Chapter 9 Silva #3
Silva shrieked in fear, whirling to find a figure standing between two headstones just to her left in a space she could have sworn was empty moments before.
He was tall and narrow, wrapped in layers of grey that blended so completely with the landscape, her eyes struggled to settle on him.
So great was the stranger’s camouflage in this frozen place that it took her several long, panicking moments to realize it wasn’t a man at all.
It was a moth, mottled white and grey, the layers of what she thought was fabric were wings.
His eyes were a washed-out blue, and what she’d thought was a fur scarf was his mantle, not unlike the fur wrap around her head.
You need to run. Run and scream and fight. You’re an elf, not a mouse. Don’t let them take you without a fight.
“Don’t.”
She hadn’t spoken, but it seemed he could discern her plan with ease.
Silva let out a shuddering breath, her hands clutched in a gesture of pleading.
“I-I’m not trying to wander. I was looking for someone, but I’ll leave.
I’ll leave right now.” Please let me leave.
She didn’t know why she thought she could do this.
The sentry regarded her in silence, his gaze lingering on her face, her hands, the line of her shoulders. His eyes dipped briefly to her coat pocket, where the key rested, before returning to her face.
“You possess Winter’s Bone. That grants you passage. Not permission.”
This was a mistake. She should never have left her house.
She should have stayed home and found another way to deal with her grief.
She could have developed a drinking problem, a gambling addiction, cheated on her husband with abandon.
All would have been more sensible than this.
Silva of the Daytime was a mouse, and when faced in a similar situation, Silva of the Nighttime had been as well .
. . but it was a mistake she’d already made, she reminded herself, even as she trembled. In for a penny.
“What’s the difference?” she heard herself ask.
He considered that. Considered her. The moth was unhurried, and she shivered in the cold. This is how they kill you. Slowness.
“Duration,” he answered at last, an echo of her thought.
She nodded, absorbing the response. It was as good as she could have hoped for. “I’m willing to leave now.”
The moth turned. “No. You entered; now you must be received. Permission is not mine to give. Follow.”
She should have stayed home, Silva cursed herself again, too afraid to not follow.
That jerk was right. Something is going to eat you.
She was too far from the gate to have been able to run, and the moth would have caught her easily.
You don’t want to find out what the punishment is for not listening.
There were more creatures on the perimeter of the gravestones.
Small white hares with beady black eyes, a graceful stag sitting beneath a tree that blended in so well with the snow, Silva was only able to ascertain what it was from the majestic antlers that rose from their head.
On the hill, a snowy-white fox sat watching.
As they walked, it began to snow, thick and blowing.
She had never felt further from Cambric Creek in her life.
Just beyond where she had parked her car, down the sloped embankment and across the field of headstones, the cemetery had a chapel.
She had seen it from the road, while she sat in her car sobbing noisily.
It wasn't terribly big, just a white block rectangle with a pitched roof of gray shingles, and a cupola with a small bell.
It was where the moth was leading her, she realized, struggling to follow behind in the deep snow.
Her footsteps were not leaving tracks. So far there was nothing about the landscape of this side of the gate that was terribly different from her own, save the animals and creatures she had no doubt would have made a meal of her if the moth had not intercepted, but these little reminders – distance stretching without her notice, the physical evidence of her existence being so easily discarded — made her shudder with something other than the cold.
Silva felt a shiver deep within her, realizing it was the first flutter that had made itself known since her arrival that morning, as if her invisible passenger had decided to tuck up beneath her lungs and remain as still as possible, keeping warm.
It’s alright. We’re alright. She didn’t know if that was true anymore, but she wasn’t about to admit it. Not yet.
They passed beneath an archway of ice without slowing, the chapel doors already open to receive their entry.
The whole building was encased in ice, she realized.
It did not glisten or drip, its surface opaque, as if the weak winter sunlight had been absorbed and stilled within the stone.
Inside it was colder. Colder and massive, all the proof she needed that she was no longer in the same world where her car was parked, just a few yards away, for she had been able to see the size of the chapel from the road. This hall dwarfed it.
“You will wait.”
An answer wasn’t expected, clearly. The moth didn’t spare her a backward glance as he strode into the adjoining room, the heavy doors closing with a thud.
Silva shivered. High above, she could see the sky.
The snow drifted down, although it never reached her, dissipating before it collected on the grey stone floors.
There was nothing ornate in the space, no glittering spires or whipped cream mounds of her imagination, but neither did it resemble the endless, gaudy expanse of her mother-in-law’s table.
The same flat, grey-white seemed to encase everything, like the personification of seasonal affective disorder.
She waited. Waited longer. At length, Silva realized that it was entirely possible that this was the punishment for wandering, and that she had been left to freeze to death in this silent, snowy hall.
She was shaking by the time the doors opened again, the moth coming back to her with no haste in his step. Duration. That’s the punishment.
“Follow. You are to be received by our Lady.”
He did not spare her a moment, turning back the way he’d come, obliging her to force her frozen limbs to work. When Silva was able to catch up enough to peek around him, she understood what receivement entailed, and wondered if freezing to death might have been the better option.
The throne room opened before her in a wide, echoing expanse of pale stone and frost. Pillars rose in clean, severe lines toward the ceiling, only to be lost in the wide-open sky.
The snow still fell. At the far end of the room, the throne waited.
It was carved from a single mass of ice, as flat and grey as the rest of the room, and the queen who sat upon it was as still as the stone and ice around her.
The white fox had followed them into the building, making her squeak in surprise when it passed them on the aisle, moving swiftly.
Silva wasn’t sure what she was expecting.
That it would sit beside the frozen queen as a pet, perhaps.
Instead, the fox rose up on two legs, transforming before her eyes into a slender fae with a thick white tail.
When the moth stopped walking, Silva nearly trod upon the edge of his wing.
“A wanderer. At the gate.” His voice was as flat and disaffected as it had been outside in the snow. “She says she wants to leave. She possesses a key.”
Silva considered that she could always throw her key as a distraction and make a run for it. Her footing was more confident now that she was indoors, and she refused to just stand there and wait to be eaten. You are an elf. You won’t go down without a fight.
The moth stepped aside, leaving Silva exposed, quaking in her little fur-lined boots.
It was the fox’s turn to speak. “You stand in the Court of Winter. You will plead your case directly to Her Majesty, the Queen of Ash and Silence.”
Silva trembled, waiting. The queen barely stirred, saying nothing.
She’s certainly living up to the name. She fidgeted for what felt like a small eternity under the woman’s clear, colorless gaze. You really are going to freeze to death, right there in front of them.
The fae woman on the throne was beautiful at first glance, but the longer Silva looked, the stranger her appearance seemed.
Her skin was bone white, her hair neither blonde nor silver, a slush-like platinum, hanging in frozen clumps around her shoulders.
She wore a crown of icicles, more in keeping with her own imagination, Silva thought, but the longer she looked, she realized that, too, was the Queen’s hair, pulled up and frozen in points.
Her face was gaunt, the shadows of her bones like dark bruises on her cheeks, as if she, too, were frozen in place, starving to death as a result.
The woman’s dress was as dreary and grey as her throne, and as she shifted, Silva could not discern where the throne ended and the dress began.
“This is Winter,” the Queen said abruptly, making Silva jump. “What remains after the harvest is taken. Speak, if you wish it.”
A slow breath, steadying herself. She would not be afraid.
She had a lifetime of preparation, and Silva of the Daytime never missed a line.
She was no amateur. She would be sweet. She would be charming.
And she would keep the upper hand, to the best of her ability.
And if you can’t, you beg. Knowing when to walk away from a hustle was key to enacting the next.