22

Winter

When Saber awoke, he was disoriented. He did not awake thinking he was home, as he had so many times in the first few weeks of his journey; he had been traveling too long to think that. He knew where he was, but still he was disoriented. He knew he had not moved, but then why did the ground look and feel and smell so different?

With a frown of part puzzlement, part indignation, and part fear, Saber sat up and looked around. White! Everything was white! His campfire was completely out, and white; the trees themselves had been turned white! What kind of sorcery was this?

Biting his lip, Saber stood, and as his sleep-fogged mind cleared, he realized the lands had not turned white, they were covered in it. And it was cold! The cheek that had lain on his pack as he slept had fallen to the ground in his sleep, and was now red and numb. The white, it was powderish, wet...his eyes widened in delight as he realized what it was: Snow! It was snow! In fact, it was more snow that he had ever seen in his life! And now that he looked, it was still falling, coming to rest and melt on his face, covering his jumpsuit. He shook himself and light powdery snow fell from it.

With a delighted laugh, Saber picked some of it up, surprised that it stuck together as he did. His valley was in an area that rarely, if ever, saw snow. It saw plenty of rain, but rarely got cold enough to snow, and when it did it was not enough to cover more than little patches here and there with a light covering of it. This...this was as magic!

The boy played in the fallen snow for a while, laughing at the shapes he could make in it, and leaving little piles of snow all around, like the dirt-castles he often made in the mud of the streams at home. When he had tired of this, he took some of the food from his pack, frowning at how hard it had gotten I the cold night. It was partially frozen. Snow was wet, how did he make a fire? He had gotten good at it, but had never been able to make one in any kind of precipitation. He tried, and he did not succeed. He cupped the pieces of dried meat in his hands for a while before eating them. It did not make them warm, but made them easier to chew at least. Saber was getting cold now. After he ate, discovering happily that he could eat the snow and it was like cold water, he gathered his pack and his belongings and continued his journey.

According to the entries in his journal pages, it was getting into the second moon-time of winter, always the bitterest in his village. Of course bitter in his village meant you had to wear pants, shoes, and long sleeves. Sometimes a cloak. Here bitter meant the wind howled, chapping Saber's cheeks and anything else that was exposed to the frigid air. Even through the heavy clothing he had he was cold.

Saber was a little bit worried. He knew you could die from being too hot, and had heard you could die from being too cold too. How cold did it have to be before you could freeze to death? This cold? Colder? He did know that the wind had picked up, and the snow was falling harder form above. It had been wonderful to see it for the first time, and fun to play in it...but now as he trudged through the wet snow that became increasingly deep, he began to think that he did not much care for snow unless he had a warm home to go to when he got tired of it.

During the day, Saber began to leave the trees behind as he continued sand was journeying uphill into barren, empty lands. And yet this was the way he needed to go to reach his home. He did not know what the land below his feet was like, covered in snow as it was, but he did know that the wind was getting stronger by the hour, and wondered if it would thunderstorm. Snow was like rain, right? Could it thunderstorm with snow? He did not know.

But if it had been rain, he would have been soaked by now, he knew that. As it was, trudging through the snow was beginning to saturate his thick leather boots as the day darkened towards night. By the time it was too dark to travel any more, his feet were soaked and getting numb. Trying to fight the fear of knowing he was too far from the last village to make it there, and knowing that winter was only now getting into its coldest times, he peeled the wet boots off, grimacing as the bitter wind actually was painful against his nearly numb feet. He bit his lip and pulled his jumpsuit legs down to cover them, and it was a little better. It pulled the clothing down uncomfortably around his neck, but that he could tolerate. The water-resistant jumpsuit was keeping the rest of him dry for now.

From one extreme to the other, his father always said when he witnessed something do one thing one minute, then the total opposite the next. This trip was definitely a case of that: He had nearly died in the sweltering desert, and now was afraid the same thing might happen here in the numbing cold. Building up a wall of snow around him, Saber curled up in the little crater he had made, covering his face by pulling his hat around it, and tried to sleep. It was not easy.

The next morning, the child traveler woke up and panicked. He felt hemmed in all around, and looked and saw white; only white. He sat up, moving snow aside, feeling some go down the front of the jumpsuit, feeling it above him, around him...he was buried alive! No, wait! Cautiously, Saber raised a hand through the light snow that had fallen during the night, and felt the cold wind through his glove as it broke the snow above. He stood and breathed a sigh of relief. That had been a shock, waking to discover it had snowed in his snow-shelter during the night, and snowed enough to come up to the top of his thigh!

The snow had fallen lightly enough so that his natural sleep movements had made cavities plenty airy enough to breathe, but still it was a shock. People were not meant to be buried in anything! Saber wearily ate, then walked on. During the night, his jumpsuit had slowly began to get wet, and by the middle of the day, the first moisture reached his skin. His light fur afforded some protection, but not much, He had had to don his soaked boots once more, and again his feet were almost numb, and he staggered through the deep snow as he walked. As many times before, he wished he was home, safe in his bed. His family would think him dead by now, he knew that.

As he walked, he kept blinking his eyes to the endless sea of snow. It stopped somewhere around noon, but he almost could not tell. If not for the fact he did not feel it anymore on his face, he would not have known it. All the boy saw was white, the reflective snow bouncing enough light so that even the shadows were banished. The sky looked white; the ground was white, everything! Saber was not able to tell where the land and the sky met, if he looked anywhere but to his own feet, he felt like he was walking in an empty void. He did not know the term snow-blind, but he now knew what it was like.

Shivering, half soaked, Saber continued walking even when night fell., He could not see anything during the day anyway, he saw no reason to let the dark stop him. He worked on feel alone, as nothing lived out here. Nothing moved, there was no sound, and the darkness was complete. The clouds covered the moon and the stars... He was very frightened. When he could go no further, he slept, but he had not gotten very far that day. He had been going steadily uphill the past week or so, but just in this day, the slope had radically steeper. Afraid he would not survive the next day, he slept.

Saber had been closer to death in the desert, but he did not know that. He knew hot weather, knew how much of it a person could take. The cold was unfamiliar. But he would have died within the week, had he not found shelter. Late in the afternoon that day, Saber began to see something in the endless white: a shadow, some hints of an icy blue.

Fervently hoping it was not his mind playing a trick on him, Saber waded through the snow, faster, as fast as he could. By the time afternoon was turning into evening, with the young boy fighting the slope of the mountain the whole way, he could see that his mind had not played a joke on him! He had hoped for a village, somewhere he could find some shelter...but this was the last thing he had expected. Before him as he stared was what he could have only called a palace. Like in the storybooks. "Wow...!"

A huge, tall front door graced the palace in the snow, leading up to a magnificent structure that tapered into towers and spires. As night fell, the boy approached slowly, wondering who lived in this magnificent place. He heard nothing still, but the wind, now having the spires to whistle through. Saber stumbled to the front door, pounding on it. "Hello?" he cried. "Is anyone there! I need help!" No answer...he felt the place was deserted...it had a creepy feel to it, as if it had been abandoned; he felt no one there.

Saber tried the door, but it did not budge but a bit. He looked up to see ice caked over the door, and bit his lip. He backed up and rammed the door, which had not been opened in centuries, jarring his numb skin and making it feel like it was burning. The ice around it had caked over many, many times, sometimes broken by the wind, and sometimes gaining enough weight to have fallen on its own. The half-frozen human child had to ram it several times, but the ice was not that strong, and finally he was able to break it. With trembling hands, that shook form excitement, fear, and mostly cold, Saber opened the doors.

Part 23: A Graveyard of Ice

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