“But North had within him great power: to stop time, to still hearts, to turn warmth to coldness and light to dark. He could have killed his brothers if he chose, but he didn’t. Instead he allied himself with the Wolf Queen.”
I peer at Ivan across the fire. That wasn’t quite what the wolf and the Winds in the book-mirror had told me. “Allied himself?”
His voice picks up an odd note. “She tricked him. Stole his power for her own. It’s why she can bend time to her will.”
My heart tugs and I shut my eyes and see Hal. “I thought the North Wind traded his power for the love of a woman.”
“That is why he went to the Wolf Queen in the first place.”
I think of the gatekeeper in the wolf’s house, all malice and power. “Do you know what became of them?”
Ivan’s eyes glint orange in the light of the fire. “The stories do not say.”
In the morning, the landscape begins, at long, long last, to change. Glaciers jut out of the ground, jagged formations of ice skewering the sky. We wander into a maze of them and have to wend our way through, our snowshoes leaving crisscrossed patterns behind us. The wind whistles between the splintered walls of ice, ringing loud with the Wolf Queen’s laughter, and the weary ponies droop their heads and drag their hooves.
“There must be a body of water,” says Ivan ahead of me. “Somewhere near.”
The glaciers stretch on and on, growing larger and more magnificent as we walk. They soar over our heads, sending ice-blue shadows across the snow. Hunger gnaws tight in my belly.
All day we wander through the ice maze, no end in sight. When we make camp, we shelter beneath one of the glaciers and eat the last of our food.
Ivan builds a fire. “The North Wind himself would be hard pressed to go any farther,” he says. He seems to be making a joke, but I don’t understand and he doesn’t explain.
I am weary and sick of heart, and Ivan can sense it. He tells me a nonsensical story about an old lady and a magical spoon, and I fall into my dreams with a smile on my lips.
The next day, Ivan kills the ponies.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
THE FIELD OF GLACIERS LEADS US to the edge of a frozen lake, so vast it might as well be the ocean. But Ivan is equipped with small spikes to attach to the bottoms of our boots so we’ll have purchase over the ice.
I cried about the ponies—Ivan did, too, and he wasn’t ashamed. “They served us well, lass. Now they help us one last time. But I am sorry they must end this way.”
We start off across the lake, the spikes on our boots digging into the ice, crunching with every step. It hasn’t snowed for days, but the sky is hazy and little sunlight shows through. The cold bites deep, and yet I see beauty spread out all around, and it humbles me.
The ice is strong and impossibly thick, surface cracks splintering out like the threads of some giant spiderweb. We hear it shifting sometimes, great thundering groans as, far beneath our feet, it cracks or moves or shudders.
“The ice is singing to us,” says Ivan, and he lets the ice sing instead of him.
I grow used to it after a while and it ceases to frighten me, the ancient music of this strange scarred land.
The ice seems endless. We camp on the frozen lake as the sun slips to its rest behind the clouds, and I can see nothing but ice in every direction. The clouds are knitting tighter, the wind whipping wild.
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.”