18. Where It Ends #2
Despite my unique tolerance for the cold, I couldn’t remain here like this forever. Staying put where I had fallen in the snow for too long would finish me. I would perish. The cold would seep inside me and end me the way that it ended all living things.
And yet I could not summon the will to move. Not yet.
For long moments, perhaps hours—days?—I did not move.
Time was incalculable.
I gazed numbly, starkly, at the red night above me filling the space surrounding the gently swaying branches.
Dark smoke billowed in great, twisting spirals against the glow.
Lethargy pulled at me, deep and syrupy sweet, and I dimly realized the cold was working its power over me.
It would be so easy to surrender to the temptation of it, let it wash over and consume me.
They were all gone. Nothing could get past that bleak truth.
I’d always felt alone before . . . but now this? I was gutted, the ache left in the hollowed-out cavity of my chest so deep and gnawing and profound.
I was truly alone.
I wondered listlessly if I would become visible when I was dead? Would my corpse become corporeal then? Would my bones be stumbled upon later by bandits or soldiers? Or would the spell hold fast forever, even as I rotted to dust?
The cold howled, mingling with another sound. My ears pricked and sharpened, reaching for it, struggling to identify the noise.
It was the fading roar of those deadly beasts.
Between the crooked, snow-dusted branches, I spotted the great winged monsters soaring away in the night, the sails of their wings beating a pounding rhythm as they took flight.
They were leaving. One after the other, at least a dozen.
Damage done. Vengeance wreaked. Havoc inflicted.
They’d done what they had come here to do, and now they departed.
I could feel no relief.
I remained as I was, sinking into the snow.
My breathing slowed, sinking to shallow sips of air.
I blinked slowly, growing drowsy as my blood thickened, turning gel-like in my veins, trickling along, barely flowing at all.
The cold no longer stung. I no longer even felt cold at all.
I didn’t shiver anymore. I felt almost .
. . pleasant. As comfortable and cozy as I would in any bed of brick-warmed furs.
That was when I knew I was close to the end.
Close to joining Da and all the rest. I could just drift away, fall asleep, and never feel pain again.
Never feel . . . anything again.
It sounded good. Wonderful. I sighed, settling into the lure, the temptation of that.
I blinked several times, sluggish thoughts roiling through me.
Lethargy pulled me under . . . down, down, down.
I could join Da and Maretta. I could join my mother and finally meet her.
It would be so easy. An escape from the loss and the longing and the grief. I only needed to let go. Just. Let. Go.
No! Arden, get up! Get up, lass!
I came to as though roused from a deep sleep, blinking awake, sucking in a breath, my eyes flaring wide at the loud, insistent voice inside me that sounded an awful lot like Da’s deep baritone.
The words pushed out everything else. They jarred me and gave me a sudden surge of motivation, a desire to live, to keep fighting.
I had fought this long. Lost my childhood.
Endured so much for years. It would be wrong to give up now.
I rolled over, clawing fistfuls of snowy earth as I pushed to my feet and staggered out of the trees to stare down at my burning home. The fire had calmed, no longer stretching into the sky.
The dragons were gone, but still their handiwork smoldered, releasing smoke thick as soup.
I walked in a meandering line, unsteady on my feet, like someone deep in their cups.
I didn’t want to go back, but I forced myself.
I had to see. What if there were survivors?
Da. Maretta. Hilla. As unlikely as it seemed, I had to search.
Whatever their fate, I had to find them.
I couldn’t leave them there like rubbish in a burn pile.
They were more than that. They were people. They were loved. My loved ones.
The smoke in the air grew stronger as I advanced, and I knew it would simmer for days, the fumes mingling in the mist, seen by no one. Not that anyone was alive to see. I tasted the residue of ash and flame on my lips. It was all that was left.
And the dead.
I thought of them—the villagers who died screaming in terror and misery. I shook my head, steering my thoughts away from those visions. It was a frightening abyss waiting to devour me.
My boots crunched over the burnt ground. I lifted one foot after the other with the stoic resolve of an automaton as I entered my village—or what remained of it.
I moved through the smoke and sparking embers, the heat singeing my skin, electrifying my hair, crackling the ink-dark strands around me, lifting the tendrils from my shoulders in a great nimbus as I searched dazedly.
It was pointless. Even if I did find someone, a survivor, what could I do? They wouldn’t even be able to see me. I could offer no help.
Still, I searched among the rubble, finding only ruin, only death, and unearthing no one.
I am the last.
The only one left. If I could even be counted as someone. I wasn’t sure I mattered.
I sucked in a cold, ragged breath. “Hello?” I called out like a warbling bird, still putting my voice out there where no one could hear it, and not just because I was invisible, but because they were all gone. No one was alive to hear me.
I walked through what I believed was High Street, although it was beyond recognition and difficult to determine with any certainty.
I had trouble distinguishing the houses and buildings I once knew so well.
I was fairly certain of the meetinghouse.
It was the largest pile of rubble with flickering flames and embers still glowing hot in the pile of ashes.
Everything else was a blur of sameness: all dark, smoldering debris . . . and in the debris, the dead.
They were my people. They deserved a proper funeral with all the rites and ceremony due them. Although we did burn our dead in pyres, and I supposed that was what Isstad was now . . . one giant pyre, the final resting place of the charred remains of my people.