His Frozen Fingertips Page 10

  “I just lost my horse,” he whispered. “I literally lost my horse.”

  “Ditto.” Asa whistled through his teeth. “But, hey, at least you didn’t die?”

  “Indeed.” Avery was soaking; voice disappearing into chatter as he fully registered what had happened. Asa wiped at his dripping clothes with his hand but soon denounced that as pointless. He asked if Avery was cold, but his friend either could not or did not want to hear as he just looked blankly at him. Asa checked over his shoulder. As he had suspected, Freda was gone, having bounded over the primitive bridge in pursuit of the bolting horse. He swore darkly under his breath. It would be harder going from now on, make no mistake.

  “Well,” Avery said distantly. “The road goes on, let us now do so too.”

  “Can you walk it?” Asa asked.

  “Sure I can.” A flush of slight pink returned to Avery’s cheeks in indignation. He strode forward, casting a supercilious glance at Asa. “Can you?”

  “Certainly.” Asa followed Avery for a moment, before seeing the pools of water. “You’re dripping.”

  “It was my intended look,” he replied, before breaking into a short laugh. “Who doesn’t look better when dripping wet and frozen to the bone?”

  They started to walk down the path, not knowing what else to do. Asa sighed. If only he had thought to restrain Freda! One pony was better than none at all. But no, he had been too intent upon saving someone a lot stronger and more powerful than him, someone who didn’t even need saving. He had let her go.

  Avery fell silent after a short while of attempting to describe the surrounding countryside. His comments had turned to shivery breaths, clouding in the cold air. Asa wrapped a supportive arm around his waist and tried to warm his cold skin. He was the temperature of a stone. Asa tried not to worry as the blond’s lips turned blue-grey. He felt for a pulse, only a languid thud every few moments in response. Avery stumbled over his own feet, body succumbing to the ice that seemed to spread through his every breath.

  Asa checked the sky above, noticing dusky shades of pink beginning to streak over it from the west. They couldn’t go much farther, not like this. He half dragged his friend off the path and into the surrounding trees, sitting him on a fallen trunk as he surveyed their options. Firstly, the trees here were thin and spindly. They were set too close to be of any use to him as a source of shelter. Secondly, there was a lot of snow on the ground. This was his only material to work with. Thirdly, the temperature was set to drop the darker it got. Avery would not survive the wind chill if he was not sheltered. Asa contemplated his surroundings, trying to understand how it would all fit together. The snow was key. There was no sudden rush of coherency, but gradual ideas began to float around his head. The snow was the key; there was no doubt in his mind. Look to the snow.

  He piled up a mound of the fluffy, unmarred snow, marvelling at the texture and crumbliness of it. His hands chilled as he smoothed it down, piling more on top. It was only when he had collected a huge pile of it, rounded at the top, that he stopped to decide what to do. He checked Avery, who was dozing on the log, eyelids twitching as he dreamed. He must move fast. A biting wind had started up as the sun sank below the horizon, turning Asa’s nose pink with cold. Avery’s face was an odd, drawn shade of grey.

  Asa glared at the pile of snow. He could not move it—it was as tall as he was. He could not build a house. He had no physical skills in this sense. It was Avery who was good at this, he was a miner.

  An idea occurred to him, brightening his previously gloomy demeanour. Reckless of the cold, Asa dug his fingers straight into the pile of snow. It resisted his entrance, which made him smile all the more. The wind and his hands had frozen it until the surface had turned to solid ice. He managed to carve out a considerable cavern in the pile of snow, digging down until his fingers met limp blades of grass. When the shelter was big enough for two people to huddle in, Asa started to smooth it down. The water on his hands began to freeze as he stroked the ceiling into one plane, a few inches all that was left between him and outside. It was warmer in the ice shelter, away from the wind outside.

  Once it was finished, Asa jogged outside to get Avery. The blond’s teeth were chattering, even in his sleep. Asa shook him awake.

  His hazel eyes opened, and Asa’s heart sank at their general fogginess. He took one of Avery’s limp hands and tugged him into a sitting position. From there he pulled his friend up until he was standing. Lurching with the extra mass he was carrying, Asa helped Avery through the snow. Avery tried to assist him by moving his feet, but this was for the most part useless and for the other unhelpful as he occasionally caught Asa’s limbs in his feeble kicks. Eventually they had staggered the few metres to the shelter, and Asa manoeuvred his friend inside and laid him down on the grass floor. It was at this moment that he had a horrible realisation. Their blankets and food were in the saddle bags attached to their absent horses. Asa looked down at the frozen form of his best friend, shivering in their icy shelter, and made up his mind.

  As quickly as he possibly could, Asa pulled his tunic over his head. The close material seemed to take all of its warmth with it. As he leant against the snow wall, metal clad back aching in protest of the temperatures, he draped his item of clothing over Avery’s prone form, watching his friend’s shaking slow and hearing the teeth chattering grow softer. He took off the protective metallic vest, knowing that it would freeze to his skin if they were to sleep that night. He lowered himself onto the ground, hissing as the cold spread all over his body. He left a minute amount of distance between Avery and himself, courtesy still ruling over his mannerisms. The blond moved closer to him, until they were nose to nose. Asa looked closely at Avery. There was so much that he had never noticed about him. How sharp the line of his jaw was, how defined his nose seemed in the dim, wintery light, how long his eyelashes were. If they ever got through this situation, Asa would definitely tease his friend about being such a girl.

  He curled in on himself, bare chest warm to his cold fingers. Unsure of what he would wake up to, Asa allowed himself to drift off into a fitful sleep of sorts.

  “You’ve made a rather bad mess of things again, haven’t you, Avery?”

  Asa woke quietly in the morning to the sound of his friend muttering to himself. He kept still, closing his eyes to a crack so that he could just see the outline of Avery sitting up in their small shelter. He moved slowly to get a better view, feeling goose bumps on his bare chest. Avery was looking in his general direction, eyes not quite focused upon Asa’s sleeping form.

  “He’s just gone and given you his own clothes because you managed to lose both your horses and your dignity. What a noble adventurer you are, indeed. He must be so cold.”

  “Not half so much as you were,” Asa replied flippantly, before clapping a hand over his mouth. Avery blushed scarlet, and then turned a mottled puce colour. He gaped wide-eyed at Asa.

  “You were listening?” he asked desperately, as though the answer could be no.

  Asa stretched leisurely, the cold feeling dissipating as he pulled his tunic roughly over his head. “Only for the last few moments, mate. Nothing too scandalous, I can assure you.”

  The purple receded from his friend’s cheeks, and he smiled in what looked to be extreme relief.

  “Well then, good morning.” He nodded at the snow roof above his head. “You were excellent last night. Thank you.”

  “No problem.” Asa was about to ask about breakfast but then remembered. “How does the morning greet you?”

  Avery frowned. “I feel as though I have run to the moon and back and then drunk my own body weight in alcohol. Otherwise, I’m great. Bring on more adventuring.”

  “Good for you,” Asa said wearily. He touched the metal vest cautiously, fingers shrinking back from the cold material. He stripped his tunic off again and dropped the armour-like garment on underneath before redressing. As he crawled out of the narrow opening which he had made the day previously, there was a curio
us jump in his chest, as though something flipped within him. It was not altogether painful but did not feel pleasant either.

  “You okay?” Avery asked from inside their shelter.

  “Fine,” Asa gasped.

  He shuffled away from the opening and lay down on the fluffy snow.

  Avery stuck his head out curiously. “You sure?”

  Asa sat up, slightly incredulously. “I think my heart literally skipped a beat.”

  “Seriously?” His friend pulled his body through the gap and stood up stiffly, cracking his back. “That doesn’t sound good. You okay now, though?”

  “Fine.” Asa stood up with him. “Let’s go. We need to make the most of this light with no horses.”

  Avery twitched. “You’re right. Eastwards, then.”

  “Until we drop off the very surface of the world itself,” Asa finished wryly. He walked past the shelter and stood on the path through the trees, waiting for his friend. The blond joined him then and together they walked off down the dirt track.

  It struck Asa then how very large the trees were. They towered over them both, casting grim shadows on the ground in front of their feet. The mists gave the woods a nasty chill, nothing too definite, just a sting on the end of each breath, a bitterness to the sweet morning air. The road crunched satisfyingly under their boots as they strode out the distance, feeling dampened yet still optimistic.

  However, Asa soon felt a sharp pang of hunger shoot through his stomach. He paused for a moment, hitting the offending organ with a bunched fist. Avery cocked his head to one side as he surveyed his self-injuring friend, but Asa muttered something about stomach trouble and they continued forward. The ache in his belly was growing with every breath he took in the cold wintery air, like it was caving in on itself. Never had Asa ever felt this kind of all-consuming hunger before in his life, not even when he had left Salatesh. He plodded miserably on, shoulders drooping with every dragged step. Avery checked him out, concerned.

  “You sure that you’re alright?” he asked Asa. “You look all peaky.”

  Asa rolled his eyes irritably. “I’m hungry.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Yeah, you should be.” He closed his eyes briefly, before blowing on his frozen fingertips and glancing up. “Don’t worry. I’ll be fine.”

  A little while later the path narrowed to go through some trees. People had been here recently; many makeshift shelters had been created. They were now covered in thick layers of snow. Unlike Asa’s ice cave, these were made from fallen boughs of trees, packed tightly around a tree in a cone shape. They were like little temples among the towering trees.

  A flicker of movement caught Asa’s eye. A white squirrel was scurrying over the frozen snow, carrying what seemed to be a nut of some sort. How odd, nuts were scarce at that time of the year, and only such sophisticated creatures as themselves would possibly be able to store food for the winter. He looked past the squirrel and saw another shelter, this one seemingly made from sticks and some sort of cloth. Sticking out into the snow were two pairs of tanned bare feet.

  “Look!” Asa exclaimed. “Travellers! Avery, we’re not the only people going east.”

  He squinted, still just about able to make out the two figures hunched inside their shelter about two hundred steps away.

  “Careful at it, Asa,” Avery warned. “You don’t know where the ground is under all that there snow.”

  “Pfft,” Asa scoffed. “I’ll be fine. They’re alright, aren’t they?”

  He started to make his way, albeit a bit more carefully this time, towards the shelter in front of him. Avery stood still a moment, and then followed.

  “So we’d hope,” he muttered darkly, so quiet that Asa only just heard it.

  He rolled his eyes, tramping through the inches of white cold. It stuck to his boots, cooling his feet inside. He could see the people up ahead. They appeared to be sleeping. That would explain their lack of response to their noise. Asa kicked a flurry up petulantly, waiting for Avery.

  “Hello?” Asa ducked under the collapsing structure, shaking a woman’s cold shoulder. The woman’s form was stiff and sinewy, skin stretched tight across bone. Her eyes were closed but there was no gentle swell under her lids. The long hair caught on Asa’s fingers, coming loose as easily as cobwebs. Asa shot backwards, hitting Avery roundly in the chest. Hastily, he spun around, eyes wide with horror. He retched at the sight before him, but he had not eaten in a while and so he could not force himself to be sick.

  “Asa?” his friend asked, concern ringing clear in his voice. “What’s wrong?”

  Asa struggled to speak for a few moments, the words leaden on his tongue.

  “They’re bodies.”

  “Oh, goodness. Are you alright?”

  “You’re asking if I’m alright?” Asa exclaimed, voice hollow from shock. “They’re dead!”

  “Yes.” Avery stepped towards them sadly, hazel eyes darting around the scene. “And they have been for quite some time, probably.”

  He respectfully removed the thin blanket that linked the two bodies, a man and a woman, and laid it aside. Asa let out a choked cry. The two figures were clad in loosely hanging uniforms of a fading maroon fabric. The same one of which they were wearing. Only not. These were articles for a much drier time. They were loose and light—a cotton shift for the lady and trousers and a jacket of the same stuff for the man. Avery looked through their two odd satchels to find many of the same things that they themselves had been given. Dried fruit, nuts, and strips of desiccated meat. He took one bag and held out the blanket for Asa to stuff into the other one.

  “Tell me they’re not—” Asa whispered.

  “Not all heroes live to be legends, Asa,” Avery said wearily. “Take the blanket.”

  “Avery!” Asa was appalled. “No!”

  “And suffer the same fate as them?” Avery snapped at Asa, a rare occurrence. “Take the blanket.”

  “But respect?”

  “Asa Hounslow, I will be damned if I let us both die for want of respect for a dead body. We can give them that through making sure that we are the last people who ever have to do this again.” Avery’s voice held such gravity that Asa took the blanket, and their tattered satchel. “This is the least which we can do. For us. For them. For the rest of our kind.”

  Asa swung the bag over his shoulders. He couldn’t argue that. His eyes caught upon the woman’s wasted face, heart sinking.

  “Avery?” he asked quietly.

  “We’re going, Asa,” Avery said stonily, voice and manner so unlike his usual mild self.

  “Shan’t we do something?”

  “Like what?” Asa heard his friend grit his teeth.

  “Bury them? Say something?” He kept his gaze on their skeletal forms. “We can’t just leave them here. We’re better than that.”

  “Are we?”

  “Yes,” Asa asserted. “We are.”

  He picked up a handful of snow and started to cover the bodies, as if he were dusting them with sugar. Avery raised an eyebrow, but Asa kept going. The snow stuck to his hands in a wet, cloying manner and dampened his sleeves in a way that made his arms all the more cold. Eventually, he had amassed a large mound of snow, which fully covered the couple. He briskly cleared the remains of their shelter, what was left. It had worn away so much that it was really not more than a few sticks and some cloth.

  Their minds a lot heavier for what they had seen, they followed their footsteps away from the camp and continued as quickly as they could on their way.

  “That upset you, didn’t it?” Avery asked his friend gently.

  Asa tried to stop his hands from shaking. “What if that is what happened to my parents? Doomed to eternity on this forsaken roadside. It’s not a pleasant thought, is it?”

  “I would embrace you but I assume that you would prefer not to.” Avery looked at a loss for words.

  “You are correct in that assumption.” Asa almost laughed.

  “How abou
t a nice professional handshake?” His friend held out a hand in offering.

  “Well,” Asa pretended to debate the matter. “I guess that could be okay. As long as it’s professional.”

  “All business, Asa.”

  They shook hands twice, Avery almost squashing Asa’s fingers beneath his. Asa withdrew his hand as though it had been burnt.

  “I believe that I detected some sentiment there, Mr. Hardy!” He laughed sadly. “I don’t want any pity shaking, thank you very much.”

  “It wasn’t in pity!” his friend protested. “I merely wanted to flatten your white, ladylike hands.”

  Asa just laughed.

  SIX

  THEY HAD LAIN FOR hours by a frozen lake, drinking mouthfuls of the water with cupped hands, too tired to even consider going forward. Both of them drifted in and out of consciousness even beneath the blankets that they had taken.

  “Are we going to die?” Asa asked.

  The water was thinner than that at home, sharper, airier. It seemed to be more fluid somehow. Frost burned their fingers and turned their throats to ice. Still, it filled their empty bellies, and Asa could not complain of being thirsty.