Chapter 23
I counted in my mind, buried with no way to tell up from down.
One, two, three, four, five.
All was silent.
Nothing was coming for us.
Six, seven, eight, nine, ten.
Stillness.
When I’d reached twenty, I dared to move. Pulling myself in the direction I could best guess was upward, my head emerged from the snowbank. Someone sat beside me, their head cocked unnaturally, staring at me.
Dressed entirely in snug white clothing, a mask of white wraps covering their face that thinned around the eyes but still made them only faintly visible, they almost completely blended into the snow.
They didn’t move. I couldn’t even detect their chest rising and falling with breath.
My first instinct was to move, to run, but there were giants nearby, and this … person, this creature, had pulled me to safety. Shouldn’t that be a sign of friendliness? My heart wanted to say yes, but my mind whispered no. The creature sat there, so unmoving and seemingly not alive. I noticed Ri, then, standing untied a little way away.
“Who are you?” I whispered the words, terrified to let the jōt hear me yet too curious not to.
The figure didn’t answer, but tilted its head even more. I couldn’t see eyes, yet I could feel their stare. In all the stories of the mountains, I’d never heard of people residing here. Never heard stories of life beyond the jōt and the bears and wolves and predators. But this thing in white was distinctly human-shaped, with arms and legs and a head like my own.
I repeated my question. “Who are you?”
A sound came from the figure’s face, then, one that both curdled my blood and triggered familiarity. It was singing, the same singing I’d heard through the trees. I couldn’t see a mouth, and its head didn’t move, but the sound came from it, I was certain. Slowly, it stood, rising above me. Movement around us caught my attention. I turned to look, and my mouth fell open.
There were more of them, at least ten, all singing and rising out of the snow, undaunted by the near presence of the jōt.
In a way, I’d been right, I thought. The snow had been singing.
I stood as well, almost entirely surrounded. For a moment, we all stood silently, staring at one another. Save for slight variations in height and a difference in the chest where I could differentiate men and the women, they were all identical. White wraps from head to toe, slender bodies, tilted heads. In a way, they reminded me of curious children, trying to understand something they’d never seen.
“Who are you?” I asked again, on edge.
“Who are you?” the one before me asked, voice low, accent thick in a way I’d never heard before.
I swallowed and looked around at all of the faceless people staring at me, awaiting my reply. “Ósa,” I whispered, though my name would mean nothing to them. “I’ve come from the south, by the sea.”
They looked at one another in silence for a moment, then the one closest to me asked, “Why have you come?”
I brushed hair from my face, shivering and pulsing with an anxiety I’d never felt before. “I’ve come in search of the Goddess,” I said finally. “I know I can speak to Her in the mountains.”
“You seek our Goddess’s council,” said another, to my left.
“I do,” I said, sparking with hope. They knew of Her. They understood why I was here. That had to be a good start. “Could you set me in the right direction?”
There was a long, silent pause, all gazes still trained on me. I shifted uncomfortably, crumbling under those invisible stares. A breeze whispered through the nearby trees, but all wildlife had ceased its noise. The forest felt dead. Silenced.
“You will walk with us,” said the person closest to me. Perhaps it was a gesture of help, but the command, leaving no room for a decision on my part, added to my growing discomfort.
“Will you lead me there?” I asked, without making an effort to move. It could prove helpful, following people who knew the mountains, knew what trails to avoid and perhaps even knew how to reach the peak. I’d already managed to get tangled up with a bear and a den of giants. These people could lead me, and I couldn’t take their lack of friendliness as a sign of danger. They had, after all, pulled me to safety.
They ignored my question and began to close in tighter around me, shuffling as a group towards the mountain peaks.
I reached for Ri, who stood up to her shoulders in snow, but the person leaped between us. He held his hand out, fingers stretched towards the sky. Stop.
“That’s my horse,” I whispered, motioning to her. “I must bring her.”
He repeated the movement with his hand, repeating the same notes to me. Then he turned to Ri and began removing her packs and reins.
“No!” I said as loudly as I dared. “Those are my things!”
Again, a hand told me to stop. Fighting back felt futile. There were too many of them, and if I simply turned around and left, I’d risk another run-in with the jōt. I watched helplessly as they took my packs, slinging them over their shoulders, and tossed the reins aside. They sank into the snow, disappearing.
“I need her,” I said softly, feeling my eyes burning.
Ignoring my pleas, the creature laid a palm on Ri’s forehead and began to sing. The notes were soft, calming, and her eyes were alert. I’d have sworn on my life that she was listening. Then, without looking back at me, she turned and left me, down the mountain in the direction we’d come.
I reached a shaking hand out to her as if it would make her stop, but I couldn’t bring myself to speak. Ri was my familiarity here, my life rope, my only way home. I’d known in the back of my mind that I couldn’t bring her all the way into the mountains, but I’d hoped I could stash her in a cave somewhere, with enough food and water to last until I could return. Without her, I’d never make it back across the plain. I’d never make it home, even if I survived. Out of all the ways I’d imagined this journey failing, this had never been one of them.
“No,” I whispered, as a sob escaped my throat. If she defied the odds and made the journey home, that would destroy my village. Destroy Ivar. She would turn up without me, without any of my things, and they’d give up hope. Hope was all they had left. My father, though. He would tighten his jaw and shake his head. It was foolish from the very start, he would say. I wanted to slap him, slap that imaginary face that hung before me. She knew what she was getting herself into, my sister would say. I gritted my teeth.
I turned back, and through tearful eyes, found a hand outstretched to me. It didn’t matter any more. I wouldn’t get far on my own, not without a horse. I had no choice but to go with them and stay alive in the mountains long enough to reach the peak, even if I never made it back. Taking the hand offered to me, we moved forward towards the Goddess and possible salvation.
As the hours passed I began to grow accustomed to my new companions. A few kilometres beyond where Ri had abandoned us, one of them impatiently stopped me in my stride. She was much shorter than the one who had first taken me by the hand and seemed to be gesturing quite intently at my legs. I had been walking along a ridge of exposed rock, and it had certainly been making the walk easier to be on hard ground rather than snow. She had gently wrapped her gloved hands around my ankle, and by tugging at my leg repositioned my feet into the snow. I’d glared at her and started to climb back on to the rock, but before I could do so she had leaned over and tapped lightly with her fist on the rock, echoing out some high-pitched notes to accompany it. She then tapped on the snow, singing lower notes.
She repeated this a few times until understanding dawned across my face. The crunching of the snow was louder than footfalls on the rock, but my footsteps had a sharper tone when not muffled by snow. As I saw the rest of the group fanning across the hillside I noticed how I could only hear the very nearest members; the sound of snow didn’t echo in the same way a tap on a rock might. This must have been how I’d heard the singing, but never the footsteps. Near our villages, where trees rustled, birds sang and rivers ran, you’d never notice. But up here where the wind alone prevailed, a very different set of priorities took hold. You can’t be eaten if they can’t find you; you can’t be found if they can’t hear you.
From then on, I worked to make my footsteps mimic theirs, stepping lightly into the snow, keeping my knees ever so slightly bent to allow for softer steps. They clung to shadows, to rock faces and what few tree trunks we passed the higher we climbed. There was a strange sort of release in my going with them, in walking with strangers in a foreign land, no other defined destination save for somewhere in the mountain peaks.
One of the snow people, as I’d decided to call them in the safety of my own mind, who’d been walking at the front of the group stopped suddenly and let out a single, low note. The others froze, absolute silence following. Then a rumble. Then a thud. One I recognized. Approaching jōt!
As if it had been rehearsed a hundred times before without fault, they all vanished. Some folded into crevices in the rock face, others lost themselves in snowdrifts, and still others seem to disappear over the ravine, perhaps holding on to the edge. The drop couldn’t be less than a couple of hundred metres down to darkness shrouded in mist. The short one who’d been instructing my steps motioned me to a snowbank where others had hidden themselves. She pushed me in first, gently but firmly, and used the white of her clothing to cover me.
We’d just barely disappeared from sight when, through the hole we’d made in the snow, the enormous form of a giant came into view. In one hand it bore a large stick and in the other a string of small animals: rabbits, foxes, unfamiliar birds. An addition to the roasted bear, no doubt. His single eye roved, searching. Could he sense us? Smell us? The way he moved, the way he looked about, said he was on alert, that he knew something lurked nearby. But on he walked, rattling the very ground around us, and we didn’t move until his footsteps had vanished somewhere further down the mountain.
Strange to think, I realized, as everyone crept out of their hiding places, how many of these snow people I might have passed before encountering them directly. They were so agile, so adept at hiding, I could have stepped over one and never been the wiser.
When all the others had gathered, climbed back over the edge of the ravine and out of the crevices in the rock, we pressed onwards. Occasionally, they sang to one another as they went and I worked to differentiate the sounds. Always, they spoke in song. Never a single, lonely word left their mouths.
Night fell swiftly in the mountains, where there were already so many shadows and dark places that the light never reached anyway. The last of the clouds left over from last night’s storm were swept away and my beloved stars were visible overhead. Sometimes it was only in snatches, between the high rock faces and trees that clung precariously to the sides of the mountains, but each one I saw warmed my heart, a tiny bit of warmth in the cold.
Finally, there, silhouetted against the sky, I saw what I’d come in search of. The boldest, highest peak of the Kalls looming over us, so close, yet still so far. It made the others look weak, small, and here in the shadow of it, I felt almost non-existent. I couldn’t see an access point, couldn’t see any way to reach it on foot, but night hid many things. Perhaps when dawn broke, it would reveal something new. Seeing it, tall and powerful and watching, my lungs filled with a breath of relief. Despite what happened from now on, I’d made it this far. I’d reached it.
My companions also paused in their steps, some eyeing me as I stood staring, and some turning to look up to the peak as well.
A few moved in closer, and again the feeling of being surrounded pressed against me.
My legs ached beyond reason. I longed to stop for a rest, even if only for a few moments, but my companions were so uninhibited by the journey that I was afraid to look so fragile.
We’d been on this seemingly carved-out pathway clinging to the side of this mountain for what felt like hours. The waxing moon climbed ever higher in the sky and I was just contemplating giving up, letting my legs give out and falling to the inviting ground beneath me, when I saw more of the snow people up ahead. The group I’d travelled with sang out notes to them, and one raised an arm in my direction, as if alerting them to my presence.
We approached the newcomers, the two groups singing to one other, carrying on the most absurd, enchanting conversation I’d ever witnessed. I wanted to add my voice, wanted to know what those captivating words meant, but it was wholly unintelligible. Unlike any language I knew of that had ever existed in Skane.
How Ivar would love to hear them.
As if the two new folk were satisfied with the answers they’d received, they pushed the large stone to the side, opening up a sort of narrow tunnel lit by sconces hanging every metre or so, until it twisted away and I couldn’t see any further. A breeze blew out of it, caressing my face, both inviting me in and pushing me away. When one of my guides held out an arm, beckoning for me to follow, I glanced about me, taking in the mountains and the stars again. I didn’t know what was inside or what would happen once I entered, but running would get me nowhere. I was so vastly outnumbered, so far from my own element up here that I’d fail this mission before I rounded the next corner.
Swallowing all hints of fear and uncertainty, I entered the tunnel.