Winter, White and Wicked - Shannon Dittemore Page 0,88
did what we had to, but I’ve no desire to be disrespectful.
Neither am I a fool. Giving up my seat means giving up the possibility of a quick retreat. And I can’t afford to do that.
More shifting, whispers. They’re waiting for me to make the first move. Strategic or respectful, I can’t decide. In the end, I turn toward them.
Only two have come, and they’ve brought a snowmobile.
A young man sits at the helm of the machine, blue rock striping his arms. He’s killed the engine, inching the skis forward with his feet. Crysel sits behind him, amber stone covering half her face, catching Winter’s light and turning her into an iridescent spirit being. Her hair is plaited and her arms are wrapped loosely around the man’s middle.
She wears a pair of soft leather trousers and a matching top, fur lining the seams. The sleeves almost reach her wrists. If I’d never seen her before, I’d have wondered how a child could look so sad.
“I’m sorry,” I say. “Sorry about your Great Father. About the mountain skittering. I’m so sorry about everything.” I let my eyes linger on her face and then his. They’re so clean. Both of them. Scrubbed and clothed and silent. I can’t imagine how such a thing is possible living in caves of mud and ice. But they’ve their secrets, the Shiv. And I suspect they’ve sacrificed much to keep the Desolation free of travelers.
Crysel climbs off the snowmobile and I scan her hands, looking for rocks.
“I understand the pool is sacred to you. I won’t do anything to dishonor your dead. I just need to find my friend.”
Crysel’s hands are empty. She steps closer and withdraws something from the top of her shirt, a triangular pendant hanging from a leather cord. Shyne’s necklace. She slips the cord over her head and offers it to me: a thick gold triangle, hollow, with etchings carved into the flat metal.
Paradyian.
“Shyne said you should have it,” she says.
“Why?”
“Because it belonged to your mother.”
She doesn’t mean Mistress Quine.
“He says he’s sorry it’s broken.” She tilts the pendant so I can see. It’s clear the hollow in the center was created to hold an adornment—a gem or a curio maybe. “He says you’ll never know how sorry he is that it’s broken.”
I’m not about to take this thing from her. It carries meaning, signifies acknowledgement of a reality I’m still not sure I believe. And it would fetch a lot of coin. This one pendant could feed them all for a year. But Crysel is impatient. She tiptoes forward and steps up onto the toe of my boot, using it to propel her high enough to drop the pendant around my neck.
The man behind her yanks the pull-rope on the snowmobile and the stench of petrol grows stronger as the engine revs to life. He glides the machine down the incline and out onto the Desolation, where he idles, waiting for the girl.
Crysel steps past me.
My mouth opens, but whatever question I mean to ask dies on my tongue. I’ve nothing to say, though I am sad to see her leave.
“It’s not often we’re allowed out on the ice,” she says, her shoulder blades like wings pressing through the leather. “But today, we send the dead to await Begynd. We will not bother you, Sessa. Not today.”
She leaves behind only footprints—all toes and no heel—as she steps onto the Desolation and climbs up behind the Shiv man. His thumb flicks forward and the engine thrums loud against the frozen pool. Despite the racket, the snowmobile is graceful on the ice, and it’s not long before their forms are nothing but dark shapes against the white.
They ride south, back toward High Pass, and I’m heading due east. I kick the engine to a rumble before I change my mind. Before I turn the bike around and climb back to the mines at North Bend. Before I beg Mars to explain the pendant I’m fighting to ignore.
Slowly, carefully, I drive the ice bike out onto the Desolation. Despite a slick layer of water that’s formed atop the lake, the pool is solid. No cracking, no pulling. It’s nothing like the river crossing at Crane Falls. I turn the bike in a slow circle, taking in the view behind me—the incline that somehow looks steeper from down here, the Shiv Road high above the tree line, the mines lost somewhere beyond it. The falls, rushing streams of white and blue—growing cascades that threaten to