They called it the dying winter before the
dying even began.
I woke to the cold before I woke to anything else. It was the kind of cold that settled deep, working its way into my joints and staying there. I lay still for a long moment, watching my breath cloud in the grey light that slipped through the cracks in the shutters. The fire must have died sometime in the night. I could feel it in the silence of the hearth, in the weight of the air pressing down on my chest.
The cot was narrow with ropes strung tight across the frame and a straw pallet thin enough that I could feel every knot in the wood beneath. The wool blanket was rough against my jaw, but I pulled it tighter anyway, not for warmth so much as for the weight of it and to feel the familiar scratch of it against my skin.
I stretched slowly, feeling the pull in my
shoulders along with the ache in my hands that never quite left after a day of hauling
timber or tracking animals through the underbrush. My fingers found the edge of
the blanket and held it there, not ready to let go of the warmth I had managed to keep through the night.
Then I smelled the pork.
It came to me faint at first, then stronger
as my senses woke to it. The scent of meat roasting, fat crackling over the fire, the edges turning crisp and golden. It was the kind of smell that made a man remember why he got up in the morning. Why he hauled timber, tracked deer, set traps and came home with his hands raw and his back aching.
Rose was up. She had been up for some time. I judged that for her to have the fire lit and have meat already cooking meant she had risen before the sun's light had crept through the house. She woke up early with her feet bare on the stone floor to blow on the embers until they caught, and fed them with kindling until the flames were high enough to warm the room and the pot above
it.
My sister was not known for rising early. On the contrary, she was known for sleeping late when she could, lingering in her cot with her hair loose and her eyes half closed. Waking her up felt more or less like a ritual on most days. But when she wanted something, when there was a favor she meant to ask, she became an entirely different creature. She rose with the dawn. She cooked. She made the house smell of pork, oats and the honeyed bread our mother had taught her to make before the fever took her.
I knew exactly what she wanted without thinking much. She had wanted it for weeks now, circling it the way a cat might circle a mouse, not quite pouncing but never quite looking away. She wanted to come with me into the forest. She wanted to hunt. She had asked me twice already, once while I was cleaning my bow and once while I was scraping a hide by the fire. Both times I had told her no, and both times she had accepted it with a look that said she had not accepted it at all. She was simply waiting for the right moment to ask again.
That moment, it seemed, had come.
I let out a slow breath and swung my legs
over the side of the cot. The floor was stone, worn smooth by generations of feet and it was cold enough to steal the warmth from my skin in seconds. I crossed the room quickly, but by the time I reached the hearth, the soles of my feet were numb and I was muttering something I would not repeat in front of my sister.
But the fire felt good. Rose had built it
high, and the flames danced, crackling and throwing their light against the walls. The pork was spitted above it, turning slowly. I watched the fat drip into the flames with a hiss that made my stomach clench with hunger. I stood there with my hands out, letting the warmth seep into my fingers.
When I turned, she was watching me from the table.
She was already dressed, which was unusual for her at this hour, in a wool dress the color of winter bracken and a linen apron that had been our mother's. Her hair was braided back from her face, and her cheeks were flushed from the heat of the fire. She was looking at me with an expression that was trying very hard to be innocent but not quite convincing.
"Morning, brother. You slept late," she said, slicing a loaf of bread.
I poured myself a cup of ale from the jug by the hearth and took the seat across from her. The ale was flat and sour, but it was warm, chasing the last of the cold from my chest. "You were up early."
"I was." She slid a slice of bread onto a
plate. "I wanted to have breakfast ready before you went out."
I watched her as I drank. She was too
cheerful, too quick with the plates and the bread, too eager to fill the silence with the clatter of her work. I had seen this before. Many times actually, and I had learned to recognize it the way a hunter learns to
recognize the signs of a snare hidden in the leaves.
Rose was my only sibling. Our parents had died twelve years ago to a fever that swept through the village taking them
both within a week of each other. I had been seventeen, old enough to keep the
house and the land, young enough to have no idea how. Rose had been five. Small,
quiet and too young to understand why her mother and father were not coming back.
After that tragedy, I did my best to raise
her. Fed her, clothed her, taught her what I could. But I was a hunter, not a father and I had learned quickly that a girl raised among traps, bows and the salted hides of deer was not going to turn out like the other girls in the
village.
Madam Sarah had told me as much, years ago when Rose was small and I was still trying to figure out what to do with her.
"She should be learning her letters," the old woman had said, watching Rose run
circles around the younger children with a stick in her hand and a ferocious grin on her face. "She should be learning to spin, to weave, to keep a house. Instead she's out there with you, learning to skin rabbits and set snares. What kind of life is that for a girl?"
I had not known how to answer her then. I was not sure I knew how to answer her now.
I tried my best in the years since. I had
sent Rose to the spinning house with the other girls, paying for her lessons with hides and smoked meat when coin was short. But she came back with torn sleeves and grass stains on her skirts, with stories of sneaking out to watch the boys practice with their bows. And every single time, she had that same stubborn set to her jaw that I saw in her now.
It was not her fault, I told myself. She had
been raised in a house of leather and steel, among traps, sharp blades and the long patience of the hunt. But some nights, when the fire was low and she was asleep in her cot, I wondered if it was mine.
"Something on your mind?" Rose asked,
watching me.
"I'm thinking."
"About what?"
I took another sip of ale. "About why my
sister is cooking me breakfast at dawn when she usually cannot drag herself out of bed before the sun is fully up."
She smiled, quick and bright, and I knew I
had caught her. "Can a woman not cook for her brother without being interrogated?"
"She can. But this woman does not, which
means you're either an imposter or you want something. So, what do you want?"
She busied herself with the spit, slicing a
portion of pork onto my plate and adding a thick cut of venison from the pot beside the fire. She set the bread beside it, the edges slightly burned and drizzled honey over everything until it gleamed in the firelight.
I looked at the plate. She was really in her
element.
"The snow came heavy last night," she said, settling back into her seat. "You said yourself that the deer go deep when the
storms come. That means they are trapped in the valleys and are most likely bunched
together. They should be easier to track as well, and your traps would have been working through the night. There could be something good waiting out there."
"There might be."
She looked at me curiously. "And what if
there isn't?"
"There will be."
"Anyways, I finished my chores early. The
water is drawn, the kindling is stacked, the garden is covered against the frost and the floor is cleaned. There is nothing that needs doing here that cannot wait until evening."
I picked up a piece of bread, chewing it
slowly as I watched her over the rim of my cup.
"I thought," she said, and there was
something in her voice now that was not quite pleading but close, "that perhaps you might let me come with you today. Just for a few hours. Check the traps, maybe reset them. Nothing extreme."
I set down my cup. "Rose."
"I have not been out with you in weeks.
Months, almost. You said yourself the forest is quiet, that the hunters are staying close to the village. If there is danger out there, should you not have someone watching your back?"
"I have my bow and my knife. I have been
hunting this forest since before you could walk."
"And I have been walking it since before I
could talk. You taught me everything I know. You taught me the trails, the streams and the way to move without sound. I am not a child anymore."
I looked at her. The firelight caught the
angles of her face. She was not a child, I knew that. But the knowing did not make the worry in my chest any lighter.
"No."
Her face fell. "Brother—"
"No." I reached for the ale, held it between
my hands, letting the warmth seep into my palms. "You are going back to the spinning house today, just like Madam Sarah told you. You are going to learn your letters and your numbers and whatever else it is the girls learn in there. And you are going to stay where I know you are safe."
"I have been safe in the forest before."
"That was summer. This is winter. The deer are starving, the predators are bold, and the ground is hard enough to break an
ankle on if you step wrong. I cannot watch you and track at the same time. I cannot risk you getting hurt because I was looking at the wrong thing at the wrong moment."
She opened her mouth to argue and I saw it in her face. The same stubborn refusal that had carried her through every closed door and every no I had ever given her. But something stopped her this time. Something
in my voice, perhaps, or the way I was looking at her. She closed her mouth and
looked down at the table.
"It has been months," she said quietly. "I
just thought—"
"I know what you thought." I reached across the table and took her hand, the same way I had when she was small, when the nightmares came and she needed something solid to hold onto. "And when spring comes, when the snow melts and the days are long again, I will take you out. We
will walk the old trails together. I will show you where the deer go when the green comes back. But not now."
She pulled away, unable to look at me. "Eat your breakfast. It will be cold before you finish arguing with me."
We ate in silence after that, the only sounds being the crackle of the fire and the scrape of knives against wood. Then the
door swung open and a streak of grey and white barreled across the floor, claws
skidding on the stone before launching himself at my legs.
Bran. He was a deerhound, long and lean with a coat rough as leather and ears that flopped over his face when he ran too fast. I had found him three winters ago, half frozen in a ditch. He had been the runt of a litter the shepherd's dog had whelped. Too small to work, too weak to keep. They had left him out, but I had brought him in and now he was
mine. Nursing him back to health while he was on the verge of death was an unforgettable experience for me, one that now made us inseparable.
I bent down and caught him before he could knock me off my stool. He squirmed in my arms, tail thumping against my chest,
tongue lolling out of his mouth in a wide, happy grin.
"Easy boy, easy." I rubbed my knuckles into the thick fur behind his ears just the way he liked, and his whole body went loose
with pleasure. "Has he had breakfast?"
Rose did not look up from her plate. "He ate an hour ago."
I kept my hands on Bran's fur, feeling the
warmth of him, the steady thrum of his heartbeat beneath my palms. "He is still
hungry."
"He is always hungry. That does not mean he needs more food."
I gave him a scrap of venison anyway which he swallowed in one gulp, his eyes fixed on my plate for more. I scratched
behind his ears again and let him settle at my feet, where he rested his head on my boots and watched the fire with the patient contentment of a dog with no worries in the world.
Rose was staring at her plate, her knife
forgotten in her hand. "You care more about that dog than you do about me."
The words landed flat, without heat and that was what made them hurt. I set down my bread.
"You know that is not true Rose."
"Is it not?" She finally looked up, and her
eyes were dry. Somehow that was worse than tears would have been. "You listen
to him when he whines at the door. You take him with you when you go out. You make sure he is fed before you leave, make sure he is warm, make sure he is safe."
"Rose—"
"I am not asking for the forest, brother. I
am asking for you to look at me the way you look after him. Like I am something worth keeping safe, not something to be locked away until you decide I am ready."
I let out a breath. "I do not want to keep
having this conversation. We have had it before, and we will have it again, and
nothing changes. You are a lady, Rose. You need to start acting like one."
She laughed bitterly at that. A short, sharp
sound that cut through the warmth of the kitchen. "A lady. Is that what you call it?"
"That is what it is."
"Sitting in the spinning house with my hands full of wool while you tell me what is proper and what is not. Learning my letters so I can write a letter to a husband I have not met. Wearing dresses that catch on every branch and shoes that slip on every stone. Tell me, brother, is that what a lady is?"
She pushed back from the table, her stool
scraping against the floor.
"Why do I need permission?" she asked. "Why does anyone get to tell me what I can and cannot do? If I decided tomorrow that
I wanted to be a hunter, that I wanted to walk the forest and set traps and bring home meat for my own table, why should anyone have a problem with that?"
"Because it is not ladylike."
She scoffed. "Ladylike. That is what you care about? What the village thinks? What Madam Sarah and the other elders think?
You stand there with your bow and your knives, with a dog at your feet and a forest full of deer waiting for you, yet you tell me that the shape of my dress matters more than what I can do."
"You are twisting my words Rose."
"I am saying them plain." She stepped back from the table, her hands clenched at her sides, and for a moment she looked
like a stranger to me. "You are just like the others. You tell me I can be anything, but what you mean is I can be anything you decide is allowed."
She turned before I could answer, her skirts brushing against the table as she walked toward her room. I heard her hand on the latch, heard the door open, and called out to her without meaning to.
"Rose."
She stopped, her back to me, her hand still on the frame.
"I will be out for a while. The traps need
checking before the snow covers them completely."
She did not turn. She did not speak. She
stood there without speaking, before stepping through the door and closing it behind her with a soft click that sounded
louder than any slam.
Bran whined at my feet, his head lifted, ears pricked toward her door. I reached down and touched his fur. "Don't worry, Bran. She'll be fine," I whispered. But it felt more like I was convincing myself.
I finished my breakfast without tasting it.
The pork had gone cold, the bread stiff and the honey congealed on the plate. I ate it anyway, because there was no sense in wasting food even though arguing with Rose had left a sour taste in my mouth.
When the plate was empty, I gathered my bow from beside the door, checked the string, slung the quiver over my shoulder and picked up my hunting bag. Bran rose with his tail wagging, his whole body alert with the promise of the hunt.
I paused at her door and raised my hand to knock, but I did not. "I will be back before dark," I said.
No answer. I had not expected one.
I opened the outer door and the cold rushed in to meet me, sharp and clean, carrying the smell of snow and pine along with the empty silence of the forest. Bran slipped past me into the white, running
with boundless energy.
I pulled the door closed behind me and stood for a moment on the threshold, looking out at the hills.
Somewhere out there, the traps were waiting. The deer were moving. The day was beginning whether I was ready for it or not.
But before that, I had to visit an old friend.
***************
The path to Niall's croft was buried under
fresh snow, making it difficult to navigate, but Bran knew the way better than I did. He wove ahead of me, his nose to the ground while I followed in the tracks he left, my boots sinking deep, the cold already working its way through the wool of my stockings.
Niall's place sat at the edge of the cleared
land where the fields gave way to the forest and the trees began their long climb up the hills. It was a low building like mine, with walls made of stone and timber and a roof thatched with heather that had gone grey with age. Smoke rose from the hole in the roof and I could smell the peat burning before I reached the door.
Bran barked once, twice, and the door opened before I could knock.
Niall filled the frame like a bear roused
from its den. He was a broad man, thick through the shoulders and chest, with hands that had been breaking ground since he was old enough to hold a plow. His beard was frosted with snow and his cheeks were red from the heat of his fire, but his eyes were sharp. The same sharpness that made him a better trader than any farmer had a right to be. Ever since I took up the hunting trade from my father, Niall had been my partner, helping me sell anything valuable I caught.
"Ah! Fancy seeing you this early." He grinned and stepped back, waving me in. "Come in, come in. I was just about to put the kettle on. You look like you could use something warm in you."
I shook my head, stamping the snow from my boots on the stone step. "I will not stay. I only wanted to see if you were about."
"Aye, I am about. I am always about. The
animals do not care if it is cold, and neither does the chief."
He said the word the way a man might say
storm or flood, with a weight that had nothing to do with the weather. I stepped inside anyway, because it would have been rude not to, and because the warmth of his fire pulled at me.
The croft was small, smaller than mine, but Niall had never married and did not need the space. A bed in the corner, a table by the hearth, a shelf of tools, pots and the salted meats he traded when the hunting was good. A bow leaned against the wall by the door, not as fine as mine but well cared for.
"Sit," he said, already moving toward the
hearth. "I have ale, if you want. Or tea. My mother sent tea, the good kind from the Lowlands."
"I cannot. I have traps to check, and the
snow will not wait."
He looked at me then, properly. His sharp
eyes taking in the bow on my shoulder, the quiver at my back, the dog waiting at my heels. "Expecting much?"
"The snow came hard last night. I want to see what's waiting for me before the light goes."
He nodded slowly, and I saw him make the same calculations I had made myself. The same weighing of hours and distance and the narrow window of daylight that winter allowed.
I leaned against the doorframe, letting the
warmth wash over me for a moment longer. "What about you? Are you busy this
morning?"
He snorted. "Busy enough. The chief wants a delivery sent up to the capital. Grain, mostly. Some wool, some salted fish.
The usual."
"The capital."
"Aye." He said it spitefully. "The Guardians
want to make sure the stores are full before the winter locks the roads. Or so they say. My guess is they want to remind everyone who is still in charge while the king's chair sits empty."
I did not answer. There was nothing to say
that we had not said before, standing in this doorway or at the market or in the tavern when the drink was flowing and the talk turned to the things that kept men awake at night.
Three years now since Alexander fell from his horse. Three years since the last king died and left nothing behind but a girl child in Norway with a pack of nobles who looked at the empty throne, itching to get their hands on power. The Guardians held the realm together with promises and threats, but everyone knew it was only a matter of time before something broke.
Niall crossed his arms over his chest, his
thick fingers tapping against his sleeve. "They say Edward of England is getting restless. The marriage negotiations have stalled, and he does not like being kept waiting."
"Edward can wait."
"Can he?" Niall's voice was low, almost
gentle. "The man has an army. A bloody good one at that. He has coin and ships and the kind of patience that comes from knowing he can take what he wants when he is done asking. The Maid is just a child. If she dies or if something happens to her on the crossing…"
He let the words hang in the air between us. The Maid of Norway, Margaret, the last thread of the old king's line. She was
supposed to come across the sea and sit in her father's chair to give the realm something to hold onto. But the sea was wide, winter was coming, and children died every day for less reason than a storm in the North Sea.
"If something happens to her," I said slowly, "then there will be war."
Niall nodded, his face grim. "Not if. When.
The nobles have already began choosing sides. Edward will not let this chance pass him by. He has been waiting for Scotland to fall since before we were born."
My mind wandered to the forest, of the traps waiting in the snow, to the deer moving through the valleys and the rabbits frozen in their burrows. Down here in the smoke and the warmth of Niall's croft, the talk of kings and wars seemed distant. Something from a song or a story told by traveling men. But it was not distant. It was here, in the grain
the chief was sending to the capital, in the salted fish packed in barrels, in the wool that would clothe soldiers who might one day march against the English king.
I pushed myself off the doorframe. "I have a feeling about today. The traps will be full, I think. The deer will have come down from the high ground when the snow hit. They'll be surprised once they find what I left for them."
Niall's eyebrows rose. "That confident?"
"It has been a lean week. I need it to turn."
He studied me for a moment and I saw the
question in his face. The same question Rose had asked about coming home empty-handed. But he was not my sister, and he did not press.
"If you are done with the chief's delivery,"
I said, "come find me. I will need a hand bringing back whatever I find."
He nodded slowly. "The chief's man is coming by midday, I think. If the roads are not too bad, I can have the cart loaded and on its way by noon. Three hours, maybe. Perhaps a little more."
"I will be at the lower traps by then. The
ones near the stream."
"The old oak?"
"Aye."
He nodded again, and this time there was
something lighter in his face. "I will find you. And if you are wrong about the traps being full, I will bring mead so we can drink to your misfortune."
I laughed, the first real laugh I had let out
since the morning. "And if I am right?"
"Then I will bring it anyway, and we will
drink to your good fortune."
Bran was already outside quivering with the need to move. I pulled my hood up against the cold and stepped back into the
white.
"Three hours," I said.
"Three hours," Niall agreed, as he closed the door against the wind.
I turned and followed the dog into the
forest, toward the stream and the old oak and the traps I had set yesterday. The morning was still young, and there was work to be done. Somewhere out there, the animals were waiting.
The first trap was at the base of the old
birch where the roots twisted out of the earth and made a natural funnel for anything moving along the stream bank. I saw the snow disturbed before I reached it. Dark patches against the white and my chest tightened with the first real hope I had felt all morning.
But it was a fox. The animal lay still, its
red fur matted with snow, eyes open and dark. The trap had caught it by the leg and it had struggled, dragging itself in circles until the snow around it was churned to mud. I knelt beside it and saw the damage. The leg was broken with the bone completely exposed in the cold air. It had been there for hours, maybe, pulling against the iron until exhaustion wore it down.
I put my hand on its side. The fur was
coarse, the body already cooling, but I could feel the last remnants of warmth beneath my palm. A fox was not worth the skin it carried. The fur was thin this time of year and the meat tough and stringy. The village would pay nothing for it. A pest. That was what the
farmers called them. A thief that took chickens and lambs leaving nothing behind but blood and feathers.
I drew my knife and ended it quickly. One
swift and clean motion, the way my father had taught me. The fox went still and I sat back on my heels. Bran whined beside me, his nose twitching at the scent of blood. I pushed him away and untangled the fox from the trap, setting the body aside where the crows would find it. Something would eat it. Something always did.
The next trap was empty. So was the one after that. I reset them anyway, checking the tension on the cords, smoothing the snow around the triggers. Doing the work that had to be done even though my mood was gradually getting worse.
The fourth trap was the one I had set at the bend of the stream, where the deer came down from the high ground to drink. I
saw the snow around it was trampled, the bank torn up by hooves and for a moment my heart lifted.
But there was no deer. Only the marks where one had been. I knelt in the snow and traced the lines of it, reading the story the way my father had taught me. A doe, I thought, from the size of the prints. She had come down to the water in the night, before the snow stopped and had stepped where she should not have stepped. The trap caught her. I saw the spot where the cord had snapped tight, the fur left behind on the trigger, the gouge in the frozen ground where she had tried to pull free.
But that was the problem: she had pulled
free. The cord was broken, frayed at the end where her weight had snapped it. She had taken her leg with her, I thought, or most of it. There was blood in the snow, not a lot, but enough to tell me she would not go far.
I followed the trail for a few steps, my eyes
on the ground looking for the signs. She had gone into the trees limping heavily, leaving a trail of broken branches and scattered snow. I could have tracked her. A wounded deer bleeding in the snow would not be hard to find.
But a wounded deer was also a dangerous one. And I was alone in the forest. Going too deep would be risky, and something about the way she had pulled free made me uneasy. The force required to snap a cord that held full-grown bucks and wild boars without breaking was almost impossible to imagine.
I went back and reset the trap, my mind on
the forest around me. Four traps empty, a fox I could not use and a deer that had escaped. I had been out for two hours, and I had absolutely nothing to show for it.
Bran had wandered ahead while I worked, his nose to the ground, his tail a pale blur against the trees. I heard him bark
once, twice, and then again, a high excited sound that meant he had found something. I did not call him back. He was a good dog. He knew the forest, which meant he knew not to chase what he could not catch. I kept walking, focusing my eyes on the next trap, my mind already moving past the disappointment of the morning.
The rabbit was a small thing, caught by the back leg. It was still alive when I reached it. I ended it quickly, just as I did the fox and felt a flicker of relief when I held it in my hands. It was not the deer I had hoped for. It was not the bounty I had promised myself when I set out in the grey light of dawn. But it was something. A hare for the pot of stew that Rose would make if she was speaking to me by tonight. I wrapped it in my bag and moved on, my steps lighter than they had been.
I was still thinking of Rose when I saw the
blood. A smear of it on a snow-covered root, black against the white. I stopped, my hand going to my knife without thought. The trail led away from the path into the deeper trees where the light barely reached. I should have gone the other way. I had what I came for and the morning was almost gone. Niall would be looking for me soon. There was nothing in that dark stretch of forest that I
needed to see.
But I followed it anyway.
The blood was not fresh. It had frozen in the cold, the edges of each drop crusted with ice. But beneath that crust it was still dark and wet. An hour, maybe two. Whatever had left it was not far, I judged.
The trail wound through the trees, up a small rise, down into a hollow where the snow lay deeper and the wind did not reach.
I walked slowly, my eyes on the ground and knife loose in my hand.
I found the deer at the edge of the hollow. It was a stag, or had been once. A really big animal, the kind that stayed high in the hills and only came down when the winter drove it. Its massive antlers were tangled in the low branches of a pine, the body half buried in the snow.
I stopped where I was, my breath clouding in front of my face, as I looked at it. The kill was not clean. It was not the work of a wolf or a bear or any kind of kill I had seen before. The kind that left tracks or signs which I could read. This was something else. The stag's belly had been ripped open, the ribs spread wide with all the organs gone. The wounds were not the work of teeth. They were long and deep cuts, the kind that a knife might make, or something much sharper.
And the blood was black. I had seen blood
freeze before. I had seen it darken in the cold and turn brown. But this was black. Black as the space between stars. As dark as the water in the deepest parts of the loch. It pooled beneath the stag's body, soaking into the snow.
I knelt slowly, my knees cracking in the
cold. The stag's body was still warm. I could feel it through my gloves. The last heat of it rising up through the torn flesh, through the ruined ribs, through the dark blood that stained my fingers when I touched it.
I pulled my hand back instinctively and
looked at the forest around me. The trees were still, the snow undisturbed except for my own tracks and the trail I had followed here. There was no sound, not even the wind.
I stood and my hand went to my mouth. "Bran." My voice was a croak, swallowed by the snow and the trees. I cleared my throat
and called again, louder. "Bran!"
The forest swallowed my voice, giving back nothing but silence.
I ran. The snow pulled at my legs, sinking my boots deeper with every stride. I ran until my chest was fire and my vision narrowed to the trees in front of me: the white ground, the dark trunks rushing past, the eerie silence that followed. Bran's name tore out of my throat again and again.
No answer. Nothing but my own breath, the thundering of my heart against my chest and the terrible stillness pressing in from all sides.
Then I heard him. The sound came from
somewhere ahead, muffled by the snow but unmistakable. A bark, high and sharp, the kind he made when he had cornered something. I ran toward it, my legs shaking,
my lungs burning. He barked again and this time there was something else in it.
Something I had never heard from him before. Fear.
I pushed even harder, my feet finding ground that slipped and gave way beneath me as branches whipped past my face. His
barks turned to whines, and I called his name again, my voice cracking. Then I broke through the trees into a clearing and I saw him.
Bran lay in the snow with his legs splayed, his body still. The white around him was black. I could see it soaking into his fur, pooling beneath him. His eyes were open, his mouth open, his chest still. And above him, standing over him was something that
should not have been there.
The figure was taller than any man I had ever seen, though it was hard to tell in the grey light. He wore black, a cloak or a
coat, something that swallowed the light and gave nothing back. His face was pale. Pale as the snow and his eyes were dark. Not dark like a man's eyes are dark, brown or grey or black in the way of living things. This was something unnatural.
I stopped where I was without meaning to. I tried to move but my legs would not answer. My arms hung at my sides uselessly. Every part of me that was still alive, that still remembered what it meant to be a man who hunted and killed and survived, was screaming. Run, it said. Run, run, run.
The figure tilted his head. The movement was slow and curious. His eyes traced the shape of me, from my face to my hands to
the bow I had not drawn, and then they moved to Bran, lying still in the snow.
Something in my chest unlocked. It wasn't courage or bravery. It was something close to instinct. The thing that made a man fight
when there was nothing left to do but die. And I knew I was going to die.
My hand found my knife even though I did not remember reaching for it. It was
there, cold in my palm. I moved my legs,
carrying me across the clearing with my arm raised. I aimed the blade at the figure but I did not reach him.
He moved even though I did not see him move. There was no moment between him being there and him being here, his hand around my wrist, his face close to mine, eyes filling my vision until there was nothing else. The knife fell from my fingers and I did not hear it land.
I was in the dark. Not the dark of the forest
or the dark of night. This was something else. It pressed against my eyes from
the inside, filling my ears with the sound of nothing, wrapping itself around my chest and squeezing. I tried to breathe but I could not. I tried to move but I could not. I tried to look away from his eyes but I could not, because there was nowhere else to look, nothing else to see, nothing in the world but the dark and the things moving in it.
I saw the sky first. A sun I did not know,
hanging low and swollen over a world that was not mine. I saw a shadow move across it slowly and patiently, eating the light piece by piece until nothing remained but a thin ring of fire. A circle of gold around a black so deep it seemed to drink the stars from the sky. The eclipse was not a natural thing. I
knew it without knowing how or why. It was a wound. A door opening. A hand reaching through the dark to take what it wanted.
Below it, the world burned. Cities that
should have been impossible rose against horizons that did not belong to any land I had ever walked. I saw towers of glass and steel. Pyramids that scraped the clouds and structures carved from what looked like diamonds. They were beautiful, in the way that mountains and storms are beautiful. And they were falling.
I saw the streets run red, and the red was
not the red of any blood I had ever seen. It moved like water but thicker, slower, pulsing with something that might have been life or might have been hunger. Bodies lay in gutters stacked on each other. Their shapes were not quite the shape of men. Longer limbs. Broader chests. Faces that had been
turned toward the sky in their final moments, their eyes still open, their mouths still frozen in the act of crying out.
Something moved among them. I saw it flow through the streets like smoke, and where it passed, the red grew deeper, the
shadows longer, the silence heavier.
Wake up.
I saw a hall with pillars of bone. The bones
rose toward a ceiling I could not find, and in the center of the hall, a figure knelt before a throne of black stone. The figure was not human. It could not be human. Its limbs bent at angles that made my mind recoil and its skin the color of old bruises. I could also see its face was a ruin of features that had once been beautiful. But still, it knelt. And seated above it on the throne, there was nothing. Only darkness. Only the shape of something that had been waiting for longer than the stars had been burning. The air around the throne was thick, heavy, wrong. It did not move. It did not breathe. It simply was, and the figure knelt.
I saw the eclipse again. A different sky, a
different world. The same shadow moving across the face of a sun that was smaller now, older, dimmer. The same cities falling. The same streets running red with something that had once been alive. But this world was older than the first, its cities built from something I could not recognize. And the dark that moved through it was slower now, more patient. It did not need to hurry. It had done this before. It would do it again.
I saw a world full of water. Endless water, colorless and heaving, stretching to a horizon that had no end. And something was rising from it. Something that had been sleeping for millennia. Something that had
been waiting for this exact moment. The water boiled when it rose, turning to steam.
Turning to nothing. The thing that emerged had no shape that I could hold in my mind. It was mass and hunger and a patience that had outlasted mountains. It did not move so much as unfold, each new limb longer than the last. Each new joint bending where no joint should bend. The water around it turned black, and the black spread.
Wake up!
I felt his hands on my head, turning it,
lifting my chin. I could not see him. I could not see anything but the dark and the things that moved in it. But I felt him. Felt the cold of him, the stillness of him, the weight of him pressing down on me. His mouth was at my neck. I could feel his breath, cold as the winter air. Then I felt his teeth.
The pain was not like any pain I had known. It was something that reached inside me, that found the place where my blood lived and pulledsomething I had not known could be taken. I felt myself falling into the dark, felt myself becoming the dark, felt the screams and the blood and the dying of the world pouring into me, through me, out of
me.
And in that moment, I saw a boy. A boy with dark blue hair and a face I recognized, lying in a room I had never seen. His eyes were open. His mouth was open. His hands were clutching at something I could not name. Something that was there and was not. Something that had been taken from him before he knew he had it. The room around him was soft, warm, safe. But he was not safe. He was falling the same way I was falling, and there was no bottom to the dark, no end to it, nothing but the falling and the cold and the eyes that watched from everywhere and nowhere.
WAKE UP!
Somewhere in the chaos, I found my voice. The scream tore from my throat raw and desperate, a sound I could barely recognise as my own. I poured everything into it. Every fear, every prayer, every last shred of hope that someone, anyone, would hear me as I choked on my own blood. But the forest swallowed it whole. The trees gave nothing back, not even an echo. The snow drank the sound and held it. And in the silence that followed, I finally understood. There was no one coming. There was no rescue waiting for me beyond the trees. There was nothing left in the world but the cold, and the dark, and the thing that held me in it's hands.