The Colorless Land

Chapter 18: Bitter Frost

Maithea squinted her eyes, but she could barely see the people directly in front of her. Even Nellary at her side was obscured. There was no telling where they were or where they were going. The path did not bend. It only plunged into the thick snowflakes ahead of them and vanished into nowhere.

They walked on. The snowflakes grew thicker in the air. It was hard to breathe now, snow flying into their airways with every inhale, melting and making them cough and choke on the water. Even Nellary was struggling. Her shawl was covered in snow, too thick to let through any air. More and more began to stumble. All of them shivered.

Then something opened in front of them, and the snowstorm stopped abruptly as they plunged into a great hall.

Gathering close, they stood inside the building, dripping wet and still freezing. It was warmer in here, but nowhere near warm enough for their frozen, snow-soaked bodies to recover from the blizzard. The light was still painfully bright. The snowy white, perfectly straight walls looked no different from the storm outside.

Behind them the gate closed with a clang, and they were shut in. Not that any of them minded. No one would have thought of going back outside in this winter anyway.

Maithea slumped to the ground. Her lungs hurt, and her skin hurt, and her body felt too heavy to move. She wanted nothing more than to curl up in front of a fire, in dry clothes and dry blankets, and sleep. Next to her Nellary looked like she felt much the same.

"I've had...enough...of this," a voice gasped out at her side, and she hazily turned around to find Fayabel sitting only a few feet away. "First they take us from home, then they drive us through that mountain passage with that accursed mist, and now this march." She shivered. "What's next? The next stage will kill us!"

Maithea looked at her in sympathy. Fayabel no longer looked like herself. Back in Rivertown she had been a lively, energetic person, no-nonsense but outgoing, laughing and helping wherever she could. Now she was a shadow of herself. Her hair was streaked with white. Her eyes were sunken inside her skull, a faded muddy hue where they had once been walnut-brown, glazed over and blank as if she was possessed. Her skin, once tanned from hours of working under the sun, had taken the grayish hue of a dying woman.

Pushing herself up, Maithea mustered a smile, forcing herself to show hope where she felt hopeless. "Who knows, Fay," she said, lightly placing a hand on her shoulder. "Maybe this was the worst of it. We're hostages, remember? They can't kill us yet."

But Fayabel shook her head. "They'll kill us," she said. "They won't get Edmian back, and then they'll kill us. Slowly. One by one. They'll kill us."

"Fay, calm down." Nellary knelt beside her too. "It's not over yet. Maybe someone gets us out, or maybe we can escape–"

"Escape through what, the blizzard and the tunnel we don't know how to open? Or would you have us climb the mountains, weak as we are?" Fayabel gave a bitter laugh that turned into a cough. "No, it's hopeless. They'll have killed us before we ever find an escape, or turned us into Colorless so that we don't even remember what escape means."

Maithea threw a helpless glance at Nellary, who returned her gaze with the same expression. Neither of them knew what to say to that. They both knew she was guessing right, though they both had not yet made peace with the thought.

"See? We're finished." Fayabel closed her eyes. "Well, at least we're all going to die together. If I have to go, I'd rather go out with my children in my arms."

A twang of pain shot through Maithea's heart, and she did not need to look at Nellary to know she felt the same. They, she thought, could not do that. Jolette wasn't with them. She was somewhere out there, impossible to reach unless they did the unthinkable and managed to escape.