I CLIMB OVER THE FIRST BODY before I realize what it is—one of my predecessors. The walls of this room are made of rough-hewn ice, but I hadn’t realized what the indistinct figures encased within were until I find the mummified hand jutting from the floor.
I run my pink fingertips over the other’s blue ones. They feel like ice cubes. If I had a glass of Grandmother’s homebrew, I’d break them off and swill them around, watch them slowly evaporate into oily trails in amber. Macabre thoughts.
I don’t break the fingers. They belong to the hand, and the hand belongs to the shadow frozen in the ice. The shadow whose face I cannot see. Maybe, I think, maybe it’s the last poor soul that Willow tried to lead. Maybe it’s me, for the next pilgrim who travels this way.
The ice cloaks these people in greys and blacks and blues, so I can’t make out specific features, but a silver light illuminates them from somewhere beneath the ice. Or perhaps the light comes from the ice itself. It ripples like aurora borealis, lending eerie life to the figures frozen all around me.
The ice cube people look like they’re frozen mid-dance. I see now that one has both legs off the ground, as if jumping or flying or falling. They froze before hitting the ground. Another is upside down, fingers outstretched and clinging to the ground, legs jutting skyward.
I’m still shivering as I slip down this ghoulish hall of mirrors. The cold weighs heavy on my tongue and I smell copper when I breathe. I spew my hot breath out in quivering clouds.
The path is straight. The floors, like the walls, are made of ice, and every pearlescent surface shrouds more frozen figures. Casualties, I think, of some forgotten ice age or cruel winter. Casualties of avalanches and glacial slides. Casualties of the maze.
Perhaps I will join them, when I can no longer force one foot in front of the other.
Though the path is straight, the going is treacherous. More limbs now jut through the surface of the walls and floors. I stumble over limbs, a morbid re-enactment of my stumble through the vinous hall.
Each time I fall, I will myself to get up—and each time I wonder if maybe my body won’t listen. Still I trudge forward.
A breeze begins to blow down the tunnel. Gentle at first, but it quickly ramps up in intensity. It blows me back the way I came, as if to deny me passage through this icy cave. It’s a cold wind. A Canadian wind. It bites into my wet clothing.
I imagine that, far away, I can hear the flapping of gigantic wings as they whip this wind into being. At least it’s not hooves, I think.
The path steepens here—turns into a hill. On this hill, I encounter my first human head frozen in the ice. Its eyes are icy bulbs, its hair a shock of frost, and its mouth is open in a scream and packed with snow. Without hesitation, I place my foot atop that frozen skull and use it to reach my next foothold—an outstretched hand.
I begin to boulder odd appendages. I push myself from one to the next, tracking my progress through the body parts I’ve passed. I touch the pieces as I move forward, steadying myself with this helping hand, that leg up.
I catch myself apologizing to the bodies for using them so irreverently. But I don’t stop, I don’t slow down.