<(The dark is all, dark streets, new snow falling—)>
<An edge, then.>
<Heart jumping. Arms catching. Foot on slick ground, sliding.
<Sailing through dark space…
<Thump.
<Flat on his back.>
Ahead turned to up, fire to night, ash-fall to snow-fall, thick white puffs fell in a stillness of the wind, on his sweating face, into his dry mouth.
The world was strained to the limit. He felt half of him missing and he desperately wanted that piece of him, stretched thin into the dark—
Not she. He. Him. Here. <(She)> screamed out into the dark after what she was missing.
But he was alive. Breathing. And the strain grew less. The missing part drew near to him. He’d dropped off a ledge. He’d fallen in a snowbank. He’d had the breath knocked out of him.
He lay there, got his breath back, relatively undamaged—too stunned to be alarmed at the moving of the brush on the ledge over him.
Not surprised, either, at the <presence becoming Cloud.> The missing half of him had shown up and Cloud wanted <downslope, now, nighthorse feet probing the ledge frantically for a way down to him, but Cloud couldn’t find it—> Cloud was going to jump.
“No!” Danny found self-awareness at least to wish <Cloud still, Cloud standing—>
Then before Cloud tried it again, he had to move an arm, a leg— finally to turn on elbows and knees and crawl up the snow-chill slope, past the screen of thorn branches—
<Cloud walking dark, fire-windowed streets.
<Cloud afraid and angry. Looking for Danny.>
He hauled himself up by the brush that overhung the last of the slope. He was on his feet then, couldn’t remember getting up, just <on his feet, hugging Cloud’s sweating neck, two of them, here, in this dark, snowy place, Danny and Cloud.>
Cloud made a sound between a cough and a snort and shivered up and down his shoulder. Cloud wanted <us.> Cloud wanted <kicking and biting, > but Cloud didn’t know what the enemy was. Cloud was as lost as he was in the battering of sendings; and Danny spared one frightened thought for <lost supplies, lost gun, lost fireside and lost Hallanslakers—>
But after that Danny just thought <us,> and heaved himself up, belly-down and grace-be-damned, to Cloud’s snowy, willing back.
Cloud moved, walked, not sure where they were going except <us.>
Danny rode, not at all sure where he was going, except that, for the hour, he was where that thing wasn’t, that thing that he’d felt and had no question—
—no question she was a killer.
He heard too much. He didn’t want to listen anymore. He just wanted Cloud; he wanted to drift on through the dark and the downfalling white. He wanted <quiet,> and <escape> from the things he saw, that still careened centerless about his memory.
He rode until he was keenly aware of the snow and the cold.
He rode until his hands and feet and face were numb.
He rode until he found himself in <forest > and knew that <fire-windowed streets > was a place he’d never, ever been.
Then he was afraid to go farther. He’d been following the beacon of that place—but it was nowhere he wanted to reach.
Nothing stirred. Nothing dared. The air felt warmer than it had. The wind had stopped blowing. The snow fell, real snow, in thick, fat lumps.
<Evergreens,> he thought. <Wide, protecting evergreen boughs.>
Because he remembered <Stuart on the porch, Stuart in the rain,> and somehow it had come up in what Stuart had told him, about having a knife, and how a knife should be last of everything you lost, because with that, no matter how desperate you were, no matter how much of your gear you’d lost, you could make a den, keep warm, get food, stay alive.
He hadn’t even the knife. They’d taken that.
But he had his bare hands. In everything about him, even, if it got to that, tearing the fringes off his jacket for bindings, he had the makings of shelter, of tools.
He slid off Cloud’s back, imaging <shelter made of evergreen,> and Cloud hovered about him as he set to furiously, tearing at branches with his hands, leaning his body against them to break them free.
Cloud tore at a few small limbs, using his teeth. <Bad taste,> Cloud thought, and spat out bits of bark.
But gloved hands jerked, ripped, twisted until branches splintered, until muscles ached. He tore at the trees, sweating and gasping for breath, until he had a pile of branches he thought was enough.
With them he made a bed, and he had <Cloud lying down on it.> Then, pulling branches over himself, he lay down on the edge of their mat, himself tucked against Cloud, warm on one side, keeping Cloud’s side warm because in that horse-smelling pocket he could make of his body and Cloud’s was the only warm air, and his chest ached and his gut ached with the fall and with shivering. A long, long time he lay there and shook, until Cloud’s warmth seeped into him.
Then Cloud himself sighed, gentle movement against his shoulder.
Snow fell on him, but that was all right. It could do that. Snow was an insulator, wasn’t what he’d heard?—as long as he had Cloud’s body radiating warmth into his.
Snow was warm, if it kept away the wind, if it kept away the dark.
If it didn’t let him dream of streets and fire reflecting off glass, and if it didn’t let him dream, sweating warm despite the cold, of dark and something more terrible than the preachers’ devils—
He wanted daylight.
God, he wanted the day to begin and this night to be over. He tried not to image, but kids, Jonas had said, couldn’t keep from noise. Kids couldn’t shut down.
(Kids in that village, oh, God, they’d have been close to that thing. Mamas and papas couldn’t do a damned thing to help them—they’d have been the first, they’d have gone to it.)
He kept seeing <fire on windowpanes. Kids running. The devil loose in the streets, and the innocent all running.
<Preachers in Shamesey streets—crying, Follow not the beast, hear not the beast—
<Denis screaming, “God’s going to send you to hell!”>
Cloud snorted, shifted, settled. The whole woods was so scarily quiet you could almost hear the snowflakes land. He’d not realized that until now: the whole woods was hushed, and Cloud was part of that silence.
They’re born to this world, Stuart had said to him. They hear the Wild first. If you can’t hear what’s going on, listen to your horse. Always remember that.
Cloud’s rider listened.
Cloud’s rider lay still, noticing only the trees, only the wind, only the snow, until he was as quiet as Cloud.
He wasn’t there. For any number of very long hours, he wasn’t there.
Chapter XVI
THE ROAD UP FROM ANVENEY WAS THE SHORTEST, FASTEST WAY UP to the High Wild—a good idea, Guil thought as the morning brightened to warmer daylight, good idea, considering both the season and the condition of the rider, because he and Burn weren’t going to make any record time; and he damned sure didn’t want to trek all the way back to the main road and then take that ascent: speed was everything when the weather was chancy, and when you had to factor in that long trek even to get to the other road. He didn’t mind camping on the main road in clear weather. But he didn’t trust it would stay clear of snow long enough for him to get over there and get up the mountain. Its gentle slope was treacherous, piling up snow in overhangs—and the chill was definitely in the air.