Page 64 of Mountain of Mirrors and Starlight
Caer yanked his hand away from her before he could do something to erase what he’d just done, and collapsed against her middle, dissolving into noisy, guttural sobs.
She was alive. She was all right. He hadn’t hurt her.
“You’re all right,” she said weakly, “it’s all right, Caer.”
He couldn’t respond, and when her hand came up and drifted into his hair, he didn’t pull away from her touch.
Aislinn fell asleep within seconds, but her breathing was steady and even, her heartbeat too. Caer tucked her cloak in around her and sat in the corner of the cave, watching her carefully and trying not to count her breaths.
It was cold in the cave, and he’d not had his cloak buckled whilst he slept. He rolled down his sleeves and rubbed his palms together, but it did little to guard against the bitter cold. He pressed himself into the vines that lined the back of the cave. Strange that living things should exist here, although these looked petrified with age. He supposed he should be grateful that she’d managed to transport them to a cave, rather than leaving them exposed to the elements.
Perhaps it wasn’t luck. Perhaps it was some faerie magic he didn’t understand, teleporting them to the nearest safe place. He was sure he’d heard something like that, maybe from Rowan—how the magic of Faerie would race to protect its queen.
Or future queen.
He wondered what that would feel like, to be truly chosen by the land, rather than shoved into the throne when no one really wanted you there. Of course, it could just be a lie faeries had concocted, a tale that became truth. They could whisper a lie if they believed it.
Eventually, the cold and silence grew too much, and he ventured out of the cave into a world of thick, dense snow. It was near midday and there wasn’t much wind, but it was still a hard, penetrating, biting cold, the type that squirmed into your marrow. He could see the borders of the Autumn Forests in the distance, could see the snow lifting from the banks, but it was too far away to travel without proper clothing and equipment, too far to go leaving Aislinn unaccompanied.
He jogged down to a small copse of trees and snapped off a few branches. It would be hard to make a fire without the flintstones or matches that the dwarves used, but he had little better to do. One of Diana’s first lessons had been teaching him how to make it without the usual equipment.
“I don’t see how I’m ever going to need to know how to do this,” he’d scoffed.
“The thing about knowledge,” Diana had replied, ignoring his tone, “is that you never know when you’re going to truly need it until you do.”
He’d grumbled in response, but listened nonetheless, even if he shouted and cussed until his fingers bled whilst trying to do it.
But he’d done it. And he could do it again.
He trudged back to the cave. Halfway there, his eyes fell on a colossal dent in the snow, like a magnificent ancient lake had been frozen over, now no more than a slope in the snow. He couldn’t think of what else it would be, and yet, as he walked closer, another feeling overtook him, deep and dark, more icy than the world around him.
It was like walking over a graveyard.
He shook it away and went back to the cave, beginning the long and arduous process of making a fire. It was a fine distraction. It kept him from worrying about the others. Most of them had still been standing when the last giant fell, but he couldn’t remember all of them. Luna’s white face had been nowhere to be seen.
“Be safe,” he prayed, rubbing his hands beside the trembling sparks of the fire. “Just be safe.”
Aislinn stirred a short while later.
“Hey,” he said. “How are you feeling?”
She bit her lip, like she didn’t want to reply. “Weak,” she said. “I need to rest more. I could be… I don’t know how long… it might be days—”
“It’s all right,” he said. “We’re alive. We’ll manage.”
“Where are we?”
“A cave in Winter, I think,” he explained. “Not far from the Autumn border.”
“I’m cold.”
“I’m starting a fire.”
Aislinn shivered, raising her fingers, and then promptly put them back down. The action alone seemed to have exhausted her. “We should, um…”
“Huddle together for warmth in the meantime?”
“Yes,” she said, too tired to nod.
