Tales of Wind and Fire: Giver

Chapter 26

"Bennu!" Yelled Cybil at the top of her voice. "Bennu! Mystigan! Where are you!"
She was alone in the storm. They could be three paces away and she'd never see them. They could have fallen down an ice hole and she'd never hear the screams. The wind tossed her into a drift, and she choked on snow. One of her mittens slipped off, and the ice river blew it away. "No!" She shouted, beating the snow with her fists. "No, no, no!"
On her hands and knees, she crawled into the wind. Stay calm. Find solid snow. Dig in.
After an endless struggle, she hit a snow hill. The wind had packed it hard, but not so hard that it was solid ice. Wrenching her axe from her belt, she began hacking a hole. She thought about using her powers to faze under ground and look for a natural cave, but she'd be doomed if she didn't find anything, for using any sort of magic sucked out energy like a infuriating mosquito. Digging would be more practical. Bennu's probably doing the same thing, she told herself.
By the Spirit, I hope so.
With surprising speed, she hacked out a hollow just big enough to take her and her pack, if she curled up small. The digging warmed her, but she could no longer feel her mittenless hand.
Crawling in backwards, she piled the scooped-out chunks in the entrance hole, wailing herself up in the freezing darkness. Her breath soon melted the ice that caked her clothes, and she began to shake. As her eyes adjusted to the gloom, she saw that her mittenless fingers were white and hard. She tried to flex them, but they didn't move.
She knew about frostbite: the Thunder-boar guild leader's son, Aki, had lost three toes to it last winter. If she didn't warm up her fingers soon, they'd turn black and die, then she'd have to cut them off, or she would die too. Desperately, she blew on them, then shoved her hand inside her jerkin, under her armpit. The hand felt heavy and cold, no longer part of her.
Fresh terrors arose. Would she die alone like her father? Would she never see Kai again? Where were Bennu and Mystigan? Even if they survived, how would she find them? Pulling off her remaining mitten, she fumbled at her neck for the grouse-bone whistle that Bennu had given her. She blew hard. It made no sound. Was she doing it right? Would Mystigan be able to hear it? Maybe it only worked for Bennu. Maybe you had to be the Giver.
She blew till she felt giddy and sick. They won't come, she thought. They'll have dug in long ago. If they're still alive.
The whistle tasted salty. Was that the grouse bone, or was she crying? No point crying, she told herself. Screwing her eyes shut, she went on blowing.
She awoke to find herself floating in beautiful heat. The snow was as warm and soft as reindeer skins. She snuggled into it, so drowsy that she couldn't even lift her eyelids. . .
much too drowsy to crawl into her sleeping-sack. . .
Voices dragged her awake. Kai and Saeunn had come to visit her.
I wish they'd let me sleep, she thought hazily.
Hord was sneering, as he always did. "Why did she make it so small? Why can't she ever do things properly?"
"Hord, that's not true," said Kai. "She did her best."
"Still," said Saeunn, "she could have made a better door."
"I was too tired," mumbled Cybil.
Just then, the door blew open, scattering ice all over her. "Shut the door!" She protested.
One of the camp dogs jumped on top of her, showering her with snow, and nudging his cold nose under her chin. She batted him away. "Bad dog! Go way!"
"Wake up, Cybil!" Bennu shouted in her ear.

= = = = = = = = = = =

"I'm asleep!," muttered Cybil, burying her face in the snow. "No you're not!" Shouted Bennu. He was longing for sleep himself, but first he had to make room for him and Mystigan, and waken Cybil. If she fell asleep now, it would be forever. "Cybil, come on!" He grabbed her shoulders and shook her.
"Wake up!"
"Leave me alone," she said. "I'm fine."
But she wasn't. Her face was blotched and inflated by the flying ice, her eyes almost swollen shut. The fingers of her right hand were waxy, unnervingly like that of the Owl-guild member's corpse.
As Bennu hacked at the snow, he wondered how much longer she would have lasted if Mystigan hadn't found her; and how much longer he and Mystigan would have lasted if they hadn't found her snow cave. Bennu was nearly worn out, he'd never have had the strength to start one afresh.
Of the three of them, Mystigan was holding up the best. His fur was so thick that the snow lay on top of it without even melting. One good shake, and the snow flew off, showering them all. Swaying with exhaustion, Bennu finished enlarging the snow cave, and walled up the entrance again, leaving a gap at the top to let out the smoke from the fire he'd promised himself. Then he knelt beside Cybil, and after several attempts, dragged her sleeping-sack out from behind her.
"Get into this," he growled.
She kicked it away.
Scooping snow between his frozen fists, he rubbed it into her face and hands.
"Ow!" She yelped.
"Wake up or I'll kill you," he snarled.
"You are killing me," she snapped.
Knowing he had to make a fire soon, he rubbed his own hands into the snow, then tried to warm them in his armpits. As feeling returned, so did pain. "Ow," he moaned. "Ow, ow, it hurt."
"What did you say?" Said Cybil, sitting up and banging her head on the ceiling.
"Nothing."
"Yes you did, you were talking to yourself."
"I was talking to myself?" He rounded on her, "You were chatting with your entire guild!"
"I was not," she snorted indignantly.
"You were," he said with a grin. She was waking up at last. He'd never been so glad to be having an argument.
Somehow, between them, they managed to make a fire. Fire needs warmth as well as air, so they used some of their firewood to make a little platform to keep the rest off the snow— and this time, instead of fumbling with his strike-fire, Bennu remembered the fire-roll in his pack. At first the fire in the birch-bark roll refused to wake up, even when he blew on it coaxingly, and Cybil fed it morsels of tinder warmed in her hands. Eventually it flared, rewarding their efforts with a small but cheering blaze.
With dripping hair and chattering teeth, they huddled over it, moaning as it thawed their hands and blistered their faces. But the flames gave them comfort greater than heat. Every night of their lives they'd gone to sleep to that crackling hiss and that bittersweet tang of woodsmoke.
The fire was a little piece of the forest.
Bennu found his last roll of dried deer meat and shared it between the three of them. Cybil gave him the waterskin. He hadn't known he was thirsty, but as he took a long drink, he felt strength returning.
"How did you find me?" Cybil asked.
"I didn't," he replied. "Mystigan did. I don't know how."
She considered that. "I think I do." She showed him the grouse-bone whistle.
Bennu thought of her blowing that silent whistle in the dark. He wondered what it had been like, all alone. At least he'd had Mystigan.
He told her about the Owl-guild corpse, and finding the last two world-souls. He didn't mention the awful moment when he'd considered not trying to find her. He felt too ashamed.
"The four elements," murmured Cybil. "I wouldn't have thought of that."
"Do you want to see them?"
She shook her head. After a while she said, "If it had been me, I'd have thought twice about leaving the snow cave. You were risking the world-souls."
Bennu was silent. Then he said, "I did think twice. I thought about staying, and not going to look for you."
She went quiet. "Well," she said. "I'd have done the same."
Bennu didn't know if he felt better or worse for telling her. "But what would you have done?" He asked. "Would you have stayed? Or gone to look for me?"
Cybil wiped her nose on the back of her hand. Then she flashed him her sharp-toothed grin. "Who knows? But maybe— it was another kind of test? Not whether you could find the world-souls, but whether you could risk them for a friend."

•.•.•.•.•.•.•.•.•.•.•.•.•.•.•

Bennu awoke to a hushed blue glow. He didn't know where he was.
"Storm's over," said Cybil. "And I've got a crick in my neck."
So had Bennu. Huddled in his sleeping-sack, he turned to face her.
Her eyes were no longer swollen, but her face was red and peeling. When she smiled, it obviously hurt. "Ow!" She croaked. "We survived!"
He grinned back, then wished he hadn't. His face felt as if it had been scrubbed with sand. He probably looked just like Cybil. "Now all we've got to do is get off the ice river," he said.
Mystigan was whining to be let out. Bennu groped for his axe and hacked a hole. Light streamed in, and Mystigan shot out.
Bennu crawled after him.
He emerged into a glittering world of snow hills and wind-carved ridges. The sky was intensely blue, as if it had been washed clean. The stillness was absolute. The ice river had gone back to sleep.
Without warning, Mystigan pounced on him, knocking him into a snowdrift. Before he could get up, Mystigan leapt onto his chest, grinning and wagging his tails. Laughing, Bennu lunged for him, but Mystigan dodged out of his reach, then spun round in mid-air and bowed down with his tails curled over his back. Let's play!
Bennu went down on his forearms. Come on then!
Mystigan launched himself at Bennu, and together they rolled over and over, Mystigan play-biting and tearing at Bennu's hair, and Bennu muzzle-grabbing and tugging at his scruff. Finally, Bennu tossed a snowball high, and Mystigan made one of his amazing twisting leaps and snapped it up, landing in a snowdrift, and surfacing with a neat pile of snow on top of his nose.
As Bennu struggled breathlessly to his feet, he heard Cybil making her way out of the snow cave. "I hope," she yawned, "it's not too far to the Forest. What happened to your cape?"
He was about to tell her that the storm had ripped it away, when he turned—and forgot about the cape.
East beyond the snow-cave— beyond the ice river itself— the High Mountains were terrifyingly close.
For many days the fog had hidden them; then yesterday the ice cliffs had loomed so close that nothing could be seen beyond them. Now, in the clear, cold light, the Mountains ate up the sky.
Bennu reeled. For the first time in his life, they weren't just a distant darkness on the east horizon. He stood at their very roots: craning his neck at vast, swooping ice-faces, at black peaks that pierced the clouds. He felt their power and menace. They were the abode of spirits. Not of men.
Somewhere among them, he thought, lies the Mountain of the World Spirit. The Mountain I swore to find.