The light grew stronger with every step we took, nearly blinding against the blackness in which we’d been enclosed. The sight of it made me feel sick, either from its brightness or the sinking dread that crept into my body the closer we got to it. I didn’t want to be here. The glow of the light should have given me comfort, but I didn’t want to be anywhere near this place. Yet we’d heard the howl of the wolves. We’d been led here by them for a purpose, and it was too late to turn back now. Every step we’d taken since leaving the woman’s home had been a step towards this place; a step towards these coming moments. We were almost there; I could feel it deep down in the centre of my bones.
There was a hissing, sliding sound that didn’t let up – a whisper? a voice? – but no, it was only Enja’s feet dragging on the ground between each step. Her legs seemed heavy, weighing her to the floor, although I didn’t know if it was from her illness or her dread, like mine, at whatever lay before us. I should have been alarmed at her weakness, been aware of the fact that she seemed to be fading faster and faster, but the light was so bright, so intense, and I couldn’t force my mind to form clear thoughts. Everything bore a haze, a bit of weighty confusion that muddled my mind.
Bitter, unforgiving cold gnawed at my body as I was pulled from the black chasm of unconsciousness. I wanted to crawl back into it, to disappear into the darkness and never be found. More than anything, I wanted to escape the cold. But the more awake I became, the more viciously it attacked.
I opened my eyes.
Utter darkness.
Cold stone pressed beneath my body, and somewhere not too far away, wind howled. I remembered the storm, the snow, the way I had been so sure I was about to give up. No, I had given up. I’d fallen, I’d succumbed. So why was I awake now?
I moved to sit up, aching and exhausted and so, so cold.
“Janna?”
I froze.
“Sølvi?”
“Yes.”
His voice was deathly quiet, and very close at hand. I rolled over and felt him lying just behind me. “What happened?”
There was a long pause before he replied. “I was so foolish,” he said, though it sounded more as if he was addressing himself than me. “I … I should have come back earlier…”
I sat up, shivering like I’d never shivered before. My cloak felt extra heavy, though I wasn’t sure why. “Where are we? How did I get here?”
“A cave,” he said, even quieter than before. “I … found you.”
I looked around, still unable to see even the tiniest detail in the perfect darkness. “There’s no fire,” I said, trembling now. “It’s so cold.”
“I brought nothing to start one,” he said. “I didn’t mean to stay out this long. And there was nothing in your cloak.” Something hung in his voice, something that seemed so obvious, but that I was too cold to fully recognize. Whatever it was, I didn’t like it. It slithered up my spine like something cold and clammy.
“We need to get warm,” I said, moving to stand up. “We’ll readjust our layers. Something.”
Sølvi didn’t move, and I realized as I was trying to stand that my cloak hadn’t got heavier; I was wearing two. “Sølvi,” I said quietly, slowly. “Where is your cloak?”
He said something I couldn’t quite make out, but I didn’t need to hear it. I knew I was wearing his cloak. Terror – for him, for us, for everything – split my mind like cracking ice. With shaking hands, I wordlessly pulled his heavy cloak from my shoulders.
“Don’t you dare,” he said, his voice the strongest it had sounded since I had woken up.
“Sølvi, you will die without it,” I told him. I wasn’t crying, but a sob welled up from deep within me and burst out in a weak whimper.
“If you take it off, we’ll both die.”
I tried to say something, to fight his words with some of my own, but the cold was unbearable, sinking deeper and deeper into my body until parts of it were numb.
“Put the cloak back on,” he said.
I wanted to see his face, wanted to hold his hands and look into his eyes and tell him that everything was going to be all right. “I can’t,” I said, stifling another sob. “I can’t do that to you. You need it.”
“Please, Janna.” And I realized what was in his voice that I couldn’t place earlier: acceptance. He knew… He knew he was dying, and he knew the only way we wouldn’t both die was if one of us could stay just warm enough to live.
“You can’t make this decision for me,” I said. I wanted to sound resolute, strong, but I was too cold to say it in anything but a whisper. A tear welled in my eye, but I could already feel it freezing. I wiped it away. “It isn’t yours to make.”
“I’ve made my decision, Janna, and you can make yours. We do not both have to die in here tonight. I don’t know what comes after this life but I would never be able to live with myself if you followed me. I am going to die in here. Please do one thing…” His voice trailed off, weak and empty. “Please live. Not for my sake, or for anyone’s. But for yours. Just live.”
I fell back to the floor, shivering and sobbing, and tried to put the cloak over him in the dark. He pushed me away weakly. “No. I won’t have it.”
“Please, Sølvi,” I begged him. “Please take it.”
“I can’t.”
I slumped forward, my eyes burning with cold tears. This couldn’t be happening. I must still be asleep. I fell down in the woods, I remembered that. Perhaps I had never got up, never been found, and I still lay there slowly freezing to death. But maybe Sølvi was well, somewhere warm at home or in a cave and this was all just a terrible dream born from ice and wind.
“Janna,” he said, and I hated the way he spoke my name so gently, so calm and certain that he was doing the right thing. An arm reached out and grabbed one of my hands – they were mittened, but stiff and unfamiliar, so unlike the ones that had long held mine while we meandered through the woods or explored caves that delved deep into darkness. “Allow me this. Allow me to die knowing you will live. And just … just talk to me. I’ll miss talking to you.”
I squeezed his hand with everything I had, holding it close to my body. It was a wicked thought that I was not ready to entertain, the idea of never talking to him again. He was my love, my every day, my morning and evening and everything in between. He was always there, always an ear or a shoulder when I needed it most. How could I lose that, and go on? “Talk about what?” I said between sobs.
“Anything.”
I nodded, even though he couldn’t see me, and searched desperately through my cold mind for a happier time. “I was just … I was thinking about that time when we were younger, laying outside under the stars and wondering what they were. Telling stories about the constellations.”
“I remember it,” he said, and it sounded like he was smiling. “I wonder if the Horned Horse ever found her foal.”
I laughed a little, and it felt grossly out of place. “I hope she did.”
“I remember another night, up on a hill talking about the stars. We sang a song about winter.”
“We did,” I replied. “I remember you saying you thought the stars were the souls of … of everyone who had passed.”
“I still think that,” he whispered. “I hope it’s true.”
A new wave of tears built up in my eyes. “Don’t say that,” I said. “I know what you’re thinking.”
“What am I thinking?”
“That you’ll be up there soon.”
A quick release of breath that might have been a laugh.
“I know I will. And I can’t wait to see…” He trailed off, either from emotion or the energy it took him to speak.
“Here, Sølvi.” I held out his cloak again. “Please take it. If you wait too long, you won’t be able to undo it. We can even share it, hug each other under them.”
“No. I’m already too cold, Janna. I can’t warm you.”
Silence fell, and I could feel my heart breaking, slowly, as I realized he was leaving me.
“If you could wish for anything right now, what would it be, Janna?” His voice was weak, cracking a little as he spoke. “What’s the one thing that you would wish for?”
I blinked tears from my eyes. “I don’t know. You. I’d wish for you to live. With me. For ever.”
His voice grew quieter with each word he spoke. “No. You should wish for something better. They say that when someone dies, you get a wish. Just one, but it should be a good one.”
“You’re still here,” I said firmly, shaking my head. “I can’t make a wish.”
“But make sure that you do. And make it good. There’s that saying. I think it was Löskan. Burn my body, and blow a wish into the night on the embers of my soul. So when I am gone, Janna, make a wish. All right?”
I couldn’t stop the tears now, so I nodded through a sob. “All right. I will.”
A long pause followed, the howling wind outside the cave the only sound.
“Stars above, snow below,” Sølvi whispered, and my chest tightened. It was an old poem recited at deathbeds to bless the departing.
“Hear the echoes of my soul,” I joined in.
“Raging sea and summer rain, don’t let the world forget my name.” We finished it together.
“I love you, Janna,” he whispered.
“I love you more, Sølvi.”
He died quietly during the night, as easily as if he’d fallen asleep. I could follow him anywhere on this island, into the woods, through the winding passageways of a cave, even to the distant mountains if we wished. But I couldn’t follow him any more, and I wasn’t prepared for the bone-crushing loneliness that gripped my soul the moment it realized his was gone. I sat awake and stared into the darkness, wishing everything was different. Wishing him back. Wishing myself with him. If a new star blinked to light in the night sky, I missed it, sitting alone in a cave in the middle of a storm, buried beneath two cloaks that kept me alive.