Chapter 38: Thought, and Memory
On tired feet Sookie hiked through the countryside, exhausted and searching. Searching, searching, but for what she couldn't quite lay her finger on. Not the flowers near the path, nor the rocks, nor the clouds or the snow of the distant mountains. Not the wolves that stirred restlessly past the treeline, or the elk that chewed reeds at the side of a vast lake.
She knew hunger, but food she sought not.
She knew thirst, but no stream could quench her.
The cry of ravens called her, and with tired eyes she turned her attention to the great black birds flying above.
She followed, because somehow, she knew.
In the distance, a knoll rose above the plain, and restless feet propelled her there, and to the tree that grew tall upon it. A mighty ash, so grand she could not see its top branches, lost in the clouds. The two ravens watched her from the branches above, black eyes shining with interest. What would this strange girl conquer next? Already, her tale whispered by thought and memory, Huginn and Munin, in the ear of the one-eyed wanderer entertained greatly; the all father awaited the next chapter, as he would await all things, until Ragnarok.
Though he stood bound to the tree by shackles that glowed silver as moonlight, Eric watched her approach with the calm of an ancient, something that would still stand when Sookie's bones turned to dust. He bled from wounds at his wrists that would not close, crimson rivulets trickling down.
"Have you come here for me, lover?" With careful hands Sookie cupped the vampire's hollowed cheeks, bones straining against the skin. She answered his question with her lips on his, and only as their mouths touched did she know some small peace. One by one, she counted his ribs with wandering fingers. She could know the shape of his bones through skin, and in a way she felt wonder that this great man could be filled merely with a skeleton, as everyone else.
Then where did he keep his fire? That endless store of strength and fury, the courage to play a hand against death and emerge the victor - - glancing upwards, she suspected he kept it in his eyes.
Sookie's hands traveled down his arms to the shackles that bound him; so bone thin, it seemed as though the vampire should be able to slip free, but hands would not budge through such binding jewelry. "Break free," she begged of him. "Come with me."
"There's always a price to be paid, Sookie."
Sookie pulled at the chains. She pushed and prodded, she railed against them furiously, but they would not budge, forged of stronger things than just metal alone. The telepath screamed in her frustration, and against the vampire's chest she cried for the lover she could not deliver from his bindings.
Some unknown thing startled the ravens from their perch, and as their glossy black wings filled the sky the earth shifted beneath them. Níðhöggr the wurm stirring restlessly beneath Yggdrassil, gnawing upon the roots of the world in his restless malice.
"The time will come, and we will find a way," Eric promised Sookie, the longing in his eyes a palpable thing as she fell away from him, tumbling back down the hill.