The Colorless Land

Chapter 4: The Empty Village

"Who's here?" Jolette hissed back even as she cowered down next to Edmian, pressing herself to the walls and the ground. "What's happening?"

Edmian was silent. His eyes were growing wider and wider and completely blank. Sweat formed on his face. His hand crept and fidgeted hastily under his collar.

More and more fog crept into the ruin, thick and white and blindingly bright. Jolette felt like she was looking at fresh snow under the sun, and yet there was no sunlight for it to reflect. It didn't seem to shine either, not in the way she knew. It was only white, palest white in a way that hurt and stung the eyes.

A freezing cold chill shuddered over the ground, along the walls, following the fog. It crawled into the clothes, seeped into the skin, no matter how much Jolette huddled and curled up to keep it away. It was hard to breathe. There was something in the air that stuck in her lungs, something that made her feel as if the very air she was breathing was dead.

No, not dead. To be dead it must have been alive in the first place. This air felt like it had never been.

Footsteps rustled over the grass, countless footsteps and yet one, dozens and dozens, maybe hundreds of feet moving in perfect synchronicity. Closer and closer they came, in a straight line towards the hills and the ruins and the building where Jolette and Edmian lay hid. They passed the beginning of the ruins. Then the first hill, the second. They were close to their hideout now.

Then they stopped.

Edmian was shaking, but he made no sound. Jolette held her breath. Her own heartbeat pounded loudly in her ears, a rhythmic, pounding, ever-repeating boom.

Slowly, slowly, her eyes moved towards a crack in the wall, a tiny hole barely large enough to peer through. Careful not to make a noise, she shifted and pressed her face against it.

A group of strangers stood close, lined up in neat rows like marching soldiers, dressed in heavy coats and armed and geared for fighting. There were lines of archers, rows of swordsmen and people with axes; and then there was another row that seemed to carry no weapon at all. All of them were tall. All of them were lean and narrow. And all of them looked more like ghosts or giant dolls than people who had ever been alive.

They were snowy white, skin, hair and clothes, and even their eyes seemed to be blank and white. Some still had pale gray irises. Others only had faded pupils in the middle of white nothingness. But many of them had nothing, no pupils, no irises, nothing to show where they were looking at all. None of them showed any emotion. Their expressions were blank. Nothing lay inside their faces except hollow, mindless emptiness.

Slowly, slowly, the row closest to them turned their heads, right, left, right, unblinking, in perfect unison, making no sound. Their blank white eyes did not move under their eyelids, but Jolette could not fight the impression that they saw everything.

Right and left their heads turned, never varying their speed. Right again. They stopped.

The blank faces were looking directly at their hideout.

Jolette held her breath, trembling and shaking. They could sense their presence, she thought. How they did it she could not tell. Maybe they could hear human heartbeats or sense their warmth in the freezing fog. Or perhaps something was calling to them. Something magical.

Were they here for the pendant? They weren't here for the pendant, were they?

What to do? What to do?

If one of them turned and approached their hideout, should she get out and pretend she had been alone? Would that help Edmian? What would they do with her when they saw her?