Icebound

Chapter 24

Anyu clung onto the warmth. She could feel it beating through her heart and blood, sense it chasing away the cold. It was a good feeling. It brought back memories, old memories of a child huddling under the furs beside her mother as a fire warmed their frozen bodies. I must be dead, she thought. Anyu had never felt heat this intense before, not even when standing right in front of the fire in a crowded igloo. She must have died and gone to the Sun mother's domain. It was the only explanation.

At first Anyu had reveled in the warmth, but soon she grew uncomfortable. It was too hot now, a flame sparking and growing out of control. The sun was shining so brightly it scorched her skin, and melted the blubber right off her boots. She was burning, as if her very soul had caught on fire. Never had Anyu thought she would wish for the cold, but she'd never wanted anything so badly as she wanted a freezing wind to wash over her in this moment and save her from the flames...

Anyu's eyes flung open as consciousness finally grabbed hold of her. The sky was still a thick, swirling gray, the sun completely obscured from sight. Small tufts of snow drifted lazily to the ground. The air was cold, without any trace of the warmth that she had dreamt of in her sleep. A strange dream. Her grandmother would have been able to interpret it if she were here. But her grandmother was a world away, and Anyu still had a long way to go to get back to her. She stared up at the clouds for a moment, blinking away the snowflakes, before pushing herself into a sitting position.

Her eyes immediately darted to the ice, searching for the hole from which she'd escaped the water. She saw nothing but the same interminable landscape of the frozen, mist covered lake, as flawless as ever. The crack in the ice had been washed away like an unsightly blemish on the lake's skin.

Anyu shakily rose to her feet. Her clothes were still damp from the freezing waters and every brush of the wind struck her right down to her bones. Sleeping out in the open with wet clothes was normally as good as a knife in the heart. She should be dead right now, or at least close to it. Anyu took an inventory of all her appendages, fearing the worst, but the cold hadn't stolen anything from her. She had both her hands and feet, and no toes or fingers missing either. She pinched at her nose and ears as well, just to be sure, and found them intact.

Anyu tried not to think too hard about the anomaly. There were all sorts of magic in this land. Some of it must have rubbed of on her at some point...

A memory came back to her with a sharp jolt. She fell to her hands and knees on the ice, scrabbling through the freshly fallen snow in search of-

There.

Her hand shot out and snatched the shiny black hair that stood out so starkly from the white snow. She clutched the strands tightly in her grasp, understanding their value. This must have been what had saved her, whatever residual power was left in the hair she'd stolen from Sedna. Anyu closed her eyes and concentrated, feeling out the power with her mind. She felt somewhat silly, sitting there out in the snow trying to make a connection with a tuft of hair, even more so since there was no aura of energy or magic around it whatsoever. Not that she could tell, anyway. She should have Kano take a look at it, he'd probably know how to use it properly.

Speaking of Kano and Tavra, her two companions and her trusty reindeer were nowhere in sight and she hadn't the slightest idea of how to look for them. She was probably miles off from where she'd initially fell into the lake, and they had most likely moved from that location by now anyway. There weren't even any markers to go by, nothing telling her if this was a part of the lake she'd already seen or completely unfamiliar territory. A hunter's nightmare.

So, stuffing Sedna's hair securely into a pocket, Anyu walked. She squinted through the clouds, trying to at least ascertain the position of the sun to guide her, but soon gave up and chose a random direction. How far across had Kano said the lake was? Only a day's journey? If the lake was roughly symmetrical, then she'd reach land at some point and at least be able to find food and shelter. Unless the length of the lake was much longer than its width and she was going in the wrong direction...