Page 83 of Echo North
Ivan studies the sky. “Storm coming.”
We put up the tent.
The ice is thick enough to build a fire on top of so we do, Ivan using a few scraps of our precious wood to roast strips of meat in the coals. We eat, and I try not to remember that the meat is pony.
It’s then that I notice the absence of the compass-watch’s steady ticking. I peer at it in the firelight—the clock has stopped once more, but the compass, when I check it, still points steadily north.
We shelter in the tent as the snow starts. The wind slams hard against the canvas, seeking, seeking, seeking to get in, to rip us away from the lake and fling us into the sky. The Wolf Queen’s voice echoes all around, a shrieking, eerie song. I shudder where I lie.
Ivan hears it, too. “The land feels her power. She wields winter like a sword—it should not have as strong a grip here as it does.”
“Do you think Hal is still alive?” I whisper. I can’t shake away the image of his dead eyes.
“If he wasn’t, she wouldn’t bother with us.”
I hold on to those words, try to take the comfort in them.
Sleep is a long time coming, but at last it finds me.
I dream again of the hall in the wood, and the stars burning fierce above it. Mokosh paces, her silver hair bound in tight braids. She’s dressed as if for battle, in plates of leather armor, with knives strapped across her back. The Wolf Queen watches her, passive, amused. I realize with a jolt why it isn’t strange for Mokosh to be there: the similarities between her and the Wolf Queen are striking, startling, in a way only parent and child could be. I wonder how I didn’t see it before.
“What worries you, my daughter?” asks the Queen.
Mokosh keeps pacing, restless, uneasy. “You underestimate her, Mother. She is coming. She will not stop, and you should take care.”
The Wolf Queen laughs. “You are just afraid she will see your face—your real face, and revile you.”
Mokosh snarls, drawing one of her knives. But the Wolf Queen gives a flick of her clawed hand and the knife falls to the ground.
“Time grows short. I fear you will not honor your promise.”
“Peace, Mokosh. You shall have your reward before two moons’ ending, and another besides: a Wolf Prince, for the daughter of the Wolf Queen.”
But Mokosh isn’t convinced. “The girl is stronger than you know. She has the power to defeat you.”
The Wolf Queen smiles, her teeth curling white past silver lips. “Let me worry about the girl.”
Hal is chained in the dark, clawing at his skin, screaming. Nettles grow up from the ground, piercing every part of him. “Why did you look?” he sobs. “Echo, why did you have to look?”
When I wake, a lamp is burning. It’s morning, but our tent is buried in snow. Ivan catches my eye. “We’ll have to dig ourselves out.”
It takes hours, and we rip the tent in the process. We’ll need to stitch it up before we can use it again.
We’re already weary before we even start for the day.
It’s hard going. Ice seeps under my collar and I can barely see for the wind blearing my vision. Ivan helps me tie a scarf around my mouth and nose, almost up to my eyes, and that helps a little.
The ice seems angry, shifting and groaning and thundering all around us. It no longer sounds like music. Ivan walks quickly; I can see the tension in his shoulders, and his fear scares me more than my own. The Wolf Queen’s reach is long, and if we fall through the ice, there will be no saving us.
On and on we go, leaning into the wind as the snow skitters across the surface of the frozen lake. Sometimes the wind sweeps the ice clean, and I can see once more the strong webbed cracks spidering out in all directions.
We come, sometime in the mid-afternoon, to a place on the lake where lumps of ice lie in furrows like a farmer’s field. They shine beneath the snow a brilliant, impossible turquoise. I stop to examine them and Ivan stops, too. My breath catches in my throat. “Beautiful.”
“Jewels from the North Wind’s crown,” says Ivan. “Lost when he traded his power away.” His face grows tight beneath the shadow of his furred hood. “There are many stories that tell of the jeweled ice of the north. A man once sold his soul to take a bit back south with him, only to find on his arrival home that it had melted away. That very night his soul was required of him.”
I try to shrug away my uneasiness.
“Some say the Wolf Queen’s magic was born in the ice.”
