The Colorless Land

Chapter 29: Trails in the Snow

She was alone.

Jolette sat in the snow like someone waking from a dream. Around her the wind whistled on, the snowflakes settling thickly on her clothes, already filling the trail of footsteps she had left. There were no more shapes passing by. It was just her and the forces of nature, and somewhere, far ahead, the companions she had run away from.

What had happened?

She only remembered it dimly. For the past hours, maybe the past days, she had been walking in a daze, paying attention to nothing but the shapes of the villagers passing by her. Shapes that, looking back, had obviously been nothing but hallucinations.

But in her daze, in her panic, she had followed them. To where, she did not know.

Jolette scrambled up, patting the snow off her clothes, squinting against the incoming snowflakes. It was hard to hear anything but the whistling of the wind in her ears. It was hard to see further than a few feet. All she knew was that her trail was still there, deep and hasty, and she only needed to follow it back.

So, with the wind at her back, she walked, hoping that at least this time she wasn't following an illusion. She only hoped that she hadn't run far. She also hoped the others had chosen to wait where they were instead of running after her. Otherwise she would have got them all lost.

She was tired, she realized as she walked. Her feet were heavy. When was the last time she had rested properly? When was the last time she had eaten any more than a morsel, for that matter?

Something dark interrupted her thoughts, fading out of the white, growing from the edge of her vision to a stripe that came closer and closer. The river, she realized. That was good news. Wherever she had run to, she hadn't got lost entirely.

But even as she grew closer, she realized the river wasn't as empty as it had been before.

A small row-boat pushed slowly down along the waters. Where it came from she could not guess; there were almost no towns or villages along the Whitewell these days, and the few houses between here and the mountains stood far from the cold water. In many places it was too shallow and rocky for boats, even ones as small as the one in front of her.

For a moment she wondered if this boat, too, was a hallucination, but from the beginning it felt different. It was no silhouette, no silent, ghostly form. It looked, as far as she could tell, real, and as she crept closer she caught snippets of voices drifting to her over the sound of the snowstorm.

"Blasted weather, I tell you," said an old man's voice from the back of the ship. "No use a-telling me to go faster. Sailing down the bloody Whitewell in a bloody snowstorm! It's a miracle you ain't all drownded yet."

The passengers, hooded and cloaked figures in gray, made no response. There was no indication that they had listened to the old ferryman at all.

Jolette crept closer.

"An' I don't care how much money you give me, mind," the old man went on. "You ain't got no right sittin' there actin' all high an' mighty, you lot should at least—"

"Ferryman," a female voice interrupted him. "Silence."

Jolette froze where she stood. A chill ran down her back, even colder than the snowstorm around her.

This kind of voice...she knew what it meant.

"All right, all right," the ferryman rambled on, but now his voice was noticeably tinged with fear. "Meaning no offense, ma'am."

"If you mean no offense," said the woman, "go faster."

"I'm tellin' yer, that's dangerous—"

"It would be faster on foot." The woman's voice took on a threatening edge. "We must reach the havens as quickly as possible. Go faster."