Frostbite

Chapter Eleven

Eira couldn't relax for a second.

Not when she soundlessly sneaked out of the castle (which was surprisingly easy if you used the back door), not when she attempted (and finally managed) to work out how to get to the main road, and certainly when she managed to flag down a farmer's cart that was heading in the correct direction after having left the market in the centre of the city—which he had presumably sold at. She paid him a shiny gold coin, securing herself a seat for the journey. The farmer eyed the newly minted coin with interest, but nevertheless accepted it wordlessly.

Once she'd knelt down in a space between two vegetable crates, she was shaking and felt sick to her stomach. Hence, she didn't dare touch any of the food she'd packed. She dreaded what she would find when she reached home—whatever it turned out to be. She was fully expecting the worst possible outcome. She always did.

Except, this time it was actually realistic. She didn't want to cling onto some false hope. The truth was, if someone made an act of rebellion towards society (or rather, the Frosts), dire consequences were inevitable. Those consequences: execution without trial. But, she needed to see— just to be sure. After that, she didn't know. For now, she would live in the moment and not think about the future, or at least try to.

The cart rumbled along the stony rutted road. She kept her hood firmly up, keeping her hair out of the farmer's line of sight. If he saw it, it would be a blaring indicator that she was one of the Frost. Nobody without it could possibly have hair so starkly colourless—not even an aged person. Theirs was always somewhere on a spectrum of grey, and a Frost's was paler than even the snow and ice they created.

"So, what's a young one like you doing gettin' a ride like this out to the country?" the farmer asked, presumably in an attempt to break the uneasy silence that had settled over them.

"I was away travelling for a while. I come from a village over your way and I needed a ride home," Eira replied, trying to keep her voice as even as possible. When she'd first spoken to him a few minutes before—when she'd paid for her ride—she'd realised how different sounding her voice had become. She'd picked up the  articulations of the Frosts. It was a struggle to revert back to her original accent, but she was more or less pulling it off. Or she thought she did. The less like a Frost she seemed, the better. She didn't want her trail to be picked up and to be dragged off back to the Training academy before she finished what she'd set out to do. It wasn't that likely, since nobody would really notice her disappearance until classes resumed that Monday. But there was still a chance. She didn't want to risk it. 

Oh, yeah, a lotta kids your age go travellin' about. Glad be going home, are ya?"

"Yes," Eira choked out.

Their conversation ended at that. She was glad of it. For the moment, all she wanted to do was drown in her worries. That was all she had.

It was already dark, and the freezing temperatures of night were settling in. Eira had grown relatively resistant to the cold through power usage, but she still felt it. It was going to be a long journey. A very long one indeed. She stared up at the sky. A few stars were beginning to become visible. Eira kept her eyes trained on the brightest one. She didn't look away.

~

On the day she started school, even at such a young age, Eira had known she would never fit in. The other children were loud and lively and all played games together at lunch and break time every day. She was interested in games, but she didn't have enough courage to ask to join in. Instead, she spent most of her time hiding away in the small school library reading books that were probably much ahead of her age range. She supposed that set her out from the rest. It wasn't as if she was more intelligent than the children—she never excelled in any subjects other than literature, even as she got older (even though, when she looked back on it, Eira disagreed with the mentality that how you did in classes was equivalent to your level of intelligence). She wasn't more special, either. She was just different. Whether that was a good or bad thing, she never knew.