A Mischief in the Woodwork

CHAPTER 21

Ombri

I gasped, possessed by that frosty breath of air, and it took a moment to recover from the shock. Only then could I address what I had actually bared before me, and the struggle for real comprehension began.

Snow flurries spilled into the city through the portal I had opened, and instead of staring at the other side of the rubble heap, I found myself staring into a dark, blizzard-torn land of winter. The door, pushed inward, was whipped wider open and pummeled against... It was hard to say what it was pummeled against. Air? A wall? Wraithlike winds ripped past, cold and screaming and white.

One might argue that the elements discovered past the open door would further sway my decision in an unfavorable direction, persuading me, in the end, that it wasn't worth pursuing what lay beyond that threshold. But I did not heed that obvious voice of reason. Finding further dissuasion didn't seem to change the game at all. I still wanted to know what lay through that door. 'Snow' did not answer the curiosity.

Bracing myself for the onslaught, I took a step forward, standing framed by the door for a moment, alighted on the cold, slightly-slanted threshold, before I dredged up what it took to take another step, into that other world, and penetrate the wind.

I was assaulted as keenly as if doused by a wave at sea, instantly bitten down to the bone. I resisted staggering, and squinted against the current. Snow crunched under my boots. I could see nothing, which I should have realized would be the case. A single step over the threshold would gain me nothing over what I could see from without. But only then did it occur to me that I would have to tread deeper, and I glanced over my shoulder, as if to assure myself that the door still lay open, faithfully awaiting my return. I could see the rubble on the other side, a golden city next to the bitter dark landscape of this other place.

Of course I could not say how far I would have to tread to see anything, nor how far I was willing to tread. I simply decided I could go further. A little bit, anyway, however much that was.

Steeling myself against the cold, I pressed further in, trying in vain to penetrate the blowing white walls with my vision. After a few steps I stopped, for the golden doorway was disappearing behind me, obscured by the storm. I stood a moment, though, letting it blow around me, recognizing the inconsistencies in the winds and hoping I might see something through them. The wind strengthened and lessened, sometimes a scream, sometimes a whistle. Gusts, then flurries. I let it swirl about, running its course, until the moment finally came when there was a break. A flurry rushed by, thinned, and for a moment the area was purged roughly clear.

There was a form, ahead of me. Something huddled in the snow a dozen paces in. I only had time to catch one clear glimpse before the flurries were back. They were lighter now, less intense, but erased the form from view in troublesome intervals. I took one more glance over my shoulder at the door, reluctant to lose sight of it, but what I had seen nagged at me too much not to investigate.

I treaded forward, dredging my way through the snow and wind. Tiny ice crystals stabbed at me like swarms of wicked, frozen insects. I pressed through it, trying to discern the form for what it was as glimpses permitted. Something of dark hues – but all was dark. Pieces of it fluttered in the propelling gusts, around its edges.

Then I was distracted by the further lessening of the wind, as it died down enough for me to glean mirages of something even more arresting – the surrounding landscape. The obscurity began to mellow out and reveal more of the world that I had stepped into, beginning to provide tantalizing impressions of sweeping cliffsides and colossal mountain bluffs, and what was more breath-taking: the unthinkable vast expanse that fell away from the path that I walked.

I faltered, glimpsing the drop. What manner of platform was I on? My wariness returned to me. Prolonging my newfound hesitance, I waited for the blizzard to subside further, seeking enlightenment regarding my course. When the currents spread themselves thin and the tail ends momentarily swirled away, I suddenly found myself halfway out on a narrow projection of ridge. It was a good two paces wide, but it was the immense way the world fell away all around it that rendered that fact irrelevant. I had stood atop mountains of rubble in my days, but could never have been prepared for the feeling of such godly altitude. Surely nothing was this vast except where the gods needed room to breathe. I would plummet for miles – decades – if I fell from this height. And the cliffs, the mountains...they were all so massive at this scale, great hulking giants that towered and dwarfed me like the smallest creature in the world. It seemed impossible that my meek voice would even echo, here; the expanse was far too vast.

Overwhelmed, my mind stuttered back to the form huddled in the snow ahead of me. It lay at the end of the ridge, perched just shy of the edge. The flutters, I could see now, were the edges of a tattered cloak – and a head of hair, at one end. A human. Small and frighteningly still aside from the billowing of cloth and hair. Dead?

I moved forward again, aware of the boundaries it was safe to stick to. Staying the middle of the path, I came upon the form, my breath issuing into the frozen air in ghostly puffs. Pixie-like snowflakes drifted by, dancing like undead fairies in the deathly cold. Carefully, I stooped, watching the form for motion. It was disquieting, the need to uncover its face. I wished it had laid there revealed for what – who – it was, not requiring intimate investigation. Was it a corpse? I had no desire to uncover the face of a dead person.

But the possibility that it wasn't drove my hand, and I reached carefully for the cowl that hid its face. Kinky tresses of brown hair blew against my arm, coarse and soft at once. It was impossible to say what color brown the hair was. Light? Dark? Both, without straying from a solid color? I suppose that was what color it was: impossible brown. My fingers curled around the cloth of the contrasting, simple black cowl, a tragically thin garment considering the elements, and I drew it slowly down, away from the face that belonged to such a mane.

And my first impression of the skin: blue. But it was only an effect of the cold, stained from its original creamy olive color. I took it at first as a mature face, fooled by the hardship and deathly hollowness that haunted it, but quickly realized I was far from the mark. This was the face of a child.

Dread and hope stirred through me in equal amounts. I brushed her hair back from her face and neck, feeling for a pulse. At first there was nothing but the cold of my own fingers pressed against her hollow little neck, but then there was a spark – a vision I forgot to anticipate, thawing through the numbness of my fingertips. I closed my eyes against it, willing myself not to flinch away. Then came the second response, a small, faint beat like a baby bird budging for the first time in its little egg. A tiny hint of a pulse.

I opened my eyes, hope overriding the dread. Now was the time to act, if I wanted to save what was left of her. I did not question where she came from, how she got there, or even where 'there' was. There was time for that later. I bent over her and slipped my arms beneath her form, and proceeded to get to my feet. As I adjusted my weight to lift her, I shifted forward, slightly, and my eyes spilled over the edge of the ridge. I eyed the expanse gravely as I straightened, taking it in one more time from my paramount stance on that pedestal, before turning to spirit my charge back toward the door that had led there. The snow crunched and creaked over the faint gusts that spilled through the heights now, and the door rattled gently against the cliffside that it had slammed open against. The city was a welcome, golden place beyond, never having looked so inviting. Normally it was that infamous place, only breached when necessary, but shining through that doorway, it looked nothing but homey to me.

I walked across that crust of sky with the unconscious girl wrapped in my strong arms, her head lolling against my collarbone. Her feet clacked now and then against my hip. Across the height of that frigid wasteland and into the arms of that doorway we trudged. At the door I turned sideways, sidled her through, and we were delivered back through that portal. I turned to see about closing the door, but as if by some almighty fist, it slammed in my face.

Wind.

That settled, I turned back down the bank of rubble that had hosted the escapade, descending past the line of collapsed dominoes. The girl was light as a bird in my arms, but I knew I would tire before we reached home. I turned my attention to finding my way back across the altered landscape, cursing the shift that had me all turned around. Where in the gods' names had I been spirited? It took more scaling of tall mounds to get my bearings than I had strength reserved for, if I wanted to make it home once I pinpointed it. At one point, I left the girl at the bottom to preserve my strength. And again, feeling like I was running out of time, neglecting her state. Abusing it. It was frustrating, having gotten her out, only to be lost and pressed for time in my own city. She was not safe yet.

Finally, I got my feet on the right path. I could not count on the path staying the same, but it was a start. I knew the ground under my boots. I knew the alignment of rubble and the precise way the powder whispered against the soles of my boots. It was familiar territory, and I dedicated my feet to it, trusting my instinct now.

My frostbitten cheeks protested the flush that rose from my exertions. It was like putting hot glass under cold water, only the other way around. But the same outcome, or at least it felt like it: they felt ruptured. Raw. Cut to the bone. I blinked my eyes hard, trying to stimulate the cold muscles in my face.

Come on, darling, I urged the girl in my arms, knowing she was much worse off than I was. All that ailed me was a little discomfort. Who was to say how long she had been out there on that ridge?

The blue was warming from her face by the time I made it down the long road home, but seeing the color that took its place put something else unsettling in my mind. It was not dark enough to be Serbaen, not light enough to match the native whites. And her hair, that impossible brown color. A hybrid color. It occurred to me that what I held in my arms had all the appearances of a halfbreed.

I had never seen such a thing before.

One heard of these things, rare cases. Anomalies whose fates were left up to a grave sense of interpretation. It was not hard to gather that hybrids were treated worse than the darkskins themselves. Abominations, rather than mere inferior creatures. They were seen as corrupted. Half whiteskin, half demon. Possessed and inseparable.

The verdict for such a creature could never be favorable.

I let the implications of her identity slide off the back of my mind, ignoring them in the light of her present crisis. It was not as if we had nosy neighbors or a reputation to uphold. Our masters didn't even come downstairs. I did not care what color she was, or wasn't, past the concern of her blue tinge. We did not live in a time of conforming to society's cultivated ideals. Superiority was a thing determined by who won in a quarrel over food or supplies. A simple fact in the necessity of the food chain. It could never be preconceived. That was its beauty. Also its threat. Much better to avoid finding out, to not seek the glory of one being better than the other, unless absolutely necessary. And the outcome could always be attributed to chance. And it was always sad, truly.

I could be the first to admit that it was hard not to root for the other guy, just a little bit, when he was after the same means of survival I was. When he was just as passionate – desperate? – about attaining it. It did not feel good to snuff his chances. Only relieving.

As anticipated, my arms ached when I reached Manor Dorn. Dashsund was on the porch, and saw me. He could not know the details of what I bore with me, but the right amount of comprehension lit in his eyes. He reacted accordingly, coming to help.

“I found her,” I announced, my voice slightly cracked from the ache of exertion in my chest. He slipped his arms under my bundle and lifted her from me. My arms resisted straightening, the muscles trained on clenching. I worked the ache out of the fused joints as I followed him up the porch, my face contorted with the pain. It seemed more intense now that she was out of my arms, as if only the clenching of my muscles had held my arms together, and now they were free to fall apart.

Dashsund surely concluded the same thing I did about the girl, but he said nothing either. He put her down on the cot off of the kitchen, and then started doing the sensible things that one ought to partake in when another's well-being was at stake. Things that, any other day, I would have jumped to help him with, if I hadn't already beat him to it. But I – I was distracted by my fingers, plagued by the cold still. The digits were numb, and I stood in the little room staring at them, where a layer of lacy snowflakes was still frosted across my fingerprints. They glistened in the light, a sweaty, sequined glaze.

It was something like dismay that was happening inside me, as the curse on my digits occurred to me as something I couldn't seem to get rid of. I was finally growing tired of ignoring it. Just go away, I thought, as if it were a rash I was loathe to acknowledge. Dashsund noticed my lapse, yet retained his expert silence. He had quite a grasp on discretion, that one. I took note of this about him with the same sense of vision he had just exercised on me.

Feeling as if the exchange made us equal, I dismissed the notion of an explanation or apology and simply turned to help with my wits returned to me. I knew it would be good enough for Dashsund.

Enda joined us as well, and I felt better with her tending to the girl. Her old hands were experienced and wise. She knew how to deal with things with a gritty realism. That was what the girl needed, surely over the gimmicky one-way effects attached to my own fingers. My enchanted fingers were useless here. Their sparking, two-cents' worth of interjections rather got in the way of performing any task smoothly.

“Where's Letta?” I asked. She was another always good to have on hand during something like this. I knew that from firsthand experience.

“Giving refreshments to Henry and Tanen. They're fixing the water pump, and pipes. Been out in the sun all day. We won't have to haul from the well anymore, when they're done.” He was calm as he spoke, and I had to admire his ability to address monotonous things in the face of a crisis. Instead of cheapening it, it seemed an effective aid to composure. Whether he needed it or not, it was a sure-fire reinforcement; he was not to be inconvenienced by nerves any time soon.

We had just gotten the girl bundled when Letta came in from her task. Comprehension took a moment establishing itself as she took in first me, returned blessedly safely but from who knew where, and then the girl who was evidently enough the more endangered factor of the scenario. In that moment I saw the initial, inevitable questions that rose to her lips upon my return, the weighing of priorities, and the conclusion that put my undoubtedly maddening disappearance on hold because of what I had brought back with me. Thank the gods they all knew how to keep priority straight. Questions could be asked later. It was a good thing to learn when half the time there were no answers anyway, when explanations just as often presented more questions.

With Enda and Letta both tending to the girl, I backed off. I was both taxed and a little bit haunted by the encounter, recalling the nature by which I discovered her, by which I delivered her. In hindsight I found the bemusement that the incident was due. It may have been better to leave well enough alone, and I may have had a fair grasp on practicing such, but this felt different than regular mischief, at the end of the day. It was one thing to get caught in something in the city – another entirely to be led into it straight from my doorstep, clear from my doorstep, as if by prestigious invitation with my name written all over it. Pains taken to see it delivered.

At least, that it was another thing entirely was my theory. My feeling.

“We saw the dominoes,” Letta mentioned, bent over the girl. She was not letting me retire to the shadows completely.

I glanced up, pulled from my thoughts, feeling caught in the act of meddling with mischief as if it were forbidden to find oneself struggling to put a name to it in the privacy of her own head. Also as if the dominoes I had left in my wake gave away some secret, when the product of their trail was before her now. I shook the misplaced feelings of being caught from my head, and waited for her to continue.

“We're glad you returned to us,” she went on pointedly, assuring that I saw she had been concerned. “In one piece, as is becoming increasingly less of a given in our every-day anticipations.”

“Two pieces,” Enda interjected in her more raspy, blunt voice, and a hint of a good-natured smile tugged at Letta's tolerant lips.

“Two pieces,” she acknowledged with evident compassion, turning her attention back to the girl ailing before her. She sighed, though her lips had pursed. It gusted out her nostrils, considering. “Where does the cold come from?” she asked, staring down at the girl. It was time for the relevant questions, at least.

As had been the case with my encounter with the Ambassador for the Angel of Death, I did not know how to explain what had happened. There was nothing but the fact: “She was in the snow”, which I relinquished with rueful, inadequate honesty.

Letta looked to me for confirmation, and found it in my lacking stance and expression.

Wearily, I composed myself, to better dredge up the necessary details. “I was in the city during a shift. It triggered the dominoes, and when it all stilled...they led to a door propped in the rubble. She was on the other side”–I nodded toward the girl on the cot–“In a land of snow and ice. Winter and...blizzards...” I shook my head, trailing off. Letta saw my weariness, that I could not explain, and did not press me for more. I shifted my focus, dropping any further obligation to continue. “Will she come through?”

“Hard to say,” Letta replied. “Her ailments run deep. It's difficult to say how long she has been immersed in this cold.”

“Too long,” Enda suggested. “Her soul is near frozen.”

“But if her soul is near frozen yet she still maintains the bodily function of breathing, that is surely a sign that she is a fighter,” Letta overrode encouragingly.

“Is she a halfbreed?” I hazarded next.

This she considered more carefully, though it would seem there was little debate, that her consideration was little more than discretion, perhaps even sorrow, of a kind. “It would seem so, yes, minda.”

I nodded once, though it was pointless. No one was looking at me. It just felt necessary, to formally acknowledge the fact somehow, to come to terms with it, so to speak. Not because I had issue with it, but for the complications that could very well come along with it. To accept what those might be, ahead of time. I did not know what they would be, in our situation, but the potential was there. The danger. The recipe for grave things.

But it was impossible to dwell on any grave implications when, after three days of unconscious struggle under our hopeful watch and care, the girl pulled through, and awoke.

*

There was a cough, and I was on my feet by the time Letta called my name from that space beyond the kitchen. The fireplace was abandoned as I hastened toward the sickroom, and as I came around the door frame Letta was already at the girl's side. Confused, crimped amber eyes blinked blearily out at the world, and another weak cough chortled through her lips. I slowed my advance and halted in a gentle fashion at the foot of the bed, peering over Letta's stooped shoulder at the waking child.

Letta was smiling, pure kindness and encouragement as the girl reentered the world. “Hello, minda,” she offered, smoothing the girl's unruly hair from her forehead. “Some water, Vant,” she cast over her shoulder. I reached for the pitcher, kept nearby for the occasion, and poured a cup. “You've been on quite a journey,” Letta was saying to the little halfbreed. “Welcome back to a shore almost abandoned.”

Disorientation was clear on the girl's face, but as she came to she at least seemed to come to terms with the fact that she had been out of it, in some form or another, and recognize that the faces surrounding her were well-wishing ones, there to guide her back through her return and the process thereafter, whatever that may be. That was all she needed to conclude to relax, at least to a manageable point. It was inevitable that she was still spliced with confusion, but I could see the acceptance, if a little uncertain, of concentrating on breathing and taking one thing at a time.

Good.

And the next step, Letta provided for her. “What is your name, my dear?” she inquired, her head tilted kindly in a way that magically seemed to eliminate any threat that could ever be conjured into her being. How could she always execute such perfect, effective body language on demand? I marveled. She never placed one foot wrong, always knew exactly what to say and do. Sometimes I fancied myself composed, but I was a grasping, reckless fault-line compared to her. Prone to all sorts of tremors and cracks.

The halfbreed swallowed, a small sound in her throat, and parted her lips around a breath. She breathed again, through her lips, as if working up her voice, or perhaps even the memory of her name itself. Still a bit inhibited, she spoke for the first time, and to this day her name is a breathy, frosty impression in my mind. Cold like icicles, rooted in my memory. Icicles and death.

But I think only of the first. The first cold I knew her by.

“Ombri.”