people has been hurt. Hunting yesterday, he fell.” Aki flinched as if he himself were injured. “We need food, too. The winter has been long this year. Vita’s window has been closed for a long time.”
“The window is closed because Vita is sick.”
He looked alarmed. “Very sick?”
I nodded. “I don’t think she will be able to bring you the things you need herself. But I can.”
Aki examined me, his eyes boring into me, and it seemed he was capable of seeing below the layers of skin and muscle, through the cage of my ribs and into my heart.
“You will be able to find us?” he asked.
I looked up the mountainside, imagining the village as Leopold had described it, nestled into a crevice of the mountain.
“Follow this path,” he said. He held back the branches of an enormous spruce tree to reveal a path beyond, worn deep into the stone of the mountain. “Straight up. I will wait for you.”
But before I could ask him how far I should climb, or where, exactly, he would wait, Aki slipped away. The branches of the spruce tree sprang back as he left, obscuring him in a crush of green needles.
There was no doubt that Vita’s strength had deteriorated since the last time I visited her rooms. She lay in bed, her skin glistening with fever. She was gaunt, little more than skin and bones, giving her the appearance, in the flickering firelight, of a cadaver. The heavy scent of perfume was gone. Now there was nothing but the smell of a life reducing to primary elements—sweat and urine and infection and sour breath. Vita would soon be gone.
Greta had been there recently—the fire burned strong in the fireplace. A full pitcher of water sat on her bedside table next to a bottle of pills.
“Vita.” I touched her hand and found her skin was cold and thin, dry as rice paper. “Vita, I need to speak with you.”
She opened her eyes and glanced at me. I regretted waking her, but Aki was waiting.
“Aki came back,” I said, holding up the leather sack.
“Already?” she asked, blinking her eyes, struggling to see.
“He says he needs more antibiotics and bandages.”
Vita struggled to sit up. I helped adjust her pillows, poured her a glass of water, and brought it to her mouth. “Someone was hurt?” she asked.
“One of them had an accident while hunting.”
“Who?”
I shook my head. “He didn’t say.”
She looked upset. “All of their supplies are in the pantry in the kitchen,” she said. “Bernadette manages them for me and reorders when we are low. If they require something we don’t have, a medication, for example, it can be ordered and dropped in. Just tell Bernadette.”
“Have you been to their village?”
“Many times. In fact, when I was younger, I spent weeks at a time living with them.”
“In their caves?” I asked, remembering Leopold’s field notes.
Vita smiled weakly. “They haven’t lived that way in my lifetime. They have stone houses now, well built and warmer than the caves. They build what they need—beds and furniture and so on. I have supplied them with what they cannot make—clothes, shoes, cookware, dishes, blankets, and so on. They know they can always come to me for help.”
“Aki was worried when I told him you were sick.”
“The Icemen need me to survive. If I die, they will most certainly suffer. There is a reason they are the last of their kind, you know. They cannot fend for themselves. That is why you are so important. You must help them when I’m gone.”
Vita pushed herself up in bed.
“They have a word for us in their language: kryschia. It means protector and educator. It began with Leopold. Every generation since Leopold has protected them except my father, Ambrose the coward. He not only stopped offering supplies—which is our duty—but he shot and killed one of them.”
I thought of the rope of hair in the trophy room, its thickness, its weight in my hands.
“Half of their population died during my father’s lifetime. When I came to understand who they were, and what my place was in their community, I vowed to never let that happen again. I have kept my promise, even when it was difficult. With medicines, warm clothing, seeds and simple technologies, I have helped them become stronger, better, capable of fighting the elements and illness. I have made them understand their position in relation to our kind—they know that they are different from every other human being on the planet, that they