The Bitter Kingdom
Page 26“Anything I’m not considering?” I ask. “Anyone else have anything to say?”
Silence. Then, tentatively, Mula says, “I do.”
We watch as she stands and approaches the fire. She clasps her hands behind her back, shifts from one foot to the other.
“What is it, Skinny Girl?” Belén asks.
She gives him a shy smile. “I have decided on a name.”
I sit forward. “Oh?”
“My name,” she says with a lift of her chin, “is Red Sparkle Stone.”
No one makes a sound. There is only the popping of the fire, the rush of wind, the pawing of a horse.
Finally I manage, “Well. That is indeed a strong and . . . unique name.”
Mula’s—no, Red Sparkle Stone’s—face lights up. “I knew you’d like it! Red is my favorite color. And sparkle stones are strong. The strongest thing there is. I was thinking you should call me Red, the same way Storm’s whole name is too important to say all the time.”
Oh, thank God. “Red it is, then,” I say, and I look around at our companions, daring contradiction. Mara looks stunned. Storm and Waterfall are wholly indifferent. Hector and Belén are trying very hard not to laugh.
25
WE prepare as best we can while the storm rages outside. Mara ties a rope around her waist and heads out into the blizzard. When she returns, she brings a layer of snow and several large strips of pine bark. She shucks gloves and boots and holds her hands and feet near the fire. Her limbs turn bright red as they warm, and her face twists in agony.
Once she can flex fingers and toes without pain, she gets to work scraping thin sheets of inner bark onto a nearby rock to dry by the fire. Then she grinds it with her mortar and pestle and puts the resulting dirty-white pulp in her empty flour bag.
She sends Belén out for another batch, then Storm, and repeats the process all day until her bag is full.
We decide to leave the horses behind. We need the grain we’d feed them for ourselves, and Waterfall insists that they won’t fit through some of the mine’s narrower passages. Belén assures me that an experienced mountain horse is better suited to winter foraging than its human companions, that if we leave them in the cave’s shelter, they’ll step out when they’re ready to find food, maybe even make their way to the nearest village.
Hector leads Mula’s—no, Red’s—sweet mare outside into the cold and slaughters her. I’m not sure how he can see to do the deed in the raging storm, but he insists the scent of blood will panic the others if he does it inside. I think he does it to spare me the sight.
He returns with strips of raw meat that he roasts over the fire. At first my stomach turns. But as the scent of sizzling meat fills the cavern, my mouth waters in spite of myself.
I find myself drifting toward the back of the cave, where the other horses are blissfully chewing on our last supply of hay. Horse greets me with a head toss and snuffles around my blouse, looking for a treat. I wrap my arms around her and press my cheek into her warm neck. She lips at my hair.
In the afternoon, Storm suggests we make snowshoes. We’ve never heard of such a thing, and we ask him to demonstrate, but he scoffs, saying, “I was a prince of the realm. I bought snowshoes—I didn’t make them.”
He describes them as best he can. Belén says they don’t sound any harder than making rabbit traps, and he experiments with some low-hanging pine branches that he finds nearby and chops off with an ax. The smaller branches are very flexible, and he’s able to weave and twist them into something vaguely resembling Storm’s description. He attaches them to his boots by wrapping them with twine, then heads out into the storm. Mara and I giggle at the way he walks—splayed and jerky—but when he returns to the cave, he smiles with triumph and gets to work making more.
I sit beside him to help. I’m clumsy, and the pine branches are stubborn, but it’s better than pacing our tiny cavern, worrying about the Deciregi reaching Cosmé and my sister before I can, or the civil war brewing in my own country, or the fact that I’ve promised a little prince that I’ll do everything I can to return to him.
After a while, Waterfall sits beside me. Without saying a word, she grabs a few pine branches and gets to work.
The storm weakens as night falls, and I breathe a prayer of thanks and relief. This time, when we array our bedrolls around the campfire, I flip mine out beside Hector’s.
I glance around surreptitiously, feeling daring, my face warm. But no one seems to notice or care, except Hector, who tries and fails to hide a smile.
As we lie down to sleep, he pulls me against him so that I am cradled by his body. I don’t know how I’ll sleep with his arms wrapped around me, his body pressed against mine, his warm breath on my neck. But I do. And when I wake, the sun is shining.
We fill our packs with as much as we can possibly carry, leaving everything else behind for the next traveler who shelters here. We tie on our snowshoes and hobble out into the hazy sunshine.
The world is blinding, sparkling gray. Pine boughs are so laden with ashy snow that they droop almost parallel to their trunks, and the bottommost are buried in snow near the ground. The snowshoes keep us from sinking too far, but Storm observes that they are nowhere near as effective as good Invierne-made snowshoes. The top layer of snow has already melted and iced over, so we crack through the surface with each step and sink a little before taking the next.
Waterfall leads the way, and we have not gone far before my shins and calves burn with effort. We find the place where we left the path to go to the way station; it’s now buried in snow and unidentifiable to me as a trail, but both Waterfall and Storm recognize some landmarks and point us in the right direction.
We double back the way we came as the sun climbs—it’s blurry and leached of color, and it remains low on the horizon, even at midday. When we reach a giant sequoia, dead and hollowed out by lightning, we depart from the trail again and hug the base of a steep mountain slope. For once I’m glad for the snow, for the slope is so steep that the snow gives us purchase we wouldn’t otherwise have.
Something rumbles in the distance, and Waterfall goes very still.
“What—?”
“Silence!” she snaps. Her bright green eyes turn inward as she listens. More rumbling echoes. Far away, then closer. She puts a finger to her lips and says softly, “We go quickly and quietly. Do not make a sound. The Eyes of God continue to shake the ground, and now there is too much snow. So much that even the mountains cannot contain it.”
The rest of us exchange alarmed glances. We follow after single file, pushing through the snow as fast as our awkward gaits will allow.
We dip into a small, pine-choked ravine. The trees are smaller here, and so tightly packed that it’s hard to squeeze through. My right snowshoe snags on a trunk, and it rips off. My heart sinks as the entire shoe unravels beside me in the snow.
Strong hands grip my armpits and lift me up. “Hold on,” Hector whispers in my ear. “I’ll try to fix it.” He props me against a tree and bends to retrieve the snowshoe.
Waterfall turns around to see what has caused our delay, and when she sees the broken shoe, fear sparks in her eyes. She gazes up the side of the mountain, her mouth pressed into a thin line.
Hector curves the outside branch of my snowshoe back into place, but his gloved hands struggle to tie it down. He yanks off his gloves with his teeth and tries again, looping twine to secure the branch to the haphazard weaving that makes up the bottom of the shoe.
“Try it,” he whispers. I put my foot into place, and he wraps the remaining twine around my boot to hold it. “This won’t last long. Go carefully.”
We catch up to the others—slowly, so as not to knock my shoe off again. Waterfall watches us approach with unveiled impatience. She keeps glancing upward, like she’s a small rodent expecting a hungry raptor to swoop down at any moment.
The ravine breaks into a clearing. Everything is so choked with snow that it’s hard to know for certain, but I suspect we have been traveling a frozen creek bed and now stand upon a small pond. “Just ahead,” Waterfall says, pointing. “Into the trees and to the right is a—”
A great crack rends the air, followed by the smack of branches and a muffled crash. I nearly jump out of my skin, and then I realize it’s probably just a tree, bent to breaking under the weight of snow.
But Waterfall says, “Run for your lives,” and she takes off across the clearing in a wide, rounded gait that could never outrun anything.
We follow as fast as we can. A rumble sounds above our heads, and the earth trembles in response. Red freezes and stares up the mountainside, horrified. Belén sweeps her up and hobble-runs with the little girl tucked under one arm. The extra weight is almost too much, and the snow sucks at each of his steps, threatening to pull him down, down, down.
My breath comes in gasps and my lower legs burn as I tear after them. Hector is right beside me, and I know he could go faster if he wanted to. “Go,” I say between breaths. “Don’t wait . . .”
My voice is lost in a miasma of rushing and crunching. Wind lifts the hair from my neck, and I look up expecting a flash flood, but it’s a wall of white coming down on us. When it hits the trees, they bow before it a split second before being overwhelmed. Powder geysers into the sky.
I run blindly, legs pumping as fast as I can make them go. My snowshoes tangle, and I crash to the ground. I try to get up, but the snow sucks at my clothes. Bruising fingers clutch my arms and yank me to my feet. Together, Hector and I wade forward. We’re not fast enough. I take a deep breath, preparing to be buried alive.
But I’m not. The crunch of snow at our backs is deafening at first but is followed by a silence as deep as death. We stare at each other in awe, both of us covered in powder and white as ghosts. Somehow, we’ve escaped the path of the avalanche.
Hector wipes snow from his eyes. I’m hip-deep in the stuff, for I’ve lost my snowshoes after all. I look down, and sure enough, Hector’s legs are sunken too.
Our companions are just ahead, looking back at us wide-eyed and breathless.
Except Waterfall. “It’s not far,” she calls from the tree line calmly, as if we are out having a casual stroll. “I’ll lead. Everyone walk in my tracks. It will pack the snow a little and make it easier for the queen and the commander to walk without snowshoes.” To me she hollers, “Yell if you get stuck.”
Something about her nonchalance gives me strength, and I press forward, refusing to think about how close we just came to death.
We pause to catch our breath. “The entrance is snowed in,” Waterfall says. “We’ll have to dig.”
Mara groans. “Of course we will.”
26
WE fall to our knees and shovel at the snow. It’s much softer here, and our gloved hands do the trick. Suddenly a chunk of snow breaks free and falls away, opening up a dark hole. We scramble back from the edge.
Waterfall says. “The snow is so deep that we’re at the top of the entrance.”
We work at the edges, opening up the hole and packing the snow down until Red is able to scramble up and over. After a moment her head pokes up over the edge. “It’s dark and smelly,” she says with a wrinkled nose.
Mara pulls her tinderbox and one of her precious candles from her pack, lights the candle, and hands it over the edge to Red. The rest of us climb inside and spread out, taking stock.
The tunnel is roughly arched, with an uneven floor that slopes gradually downward. Beams brace the walls at regular intervals, though some have toppled into the center. They are in various stages of decay, and shimmery with cobwebs.
“We’ll collect wood and resin for torches and firewood,” I say. “As much as we can carry. Storm and I can use our Godstones for light if necessary, but I’d rather save our strength for emergencies.”
“There’s plenty of wood along the way,” Waterfall says. Her sharp features seem nearly skeletal in the shadows cast by our single flame of light. “These beams burn well, and torches are stashed throughout. Some are very old, but they’ll be better than nothing. When we encounter the stashes, though, I suggest we take several, because a few stretches of our journey will take us through tunnels that were never well used.”
In demonstration, she bends over the shadow of what might be a wooden crate and pulls out a torch that is black and dry with age. She holds it toward Red, who lights the end with her candle. It catches instantly, washing the icy tunnel entrance in shades of orange. “Ready?” she says.
I grab Mara’s hand and say, “Will you be all right?”
She breathes deep through her nose and says, “I have to be, don’t I?” Then she pulls her hand away and steps resolutely forward.
“Be alert,” Storm says. “We’ll be going farther and deeper than my sister has ever been. I know that in Joya d’Arena, rumors are something to scoff at, due to the prevaricating, deceiving nature of your people. But in Invierne, rumors of danger should be taken seriously.”
“Hopefully, it is less dangerous than volcanoes and avalanches and freezing temperatures,” I say, but Storm just shrugs.