Darkness carved in bone

Chapter 31

Chapter 31

Ten

It felt like they flew across the ice. Shiny's spiked hooves gave the horse the grip it needed to push them and the sleigh across the ice in a hurling speed. Helen sat beside him, deep inside the furs that warmed them both. Their hands had found each other underneath, intertwined fingers and clashing palms that played with each other under the covers. They hadn't really spoken since leaving Sigfjordswerf, she had just put her head on his shoulder and let him take them across the ice.

The path ahead was illuminated with black powder pits that burned in the ice, and the darkening sky was about to let the stars come out and play. The path they were on were meticulously taken care of by the villagers, clearing it as often as they managed, and keeping the black pits filled with enough black powder so that the path was lit. The bright contrast between the dark ice and the orange flames was beautiful. But it was also strange and slightly unnatural to see the flames shooting up from the ice. Sometimes it was even possible to hear boiling water and see steam rising from the pits as the black powder turned the ice into water and steam. But the black powder had never, not even to this day burned through the ice. It had to be a combination the extremely thick ice and the blistering cold that kept turning the water back into ice as fast as it could melt. The equilibrium made it possible for the pits of fire to burn for them as they crossed the ice.

The thoughts of the thick ice below them made him think of the unnaturalness of Helen falling through the ice. It shocked him to think how strong this prophecy seemed to be. Of how much divine intervention and power it had, to weaken the ice and break it so she ended up falling into the dark abyss below. It could of course just have been a coincidence. Perhaps it was a fracture, a weak point in the ice from when someone had made a hole in the ice so they could fish. But he thought it strange that anyone would have ventured that far out on the ice to fish, and then to make a hole in the path. That was both reckless and stupid. The goosebumps that formed in his neck as he thought of her falling through the ice, told him that he did not believe in a natural explanation to the ice breaking. No, the prophecy had been there with him for so long now. This was no coincidence. Something or someone had wanted her to fall through the ice.

They had passed that point, the point where she had fallen through the ice, a while back. They had looked at each other, as a gust of cold evening wind seemed to alert them to the fact that they were closing in on the place where it had happened. They both had looked longingly after the cabin at the edge of the lake, but the darkness had obscured their view, making it impossible to spot it. A tinge of bitterness was suddenly evident in his mouth, as his expression turned hard. He gritted his teeth and gripped Shiny's reins just a bit tighter, as uneasy started building up inside him. He had discovered some parts of himself in that cabin, and he was still undecided on how to act on those discoveries. And not being able to choose a path forward for himself made him feel hard and cold inside.

He let his gaze wander to his surroundings after a while, letting go of his internal struggle for a while. The dark forest loomed on both sides of the now narrowing lake. They had passed the part of the wide and oceanlike lake. Now it was perhaps not more than 70 paces across. But in contrast to the slimness of the lake at the moment, it still seemed unending. A slow and steady hum came from the metal runners underneath the sleigh. The metal runners made the sleigh run smoothly against the dark ice, and was the only source of sound, except for Shiny's hooves against the ice and his breaths and occasional grunts. The wind had blown snow across patches of the path, making the sleigh lurch as it passed over them, making it tingle slightly in Ten's stomach. The wind also disturbed the sleeping newly fallen snow on the ground, making it fly and fall through the air, twinkling in the approaching starlight.