Mara and the Wasteland

Chapter 1

The road was long, made even longer by the fact that it had not really been a road for centuries. As far as Mara knew, there was nothing past the northern woods- perhaps more sea, but certainly no people. She had never dared to imagine that someone could live across the frozen desert.

"Dima, should we go back?" Mara and her companion were camping out at the very edge of the woods. Their tent had been pitched long before nightfall in anticipation of the dreadful cold that came with the dark. Their fire, though, was blazing high and hot, thanks to the dead wood they had collected miles back. For all the snow, this far north was a true desert: it never rained or snowed, only the snow didn't melt and stayed all winter long. Dima looked up from his maps. He had drawn them all himself- he was a mapmaker, sent by the high Cor'reni to explore and chart out the furthest reaches of the continent. Already he and Mara had explored much of the eastern coast, where she was from, but now they were venturing into places Mara could not guide him. Still, she had chosen to stay, because it was not safe for Dima to travel alone. "No," said Dima. "We'll keep going north. There's something there, I'm sure of it. It's on Winn's maps." Mara didn't want to go north any further than they already had, but she shrugged. If Dima was certain, he was usually right. He had a curious knack for finding things. It was how his magic manifested most of the time- he could be left in a random spot far off he road and still find his way where he wanted to go. So if Dima thought there was something worthwhile to the north, Mara would follow. She always followed. Mara's own power was less helpful. She could make lightning. It was good for starting a fire in a pinch, but it was no good around water. "Alright," she agreed, pulling her cloak tighter around herself. It was thin, made more for the rain than for a place like this, but it would have to do. With all the walking, she would warm up. She only wished they had some other way to travel. "You know, I did once hear a story, about people living up here. I'd forgotten." "What is it?" Dima didn't look up from the map he was writing on, but he was listening. "They travel by boats. Not boats like ours, that go on the sea, but boats that use the winds to skim across the snow." Now Dima was looking up at her with his full attention. She privately smiled to see the curiosity that lit up his face. Dima was a handsome young man, only a year older than she was, with a subtle and strange accent that spoke of warm fires and hot drinks. His eyes were the lightest brown she had ever seen, almost the color of dust. "I hear their magic makes it so they can change the direction of the wind and sail their snow-ships." "I'd like to see one. And we will. I can feel it." Mara smiled and Dima went back to work. He hadn't said anything about her calling him Dima- not even an offhanded my name is Dmitri or a tiny grumble. She would try it again later. She always called him Dima in her head, because Dmitri sounded very dignified in comparison, and Mara had seen him in too many awkward and laughable situations to ever see him as dignified. Mara had nothing to occupy her time while Dima finished up his maps, so she lit an everwick and went into the tent to sleep. She didn't share his habit of staying up late at night. The longer she walked, the earlier and earlier she had been sleeping. It was just too cold, too long, and she was too hungry. She had already eaten what they had for the day, but already she felt her stomach complaining. She shook it off. They would hunt tomorrow. Or, rather, she would hunt and Dima would stand there uselessly. Mara only took off her cloak to go to sleep, and nothing else. It was too cold. under her blanket, she was just barely warm enough, but it would do. She blew out the everwick and went to sleep. — Dmitri stared hard at the parchment. Winn's map was laid out next to his, and unless you had seen the land and knew very much about maps, you would hardly have seen the difference between them. But there was one thing that was glaringly obvious to Dmitri, and it was a tiny speck at the northernmost reaches of the white wastes. This was as far as Winn had gone in this direction. But it wasn't the last thing he had reached. He'd gone south again, along the western edge of the mountains, and almost the the southern point of the western cape before the had gone back to Cor're. Winn was the explorer that had preceded Dmitri. Dmitri had only known him as an old man, a family friend whose story he'd never really known, but after he died and left Dmitri his life's work, everything had started to make sense. Winn was the bravest man Dmitri had ever known, a valiant explorer whose career had only been stopped by the White War. So why hadn't he gone any farther north than that little dot on the map? The paper was too worn with time to read the name of the town, but it was certainly there. This was no mistake. Dima only wondered how many days and miles it would be before they reached it. He hoped it wasn't too terribly far. Mara wasn't used to the cold like he was. Back in Dmitri's native Russia, winter had seemed unending, but he had lived with it his entire life. He had his coat and the scarf his mother had made him, and even he was chilled to the bone out here. He could only wonder how Mara, who had lived far to the south in a seafaring village, was dealing with the cold. Dmitri's eyes began to close after long minutes of staring at the map as if something would reveal itself. The fire, too, was dying, and soon he could hardly read Winn's words. He sighed and rolled up the maps, putting them back in his bag. Mara had taken the everwick inside, so he felt his way by magic in the dark, finding the tent and ducking inside. His blankets were laid neatly next to where Mara slept in a rumpled pile. If he hadn't known it was her, he might have mistaken it for a heap of blankets with some curly hair sticking out of the top. He couldn't suppress a smile. Dima kicked off his boots and lay them at the end of his makeshift bed, then lay down and pulled the covers up over himself. It was a dark and frigid night already, and the deepest part of the darkness was yet to come. He had to sleep. — If Mara had been in her village, it would have been no shock to wake to the sound of voices, shouting to each other, echoing on the surface of the sea. The fisherman would be up at the break of day, already going off onto the water by the time their voices reached Mara to wake her up. But she was not in her village. She was in a tent, in the dark, at the edge of a wasteland. There was nothing familiar about the distant shouting. It came to her on the wind, like a sound blown from a distance. The words were impossible to make out. But Mara's heart was already pounding. There was too much that this could be, and none of it was good. She scrambled out of her nest of blankets and felt for the everwick in the dark. "Mara?" Dima's voice came groggy and confused from the other side of the tent. In her blind reaching she smacked something that she was pretty sure was his face. "Ow. Mara. What are you doing?" She hissed a sharp shh. Dima fell silent. She could almost feel his realization as her heard the shouting. She finally found the everwick beside her bed and went to light it. Dima stopped her before she could put her fingers to it. "Don't. Someone will see the light." Mara put on her shoes, freezing cold though they were, wrapped her cloak haphazardly around her shoulders, and went out of the tent. "Mara?!" Then, quieter, "Mara, come back!" The sky was red. Deep red, the red of a cloudy midnight. She could hardly see anything when she looked ahead of her. You could only see from the corners of your eyes in the dark, she remembered. Vaguely she saw behind her the deep woods from which they had come, and ahead of her the bleak horizon of snow against sky. The wind was howling loud, but she could make out the shouts again when she held her breath. It sounded so much like the sailors of home, but in such a lonely place, it felt wrong. Dima emerged from the tent after her, already carrying his pack as if they might have to run any moment. "I think I was dreaming about snow-ships," she said quietly. "You heard it too, didn't you?" "I heard it," he said, and nodded. "It's probably only some hunters. Or someone traveling like us. Wind carries voices much farther than they should go." Mara wasn't sure if she was ready to accept that explanation. Something told her to hurry, that something would be lost if they stayed here too long. "Let's pack up. The sky is lightening, do you see? I won't stay here any longer." Dima looked at her for a long moment, then nodded and went to gather everything together. Mara wondered very briefly why she had agreed to come this far. She had thought about stopping when they'd reached the river that divided the north and south, since she had never crossed it, and would be of no use as a guide. But she had gone on with Dima anyway. Maybe she had been stupid to do so. The sun had just started rising when they had everything packed away, and so they set off northward, with the sun at their right, its low angle and red light warming them for perhaps the last time that day. After this it was only snow and sky. They walked and walked without speaking until high noon made the snow so bright Mara could hardly look ahead of her. They stopped for a break. Mara out her pack down on the ground and sat on it. "Your things will get wet," Dima said. "No they won't. This snow is too cold to melt, and all my things are cold anyway. This will make no difference." She rubbed her hands together, wishing she had better gloves than the ones she was wearing. They were thin and full of holes. She looked up and saw Dima watching her from where he was also sitting on his pack now. "You're cold," he said. "Very observant. We are in a frozen wasteland. Of course I'm cold." He rolled his eyes, but not without some fondness. "Here." He took off the big scarf he had worn since they passed the river and he wrapped it snugly around her neck. She instantly felt much warmer. But Dima started laughing, first softly, then uncontrollably. "What?!" Dima gasped for breath, then wiped his eyes as if he had been crying. "You should see your hair." "You're the worst," she said, instead of thank you. She was sure the gratefulness was implicit in her words. They ate some of the bread and meat they had saved, and though the dried meat was cold, it was better than eating meat that had not been dried and was frozen solid. Mara wished they had time to start a fire and warm it up along with themselves, but Dima was already on his feet and ready to go by the time they finished. They walked until late evening. After a few hours Mara had used a precious bit of her magic to light her everwick and held it in her hands as the glass globe warmed from the flame. Dima had looked impressed as they walked on, and her hands were much warmer. His hands stayed buried in his pockets. Dima had no gloves at all, and now no scarf. Only his fur-lined hat and his overcoat, which could not have been doing a very good job of keeping him warm. She felt suddenly guilty for having his scarf. He had already bought her the boots she wore, and spent nearly all his money on it. The rest had gone to the threadbare gloves, which she supposed were better than nothing, and she ought to have been more grateful. She handed the everwick quietly to Dima about halfway through their afternoon traveling and privately smiled while he warmed his hands. His nose and his ears were all red. The everwick seemed to shine brighter soon, but she realized that it was because of the nightfall and not the fire itself. Wordlessly they came to a stop and started setting up their tent. But Mara's knees felt weak and wobbly beneath her, and she sat heavily on the floor of their tent as soon as it was set up. "Are you okay, Mara?" Dima's voice was as concerned as it had been when they had rested, but she did not read into it. She didn't have the strength. "I'm fine," she assured him. "Just do the rest without me." Dima gave her one last cautious look and closed the flap of the tent to go start the fire. Mara lay down on her blankets and closed the top of the everwick to bring down the flame until it slowly died. Still she held it in her hands as the glass cooled, and her eyes grew heavy as darkness fell around her. Before she even thought to go out by the fire, she was asleep. — There was something about the night that set Dmitri on edge. Perhaps it was how open they were to the wasteland. Everything was flat and featureless, and the light of his fire was only a small speck of light in a vast darkness. His eyes were not adjusted to the light, since he had been so close to the flames, staring at his work. He couldn't even see the horizon. If his magic hadn't acted as a compass, he would have felt completely lost and adrift in this isolation. As the hours wore on and Mara did not come out of the tent, Dima was only slightly concerned. It wasn't the first time she had gone to bed early. They kept different hours, the two of them, and she was always awake before he was as well. But suddenly there was a stirring in the tent, and Mara's gasp muffled by the canvas. Dima tucked away Winn's map and went to the tent to listen, to determine if he had really heard the sound. He had. Something rustled again, and Mara's breathing was heavy and labored. Dima opened the flap of the tent, but it was too dark to see. He reached for her everwick to see her, but as soon as he reached for it, she stopped tossing and turning and sat straight up, awake as suddenly as lightning. "Dima, did you hear it? It was the shouting from the woods!" She tried to get to her feet, but Dmitri pushed her down again. She didn't even struggle. He hadn't realized just how weak she was. "It was just a dream, Mara. It's fine. There's nothing." "Let me listen," she urged him, and batted his hands away. She held her breath for a moment and closed her eyes, but after a couple seconds listening, she appeared satisfied that there was nothing. "I could have sworn..." "It's okay. Go back to sleep. Are you warm enough?" "I'm fine," she said, and huddled back under the blankets. Dima's eyes were adjusting to the dark, and he almost laughed at the sight of her bundled up like that, her curly hair like a cloud around her. When he was sure she was asleep again, he put one of his blankets over her and waited for her to stop shivering, then went out by the fire again. He would need the warmth. — When Mara woke up in the morning, Dima was already up, which was a bit of a shock, but not unwelcome. He was sitting in front of a new fire, or perhaps the same one, holding a pot over it. In the pot were shards of ice, slowly melting. "You didn't take that off the ground, did you?" "No. Our water finally froze." "Oh." Well, it had only been a matter of time, really. Though they kept their water stuffed deep in their packs after they warmed it, to keep it and their things from freezing solid, this was the kind of cold that seeps into your bones. Mara definitely felt it in her bones right now. There was a dull ache, a twitch, a restless prickling that she hadn't felt before. But she didn't say anything about it. She didn't want to worry Dima, not now when they should both have been focused on their survival. They heated the water until it was warm enough to stay liquid in their packs for a little while longer, but she doubted how long it would last. The sun was barely up when they set off on their way, due dead north with the sun casting cold light on their right. In the fifth hour, Mara lagged behind. Dima looked back at her with concern, but he only stopped long enough for her to catch up. In the sixth hour, she felt her legs failing, but not as sharply as she felt the cold. It felt lodged inside her like a shard of something sharp, ice in her heart that was freezing her from the inside out. In the seventh hour, the wind picked up, and Mara collapsed on the cold ice like a puppet whose strings had been cut, and the whole world went black.