Chapter summary: Stupid human! Telling me the best way to kill her. As if I needed the advice. And then rhapsodizing about her stupid sweet BLOOD! Hunting. Again. I HATE HER! Wait. What's this? She's outside walking through the snow IN SOCKS? Stupid human.
So, this is what it feels like to die. I stumbled along, remembering Rosalie's words from long ago — keep moving — but I no longer walked in a straight line. What was the point, anyway? If the tree was a half-way mark, then I must have passed the outhouse to my left or to my right a long time ago.
A long time ago.
And what would happen if it magically appeared right in front of me? It wouldn't be Rosalie's toasty centrally-steam-heated outhouse. Oh, no! It would be the same temperature as the snow as I was walking through ... in my socks. My frozen brain sent a message to what I hoped were my toes to wiggle. I didn't feel any response, perhaps the message was frozen in transit?
I knew someone had made this brilliant plan back in that swelteringly hot cabin — oh! how I wish I had a bank account of heat from there ... I think I would've gone into overdraft by now, but at least I would have something more than the memory of heat to warm me — I cursed that smug little girl in that cabin and her "brilliant" plans.
I hated that girl. Why did she have to kill me? Was it a career goal of hers? Actually, there seemed to be a line forming: Rosalie, the wolves, and now myself.
I was a complete mess: mucus formed two trails from my nose to my mouth, the once hot breath condensed around my now ineffectual sweater scarf adding more yuck around my mouth, and my eyes teared up from the cold adding to the agony that was my face.
I stopped to take stock. The mocking sun glowed directly overhead, high noon, but did not provide one iota of heat. How cruel! Why must the brightest days in winter be the coldest, the most brutal? The light reflecting off the snow on the ground, also known as the daggers slicing into what were my feet, nearly blinded me, hurting my eyes, keeping the tears flowing in a steady stream. I looked around again, hopelessly, for that magical, mystical outhouse to appear somewhere — anywhere — where I could see it and walk to. It wouldn't be warmer, but at least I could get my feet out of the snow, take off the socks and breathe on them at bit.
No outhouse.
Maybe I had gone too far to the right? I adjusted a bit to the left and looked hopefully in that direction.
Do you know the feeling when you get lost? You don't know you're lost until your hopelessly lost. Did you know that? When you're lost, you can't just say, "Well, I'll go back to the last place where I knew where I was, and backtrack from there." because you can't, because you're lost. I looked back at my trail. I could try to get back to the tree, I might make it there by nightfall. The zig-zag that was my trail mocked me. It said: "This time." Yes, this time I couldn't work my way out of it. I was going to die.
But that was okay. Actually, the pain had left me, and I felt numb ... actually I felt kind of good. A little tiny voice in my head screamed that this euphoric feeling was not okay, but I ignored it. What did it know? I looked back ahead, and commanded my legs forward.
They didn't move.
Well, I was kind of tired anyway. Perhaps I could rest here for a bit. That sounded reasonable. A little rest wouldn't kill me, and after that, I'd be as right as rain. I took the sweater off my head, and rolled it up to make a little pillow. The air kissed my now exposed cheeks comfortingly. I knelt down into the snow and looked for the best place to put my makeshift pillow. With the terrain being uneven I wanted to lie the right way so I wouldn't roll off the pillow. That would be unpleasant. Hm, how was this supposed to work? Thinking proved hard, besides, I was only going to rest for a little while ... I dropped the sweater onto the ground, and it unraveled into an untidy heap. This bothered me in an abstract way, and I knelt over to fix it up when I heard it.
It was the sound of a gale. I looked up from my shirt — I still needed to fix that pillow — and saw the oddest thing. It was a wall of snow, a wave, slicing across my field of vision. But it wasn't: the snow whorled and eddied and danced ... it actually looked like fire. Not that it was on fire, but it actually looked like a long line of white flame. At its head was a white torch, like the beam from a lighthouse. As I watched it with curiosity, it arced so that it was heading straight for me, and then, just as suddenly, it was in front of me, the angel from my dream.
But my dream had nothing on the angel. Clothed in white, but her face was the sun, a white sun, with eyes that were the brightest yellow flames, her wings unfurled ten feet out from her in either direction, swirling with majesty, her hands held lightning bolts — no, they were lightning bolts — her long golden hair waved like the ocean I hear Pa describe.
But this angel was Fury. She had come at me screaming, lips aglow with the brightest of reds, and pure anger burned in her flaming eyes. And now before me, her lips sealed her mouth closed and her eyes burned a darker golden color.
Golden color?
"Rosalie?" I asked. I thought she was a vampire. Her wings swirled away from her as she stopped. Wait a minute! Where did her wings go? But her face was still the sun: painful to look at directly, but impossible to look away from. She glared at me.
I was happy to see her. She looked so nice, all sunny like that. "You know, it's good to see you. I need to tell you something after I rest here a bit."
Then I saw something I thought I'd never see. The fury on her face was replaced by something different. Was that compassion? Fury-compassion-fury-compassion alternated and warred for supremacy on the sun before me. Eventually they made a compromise: they settled into irritation.
Well, it was good to see her, but she needed to resolve whatever issues she had on her own for now. I lay down on my rumpled sweater, not bothering to fix it anymore, and closed my eyes.
Movement. Being lifted. I grumbled. How can a girl get her sleep under these kinds of conditions? Angels or vampires or whatever she was didn't need to sleep, but I sure did. I opened my eyes to give her a piece of my mind, the piece that said "quit it!", but instead of telling her off, I reconsidered when I saw the outhouse right in front of me. Oh, yeah. I knew I was out here for some reason.
Actually, I had cheated a bit along the way. What is it about the cold that exacerbates the need to go? Whatever it was, I hated it, and now, so did my PJ bottoms, panties and pants. Perhaps I could ask her to move the hideaway locale to parts south? ... We could go to Hawaii and join the petition for Statehood. I imagined Rosalie in a grass skirt and snickered. The sun that held me looked at me with stormy-fiery eyes. She opened the door, and laid me on the shelf that held the seats.
"Don't move!" She grated out each word slowly and distinctly. And irritatedly.
Yup. It was Rosalie. 'Bossy' was somewhere on The List — I couldn't recall which number it was right now, as thinking was still a rather difficult concept for me ... calling me 'girl' was number 1, so I guess bossiness was number 2 or 3, tied with her shrugging and ambiguity — and, when I looked at her in the darkened outhouse, she wasn't the sun anymore. She was just plain old most-beautiful-creature-in-the-world Rosalie. I'd have to add that one to the list: even when she doesn't shine like the sun, she's got the rest of the world beat in the beauty department, hands down.
Well, 'don't move' wasn't a disagreeable order for me to follow right now, so I closed my eyes and waved bye-bye with one sock-covered hand. Just when I started to drift off again, the door opened and in walked Miss Bossy-Pants with two buckets. "Leave me alone!" I grumbled, but it was just a matter of form: there was just no arguing with her sometimes. Light from the candle, then steam. She held me upright and disrobed my lower half.
"Hey!" I actually liked my rather forceful argument, as it made a lot of sense to me, but Rosalie continued on, ignoring me as usual.
Boy, was she going to get it when we got back to the cabin, but good!
She held me with one arm under my arms and around my back, and seated me on the toilet.
"Would you make up your mind!" My complaint came out softly and sounded rather weak. I couldn't decide whether she was nice for a bossy person, or irritating as a helpful one. Always angry, always saving my life. Always running off, always right there at my darkest moments. This flip-flopping was getting rather annoying. I rested my head on her shoulder — it was actually rather comfy for granite or whatever — and finally drifted off.
...
I woke screaming.
No, you don't understand: from no dreams, no nothing, oblivion to agonizing pain lancing through my entire body. It was confusing, and I was bewildered. As I screamed my way into consciousness, I took my bearings. I was upright. I was facing the stove, some distance from it. The blanket tented behind me, and was held to me, and I was held up, by Rosalie.
Of course I was naked. What was her issue with my clothes!
But it didn't matter right now. What mattered was that my feet had gone from nonexistent to two pools of excruciating pain. And my hands, too. That wasn't the bad part. The bad part was that the numbness was fading away from my legs and arms. I didn't want that numbness to fade away, because I felt the replacement coming. It came. The pain, oh, the pain!
I screamed.
I couldn't form coherent thought. I couldn't move my mouth out of the 'O'. I couldn't escape from the pain.
I screamed. And, as I screamed, I now could do something new: I cried.
This, you see, was progress. I couldn't celebrate my gain, however: pain lanced through me again, gleefully.
I could do nothing but give myself to it as I screamed.