Followed by Frost

by Charlie N. Holmberg

I have known cold. I have known the cold that freezes to the bones, to the spirit itself. The cold that stills the heart and crystallizes the blood. The kind of cold that even fire fears, that can turn a woman to glass.

I have known cold, the chills with which even the deepest winters cannot compare. I have lived it, breathed it, and lost by it. I have known cold, for it dwelled in the deepest hollows of my soul. And the day I broke Mordan’s heart, it devoured me.

My world was so small then. Euwan was an ordinary town full of ordinary people, and I believed myself an oyster pearl among them. But I was about to spark a chain of events that would shatter the perfectly ordinary shell I lived in—events that would undoubtedly change my life, in its entirety, forever.

Let me take a moment to say that wizards were unseen in these parts, and supposedly rare even in the Unclaimed Lands far north, where they trained in magics beyond even my imagination, and none of them for good. A traveling bard once whispered that they have an academy there, though to this day I’m not sure where. I certainly never thought I’d one day search for it myself.

“Vladanium curso, en nadia tren’al,” he murmured. “I curse you, Smitha Ronson, to be as cold as your heart.”

“May winter follow you wherever you go,” he said, “and with the cold, death.”

I shivered, a trembling that engulfed my whole body. The gooseflesh that had spread across every inch of my skin could not be soothed. A frozen vise clamped down on my chest, making it hard to breathe. My eyes felt like packed snow, my tongue wet leather.

The same men who had searched high and low for Mordan now broke out their shovels to clear roads and porches. My curse had created the heaviest snowfall in Euwan’s history, and in the early months of spring, no less.

The man was tall. Very tall. He had pale, white skin lined with bold, violet veins. A soft, wide-brimmed black hat rested on his head, from which fell a cascade of dark auburn hair, spilling over his shoulders like thick forest smoke. He wore fine clothing: a maroon coat, black velvet cloak, and high black boots with large gold buckles. A gold necklace hung from his neck, and a ruby the size of a duck egg shone from the amulet at its end.

The death of the Hutcheses’ only son was “the last water in the well,” as Imad would later say. For the following morning, I could not convince even my own father to keep me.

I had been cast out by my own family, my own flesh and blood. For the first time in my life I was unwanted, cast aside like sawdust.

I realized then, staring at the broken taffy, that I was truly on my own—for if my own family could cast me out, surely no stranger would show pity on me. The very cold that had destroyed my life was my closest and only companion.

But animals have a keen sense humans do not. Perhaps they sensed the wrongness of my storm, for no wolf ever trespassed my camp, not then nor in the years to come.

The light seemed to bend around him as he stepped to the side of the fire. The black of his cloak appeared never ending: a deep pit with no floor, or dark sky with no moon or stars. His amber eyes glowed almost the way a cat’s would.

The wide brim of his hat hid his eyes, but I knew he still watched me. I felt his gaze the way one feels the pelting of hail or the slip of a hammer. My chilled heart raced. Still a slow drum, but quicker than it had beaten in days.

“I know the names of all who are born,” he said, leaning forward and revealing those penetrating eyes. “For all of them will eventually die. As for you . . . you’ve drawn my attention, Smitha. It is a deathly curse you carry, if you’ll excuse the joke.”

“I didn’t ask for it.” He grinned. “Does any man or woman ask for a curse? But yours carries death with you. Is it any wonder that I would take an . . . interest?” “No!” I shouted, my violet fingernails digging into the oak’s root. “I did not kill that boy. Mordan did. He did everything!”

“Why are you here?” “I told you,” he said, smile unfading. “You interest me. However you may see it, Smitha—however you wish to lay the blame—you and I are a lot alike. We are neither dead nor living—entities who exist between worlds. There are few of our kind, but we tend to make good company.”

“No one will help you, Smitha,” he said, his voice deep and honey-like, quiet. The fire cracked behind him. “No one will take you in. But I will.” The shock of his words ceased my trembling. “What?” He smiled. “The realm beyond this one is grander than you could imagine.”

A wizard had cursed me; perhaps a wizard could cure me as well.

Then I asked, “Could you make me warm again?” “Smitha,” he said, folding his arms, “with or without me, you will never be warm again.”

I confess there were times when I craved his company so badly, when I felt so utterly alone, that I convinced myself to accept his offer, to join him in the realm beyond—as a servant, as a lover, as anything he would allow me to be, for what Sadriel wanted seemed to change by the day, and he never spoke directly.

Sadriel never appeared during those moments of despair, only in times of clarity.

I glanced back at him. “What do you know of wizards?” He laughed. “I love wizards. They’re always killing one another in the most fascinating ways.”

“Do you know how their magic works?” he asked, clasping his hands behind his back. “They harvest manna from the bowels of the earth, scraping it out of the bodies of beasts that died long before your kind ever took form. They covet it, kill for it, then eat it until their eyes glass over and their brains fill the realms adjacent to yours. Sometimes they die from it, but they take the risk in the name of ‘magic.’” He chuckled again. “Good luck getting one to use his manna on you. Then again, you already have, once.”

“The living do not see me, and the dead do not hear, but you can do both. You are special, Smitha. And you are beautiful, even with your aged hair and gnarled hands.”

“You need me, Smitha,” he said, taking the stone from my grasp. “Think of it this way, if you will. A wizard’s magic—your curse—is held by the laws of the mortal realm. Leave the mortal realm, and the curse loses its power.”

Why I managed to so readily reject his offer, I’m not sure, even today. Leaving with him would have been a simple matter. I know I wished to see my family again, for the memory of my fleeting farewell to them had come to pain me. Maybe, deep inside, I was unwilling to believe the curse would last forever.

Mordan had taken away the life I had known, but even his curse had not taken my life. Without that, I would be truly frozen, unable to change. Unable to save myself. My life, albeit a hard one, was the only thing I had left. And no one—no one—could take that from me.

More importantly, I had learned to recognize the mercies Mordan had allotted me, even in his rash anger. I still had my mind, my memories. I could still move, even if my frozen muscles made my limbs sluggish. Most importantly, I still had my life.

Sadriel, whose company I both craved and despised, did not visit me that winter, and I had come to believe I would never see him again, save on my own deathbed. But our confrontation had ignited within me a new will to live. Where once I had gripped on to life with white knuckles for fear of death, I now cherished life for the love of it.

“I am part of you, Smitha,” Sadriel said, his slender brows knit tightly together. “I have waited longer than a few years for men to fall to me.”

For years I had only inspired fear and hatred in those who learned of me, and I had not spoken to a soul outside of Sadriel for so long my throat felt unaccustomed to speech. Now a prince of Zareed knew the truth about who and what I was and he knelt before me, unalarmed by my curse. Inspired by it!

I smiled, feeling more peaceful than I had in years. My curse had become another’s blessing. How wonderful, to give this to them.

Over the years I had realized I’d done many things to deserve his curse, whether or not he knew it. After some thought, I answered, “Winter is the dearest friend to those who have chosen to be cold.”

“These people,” he continued, softer, “will turn their backs on you, eventually. I won’t. You can’t hurt anyone in my realm.” “Only watch as you do.” “What is life without Death?” he asked, tilting up the rim of his hat. “Will you punish me for doing that which I was created to do?”

“I have a home here.” I met his eyes. “I have friends.” He snorted. “For now, perhaps. But they can’t change what you are any more than you can. They’ll realize the consequences of your curse soon enough.”

Lo was a stern and quiet man, but I had already learned that he could say in a moment of silence what a normal man would take an hour to relate.

It stood plain, a little crooked, and scratched in the back from where I had missed my nail, but he smiled at it, and in that moment, I desperately wished I could touch him, this man who had ridden me down atop a horse of deepest ebony, who wore a helmet of ibex horns, and who spoke to me not as a person with an unfortunate curse but as a woman who loved literature and old tongues, who feared domesticated dogs and wove uneven rows of yarn and spilled pitchers of water over fine rugs. A man willing to forgo superstition to bring me a book, merely because he wanted to hear my thoughts on it.

“What do you want with me, Sadriel? Amusement? Sex? Not love, never love. You are Death; you don’t have a heart! But I do!” I pounded my uninjured fist into my chest, tears welling in the corners of my eyes. “It’s cold and cursed, but I still have a heart! How many times must I say it before you hear me? I. Will. Never. Go. With. You!”

“Twice he’s kept you from me.” Sadriel flashed and reappeared standing, taller even than Lo. “I really thought I had you, in the desert. But then, your death would just make you like all the other lost souls in my realm. You wouldn’t be the same, then.”

“Realism is what philosophy is for,” I said, wetting a rag to wipe out the previous night’s cups. The water froze on the fingers of my gloves. Lo put down the book and took the rag from me, cleaning the cups himself. “Fiction is for dreamers.”

“Why else would one read unbelievable stories but in hopes of believing? I always saw novels as an outlet for which the mind can escape this world, not be tethered to it.”

Lo gathered his things as Aamina prattled, silently excusing himself. However, as Aamina began unloading yarn and foodstuffs from her basket, Lo leaned down to me, his fingers brushing my scarf, and whispered, “You do not have a cold heart, Misa.”

My lips quivered, and tears blurred my vision. I pressed one palm to my lips and the other over my heart, shivering and aching and feeling . . . light. A sort of airy relief I can’t describe passed through me at those words, words I hadn’t realized I needed to hear. Words that answered the question buried in the deepest part of me—the one I had never thought to ask.

What had I expected? That my life in Zareed would go on unchanged? That Lo would continue to discuss books with me into his old age? That he could ever love me, a woman whom he could never touch? I was a child cursed for her cold heart, a woman who flirted with death at every turn. Lo was captain of the prince’s guard. And Faida . . . Faida was beautiful and kind and selfless. Everything I was not.

I barely knew her, yet I wanted her to be happy. No, not her. I wished that for Lo. I wished him every grace life could offer, and I would do anything to give it to him. Oh, how I loved him.

But only now did I understand the implications. Just as I had broken Mordan’s heart, so would my heart be broken, for I could not so much as touch a man without hurting him. No matter where I went or who I met, conversation would be the uttermost limit of intimacy I could hope to achieve with another human being, and only then if they were willing to brave the eternal cold of my presence.

In a way I was glad it had taken me so long to internalize the cost of the curse, for if I had understood the deeper implications of the curse from the beginning, I might never have survived my first year. If my inner darkness hadn’t consumed me, Death would have.

Oh, how often I had played the part of the fool, but I learned from it every time. This new pain would ultimately help me grow stronger; I knew that. But it ached so terribly, and I felt so very, very cold.