Aldric Thornwood's Arc

Chapter 8 of 10

Aldric slowed on the far side of the bridge. His breath came hard. The canyon dropped white and silent behind him. Ahead, the snow rose toward a low ridge, and someone stood on it. A figure, still as stone, watching him cross. Not a guard. No uniform. Just a person who had waited there long enough to know he would come. The stranger set down a boxy machine in the snow. Purple light bled from its sides, and the word KARAOKE blinked across its top in tired pink letters. Aldric froze. He knew that box. He had sung beside it in a cellar room years ago, before anyone had thought him worth a guard. The stranger pressed a button. A song started, thin and bright in the cold — the same one Aldric had picked that night. "You used to laugh at this part," the stranger said. Aldric walked the last steps up the ridge. The face was older, but he knew it. He knew the name now too, without being told. The past had been the only key left, and it had opened. "Take me to them," Aldric said. The stranger lifted the box, turned, and led him down the far slope. They came to a shelter set against the wind, wooden beams holding cloth walls tight. The stranger pulled the flap back. Inside, the snow was packed flat and a small lamp burned low. "Not here," the stranger said. "This is only where I watched from. They're further in, and they're hurt. We move at dark." Aldric stepped inside and sat. He had a guide now, and a name, and a place his sibling waited. He also had hours to wait in a tent built by someone his mother did not yet know existed. At the back of the shelter, a green plant grew in a clay pot, its wide leaves bright against the cloth wall. Aldric stared at it. Nothing alive should grow out here. The stranger saw his look. "They kept it for years," the stranger said. "Said it belonged to the one who got erased." Aldric closed his hand around both pendants in his coat. The name was real. The sibling was real. And someone had carried a living thing through the cold to prove it. He leaned back against the wooden beam and waited for dark.