“Don’t, Darrow,” she says as I pull back the caribou skin. I turn. Her face peers out from our blankets.
“We will have to move if they live,” I say. “And you’re already sick. You’ll die.”
We have warmth here. Shelter.
“Then we will move in the morning,” she says. “I’m tougher than I look.”
Sometimes that is true. This time it is not.
I wake in the morning to find that she shifted in the night to curl into me for warmth. Her body is so frail. It trembles like a leaf in the wind. I smell her hair. She breathes softly. Salt tracks mark her face. I want Eo. I wish it were her hair, her warmth. But I don’t push Mustang away. There’s pain when I hold her, but it comes from the past, not from Mustang. She is something new, something hopeful. Like spring to my deep winter.
When morning comes, we move deeper into the woods and make a lean-to shelter against a rock face with fallen trees and packed snow. We never find out what happened to the Oathbreakers or our cave.
Mustang can barely sleep, she coughs so much. When she sleeps curled into me, I kiss the nape of her neck softly, softly so that she will not wake; though I secretly wish she would if just to know that I’m here. Her skin is hot. I hum the Song of Persephone.
“I can never remember the words,” she whispers to me. Her head lies in my lap tonight. “I wish I did.”
I have not sung since Lykos. My voice is raspy and raw. Slowly the song comes.
Listen, listen
Remember the wane
Of sun’s fury and waving grain
We fell and fell
And danced along
To croon a knell
Of rights and wrongs
And
My son, my son
Remember the burn
When leaves were fire and seasons turned
We fell and fell
And sang a song
To weave a cell
All autumn long
And
Down in the vale
Hear the reaper swing, the reaper swing
the reaper swing
Down in the vale
