Jaleigh Johnson - Unbroken Chain - The Darker Road

The witch smiled. “It’s not something that’s easily explained. You either feel it or you don’t.”

Ilvani considered this. What had changed about her since she’d begun the caravan journey? “The storm passed,” she said.

The witch’s expression turned sad. “No. It’s still here, waiting. But it’s content to wait, for now, so we’re safe.”

Ilvani stood up. She moved restlessly, wanting to comprehend this new awareness of herself that the witch seemed to possess. Her hand touched the green bag tied at her waist. She gripped the drawstrings tightly.

The Rashemi woman saw the movement and smiled in approval. “You feel it, don’t you? Don’t be afraid.”

Ilvani wasn’t afraid. She fingered the drawstrings and considered the implications of what she felt. She’d been days on the road and never once had she opened the bag to draw out her memories. Nor had she added new ones to the boxes. Panic gripped her as she considered the potential loss, but no, there they were. She found she could look back and remember the events of the past days with near-perfect clarity. When was the last time she’d gone away to that sanctuary in her mind? When was the last gap in her memories?

“It won’t last,” Ilvani said, more to herself than to the snow rabbit. “The shadows will start to talk again, and it will all get jumbled together.” She looked out across the lake. “The wolf will turn on me.”

“Not if you tame the wolf,” the witch said. “You can silence the voices. I have to believe it’s possible. Not everyone fails …” Her voice faltered.

Ilvani held herself, her arms pressed to her stomach against a sudden wave of sickness. This is when the storm comes, she thought. It’s going to swallow us again.

But nothing happened. The day remained peaceful and sunny. Water insects skipped across the surface of the lake. The fish chased after them eagerly.

“Do you remember your childhood?” the snow rabbit asked her. Her voice was steady again, though she seemed sadder than before.

“Sometimes,” Ilvani said. She hadn’t kept boxes, back then. The memories were vague and half-formed, except the ones that blazed brightly, like images of Natan.

“The spirits used to come to me when I was a child. I’d see whole worlds that no one else could see,” the Rashemi witch said. “The snow rabbit took me to the Feywild. I slept with my head against his fur, beneath trees with leaves that looked like bluebells. I felt safe. Did you ever feel safe like that, Ilvani?”

Ilvani tried to remember if she’d ever felt truly safe. Only in that place where no memories were made. But if she couldn’t remember what safe was, how could she claim the emotion?

“Natan,” she said finally. “I felt … better … with Natan, my brother. But he’s gone now.”

The witch sighed. “I wish it weren’t so. It’s going to make things that much more difficult for you. Isn’t there anyone else?”

“No.”

The snow rabbit gave Ilvani a strange look, then, as if she knew she was lying.

“Oh, look.” The witch pointed to the lake. It had frozen over. “Winter’s here.”

Ilvani opened her eyes and saw the clouds moving above her head in a heavy gray mass. The wagon dipped and jostled beneath her, yet she’d still managed to fall asleep in the middle of the afternoon. She hadn’t fallen asleep so carelessly since she’d been in Darnae’s shop.

The nightmares stayed away. The snow rabbit had become a tame creature.

Moisture falling on her face had wakened her. She looked around, expecting the falling rain to blind her.

Snow covered her black cloak.

She raised both hands to catch the white flakes and watched them melt away into tiny puddles in her palms. The wagon rolled to a stop to give the horses a brief rest. They’d been traveling steadily for several days now, with no weather delays or brigand attacks.

Ilvani stood up and looked over the side of the wagon into a cold white vastness. Snow blanketed the ground, and the horses shook white flakes from their manes. The wind had died. Silence and stillness reigned across the plain. In the distance, she beheld a vertical stone marker and a beaten down, muddied path that wound to the east.

It was the trade route, the Golden Way.

A murmur of excitement threaded through the caravan as the crew saw the marker. They’d finally reached the trade route, and they would have a measure of civilization and security, at least until they started the climb into the Sunrise Mountains.

Climbing down from the wagon, Ilvani shook the snow from her hair and pulled up the hood of her cloak. She’d thought they were just going to rest here, but she noticed that the caravan was already setting up a camp. The cook grumbled about trying to light a fire in the snow, and the passengers stood in groups, shivering and stomping their feet.

There was a small pinewood just off the trade route to the west. Trees grew alongside the road in sparse patches, their snow-crusted needles bowing close to the ground. She remembered Tatigan, the merchant, describing the trees to Ashok and naming them. Mixed in with these were a few bare deciduous trees, but they were small and stunted.

She walked over to where Ashok, Skagi, and Cree were tethering their horses to these trees. “Why are we making camp here?” she asked.

Skagi looked at her with some surprise, as if he hadn’t expected her to ask such a direct question. Had she never done that before? Or had they never understood her questions? She scowled at not knowing the answer to this riddle of herself.

Ashok answered her. “Tuva thinks the wind’s going to pick up in the next day or two and make us snow blind. Tatigan wants to make a quick expedition into Uzbeg and back before nightfall to avoid the weather, so we’re stopping here while he and a few others take goods into the village.”

“Are you going with them?” Ilvani asked, looking at the three of them.

This time even Ashok looked a little perplexed. “No. Vlahna wants us here to hunt in the woods and guard the caravan.”

“Too bad Tatigan won’t take the Beshabans into Uzbeg with him,” Cree said. “Your friend Mareyn’s going, though,” he told Ilvani.

“Would you like to come into the woods with us?” Ashok said. “We’re going on foot. It won’t be far.”

Ilvani looked toward the dense pines. She nodded. “I’ll come.”

When they’d secured the camp and placed watch guards about the perimeter, the four of them set off for the woods. Their boots crunched in the snow and brittle brown needles scattered about the ground. Ilvani bent and picked up a large cylindrical cone that had fallen from one of the trees. She ran her fingers along its scales and listened to the sound her nails made on the woody ridges. The stillness magnified every footstep and breath. When snow slid off a bowed branch and fell to the ground, they heard the impact.

Cree kneeled to examine a set of closely spaced tracks. “Rabbit,” he said, indicating the two-inch-long depressions in the snow.

“Have to catch a lot of those to make a decent meal for everyone,” Skagi said.

“If we could find another deer herd, we’d have enough fresh meat for days,” Ashok said.

Curious, Ilvani followed the rabbit tracks. They cut a twisting path through the trees, unhurried, as if the small creature had been foraging.

“Don’t stray too far, Ilvani,” Ashok called to her.

Ilvani raised a hand to show she’d heard him, but she didn’t take her eyes off the tracks. They led deeper into the woods, where the trees grew tall enough to block much of the dim sunlight penetrating the cloud cover. At last they stopped near a small hole at the base of a tree. Ilvani paused to listen for the sound of the rabbit. She kneeled and pressed her ear to the earth, but she heard only the silence. The snow rabbit slept, just as the earth slept.