Frost (8 page)

“I’m taking you to the house,” I said. “Are you ready?” My breath made a puff of cloud in the cold.

He nodded. Worry chased across his face and was gone, replaced by grim determination. “Ready.”

For a few breathless moments, we were partners instead of near strangers as we performed a strange sort of three-legged race, staggering across the dark yard. Snow brushed our faces like little cold butterflies and settled across our hair and shoulders. My back prickled with terror the whole way, and with each step I expected a Watcher to appear from the blackness, a phantom in the swirling white poised to take us and leave red splashed across the snow.

But they never came. We reached the house unscathed and unseen. Ivy wrenched the door open, her mouth in the shape of an O. Jonn dropped the yarn when he saw us.

I made it to the fire before my arms gave out. The Farther hit the floor with a groan and looked up. Snow was melting on his eyelashes and the hair that hung into his eyes was wet. Two spots of bright red glowed on his cheeks.

“Thank you,” he breathed, before the fever began to take him again.

Ivy grabbed some quilts for him.

I went to close the door.

Outside, something stirred in the darkness, and my heart stuttered as I reached for the snow blossoms.

But it was just a fox. The creature looked at me with wild, unreadable eyes, and I looked back, and then it slipped into the night while I shut and barred the door and returned to the dying boy at my fireside.

The Farther’s fever worsened. He rambled about soldiers and prison cells while his sweat soaked into his hair and his cheeks grew hotter and hotter. He whispered and yelled, muttered and moaned. Ivy sat by him, and when he cried she flinched as if he were personally insulting her.

“Please,” the Farther begged, grabbing for her hand during one particularly brutal round of fever-induced delusions. “Please don’t, please don’t.”

“What do you want?” she asked, biting her lip. We’d found that talking to him tended to help.

He hesitated. His eyes blinked open, and they swam with tears of pain. “Please don’t kill them,” he mumbled. “Kill me if you must, but please don’t hurt them.”

I was stricken by his words, by the pain on his face.

“Please!” he shrieked, and Ivy put her hands over her mouth.

“Gabe.” I grabbed his fingers in mine and squeezed tight. They were hot and dry. “You’re safe now. Go to sleep.”

His eyelids drooped. He looked down at our hands, clasped tight across the quilt. “Don’t let go,” he mumbled.

“I won’t,” I said.

And as long as I held his hand, he slept.

IN THE MORNING, I put on my nicest dress—a long blue one with white flowers embroidered across the skirt and sleeves—and braided my hair into the traditional thick rope of hair that most Frost women wore. I tucked a few dried snow blossoms into the braid and then stared at my reflection in the dusty mirror that sat propped against the rafters in the farmhouse loft. If I was going to see the Mayor, I needed to look exceptionally presentable, so he wouldn’t doubt my capabilities when it came to providing for my siblings. Especially if I was going to confess to breaking a major community rule.

When I descended the rickety ramble of steps that passed for a staircase, I saw the Farther sitting up by the fire, his fever gone and his hair in a snarl. His eyes were completely clear for the first time, and he had a bemused expression on his face, almost a smile. It softened the sharp angles of his face and made him look less threatening. And he was handsome, but in a quiet, intelligent kind of way, like he was used to working inside with old records and books instead of in the fields.

I immediately hated myself for thinking he was handsome, but my rebellious brain continued to think so anyway. I also could not help but admire his uninjured arm, which was visible where the blanket had fallen away. It was surprisingly muscled, given his lean frame.

His eyes swept the room as if he’d never seen anything like it before, his gaze lingering on ordinary and ugly things like the spinning wheel and the pot over the fire. “Are you done ogling me yet?” he asked, smirking, without turning his head to look at me. I wanted him to look—I wondered if he would scrutinize me the way he’d looked at the spinning wheel, an ordinary thing turned strange and wonderful in his eyes, and then my cheeks flushed at the notion. Or maybe that was just because he’d caught me looking in the first place. It was hard to be sure, because my emotions were in such a tangle lately.

I descended the rest of the staircase with what was left of my dignity, pretending indifference. “I wasn’t ogling you,” I said. I didn’t have any evidence to offer to the contrary, though, so I changed the subject. “Your fever broke?”

“I suppose so, since I am lucid and feeling better. Or maybe I have died, and this is the afterlife. Although you and your sister make a pair of strange angels.”

I spotted a used teacup and a plate with crumbs on it next to his nest of quilts, and I deduced that Ivy must have fixed him breakfast. That probably explained some of his shockingly high spirits. Food made everyone a little more cheerful.

I took in the rest of the room. Jonn was asleep in his chair, and Ivy was absent as usual. We were functionally alone, and that made me uneasy. But not because I feared he would try to attack me—I couldn’t put my finger on why, exactly, but the sensations simmered just under my skin and made my stomach curl.

“You look all dressed up,” Gabe—no, the Farther—said as he finally looked at me. “Are you going somewhere?”

Going into the kitchen, I took out the bread and cut off a piece. I ate it quickly, without butter or jam. I didn’t have time. “I have to go into the village to speak with the Mayor.”

The tenor of his voice changed suddenly. “Why?”

I returned to the main room and leaned against the doorway, watching him. “Because I need to figure out what to do with you.”

He blinked. I didn’t miss the concern that flashed in his eyes. “But your sister said—”

“What did she say?”

He pressed his mouth into a flat line and refused to answer. I scowled. No wonder he’d been so cheerful, if Ivy had been promising him all kinds of impossible things. I couldn’t promise him anything, because I didn’t know what the Mayor would do, but I knew he didn’t need to worry.

“It’s going to be all right,” I said. “You’re going to have to trust me.”

Why did the words in my mouth taste like lies?

His eyes followed me to the door, where I gave him one last look and then I slammed it shut behind me.

~

When I left the house, Ivy was exiting the barn. Her steps slowed as I approached, and her mouth pinched in a frown as she caught a glimpse of my face. I grabbed her arm, and her eyes widened.

“What have you been telling the Farther?” I demanded.

“He doesn’t want any trouble, Lia. He just wants to get to some gate.” She tried to wriggle away, but I wouldn’t let her.

“A...a what?” What in a thousand frozen winters was she talking about?

“A gate,” Ivy insisted.

“To the village?”

“No. He told me about it this morning when I made him breakfast. He’s in trouble with the other Farthers, and he’s trying to get to safety, but he has to get through the Frost and to this gate first. He said it will take him to safety. He doesn’t want to hurt us, or the village. He just needs our help getting there, and then he’ll leave.”

I dropped her arm as I remembered he'd asked me the same question when he'd pinned me to the floor. But this was nonsense. A gate to where? The frozen tundra? I’d lived my whole life here in Frost, and never heard of such a thing, and besides—it didn’t make any sense. There was nothing above us but icecaps and Watchers. “Do your chores, work on the quota, and don’t let the Farther fill your head with stories. And don’t promise him anything, Ivy. I don’t want you getting even more mixed up in this than you already are.”

Not like me
, I thought.

I stormed toward the path to the village, kicking up snow.

~

The Mayor’s house was in the center of the village. It crowned the top of a hill, so it was visible above all the roofs of the other houses. The house itself was tall and narrow and painted bright white with gray trim, and windows of precious stained glass and a large, wrap-around porch lined with rocking chairs accentuated the aura of wealth it exuded. There was no other house half so fine in the whole village. Even the grounds were opulent, the obligatory snow blossoms planted in swirling patterns by the Gardener family.

I stood at the bottom of the steps and looked up, the anxiety rat gnawing at my stomach again.

What would he say? What would he do to the Farther?

I took a deep breath and let it out. The rush of cold air to my lungs was bracing, and I straightened my shoulders and stared up the steps. I could do this. It was Ann’s father, and he would help me.

My mittened hands made a dull thudding sound against the door. I noticed the shiny brass knocker and tried it. I felt very shabby, standing on that massive porch with my ragged blue cloak on my back and wilting blossoms in my hair.

Only a few people moved about in the streets below. Everyone was probably working on filling their quotas, or else avoiding being out for fear of the Watchers.

Footsteps echoed inside the house, and the door was yanked open. A woman wearing a pressed white apron regarded me with suspicion in her flat gray eyes. “If you’ve brought the pastries quota, you’ll have to deliver it around back.”

Pastries quota? Our sugar was rationed because of the winter. Why did the Mayor family get pastries? I shook my head. “No—I’m here to see the Mayor.”

She squinted at me. “Name?”

“Lia Weaver.”

At the mention of
Weaver
, which obviously marked me as a worker instead of one of the Elder family’s daughters, the maid began to close the door. “Wait,” I said, stepping forward and shoving my foot in the crack before she could shut me out completely. “I’m a friend of Ann’s. She’ll be furious if she hears I was denied entrance.”

It was a gamble—I had never been to Ann’s house before, invited or otherwise. But the maid might listen.

She frowned and glanced me over again through the crack. “Come in,” she said. “I will ask him. But I make no promises.”

With a sigh of relief, I stepped inside. The maid shut the door behind me.

“Wait here,” she ordered with a sniff, and disappeared down the hall.

I looked around. The wood floor beneath my feet was shiny with wax. A gleaming brass lamp hung over my head. Rose-painted paper covered the walls, and through a doorway I glimpsed plush furniture and a thick fur rug. Ann’s clothing was always a little nicer than the rest of ours, but she never said anything about the luxury that her family lived in. A servant? Special quotas delivered straight to her house? Shining floors and papered walls?

The maid reappeared, and although her frown hadn’t been replaced with a smile, she no longer looked at me as though I were dirt on the floor. “He will see you in his study,” she said.

We went up a flight of stairs. I was still struggling to keep my mouth from gaping open like a fool’s as I stared at the things around me—rugs on the hall floors. A painting on the wall of Ann and her family. More lamps, all shiny brass.

The maid stopped in front of a closed door and knocked gently. I heard the Mayor’s low tenor murmuring on the other side. I could just barely make out the words.

“...Eloisa and Aaron...yes, that might be problematic...”

Eloisa and Aaron? My parents’ names?

The maid knocked again, and the murmuring ceased. “Come in,” the Mayor called in a louder voice, and she opened it and moved aside for me.

My heart hammering, I stepped into the room.

HE SAT AT a desk, surrounded by walls of books. A fireplace warmed the room, and through a window white with frost I saw the gate to the village, the path that led to my farm, crowded on both sides with trees, and above the trees, the mountains. The Mayor smiled at me, but I was still hearing my parents’ names spoken in his voice, and the gnawing nervousness in my stomach did not ease.

“Sit down, Lia,” he said.

I was surprised he knew my name, and it must have showed on my face, because he said, “I knew your parents, my dear. Wonderful folk. So sorry about what happened to them.”

“Thank you,” I murmured, sinking into a chair looking down at my hands. Coldness seeped through my veins, and every single bit of me wanted to ask him what he’d been saying about them just a moment earlier. But I didn’t ask. “They are missed,” I said instead.

“Yes,” he agreed. “Now, what can I do for you? I do not normally grant audiences with whoever comes to visit me, but you are Ann’s friend.” He smiled, and his teeth were as bright white as the outside of the house.

I licked my lips, which had become bone-dry. “There is something I wanted to speak with you about, sir.”

He raised one eyebrow. “Oh? Please continue.”

Suddenly I saw Ivy and Jonn in my mind’s eye, and my nerve failed. What if he decided I wasn’t fit to be in charge of them? What if he split us up and took away the farm?

The Mayor was waiting.

“I...well...”

Sweat formed on my upper lip. What if this was a mistake? Maybe I should have listened to the Farther, spoken to him in more depth. I remembered the way he’d screamed for mercy in his fever-fed delirium, and I squeezed my hands together in my lap. My heart thumped hard, and the words felt too heavy on my tongue.

“What I mean is...”

I remembered him begging as if he was being tortured.

What if they hurt him?

No, no, no
—

“What I mean is that I saw Watcher tracks in our yard, in front of the barn.”

And then I could breathe again. I hadn’t told him. I felt myself deflate, and I sank back in the chair, wondering if I were a coward.

“More tracks?” He sighed and picked up his pen, making a note of it on a map spread across his desk. I leaned forward and glanced at it. There was our village, a large square in the center. There were the farms, spread around the village like unfurled skirts around a girl’s waist. There were the mountains of the Frost, and a funny symbol in the corner that looked a little like a flower—