Chapter 27 Winter's Cruel Hand
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I come to the frozen world about me, woken by my churning stomach. My throat tightens and my mouth waters. The nausea works its way up into the back of my mouth. I scramble off Eric and barely crawl from him before the violent heaves tear through my body. I heave and heave and heave, nothing except the little water in my stomach and some green bile dripping out of my mouth and staining the white snow. I heave and heave, my body trapped in these violent contortions. Oh God, why am I sick!? I heave and heave, memories of that cruel winter rushing back to me. I woke up like this sometimes, violently ill, this bout of sickness not preceded by any cannibalistic nightmare. I became trapped in these heaving spells that would never seem to let up until exhaustion got the best of me. I heave, heave, and heave, retching out some more green bile mingled with spit. I heave and heave...and heave...and heave...and heave…The heaving finally stops.
I groan, my jaw too weak and too sore to close fully. My body suddenly grows too heavy on my hands and knees. My arms tremble, losing their strength. I shift my weight left and fall on my back on the rockhard snow. Pain shoots from my right shoulder down my arm and up my neck. I grit my teeth, my left hand shooting to clutch my neck and rub the cramping muscle there.
"Agh! Damn!" I barely manage to open my eyes, the cramping muscle in my neck unrelieved. Those same damn clouds stare down at me like a thousand eyes, somehow darker in their centers and only slightly lighter about them...like the whites of eyes surrounding their pupils. There is not a speck of blue sky, not a glimmer of sunshine breaking through. Just those same ominous clouds rolling over the land promising a cruel twist of fate to come. Surely the telltale signs of another winter storm about to rip its way through here.
My eyes widen. Eric! I try to sit up quickly, but it is a slow, arduous task just to prop myself on my elbows. My eyes fall on him—I freeze. I'm not sure if it was this winter or those blue eyes staring back at me that froze me!
"ERIC!" I scramble over to him and take his face in my hands, turning his limp head so he can look up at me. "Eric!" Indescribable joy swells my heart, almost making me burst open with praise. My eyes burn, needing dearly to weep. I blink my eyes—his eyes...are closed. The sweet, indescribable joy vanishes. I sink so low that there is no hope of resurfacing ever again. He still breathes on his own...am I seeing things? I remember back in my cell that as the cold took stronger hold of me, I would see things that weren't really there. Finn would appear in the strangest spots, sometimes even hanging from the rafters of my cell like a jungle cat slung across a tree limb. Sometimes I would see the hunting hounds trotting through the hall, or hear the chatter of a lively celebration going on. The worst of these unwilling imaginings were those of Mama and Papa standing outside my cell, both of them looking down on me with reproach...and those of Sara sitting up in her cell staring at me with those empty, black sockets—I shake my head of the thought.
I must eat. Though the thought of eating with this nausea twisting my insides makes me even more nauseous...but I must eat if I am to have any strength at all. I have already given up eight years and forty-six days of my life to sustain Eric, leaving me with only six years and sixty-six days left to live. That leaves me with God only knows how many days left to reach Vilgard. If Vilgard is four days away on foot from the abandoned mining settlement in good weather...Maker only knows how that converts to pushing a comatose man who weighs as much as a bear on a barely held together sled.
I sigh, the terrible truth finally becoming self-evident. I will never be able to get Eric to Vilgard by myself. The only way we'll make it now is by some miracle...which will never come. How could it? God has long since abandoned us. Hell, he probably never even existed! He was just a creation of men's idle minds to ease their worries about what comes after death. Of that I am almost certain, especially when there are evil ghosts of the past seeking to destroy this world. I scoff as I reach for the sack that we had stored our leftover cooked trout in. I rummage through it, pluck out a frostbitten piece of the pink meat, and force myself to tear a bite from the fish and swallow it whole. It's...tolerable. I think. I tear off a few more small bites and swallow them whole. I hope I can keep it down. My stomach is churning in protest. I tear off another bite and swallow the bit of frozen fish meat whole. Just as the frozen meat slides down my throat, my churning stomach worsens and bubbles up into my chest. My mouth produces too much spit. My throat tightens and my cheeks tingle. I drop onto my hands and knees as the heaving spell consumes me again. The ten bits of fish that I managed to swallow spill onto the snow, leaving my stomach hollow and aching. I heave more and more...until it finally ebbs.
Frustration builds and tangles with the persisting nausea, making me more sick to my stomach! I scream and fling the frostbitten fish across the snow. I cannot even stomach some damn fish! I fall back onto my heels and choke on a sob. As if there weren't enough odds stacked against me! Why not throw the inability to keep food down in there!? Why the hell not!?
I choke on another sob, my eyes falling on Eric. I have two choices now. I can push Eric onward for as long as I can. Maybe, by some longshot in the darkest of nights, somebody is out there. Somebody who will help us and not harm us. Though even the most sensible man would be fooling himself if he hoped on some would-be rescuers. My other choice...I can let Eric pass...as he was supposed to three nights ago. That thought churns my stomach and my heart and brings forth many tears.
I find myself shaking my head as tears brim in my eyes and spill down my cheeks, leaving behind the only wetness to be felt in this dying world. I don't want to imagine a world without Eric. I...I can't. It's that selfish remnant of me rearing its ugly head again. It drives me forward. I grab the edges of the sled on either side of his head and push onward, keeping the fissure of the valley to my left. Day twenty. No matter my qualms and guilts, I will keep moving forward. I must. I just...how can it end like this when Sara came into my life just as I am about to slip the noose over my head? How can it end like this after she broke her bones to hand me her tarnished ring for the impossible chance that I will one day escape my cell? How could she have known!? She was far from evil! She most certainly was not in league with whatever delvir was orchestrating this whole show! No, I cannot give up now. I know I will not make it to Vilgard, but I will keep pushing Eric along until either the cold or starvation claims me. All because the selfish remnant of me does not want all this to end on a sour note...and all because I do not want to live in a world without Eric in it.
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I keep pushing Eric along, my strength leaving me with each stride I take. I am exhausted. My body is so heavy. My eyes are heavier than that. How I want to close them...I shake my head, keeping myself awake. I glance down into the valley far below—my eyes widen and my heart misses a beat. There Sara stands at the bottom of the valley staring up at me with those empty black sockets of hers, blood dripping from her frostbitten muscle onto the snow. The top of her skull glistens in unseen light. I cannot help but stop and watch her. Horror grips me. I thought she was dead! How is she here!?
She bends over and picks up something off the ground with her hand, her fingers nothing but bone and sinew. She straightens and holds the object up to me. A rock...no...no, the same rock that I had used to crack open her bones to get to her frozen marrow!
Tears prick my eyes. "NO!" I bury my face in my hands. Guilt, remorse, disgust—it fills me, twists me in unnatural ways. I scream into my hands, barely muffling myself. My body shakes violently. I scream and scream, desperate for something. Relief, forgiveness. Anything!
"I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry!" I sob, crumbling into a shaking mess.
"OPEN YOUR EYES!" Sara shouts from the bottom of the valley.
"NO!" I scramble back from the valley, keeping my eyes squeezed shut.
"SNOW!" A hand grabs my shoulder! My eyes snap open. No!—I halt. There is no one here...no one. It's just me...Eric! I clamber through the snow on my hands and knees to reach him. I grab the sled on either side of his head and push with all my strength. The bitter cold is stealing my mind from me bit by bit, piece by piece, tormenting me with my ugliest sins. On top of all that, the pain in my right shoulder is a constant ache now, always there as a harsh reminder of my worsening injury.
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The day wears on unaffected by the troubles of men. How easy it would be to close my eyes right here in the midst of pushing this damn sled. It'd be the easiest thing to do, but that would mean completely halting our progress to Vilgard. I cannot close my eyes now. Not yet. Only when night comes and after I have given Eric some of my life can I afford to rest.
Something catches my eyes far above me. I should not look up lest another nightmare manifests in the waking world. I should not look. Though I know I shouldn't, my eyes drift up of their own accord. My heart takes off racing. There is Papa's body strung high up in the tree's branches, the noose barely able to hold his rotting corpse up there. His skin has mostly rotted away along with much of his muscle, yet enough of his flesh still clings to his skull for me to recognize him. He did not die peacefully. A look of horror is trapped in his face. I know that horror is for me, for the choice I made to welcome evil into my heart.
I whimper and tear my eyes from his dangling corpse. He's not there. He can't be...though I don't know what was done with his remains that fateful night. Good God, what happened to his body!? It never crossed my mind if he was rightfully laid to rest on the pyre...or Maker only knows what Finn and his wicked men did with Papa's remains. Perhaps, by some remaining goodness that Ravenna had in her then, she laid Papa to rest for me...if she would have ever considered doing such a thing after I betrayed her.
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This winter plays her final cruel hand. She whips up the winds and deepens her chill to something I have never felt before. She throws a sudden onslaught of snow in my face like many arrows. I try to keep my eyes open just enough to see and use my lashes to catch all the snow so that I can search for shelter. The last I see before the blizzard engulfs everything in white is a white wasteland and the gaping valley to my left. No pine trees to make tree wells out of. No snow drifts that would be suitable enough to dig a snow cave out of. Nothing.
Completely blinded, the vicious snowstorm grounds me right here. Wherever here is. The storm lashes at me in every direction, wrapping her winds about me like concord snakes. The only shelter I have is Eric and his coat. I grope about in the darkness, the wind howling in my ears. It's so hard to tell with how frozen and numb my hands are, but I think this is Eric. I crawl onto him and lie down on my stomach, pulling his coat over both our heads. The storm pounds on my back and tries to tear his coat from my grasp. I grip his coat as tight as possible, though I can barely bend my fingers anymore. I cannot lose his coat. I somehow have lost his precious deer pelt along the way. His coat is our only means of protection from this blizzard—a loud, harsh wind snatches his coat from my grasp!
"NO!" I grope after his coat, but my frozen fingers can barely move. "No!" I sob, the howling blizzard swallowing my cries. Oh God, why!? Why!? There's nothing left! There's not much more I can do! All I can do is shelter him with my own body now. I crawl further up his body and cover his head with my chest to protect his face from frostbite. I curl up about him, hugging his head to my breast with one arm. I reach down his chest with my other hand and find his heart. Tonight I will die. There is no way I can survive this cold. I will freeze to death. I am exhausted beyond what I have ever felt, my mind slipping from me. I am seeing people that aren't there. Hearing things, too. Many little odd sounds that cause me great fear. People whispering. Those wolfmen growling and sniffing about. Yet I know they cannot possibly be there.
I will myself to ignore the raging blizzard, the biting cold, the numbness, the exhaustion, the hunger, and focus on Eric's heart. I take his heart into my hand. The life I gave him is fading quickly, only eighty breaths left. The poison and this bitter cold will both steal his life from him if I do not give him more than three years. I know I will die tonight...but maybe, just maybe we are closer to Vilgard than I think. Maybe I need to keep a year for myself to get him to Vilgard. I can spare him five years and sixty-five days, but no more. Only for his sake, to possibly save him. I take Maacthis' knife and carve exactly five years and sixty-five days from my heart with three quick slices. A wonderful heat spills out of my heart and floods my chest, no longer feeling like molten iron. I force the five years and sixty-five days down the bridge and into Eric's heart. He gasps in a deep, agonal breath as my life soaks his heart through. Exhaustion crushes me like a mountain. I curl up about Eric with the last of my strength and let go.