Chapter 4 The Worst Winter
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I scratch the white stone down the wall with my trembling, gloved hand, chiseling in the sixty-second white line on the black stone. Day sixty-two since Sara inspired me to live. I slump back onto my heels and stare at that sixty-second line. Another winter day fills up my cell, making me shiver and my teeth chatter. I draw my limbs into my stomach and chest, hoping to find some warmth. Not an ounce of warmth touches me. Perhaps if I hunker down in the corner? I curl up in the corner of my cell out of the direct breeze...that does nothing for me. This winter is unusually cold, unusually bitter, and unusually merciless.
My cheeks and the tip of my nose sting. My toes burn with frost. Stories of knights being caught out in the cold haunt me. I never saw it myself, but I heard stories. The knights who got caught out in the cold had their toes turn black with death. They had to have their toes cut off! That thought strikes my hollow stomach with fright. At the very least, I have my gloves that I stitched together from salvaged wool stockings. I pray to God these gloves save my fingers. God, please, if I am not allowed to keep my toes, at least let me keep my fingers.
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I scratch the white stone down the black wall with the seventy-third white line. Day seventy-three since Sara gave me a reason to live. I crawl back into my corner and huddle beside my dwindling stockpile of rat meat. I try to focus on any other part of my body than my hollow belly, but I cannot feel my toes anymore. I prefer the numbness to the burning…but something unsettling stirs in my gut. A warning. The numbness is just one sign of death. I try to recall the warmth of the sun and the heat that fire brings...I cannot remember what warmth feels like.
How I wish I could start a fire, but I have nothing left to burn other than the clothes on my starving body and my dwindling stockpile of rat meat. I have burnt all my sewing needles, all my spare rags, all my precious bone statuettes that I had carved…even my pole and hook contraption. Tears well in my eyes, but I fight to keep them at bay. The last thing I need is my tears freezing on my cheeks.
I try to remember what Sara said exactly that made me laugh. I scour all my memories of Sara. I expend my precious energy to lean forward enough and peer between my bars into Sara's cell. Her corpse lies there, her red and yellow flesh frosted over, preserving her. More tears gather in my eyes. I fall back into my corner and quickly scrub away my tears with my gloves, turning my world black. For the life of me, I can barely recall. Something about her husband being an ass?
Time crawls by slowly as daylight dims. Dread forms a pit in my hollow belly. The nights are worse than the days. They're colder, darker…lonelier.
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Day eighty-four. I huddle into my corner and hold my wood cup full of snow close to my mouth, exhaling into it, ever so slowly melting the snow enough to drink. No matter how much I try to occupy my mind with something, anything else, I cannot think of anything other than my gnawing hunger and my unquenchable thirst. Every winter I have endured before this one brought with it fewer rats, but they still came around to supply me with just enough meat to get through the winter and provide me with fuel for my fires to heat up the snow and turn it to water. I should have caught ten rats by now. The rats must have sensed the unusual brutality this winter would bring and have fled into the warmer depths of the castle.
I would crawl over to my cell wall and chisel another mark for the day, but I need this energy to scoop the snow piled on my window ledge into my wood cup to melt with my breath. No matter what, I cannot give up my will to live. Sara gave me the reason to live—the hope that happiness is real and that it is attainable. I understand all too well that I need every bit of energy I can get to keep me warm enough to survive this winter.
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Day eighty-six. I dig into my sack of rat meat, desperate for some to eat. I stop, almost as if frozen by winter herself. There at the very bottom of the bag is my last frozen shred of rat meat no bigger than my fifth finger. I try to swallow, but there is barely enough water in my body to form spit. I gingerly take the rat meat out and cradle it in my gloved hands. This rat meat is so precious. If somebody put before me chests and crates of shining gold, glittering gems, and the finest silk dresses, I would not give up this rat meat for all that. If someone opened up my cell door and bade me leave this place, I would not give up this rat meat for that.
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Day eighty-seven. I nibble ever, ever so slowly on my last strip of rat meat, my aching, hollow belly thinking of nothing other than this most precious meat.
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Day eighty-eight. I nibble on the very last fiber of frozen rat muscle and sip very slowly on my ice-cold water, one litany of thoughts playing in my mind over and over and over again. You have no food. You have very little water. You feel it. Your body is eating your muscles, your organs, to keep you alive. You cannot feel your toes. You haven't felt your toes in…days…weeks…could be months for all you know. This is it. Your last efforts to stay alive for Sara…they are for nothing.
I take another sip of water, that same damning litany of thoughts starting all over again. You have no food. You have very little water. Your body is eating you to keep you alive…
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Terrible cackling laughter calls me from my sleep. I barely open my eyes, seeing three blurry black figures looming over me, daylight so dim that I can barely distinguish one from the other. One of the blurry black figures stoops to me. I would scramble away in fright, but I barely feel that rush of fear. I…I don't have the energy to feel fear.
"Eat!" It's Finn. He yanks down the strip of fabric that was keeping my cheeks and nose from freezing to death and pushes something frozen against my cracked lips.
"Eat, woman, or die!" another man, not Finn, says. "EAT!"
My mouth snatches the morsel out of Finn's grasp. I chew the tough, frozen food and swallow only when safe enough to do so without choking.
"She ate it!" one of the men says. Terrible cackling laughter fills my ears.
"Eat," Finn says, shoving more morsels into my mouth. I chew the tough, frozen food and swallow. Chew and swallow. Chew and swallow. Chew and swallow. Wait…what am I eating? Why is Finn forcing me to eat? I open my eyes a bit more and look up at one of the men looming over Finn's shoulder. Our eyes barely cross, but his busy hands pull my eyes down—I stop chewing, my eyes growing impossibly wide. My heart stops beating. The man holds a severed, skinless, frozen human hand in his grasp, cutting off strips of meat from the delicate bones! Horror starts rising in me and I look down at Finn's gloved hand, the same frozen strip of human flesh in his grasp so close to my mouth!
Good God! These demons fed me human flesh! I spit out the frozen flesh in my mouth and scream. I scream until I run out of breath. I tear off my glove and shove my finger into the back of my throat, trying to make myself retch up the frozen meat I had already consumed! I poke and poke at the back of my throat, making myself cough and gag horribly, but nothing comes up. Finn and the men laugh at me.
"My sister ordered me to keep you alive, but she never said how I must do that," Finn says. I stop poking at the back of my sore, bleeding throat, the strong taste of iron pooling in the back of my mouth. I drink my own blood out of desperation. This is a nightmare. This cannot be happening. I'm caught in a terrible dream. I must be.
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The days are growing warmer. I find myself shivering less and less each day and night. I swallow hard and wring my hands together. I'd love to think that these last three months of Finn force feeding me had been an extremely long nightmare…but Sara's body is missing from her cell. Both in her life and in her death, Sara…she is the reason I'm still here. That's all I will think about it. That's all I can ever think about it.
I turn my mind to my numb toes. God, I prayed to you to let feeling return to my toes with this warming weather, but as usual, you have not answered me. A terrible pit fills my stomach at the thought of ever looking at my feet again, but what choice do I have? I must take off my boots and stockings sometime to let my skin breathe!
Carefully, ever so slowly, I pull off one boot, and then the other. I hike up my skirts and grab the top of my stocking, but my fingers freeze with a flash of fear. You have to do this, Snow! You have no choice! You must see the damage. Sara gave up everything for you to survive. To live! You must take care of yourself to your utmost ability.
Carefully and ever so slowly, I peel one stocking down my skeletal leg, just skin over bone. Down, down, down, revealing more of my ghastly white leg. I roll my stocking down past my white ankle, past my pale foot—I halt at the bit of sudden black ringed about my smallest toe. Tears well in my eyes and mercifully blur my sight. I pull off the last of my stocking. My blackened nub falls off my foot and lands on the floor.
I slowly pull off my other stocking and stare at what my body has given up to this winter just to stay alive. My fifth toe just fell off my left foot, and the fifth and fourth toes of my right foot have turned black. I'm certain that they, too, will fall off with time.