him as he died at my hands. I saw the humanity return to his eyes. I heard him pleading for mercy. He had not asked to be called from his grave, nor transformed into the monster he became. It was another who did that to him, another who must bear the guilt of what they made him. But if I had relented, if I had weakened, given way to pity, he would have become that demon again.
Isabela will forgive me in time. She will come to understand one day that sometimes mercy is not kindness and pity is not love. But I saw the momentary fear in her face when she looked at me, the same fear that I had seen in others when Valdis and I were children, and it hurt me.
No matter how far the wind may blow them off course, every wild creature feels the unseen paths and lines that draw it home. Even the dead can sense the road they must travel through the stars. I thought I would not remember the way back to the river of ice, but when I close my eyes and trust to my dreams, I feel the pull like a current of water over my skin. All I have to do is follow it.
I long for a hundred eyes to look everywhere at once. To see the black rocks and golden sedges, the white clouds and blue skies reflected so sharply in the still pools that it seems as if the pools contain the real clouds and what drifts above us in the blue lake of the sky is merely a reflection. I listen to the wind rustling the dried leaf stalks, and the cry of the sandpiper. I breathe in the clean, sweet fragrance of grass, and the rich, pungent scent of the bogs. I feel the breeze pulling my hair, and the soft cushions of moss beneath my bare feet. And I wish for only one thing – that Valdis could see and smell and hear and feel the light, that glorious light that bathes the whole world.
Isabela and Marcos trail after me. Isabela is constantly gazing around, her eyes searching the rock faces and the skies for any sign of the falcons. She is not pulled towards a place, but driven to move on until she finds what she seeks. The force of it will no more let her rest than it will me.
As for Marcos, he makes me smile. Whereas Isabela delights in the vast open spaces, the colours gliding softly into one another, russet, bronze and copper, gold, gentian and green, Marcos can see nothing but mud and water, rocks to trip him and bogs to fall in. He stomps along, his shoulders hunched miserably against the cold, giving fearful glances at the emptiness as if he is constantly searching for some little corner to hide away from it all.
When night returns we seek the shelter of some rocks and nibble on the remains of the dried mutton strips that Fannar insisted on sharing with us and quench our thirst in an icy stream. We huddle against the rocks and try to sleep a little, but I am too restless to settle. I can tell from their tossing and turning that Isabela and Marcos cannot sleep either. So as soon as the moon rises high enough to gild the rocks and pools, I shake them and we move on.
It is cold. I had forgotten what cold feels like during all those years in the cave, the way it sets your teeth aching, your muscles tightening against it till they moan. My skirts are thick enough, but I have only the thin wrap around my breasts. If I was alone I would take Valdis’s wrap to help cover me, but even though she is dead, I cannot expose her naked to strangers.
We make slower progress at night. The moon casts long shadows of us as we walk, but we can see the glint of its reflection to warn us of marsh pools and streams, and as long as I trust to the sense that is calling me I know we will not be led astray.
Suddenly the sharp wind carries the smell of the ice to us and, as we round the curve of the hillside, I stop as a thrill of excitement and joy shudders through me. There, between two jagged rocks, which rise like pillars on either side, is the vast, glittering expanse of blue