A young man stood on the boards of the Mylin city square, his feather cloak pulled tightly about his neck. The sky showed black clouds that signified heavy weather soon to come. Good, he thought, he could use the south-bound winds to help him on his journey. His sale hadn’t provided money enough to stay in town another night.
...
Miles away, the wind cried as it ripped through the branches outside the hovel built into the side of an oak.
“Verdeyan?” Unsa’s voice came from the next room.
“What now?” replied Verdeyan.
“Make sure you get everything. I’m serious, we can’t lose time. We must get away before the scouting party reaches us, and before that storm.”
Verdeyan nodded absently, continuing her packing. Her three changes of clothing, the shawl her grandmother had made, and her jet necklace lay in the bottom of her rucksack. She touched the bone needle she held from her sewing kit with the tip of one finger. The tip was blunt, she thought, reaching for the grinding block of mullar bone that lay on her bed beside her pack. She wrapped the bone needle and the grinding block in a scrap of fabric to insure they stayed together in her bag.
Next to pass through the opening of her bag was the Wind Spirit amulet, a small amber medallion carved with curving lines. Verdeyan smiled, recalling the pchant her father had taught her when she was twelve, detailing the Wind’s persuasion of the Great One to create the first winged people from the birds. A few more objects and her blanket completed her packing. Most of her possessions were in the family’s winter home in Preacce, the northernmost city in the Chamalaen range. Her brother was apprenticed there, where the glass-makers blew molten amber globules into richly contoured vessels. She sighed, longing for the warmth of the fires in the glassmaker’s shop.
“Verdeyan-” Unsa was in the doorway now.
“What did I forget now? I thought I’d already swept every surface in this place twice,” Verdeyan interrupted her mother.
“Stop this and listen. We must go, immediately. An un-planned party was seen ten miles from here; the lantern beacons are lighted.” Unsa breathlessly related the news.
Verdeyan nodded, closing her pack and slinging it onto her shoulders. She already wore her heaviest clothing; Unsa had insisted on putting out the fire two hours earlier to save fuel.
“Now,” Unsa reiterated, taking her daughter by the arm, pulling her through the door. They ran together, joined by Ashya, Unsa’s sister, who carried several large bundles. Ashya flailed wildly for a moment, trying to settle the cumbersome bags on her back. In desperation, she dropped one, and hefted the other baggage, following the two other women to the door.
Unsa and Verdeyan both leapt into the sky, flaring their wings to get lift. Ashya followed quickly. They set off southward, toward an emergency rendezvous point, where the few families in their rural community met during crisis.
They’d been traveling for mere minutes when the gale hit.
“Mom!” Verydeyan screamed, the words torn from her lips by the gusts of wind.
The updraft hit her wings, pushing up with such force any movement was nearly impossible; it forced her wings full; they felt as if they were going to tear from their place on her back. The air quickly grew thin and colder yet, her breath coming in sharp gasps of pain as the tendons and muscle in her wings stretched to accommodate the surges of wind. The world was a blur of gray. She couldn’t see her own hands, just the gray. Adrenaline had already wiped all thought from her mind. Then, as quickly as it came, the updraft disappeared, leaving her wings empty, as more air began sucking her down, the endless gray racing past. She opened her wings as wide as they’d go, tilting her body to gain altitude. But it wasn’t enough. Something hard, sharp, smashed into her face, stinging her eye. More and more impacts jolted her body, slowed her descent…branches. She caught one, dangling from it like a leaf, and clung tight. The gray whorled so fast, so heavy, she couldn’t see what it was she held onto, but she knew it must be a tree. Groping in the darkness, she pulled her body up onto the branch, and crawled, sensing by feel, with raw and bleeding hands, the way to the trunk. Somewhere near her destination, her arms gave out, and she collapsed into a fork in the branch she was on.
It was a dozen hours later that her eyes cracked open, revealing the bareness of the landscape around her. She was huddled against the trunk, halfway up a tree, its leaves hidden by the snow that coated its branches. Mom’s right about the flash storm, she thought, fear beginning to gnaw at her gut. How long had she been asleep? The sun was hidden, but a bright spot behind the clouds signaled its position; it was midmorning. Her stomach now gurgled hungrily at this news. There was one thing to do at present: get out of the tree.
She lifted her head, turning to face the trunk of the tree. Her muscles screamed in protest, one wing refusing to move from its limp, half-extended posture behind her back, drooping against her leg. She winced, recalling the battering she’d taken the night before. She tried to move again, realizing the likely extent of her injury: a dislocated wing, crushed broken bones.
She took a breath, trying to will the pain away before making the movement getting down required. She managed to turn to face the trunk, but not before the breath-stealing pain slashed through her back again. She had to cling tight for a moment, catching her breath, before relaxing enough to concentrate on picking her way down through the branches.
The process took nearly fifteen minutes, each movement triggering a blinding stab of pain, for her to make it to the ground. Just another step, she told herself with each movement. Just another step… Hunched in the snow at the foot of the tree, she thought it might have been better to just jump down. Then the pain would have only come twice; once to let go of the branch and jump; then when I hit the ground, she thought.
She counted to five, and let her body go limp, so that she fell backwards into the snow. Its cold bled through the feathers of her wings, and, as she had hoped, began to numb her injuries.
She lay until tingling permeated her limbs, creeping up her back and neck, before attempting to move. She stood awkwardly, the firey pain dimmed, replaced by the pervasive tingling of cold. Although she knew the numbness meant her skin was being damaged, she couldn’t suppress a stiff smile at her cleverness.
She picked her way through the two-foot deep snow, as often as needed, lying down again in the drifts to dull the pain. After some time, she tired, and, when she lay down, failed to rise.
…..
The young man shivered in his cloak, his chapped hands cracking from the cold, dry air.
“Gattlin, you fool,” he muttered, speaking as if he had a woman’s voice.
“Sure, that’s what Jonnalla’s saying right now. But she’ll see, as if she doesn’t already know, I’m not leaving. Not while mom’s around...If I’m even around…if…” He broke off, unable to finish what he was saying. If I’m not going to make it back, he thought. He shook his head, and continued trudging. The wind was too strong at the moment to fly, but he could still make headway walking. He’d already picked up several sizeable sticks for a growing bundle of firewood, which, when the opportunity appeared, he’d quickly use.
It was around noon when he saw it; a shape in the snow. A log? He wondered.
He dug at the shape with the toe of his boot, shuffling back when he realized the bright mass he’d uncovered by kicking snow was hair.
Merciful Keeper, he thought. Who is this?
Gattlin tilted his head, looking more closely at the shape. The unfortunate person appeared to still be breathing, judging by the slight rise and fall of the snow over its body.
“Hello?” he called.
The person in the snow moaned in reply.
He knelt, looking down at the face of the person; a girl of perhaps sixteen, skin nearly green from the cold. He took hold of her shoulder, and heaved her from the snowdrift. He shuffled a few awkward feet to the shade of a boulder, where he raked snow away with his feet to reveal a patch of rocky ground. He propped her against the side of the rock, and set to work building a fire.
…..
Verdeyan awoke to the crackle of a fire. She felt warmth searing her face, a cold, hardness behind her. Her vision revealed the dancing flames of a small campfire in front of her, and beside her, a teenage male wrapped in so much clothing his face was barely visible. He muttered something she didn’t comprehend, and thrust a bowl toward her. She reached out for it, but her hands shook, clumsy from the numbing cold, and he guided it to her mouth. She swallowed a salty hot broth before succumbing again to sleep.
He shook his arms, bending and stretching while he sat to stay warm. He stared meanwhile at the unconscious girl, wondering what he should do next, slowly drifting asleep himself after re-stocking the fire.
When Gattlin awoke, the snow was already melting, he supposed due to the sudden warm wind shooting up from the South. His companion still lay against the boulder, her breath making puffs of white in the air as she slept.
He sat for a few minutes, melting water in his pottery bowl on the embers from the night before. When the water qualified as tepid, he took the bowl off the coals and drank it. He put it back, adding some sticks to the coals to burn, and putting in more snow to melt, this time, for the girl.
He found his mind wandering. Who is she? He thought. Red hair, yellow-tan skin; probably Sleveten. It would be easier if we weren’t at war, he lamented.
