Tova glances down at her. Her lady’s eyes are closed, her mouth a little open, her breathing light and steady.
She’ll ask her again when she wakes. There’ll be plenty of time to make those decisions later. First they have to make it through this night.
Trying not to move too suddenly, she lays Merewyn down on the bracken and the leaves where she’ll be more comfortable. Her lady hardly stirs. She must be utterly spent. Tova lies down next to her, curled tight and hugging her arms close to her chest, making sure as she does that the covers are wrapped close around them both. Their feet are pointed towards the fire. The flames dance and flicker, swell and subside, like there’s a spirit inside each one that guides it and gives it radiance and causes it to flare up, to play and leap, to glow hot and then cool, cool and then hot again. A moving, breathing thing, as delicate and as changeable as any other creature.
She watches them, twisting and intertwining in their many colours, safe in the knowledge that as long as she does so, they will not go out.
Seventh Day
Cold. It binds her and clutches at her chest. She can hardly breathe: the air, when she can catch it, is thin and sharp and takes her by surprise, each time like being stabbed from the inside. She shifts, searching for warmth, but there’s none to be found. Her neck is stiff and her mouth and throat are dry. She coughs, once, twice; blinks, trying to shove away sleep’s grasping embrace, but her lids are heavy and to move them at all takes all her strength.
She eyes the door, with the light spilling in from underneath, bright and harsh and painful to look at for long. It must be morning. There’s an ache in her head, as if a shard of ice has become lodged in her skull and is driving ever deeper, making it difficult even to think.
She never imagined she could be this cold.
Where is she? Trying to remember is like wading through pitch. She recalls the fight, but dimly, like it was a long time ago, and she isn’t sure that she has all the events in the right order. She remembers fleeing, and the snow beginning to fall. Beorn going to find help, and the two of them staying behind. He told them to wait for him, to stay inside where it was warm, to make sure they kept the fire going—
The fire.
Her heart racing, she tries to raise herself, but she has become tangled in their makeshift blankets and she has to fight her way out from underneath. But even before she does, she knows.
‘No,’ she says, her breath misting. She throws back the cloth and sits up. ‘No, no, no.’
It’s gone out.
Not a flicker, nor a wisp of smoke. Only ash, white as snow and just as lifeless. She scrambles on unfeeling hands and clumsy knees towards it, searching for any spark amid the embers, however small, from which she can coax it back into being. She tries blowing upon the remnants, gently at first and then harder, hoping to make something happen, but nothing will.
How long is it since it burned out? When did she fall asleep? Hours ago, it must have been, for it wasn’t long after dark when she and her lady were talking—
Merewyn.
She turns and sees her huddled beneath the covers, her cheeks milky pale in the wan light. Unmoving.
Oh God, please no, Tova thinks. Oh God, oh God, oh God.
She rushes to her lady’s side, places her hand on her arm, shaking her gently and saying her name, over and over and over and each time more urgently.
Beorn trusted her to take care of them both. He trusted her to not let the fire die. She promised him she would. She promised herself.
The one thing she had to do was not fall asleep.
‘Wake up.’ She feels the tears welling. ‘Please, wake up. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to.’
But Merewyn doesn’t stir or even seem to hear her at all. Her face is tranquil, like those of the angels painted on the walls of the church at home, ascending to the eternal kingdom. Like the faces of the saints that she saw in Guthred’s book.
Please, let her live.
She fumbles beneath the covers for her lady’s hand and clasps it in her own. It hasn’t gone stiff as she had feared, but it’s cool to the touch. Merewyn is no longer shivering, Tova sees, and she knows that’s a bad sign, because that’s what happened to her mother near the end. First she grew still, and then she stopped breathing, and then—
No. She can’t give up hope. Not now. Not yet.
She leans forward, pressing her ear close to Merewyn’s lips, desperate for some sign that she is still breathing. Nothing. With every heartbeat she feels what hope she had melting away. Despair clutches at Tova’s stomach. Her heart is thumping so loudly that she’s worried she won’t be able to hear her lady’s breath when it comes.
But then there it is: the feeblest brush of warm air against her cheek. It wouldn’t make a candle flicker, but it’s enough. She’s alive, if only barely.