Okay. No taking stock. Got it.
I should regroup.
I drag Kaelen and then Bern, step by arduous step, farther away from the river. Then I have to sit down and rest. I’m still freezing in my wet clothes.
My brain skips through useless ideas like making a travois, or going for help, or trying to find a way back up into the Barrows to look for the rest of our company. If I can find any wood on the ground beneath the few trees I see nearby, I’ll use it to start a fire, not in some futile attempt to build a travois. My first goal has to be to get them warm.
Get all of us warm, I amend as I shiver so hard my teeth chatter.
“I’ll be right back,” I tell Kaelen and Bern, though neither are conscious to hear me. The sound of my voice is comforting, though, so I decide to narrate my futile—no,valiant—efforts to save us from dying.
“Valiant is a much better word.” I trudge over to the trees, wondering when simply walking started to demand so much effort. My head injury and the various cuts, scrapes, and soon-to-be bruises from the draugrs’ attack, the fall, and the escape down the river are all burning now that the icy water isn’t numbing my skin. The bleeding slowed down, though. I have to believe that’s a good thing.
“Oh, thank Artemisen,” I say when I see branches on the ground beneath two of the trees. Then I grit my teeth at the irony almost before the phrase finishes leaving my lips. Maybe Artemisen should thankus. We’re certainly racking up the hardships on this rescue mission.
Ifgoddesses didn’t act like children, maybe we’d all be safe and sound at home, and … I’d never have met Kaelen. He’d be home doing princely things in Valourian—a Valourian that was never overrun by the Zhagarn and Fell.
I’d still be scrubbing floors and bookcases in the library, though, because nothing a goddess did caused my mother’s accident.
No. I don’t want to think about what-ifs that lead me back to that version of my life. As much as I hate to admit it, freezing and terrified on a journey to save a goddess might actually be preferable to the life I was living before all this started. I make the conscious choice not to examine that reality too closely.
Slowly, too slowly, I gather the materials to make a fire, then realize I don’t have any steel. When the draugr knocked me down, the dagger Chitai gave me flew out of my hand. But then I shove my hands into the deep pockets of my pants and smile, because I’m not completely out of luck.
First, the tube carrying my freedom from indenture is still in there. I hurriedly untie it and laugh out loud when I see the oilcloth protected the precious parchment, my pages, my snow leopard, and—less important, maybe—my small pouch of words. I manage a wry grin when I think of theFortitudeI braided in my hair, now lost to the river.
A streak of reckless determination shoots through me, and I reach in the pouch for a handful of paper scraps, searching through them until I findDefiance. I quickly re-braid my hair with the word, then carefully replace everything, secure it, and put the tube on a flat rock near me in the sun to dry the outside. Briefly, I consider adding the key to the tube, but I’m uneasy about the idea of letting it get even that far from me, so I keep it in the smaller pocket at my waist for now.
For a second bit of luck, I find the stone Neville gave me in my other pocket. I take a long time, fumbling with icy fingers and Kaelen’s sword, to start the fire. I think back to poor Sergeant Neville trying to talk to me about what to do if I got separated from the group, andhow I cut him off. How sure I was when I told him I wouldn’t survive.
The Soli who said those things feels like someone I only vaguely knew, long in my past. The Soli I am today is going to do everything in her power to save my injured companions and myself.
“I willdefinitelysurvive,” I tell the armload of branches I’m carrying back to the fire.
“Wewill survive,” I tell Kaelen and Bern while I try to make them as comfortable as I can next to the fire. “We have the first key. We can’t quit now, when we’re halfway there.”
I’ll stand watch and keep the fire burning until one or both of them wakes up, and then, together, we’ll figure out what to do. Then I huddle closer to the fire, Kaelen on one side and Bern on the other, and watch the sun rise higher into the clear, blue sky.
An hour later, the rain starts.
I’ll never admit this in the book I’ll someday write about this horrible journey, but that’s when I start crying. I’ve tried so hard to be brave and determined and fierce, and life keeps slapping me in my already-scarred face.
I can’t let despair completely gut me. I drag myself up off the ground and rush to put the tube carrying my precious freedom back into my pocket. Then I hurry back over to the trees, where I pile dirt and fallen leaves on the remaining branches, hoping to keep them at least somewhat dry, so I can start another fire when the rain stops. My clothes, which had finally started to dry, soak through again in seconds. I have nothing to use to cover Bern or the prince, so I sit and pull them closer until both of their heads are on my lap, cheek to cheek, and I lean forward to keep the worst of the rain off their faces with my body.
The cloak might have come in handy here.
When I start laughing helplessly, I realize I’m still crying, too, because some of the water streaming down my face is warm.
The next several hours are the longest of my life.
This isn’t the warm, gentle rain of summer. Icy sheets of water attack me like we’re at war and I’m a much-hated enemy. I’d raise a white flag if I could. Even as the ridiculous thought crosses my mind, thunder crashes nearby, making me jump, and then a brilliant streakof lightning slices through the sky not too far from us.
And there’s not a ravens-begotten thing I can do about any of it.
I can’t run away, because I have to protect Kaelen and Bern. I can’t drag them beneath the trees, because I’ve read that trees actually attract lightning strikes. Something about the sap, maybe?
I can’t believe I’m wondering about goddess-bedamned tree sap when goddess-bedamned lightning is about to crash down on our goddess-bedamned heads. My hand brushes against Kaelen’s cheek, and he turns his face into my palm, almost as if he wants me to stroke his hair.
I almost laugh at how much he reminds me of a kitchen cat that used to make the very same movement anytime I touched his head.
