobody had really liked them before, after my parents’ deaths they were regarded with open contempt. They’d asked my parents to help them with their quota and then abandoned them in the forest when the Watchers attacked. And my parents had not come back alive.

He was still looking at me like he expected a response. I hesitated, the words sticking in my throat. A hot, humming pressure started at the back of my head and crept forward—the promise of a headache. I couldn’t do it.

Lowering my head, I moved past him without speaking. The others followed.

Cole threw a glance over his shoulder. “Idiot.”

Shock still reverberated through my body at the near-confrontation. I turned my head to see if the Brewer boy was still standing there, but he’d vanished deeper into the village.

“That was bizarre,” Ann said, rushing to agree, to comfort me as we reached the village perimeter and the wall that surrounded it. “My father says the Brewers are a strange bunch.”

“They’re practically Farthers,” Cole spat.

Everyone flinched, and I thought of the soldiers we’d seen earlier. We knew little about the steely eyed people and their land to the south of us, but what we did know was enough. The stories that passed into our village told of arrested citizens, of public brutality, of wealthy who tormented the poor and prisoners who were forced to work as slaves. It was a cruel, cold land of advanced technology and regressed morality. Mothers told their children to be good or the Farthers would steal them away. As a little girl, I’d had nightmares about them.

“Those are strong words, Cole Carver,” Ann said sharply. She was loyal to me, but she was also the Mayor’s daughter, and a diplomat. “The Brewers are a part of this town, members of our community. They deserve to be treated as such.”

He crossed his arms. “They’re not from here, same as Farthers.”

“Farthers,” she said, “Are vicious, cruel people. Comparing anyone in the village to them is a reprehensible accusation—”

“What the Brewers did to Lia’s parents was reprehensible, too.”

I didn’t really want to talk about the Brewers or the death of my parents, especially not with Cole. “I have to go,” I said, interrupting them. “The storm is getting close.”

Cole pressed his lips together and nodded. I think he could finally tell he’d offended me. “May you have clear skies home,” he muttered. It was our village’s traditional—and cautionary—farewell.

Ann hugged me, and Everiss waved. Together they turned for their homes.

I stepped to the gate and lifted the sack to my shoulder. The wind swept around me, tugging at my hood and the hair beneath. I took a breath and started down the path again.

The forest had already begun to grow dark. Shadows darkened the trail ahead, tricking my eyes and transforming the trees into monstrous shapes with skeletal arms that clawed at the sky. Flurries of snow were beginning to drift down like feathers.

I’d tarried too long, and now I’d have to make the journey home in the grim twilight.

Gathering my cloak and my courage around me, I stepped through the gates.

~

If the journey into the village in daylight was bad, the trip back in near-night was a terror-filled nightmare. The trees seemed to crowd the path like skeletal spectators. Shadows blanketed everything in deep shades of gray. The wind moaned across the snowdrifts, making them hiss.

Something sprang from the darkness to my left. A rabbit. I clapped a hand over my thudding heart and pressed on, fumbling for the flowers at my throat. My skin prickled with every step I took, because with every step the shadows grew deeper and colder. Snowflakes began to swirl, making patterns in the wind and brushing against my cheeks like wet feathers.

The path wound on, and I followed it grimly. Lanterns filled with the glowing fungus found deep in the Frost cast circles of blue light across the snow here and there, their light like fading stars. Some helpful soul had placed them on the path earlier today. The phosphorus-rich fungi would glow for days after picked, but the falling snow made it difficult to see.

Shadows rippled ahead, and the snow crunched. I paused on the path, reaching again for the flowers at my throat. Watchers?

The sound ebbed. I exhaled sharply and pressed on. The incident with Adam Brewer in the village had made me jumpy.

Our farm was the last stop on the path. Ours was the final fingernail on the hand of civilization—after our shabby barn and ramshackle house, there was nothing but icy rocks and trees between us and Aeralis.