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Ellery touched the back of his hand gently to Nara’s face. Despite the cold numbing his fingers, her flushed skin was too warm. He wondered if the cold and near numbness of his hands might make her feel warmer still, or less so. Touching his own face, Ellery found it just as cold as his fingers. In all their lifetimes and all they had faced, death and injury had been common, but illness was not something they had experienced.
He had been ill as a child from time to time, although he barely remembered it. Other than his mother fussing over him. This worried him. He put his hand back to Nara’s face, which was growing redder by the moment. He glanced up and over her head. The too-white world reflected the light, making it difficult to tell which way was up and what might be surrounding them.
Was it something here that had caused her illness, and if so, why wasn't he experiencing the same? He had carried her on his back across the snow, and she had not shared the illness. She had made no noise at all. From time to time, he had stopped to listen for her breathing in the odd silence.
“You touched one of them,” he murmured, his hand still cupping her too-warm cheek.
“It pinned me to the ground,” she replied. “I didn’t reach out to pet it.”
Ellery smiled, despite the situation. Something in her relaxed a little, as though she was wary, and he realised then how tense she had been. Was it the world, or had she been worried about something else? He had to admit that he had not been paying proper attention. He was looking for signs of the creatures, looking for something that would give him an idea of where they were and what might be around them.
“Climb on,” he said, turning his back to her and squatting down.
“You can’t keep carrying me,” she said, remaining where she was.
When he glanced over his shoulder at her, he noticed that her eyes appeared unfocused and she swayed a little, as though standing was harder than it usually was for her.
Ellery had seen something like this in his days with the lord, leading men through muddy fields in pursuit of other men he was uncertain he really wanted to hunt down. Some went down with illness, usually induced by injury or the constant cold, wet conditions. Most quickly succumbed to the illness and were left behind whether dead or not.
“I will carry you for as long as you need me to.” His voice was firmer than he intended, and it echoed angrily around them.
Nara fell forward across his back, her arms around his neck, although not as tight as he would have liked. Her sword jutted out before him, still tight in her hand, although he worried that she couldn’t maintain her grip on it.
He held her tight, his own sword still in his hand as he stood in the silent world, unsure where to go or what they might be moving towards. They could walk for days and find nothing. If she was as ill as she appeared to be, it might be that he was alone by the time he reached wherever he was headed.
Nara raised her hand, pointing into the distance, and he realised she held her jade stones in her fist. Something else she could lose on the journey. She had not lost any yet, having maintained her hold on them in even the most difficult circumstances. And yet, at different times, during different lives, she claimed that she’d had more of them.
The bright golden sword reflected the sunlight, although there was no warmth in it despite the golden glow. Ellery had seen her maintain her hold on that in difficult times. In their last life, she had even called it to her hand. As he thought of that memory, holding her in his arms as the sword moved towards her through the moonlight, he would have sworn on her life that it was the same blade she carried now. But the feeling of the risen symbols on his side was just as strong, and he knew it was a false memory. The sword she had carried in her last life was not this one, although it was.
A moment of fear crept along his spine. All the memories he was so sure he had lived—all the times they had been together and then dragged apart—might be some other form of false memory. They might not be his memories at all. Were they even the same people? He was sure he knew her, those golden eyes and long brown hair, every inch of her body.
But then, he never carried his scars to the next life—another idea that it was all a memory that might not be his own. They had been so determined to find the reason behind this all, and now it might be that there was nothing to chase. Were they even alive, or were they lost in some in-between space between living and the fire tree?
Nara’s hand tapped against his chest, and the feeling gave him pause. If nothing else, he was certain he was alive. He could feel her weight, the cold air pushing in around him. Her fist tapped against his chest again, and he stopped.
She raised her hand up and opened it, and there were no stones present. He turned suddenly, as though she might have dropped them and he would see them in the snow. There was nothing but white behind him. Nara needed the stones, but he did not have the energy to backtrack and find them.
Nara moved her hand a little to the side, and he could see a shape on the horizon. He couldn’t tell what it might be from this distance other than a shadow. A mountain? Another ravine? Whatever it was, it was far away.
He didn’t need to ask if she was sure of what she sensed; she wouldn’t have indicated it if she wasn’t. Whether ill or not, her senses had not been impacted. The pull that had dragged him out of the ravine and away from the creatures earlier had disappeared. He focused on holding her closer, despite still carrying the sword in his hand, and he walked towards whatever it might be in the distance. Whether refuge or the creature they sought, it was all a guess.
His shoulder ached. He longed to put the sword away, but he didn’t want to risk Nara rubbing against the blade. And if Nara remained on his back, he didn’t want to risk hurting her if he had to pull it out in hurry. The creatures they had seen so far were near invisible against the white world, although they might have burrowed beneath it. He had no idea where they could come from. They had at least sensed the creatures coming, and that gave him some comfort.
His feet paused despite the distance still to go.
“Haven?” Nara murmured in a half-asleep state.
Nara had said that the snow wasn’t cold enough when she had been pressed beneath the creature, as though she’d doubted it was snow. Ellery was certain it was. As if to test him, it started to softly float down around him. It melted against his skin, freezing as it trickled into his beard.
He rolled his shoulders, hiked Nara a little higher on his back, and then put his head down, tugging the hood forward over his face. He hoped he was headed towards the distant shadow that, despite the snow, appeared more solid with every step.
This life seemed so different to all the ones that had come before. No matter his fear that he might not have lived them, he was worried that if he started to notice what was different, this one might not end in the same way as the others.
Not that he wanted to end his lives with Nara. He had wanted to find an end to this for a very long time. By the end of the last life, he had been so ready for it all to end. But then Manning had appeared in his life along with the implications of what that meant—that there were others out there who not only knew who they were but wanted Nara had frightened Ellery more than he realised.
He had spent his time beneath the fire tree trying desperately to work out what it meant, what any of it meant. And yet, it might be far more than he had considered.
Now he was tying himself in knots, trying to pay attention to his surroundings while the last life kept turning over and over in his head. Nara knew the soldier, he remembered. Although he wasn’t a soldier; he was a hunter of some form. Although Ellery had not believed that himself when he met the man, something had unsettled him from the very beginning. There was nothing familiar about the man, nothing that reminded him of anyone he had met during his lifetimes—any of them. But could the man have been someone from Nara’s past and not Ellery’s, and that was why she recognised something in him?
Someone from her father’s history, perhaps, and that was why they wanted her and not the both of them? Yet something niggled at the back of his mind, something he couldn’t work out, no matter how many endless days beneath the fire tree he had spent thinking about it. It was as though something was preventing him from working it out. Something was blocking a memory or an idea so he couldn’t determine what it all meant.
He lifted Nara again to ensure that she was secure. She remained silent, her weight against him, and he wondered if she was really holding on. Although one arm was pulled around his neck, the other still held the sword out before him. Her hold seemed relaxed, and yet the sword remained where it was. If they came across any threat, he wondered if she would be able to help defend them. It had been a close call with the number and size of the creatures they had already met. He doubted he could outrun them again. Not with Nara’s weight.
Looking forward despite the slow walk and the snow falling around them, Ellery was certain that the dark shape he moved towards was closer. When another growl echoed through the silence, it was as though it appeared right before him. A towering mountain blocked the bright light, plunging them into a surreal grey world as the snow continued to fall around them.
Ellery was tempted to put Nara down and explore a little of the sheer stone wall that rose out of the frozen ground before them. There was no sign of any creature. The silence had closed around them again as the flakes continued to fall, his boots crunching through the thicker snow on the ground.
There was no indication as to what it might be, nor what might be on the other side. There was no sign of a door, nor any entrance or break in the stone. It loomed above them, despite the shadow of it not falling nearly as far as he would have expected looking up towards the top—which he could not make out. Although he had seen it from the distance, he thought, starting to lean back. Nara’s weight shifted on his back as he looked.
Her arm closed tighter around his neck, and her hand tapped his chest. He looked down as she pointed to the right. Despite the exhaustion pulling at him, he headed along the wall following the direction she pointed. He was tempted to touch the surface with his sword, but he didn’t know what that might do. It might not be stone but something else entirely, although there was no sense of danger here.
In a few short steps, the solid dark-grey stone opened like a fissure that ran from the ground up into the sky. The snow was unmarked around the opening. It was wide enough that he could have continued inside, but he hesitated.
Nara murmured something unintelligible. She was his priority. If this could protect them from the cold, it was a risk he had to take. He paused too long at the entrance, the snow likely settling on his hood and on Nara, but there was no sense of danger—no pull to enter, no push to run. Something squeaked in Nara’s hand as he stepped forward, and when she tapped her fist against his chest again, he understood that she held the stones. If they had told her this was the way to go, there was no other way.
The bright light had been lost to the shadow of the mountain, but the darkness surrounding him now that he was inside it brought the fire tree to mind. And when the darkness lit up with the blue-green light of Nara’s sword, he thought he felt the magic hum through him. He was tempted to take it from her hand, but the magic was hers and not his. Instead, he tried to focus on their surroundings.
The narrow tunnel tapered up, the narrowed ceiling disappearing into the dark. He glanced up, wondering how far above them it went and what might be hiding in the dark. His sword tapped against the solid wall. The surface was worn, deep lines running both horizontally and vertically to produce a wide, uneven checkered pattern. It appeared to maintain the same width as Ellery stepped slowly forward, but he wondered how long before the path ahead of them narrowed to a point that they would no longer fit.
Despite his worry at Nara’s possible illness, he was comfortable with her weight on his back. He needed to keep her close, needed to be near her for as long as possible.
“Sunshine?” he whispered, his voice echoing away ahead of them.
“Captain Ellery?” Her voice held the same question, as though she were surprised he was there, and yet it didn’t quite echo in the same way.
She had never called him that, had she? Even in those first moments in that first life, she had never called him Ellery, always Haven, a name only previously used by his mother.
Despite the continued darkness ahead of them, he stopped, and the light went out of her sword. Then it clattered to the floor, echoing in the dark as though it had fallen further than he imagined it could. He squeezed his own sword tight in his hand and listened for anything coming towards them, anything hunting them in the dark. Despite the fear creeping in around him, he rested his sword against the wall of stone. As soon as his hand was free, he slowly and carefully lifted Nara down and onto the floor.
He found her hands and pulled them to his lips. They were warm, just as warm as she had been before. As he felt for her face in the dark, he found it warm and damp—from sweat, he thought, rather than the snow they had been walking in. The rim of her hood was wet and cool, and he moved his fingers to his beard that was now just damp. The cold had gone, although the air around them was just as chilly as it had been outside. He glanced back along the path they had followed and saw a dim light in the distance to indicate where they had come from, but it seemed too far away.
The whole world appeared off-kilter. Nothing was the distance he expected as he felt about the icy floor for Nara’s sword. The relief when he closed his hand around the leather handle was overwhelming. He raised it up and over his shoulder, scraping it across the stone, the sound echoing around them. He groaned at the intensity. As he pushed it into the sheath, his elbow hit against the wall, and he cried out. The sound again echoed too loud in the narrow space.
Ellery shook out his arm. Carefully, so as not to slice his own hand open, he felt across the floor for the tip of his own sword, then followed the blade up to the handle. As he closed his hand around it, the panic subsided in his chest, and a silver light flowed along the blade. He was reminded of the shimmer he was sure he had seen with the Mer, only Nara was right—it was a different sword. A similar and yet very different sword. The two memories made his eyes hurt, and for an instant his own sword lit up the world so brightly it was as though the light of the outside world was reflected into the narrow space.
“Ellery,” Nara murmured, the idea that she would use a name she never had before making him even more nervous.
“Right here, Sunshine,” he replied, but he was standing over her, his sword lighting up the world. And despite her words, she wasn’t looking at him.
“They are coming for us,” she said, and then she slipped along the wall and landed splayed out along the narrow path.
“Who is coming?” he asked, reaching too slowly to stop her fall. He looked back towards the dim light, but there was no sign of anyone following them into the mountain, and no further response from Nara as he tried to scoop her into his arms.