Frostbite

Chapter Twenty-Six

The city was quiet as death. Streets that were previously bustling and full of life despite the weather were empty, abandoned, cold. It was eerie, in a way. A blanket of fresh, unmarred snow covered everything in sight, only adding to the starkness of the atmosphere.

Just what, Eira wondered, could have happened over less than two days to cause such a change?

However, the answer soon became evident in the air. The moment she was close enough to breathe it, it was clear as day. It smelled like death, and death alone; an unmistakable scent that could not mean anything else.

Eira clamped a gloved hand over her nose and mouth.

She entered the city, navigating the empty streets and surveying for signs of human life. Nothing. Only a handful of crows perched atop the usually smoky chimneys of houses, their cawing loud and piercing, hungry. Their feathers were fluffed up due to the weather, the pure black shocking against the whiteness of everything else. Beady eyes watched her intently, presumably hoping she had some form of food on her. Eira pulled a bag filled with leftover crusts of the bread she'd eaten over the journey from her satchel, upending it onto the road in front of her. The birds instantaneously began circling around, squawking loudly and fighting each other over the scraps.

She left them to it, wandering further down the street. Usually the crows would eat discarded or dropped food from the many people of the city, but they were going hungry today. Perhaps she was the only human they'd seen all day.

Dread pooled in the pit of her stomach. She was beginning to get an idea of what had happened, and it wasn't something she much liked to think of.

Every shutter in every house was closed firmly. As she got closer to the centre of the town, shops began appearing. They too were closed, locked up and bore no signs of being opened any time soon.

She breathed in and out, a cloud of steam forming from her lips. The scent was stronger here. Her nose picked up another note in the air: fear. Tangible fear. The firmly closed shutters showed that fear.

As she moved, her eyes flicked over every building and side street, still searching for any sign of life. Nothing. There was still nothing. She brought her front teeth down onto her bottom lip, hard. She tasted metal on her tongue.

Eira was on the main street now. Shops that should have been bustling were vacant shells of themselves. Still nothing. The dread she was feeling was becoming troublesome to ignore. She disliked that fear. It had moved from trepidation, foreboding, to a raw, instinctual fear. Fight or flight. Everything in her bones was screaming: run away, run away!

She forced it away as strongly as she could, swallowing the air in her throat, and clenching her hands until her nails cut through the thin wool of her gloves and dug into the flesh of her palms. Instead, she focused on her breathing, putting one foot in front of the other. She would go to the inn and see where Al was. If he was there, she would attempt to get some information out of him regarding what had happened. Everyone couldn't have just up and left the place.

She began the walk back to the inn, newfound determination masking her fear. It wasn't a long-term plan, or anything close to it, but it was a start. And that was all she needed to keep herself going at this point.

As she walked down the dim, grimy close that led to the inn, she heard something that couldn't be anything other than her own imagination playing tricks on her. She stopped in her tracks, searching for a source of the noise.

She heard it again.

Was she imagining things? Were her ears cruelly playing tricks on her?