By the Icy Wild Read online

  Finally, I bumped into Snowboy’s back, grateful that he’d stopped.

  “Let’s rest here for a while,” he said. “I could use a break and some food.”

  He didn’t sound tired and I was sure, if I could see him in the dark, that he wouldn’t look tired either.

  “I could use a torch,” I said.

  He led me to the side of the clearing. “Let’s do something about that.”

  There was a soft snap and a light appeared near his face, creating a welcome glow. He opened his palms to reveal a fuel marsh leaf, golden in his hand, not so bright that it lit the space beyond a small circle but enough to make the snow sparkle and allow me to assess our surroundings. We were in a clearing—a widening of the fissure between rock faces on either side—perhaps ten feet across. Snowboy pocketed the tinderbox he’d just used and withdrew something else—a metal stick long enough to hold in his fist with a clip on the end of it to which he attached the leaf.

  “Ta-da.” He showed off the makeshift lamp, which lifted my mood.

  “It should burn all night,” he said. “The danger is that it’s impossible to extinguish, so it could attract unwanted attention. But it’s better than falling down a hole in the dark. We’ll keep our eyes out for any furry residents with ill intentions, but in the meantime…”

  He gestured to the nearest rock face. It had enough protrusions to form a place for me to sit and for him to lean against. He rammed the lamp into a crevice and left it there, lighting the space around us.

  Before I settled down, I pulled my pack off and rummaged around in it, finding bread and an apple and further down some cheese, just like he’d said. There was also a flask of water. The bread was soft and fresher than I’d expected with the tang of sourdough, and the cheese was moist enough to push onto the bread like butter. For the next few minutes, I gobbled the food, finally crunching the apple in the silence, noting that Snowboy was chewing too.

  I was the one who broke the silence. “How did you find out you were mortal?”

  He swallowed, his gaze resting on my face. “As soon as my parents saw me, they knew I was different. My great-grandparents were Seversandian. Not all Seversandians have dark skin, but my parents did.” He shifted against the rock and I contemplated him, remembering what Ruth had said about my own ancestors being Seversandian too.

  Snowboy continued. “When I was born, my parents sought advice from the Council, and Councilor Naomi engaged a team of specialists to figure out what was wrong with me. In the end, it was an old historian who had the answer. I’m what they call ‘albino.’ There were other documented cases, but not for hundreds of years. I’m guessing the others weren’t mortal, though, because it sounds like they lived long lives.”

  He stared at the glowing leaf. “My parents couldn’t stand to look at me. You only get one kid and they got me, but they stuck it out until I was four years old.” He took a deep breath. “I didn’t have a smooth time making friends as you can imagine, and when some boy broke my arm, well, my parents thought I was a slow healer on top of being albino.”

  Anger rose in me at that, but I pushed it down as he continued.

  “That was the last straw for them. Councilor Naomi encouraged them to believe the part about slow healing so they wouldn’t figure out the truth. She arranged for them to move south. Officially, I went with them, but Naomi took me in.”

  “Naomi? But you act like you hate her.” Back at the train crash, when Snowboy had arrived, he’d treated Naomi with hostility, barely looking at her.

  He sighed. “You can’t trust the motives of non-mortals. Compassion doesn’t come easily to them. Although … Naomi’s passionate about protecting Starsgard. She only does what she thinks is right for the country.” He tapped the rock face, whittling away at a curve of snow. “She hid me in the data storage area under Tower 159. Do you know what that is? A data storage area?”

  I nodded. The data storage area under Tower Seventeen was filled with plants—a gigantic botanical garden of flowering and fruiting trees and shrubs—each one encoded with information that had to be ingested to be read. My parents’ location was hidden in the sap of a maple tree and the information had led me to a room containing ten glass coffins. My parents slept inside two of the coffins, never to wake unless it was truly safe to do so.

  “It wasn’t so bad there.” Snowboy chuckled. “I had access to a lot of people’s information. I can’t remember half of it now, which is kind of a shame. I never found Naomi’s information, though.” He shrugged. “I didn’t mind the dark. It was best for me to stay out of the sun anyway—before I had the protection of nectar, I used to burn instead of tan.”

  “How long were you there?”

  “Until I was eight years old. And then one day a man arrived.” He sighed, resting back against the rock as his hands ran across the snow. “I still remember his face. The first time I saw him, he was arguing with Naomi at the entrance to the data storage area. He convinced Naomi to let me out. He brokered my freedom and brought me to the abandoned tower—the one you call Tower 177. The only thing he wanted in return was a sample of my blood.”

  I leaned forward. “Who was he? What happened?”

  “When we got to the tower, he spent a week cleaning it up and I helped—as much as an eight-year-old could. He got one of the elevators working again and then one of the kitchens. He brought seeds with him and we planted the gardens. You’ve seen the instant food the Starsgardian grow in their homes, yeah? Some of it was like that, but he also had other seeds. He said they were from Evereach and they’d take longer to grow but then they’d keep growing and feed me for a long time. Then he told me he had to go away for a while and he disappeared for another week. I didn’t know where he’d gone. But when he came back, he had the others with him.”

  Snowboy paused. “He brought them from Seversand.”

  I gasped. “Seversand!”

  “He said they were imprisoned there—held captive for years.” He stopped picking at the snow, his expression fierce. “He brought them to the tower. He told us we were all mortal and that we had to stay hidden. But that was when things got really bad. Three Councilors arrived and personally arrested him—Naomi was one of them. They took him away. But … they had nowhere to take us, so they set us up with animals—cows, goats, chickens—and left us there to fend for ourselves. After that we were on our own. We never knew what happened to that man.”

  He peered at the snow, contemplating it as though he were choosing his next words very carefully. “As for who he was … the thing is…” He chewed his lip and started again. “Back in the south, before you came here, before the festival, I saw you.” His eyes met mine. “I know you saw me too. You were sitting under the cherry blossom tree outside Tower Seventeen. Do you remember?”

  “I remember.”

  “Before you sat down by yourself, you were talking with someone—a guy. Is he the one you left behind? The one who thinks you’re dead?”

  I nodded, frowning. “What are you asking me?”

  “That guy. He looks just like the man who brought me here.”

  My frown deepened. “This all happened years ago, didn’t it? Michael’s only a year older than me. He would’ve been a kid. There’s no way it was him…”

  But suddenly the memory of his voice echoed in my ears. Dad disappeared for months sometimes when I was a kid. He even went to Seversand on some international goodwill exchange.

  I remembered the first time I saw Michael’s dad and how much they resembled each other. I remembered Cheyne’s derisive tone when he told me Michael’s dad wasn’t a fan of keeping people against their will, that it was a particular weakness of his.

  And Michael’s dad himself, talking about the mortality weapon: Seversand wants this weapon—badly. We’re in a race right now that makes the nuclear bomb look like a toy.

  Could Michael’s dad have traveled across Starsgard, all the way into Seversand, under the guise of a goodwill exchange, to steal the mortals
right out of Seversand’s fist? Had he intended smuggling all of the children back to Evereach, only to be arrested on his way back through Starsgard?

  I tried to keep my voice steady as the pieces fell together. “When the Council was trying to decide what to do with me, they told me about a man who was supposed to be punished but never was. They told me he committed a terrible crime and then escaped.”

  “He got away?”

  “Yes,” I said. “Michael’s dad got away.”

  I told Snowboy what I knew about Robert Bradley—that he’d tried for years to make a mortality weapon from my brother Josh’s DNA. That he’d finally succeeded with me. That if what Michael had said was true, his dad had legitimate means to travel to Seversand and to make a stop in Starsgard along the way.

  And then I told him what I guessed—that he’d used the trip intending to bring back the mortals, to thwart Seversand’s efforts to make a mortality weapon. That he’d been apprehended in Starsgard but managed to escape back to Evereach, taking marsh plants and bugs with him, but forced to leave the children behind.

  Snowboy said, “He could have got the bug from the marsh near our tower—there are lots of bugs there that you won’t find anywhere else. We haven’t identified all of them and to be honest, we’ve had better things to do.”

  He shook his head. “But … it’s impossible to travel in and out of Starsgard without permission. He might have had their permission to travel through to Seversand, but they would have revoked that as soon as they found out what he did. I can see him getting back into Starsgard before they found out what he’d done, but how did he get out again?”

  I shook my head. “He must have found a way. Some path through their security maybe?”

  “If he found a gap in their armor, it’s not surprising they have a coffin waiting for him.”

  Snowboy fell silent for a very long time. “Despite everything … I’m glad he got home. He wasn’t cruel. Just … driven. Is Michael the same?”

  “Michael’s nothing like his dad.”

  But even as I said it, I knew there was a part of me that understood why Mr. Bradley had done what he did. He’d started out searching for a cure for his other son, Jason, who was a slow healer, and ended up trying to defend his country. Even the bug he’d implanted into Michael had a secondary protective purpose—to relay Michael’s life signs—so Mr. Bradley knew I hadn’t killed Michael.

  I shook my head as Snowboy waited for me to speak, but I couldn’t continue. I rubbed my face, trying to erase everything.

  Snowboy was quiet for a few moments. Then he pressed his chest as if his heart ached. “Each one of us has lost someone, left someone behind, or had someone leave us, but not all of us are ready to talk about it.”

  I stared at my hands, clasping and unclasping them. It had been more than two months since Josh died. In that time, my life, my whole world, had turned upside down. Receiving Josh’s final recorded message in Tower Seventeen’s underground had hit my heart. What I hated were the regrets. The fact that he knew he was mortal but couldn’t tell me. The fact that he lived his life in danger, manipulated by the Bashers on one side and Michael’s dad on the other. The fact that I hadn’t been there for him. That he’d risked his life for me when he could have left for the safety of Starsgard with Arachne, the girl he loved.

  It was Snowboy’s turn to lean over to me and his smile was regretful but comforting. “If you need time, you have it.”

  He closed up his bag, slung it over his back, and pulled the lamp free. “I’m sorry I can’t let you sleep. It’s dangerous to stop here any longer. Not just in case of bears or other animals, but a sudden snowfall could bury and freeze you while you sleep. I feel I’d be remiss not to offer you this again—even if you don’t want to take it.”

  I shook my head at the black pearl of nectar resting on his upturned palm. “I can stay awake.”

  He popped the pearl into his own mouth. “Okay then.”

  I responded by climbing to my feet, brushing myself off, and taking the lead down the path, the light glowing behind me as Snowboy carried it. He picked up humming again, his voice soft and soothing.

  As I rounded the corner into another small clearing and made my way across it, the humming behind me ceased and I sensed Snowboy pausing. No sooner had I gone a few more steps than his voice hissed after me. “Stop, Ava.”

  I froze mid-step, watching and waiting. And listening.

  In the far distance, a train rumbled around the towers, the faint sound like a low-level vibration in my ears. In the opposite direction, a larger creature lumbered through the snow, soft crunching footfalls, but it was headed away from us.

  No, the reason for Snowboy’s warning was right in front of me, a mere few feet away in fact, its curved body camouflaged against the snow drifts gathering at the side of the path.

  As I tried to make out its true shape, only its breathing gave it away. Slow breaths that were somehow deep and light at the same time.

  It had to be a bear and I wasn’t going to wait for it to attack.

  Chapter Four

  I REGRETTED my previous hesitation. “Nectar! I need it.”

  Snowboy was strangely calm. There was a rumble in his chest and I glanced at him in alarm. It took me a moment to realize he was laughing.

  “Not for her, you don’t,” he said, sliding up next to me.

  Then he began to hum again—a pacifying sound made up of a few notes repeated over and over. It was the same tune he’d been humming all afternoon.

  At the sound of his voice, the creature slunk out of the shadows.

  It was a beautiful leopard, as high as my waist and graceful, with delicate whiskers and fur that was a pure white color that blended with the pristine snow. The fur around its sides shimmered in the dim light and there was something protruding from its shoulder blades on each side.

  “There you are, Glacier,” Snowboy said, dropping to his knees so he was eye-level with it. “Why didn’t you come when I sang to you?”

  The leopard inclined its head in my direction, its eyes glinting in the reflected light. He crooned at it. “That’s Ava. You don’t need to be afraid of her.”

  The animal didn’t seem convinced, stealing another look at me.

  Snowboy stroked the leopard’s fur with one hand and took my arm with the other, pulling me closer to her and guiding my hand to her back.

  Her fur was silky, soft, and warm. As I ran my hand from the base of her neck down the side of her spine, I discovered something unexpected—the source of the shimmering—transparent webbing gathered and laid flat against her side. It was the same on her other side. The protrusions on her shoulders connected the webbing to her body.

  I gasped. “Wings?”

  Snowboy didn’t take his eyes off her. “They aren’t functional. From what we’ve read in the files, Starsgard was trying to create a flying beast but never succeeded. They’re really useful for other things, though.” He snuggled his face against hers. “Where’s your mate?” he asked her, cooing gently. “Scouting for bears?”

  Mate? “There are more leopards?”

  “Only two that we know of. But they’re secretive creatures, so who knows? Here, you can ride her. I’ll run alongside for now.”

  “Ride her? You have to be kidding. I’d just as soon ride a Seversandian lion.”

  “C’mon. It’s fine. Really.”

  He gave the leopard’s front leg a gentle downward nudge and she folded her front and back legs underneath so that she was low enough for me to slide my leg over her. I wasn’t sure what to do about her wings—I didn’t want to sit on them—but as I approached, she lifted them upright, holding them vertical like a concertina so I could slide in beneath them.

  Her fur was so soft it reminded me of a duckling’s feathers. She was delicate and I didn’t want to place my full weight on her. As I rested down, cautious and reluctant, she surprised me by opening her wings out and folding them back over my legs, covering me from my thigh
s to my feet. Her wings were surprisingly strong, holding my legs in place as she began to walk.

  “You can hold on to her where her wings meet her body. Don’t worry about breaking them. They’re strong and make good handles. See.” Snowboy moved alongside and gave the curve of her wings a gentle tap.

  I wasn’t sure I wanted to. I was scared her fragile wings would snap off, but as we suddenly picked up pace, I leaned forward over her neck and gripped the hand-holds that the tops of her wings provided, finding the position surprisingly comfortable. The breeze quickened around us as her speed increased and very soon she was going so fast that Snowboy had to run to keep up with us.

  “I hope she knows where to go?” I tried not to yell out my concern.

  Snowboy laughed and ran ahead of us, a streak of light in the dark. He wasn’t even exerting himself, feet flying across the snow and rocks.

  I inhaled the crispness of the icy cavern, drinking in the movement of air across my body and the agility and lightness of the leopard as she glided along the path. I blanked my mind to everything except the chill and the sense of freedom. Some of the tension of the last few days left my body.

  Soon we approached the end of the fissure and I could make out the shape of an opening ahead, a wider clearing with more mountains in the distance. Toward the end of the fissure, the cliff face lowered, stooping to ground level.

  A hundred feet from the opening, there was movement to our right, a flicker of something along the cliff top—another life form with the same grace as the leopard.

  Snowboy saw it too. He inclined his head, glancing right and then forward again, increasing his speed, keeping pace with the creature above. As the cliff beside us declined, the other leopard came into view, sleek and white, racing alongside. Glacier shivered and I sensed her delight.

  Suddenly, Snowboy veered to the right, toward the cliff where the other leopard raced, leaping and snatching a handhold, propelling himself upward. At the same time, the leopard soared out into the air toward Snowboy.