Chapter Forty-seven

 

 

An Icy Tomb

 

 

Despite the shelter of the wagon as it sat stranded at the top of the pass, those inside were unable to keep warm. The wagon had been shabbily built and gusts of frigid air continued to blast through the many cracks of its thin walls and floor. Fernando lit several more candles thinking they might alleviate the sting of the freezing temperature within, but they were useless in this endeavor.

The blizzard continued only to increase in strength throughout the night and the remaining pony had frozen to death well before daybreak. The rear and north side of the wagon was completely caked in snow and ice to the roof, and it took Fernando over an hour to work the back door open. Stepping outside to look about, the first thing he saw was the two ponies, their snouts peeled back in frozen, hideous fashion as though deliberately distorted by some horrid sculptor intent on frightening anyone foolish enough to take on the Alps in winter.

Nevertheless, Fernando took in the sight with near gratitude because they had gnawed the remnants of the original horse carcass to bone fragments two days earlier and had nothing to eat. We’ll now at least have something to sustain us until Spring, he thought. And with a little luck, perhaps other travelers may happen by and assist us before then.

Hours turned into days, and days turned into a week. Nobody came. The unimaginable occurred: the weather turned even more severe. Although they were able to chew on frozen horsemeat to quell their aching stomachs, their fear of starvation was soon supplanted by their fear of freezing to death. By the middle of their second week marooned on the pass, their faces began to take on a ghostly bluish tint, and even as they lay huddled in a knot beneath blankets and clothes, they were soon scarcely able to move or speak. Mala did her best to keep the baby warm, swaddling it close to her swollen breasts. Wthin days, the weak, prematurely born infant became lethargic and ceased crying even. One morning as Mala awoke from her frozen sleep, she felt the baby’s cold lips frozen to her nipple. It had perished in the night. “Oh!” she stirred, heartbroken, but so numb from the cold she was but barely able to utter sound. “Oh, God! Oh...”

Feeling something heavy against her side, she then turned her head, and found that it was Fernando, clinging to her in a tight curl. He, too, was cold to the touch, and his eyes were frozen open in a dead but content stare. Indeed, he had frozen to death in the night also, clinging to Mala and the baby, imagining that both were now his. He died thinking he was there within the wagon with his beautiful bride Mala, and their beautiful newborn son; that the wagon was sitting not upon a pass in the Alps, but sitting in the warm plains somewhere in his homeland of sunny Spain. So despite a lifetime of wandering and hardship, despite failed years of chasing the dream of Mala’s love, he died in peace, mistakenly believing that all his dreams had finally been realized.

“Ughh!” Mala sighed, unable to move. Frozen there, she shifted her eyes over to Duxia, certain that she, too, had passed in the night. The old woman shifted within the pile, and her eyes blinked open with a start. Too frozen to move any further, she sat there, and like Mala, moved only her eyes. She first saw that Mala had pulled the blankets aside, and was clinging to the dead infant. Her eyes then shifted to the dead Fernando.

The two women then gazed at each other in silent helplessness, both unable to utter even a sound. In that meeting of their eyes a communion of tenderness arose that was so heart wrenching and profound, words were not necessary. As I lay here dying, their eyes said, I love you to the ends of this earth.

 

Then they both closed their eyes… and found sleep.