The Halfling

Chapter 4

The journey towards the Whitehead Mountains would be much the same straggle it had been yesterday.

"Was it yesterday," the boy thought. "I could swear we were in there for a week!"

But it was yesterday, thank you very much. And that meant the storm's destruction left marks on the forest.

The incessant-drumming rain had formed eddies here and there, leaving either a small bed of water or mud that twisted around your feet like manacles. Branches were torn, lifted, spat onto the ground, looking like thin-dilapidated hands.

Around them the forest smelled of loam and dew and raindrops, placating the fears that might have been inspired by the knotting boughs and the stripped barks of the trees. Moreover, the intermittent rustling that slushed through the bushes and weeds was also masked by the humming of the boy.

They were folk songs in his village, which now seemed as far away as a dream to him. And singing and chanting were the only ways he could remind himself that they were not only nebulous figures and shapes, they truly did exist.

"Have you any songs from your land, princess," asked the boy, his voice gravelly. "It doesn't please me to say that singing for the last few hours has worn out my throat. But it has."

"Then you shouldn't be singing," Theresa said. "And besides, if we were heard by some creature here, we'd be fodder."

The boy snarked but the princess did not pay mind.

A week had gone when they started hiking the base of the mountains. Like a snake, the path wended the mountainside before disappearing at the peak, as if smoke pillars rising up then blending into the thin, invisible air.

Though winter had dissipated below the range, the craggy mountainside had not been reached by the breath of spring. Frost covered the surface as if they were hoars of muffled hair atop a person's head. Their feet were easily wearied as they had to sink into snow thick as castle walls and emerge up then stomp forward.

They were crossing a range when the boy almost fell, had he not been caught by the wizard. He had miscalculated his step and the rocks had given way.

The wizard pulled him back. The boy clutched at his staff as if he were holding his heart, which now beat beside his tongue.

Theresa snickered. The boy glared at her. They squabbled until parted by Amos, whose countenance was sprinkled with the same salt-and-pepper that flowed about the ragged paths.

Slowly, the goodly foods disappeared into crumbs and they were left with nothing but the same mush they dreaded eating. The water they had to be careful with, as drinking too much meant little provisions for the next few days. Which itself meant their deaths.

"Can't you make the snow into water," the boy asked Amos.

"Master Lightfoot," the wizard said, "I can't, unfortunately. And even if I could, I wouldn't. There are things better left to the fickleness of fate than to our unceasing desires. We cannot mindlessly change the world."

A droplet of water trickled from the ceiling of the cave.

The boy swallowed. "And if we die?"

"Then so be it."

Horrified, the boy turned to run out the cave and trudge as far away from the wizard. Possibly, back to his home in the West. Or, at least, his camping site. But he remembered why they had sought shelter in the cave. More accurately, he saw why.

Outside raged the fiercest buffeting of snow he had ever seen in his life. They came like shards of glass, hurled in so fine whips that they looked like insects humming about. And from the gorges below, the roars of beasts echoed in the hollow mountains.