Elaria Silverstan's Arc

Chapter 25 of 39

Elaria sat with her back to the chapel wall until her breath slowed. Lia's blue thread held steady inside the cooler. The wind outside kept rising. It found the gaps in the old stone and pushed cold air across the floor in long, steady pulls. The candle stubs on the altar guttered without flame. Snow drifted in under the door in a thin white fan. The shelter was failing. She could not rest here, and she could not plan the walk back to the marker flag, until she stopped the wind. She stood and made a slow circle of the room. She found the leaks with her hand. A cracked pane behind the altar. A split in the door frame. A hole where a beam had pulled from the wall. Above her, in the small tower, a bell hung sealed in old ice, its bronze cracked through. Wind poured down around it in a cold column. That was the worst gap. If she left the tower open, nothing else she did would matter. She searched the side rooms and found a wooden draft screen leaned against a pew, slatted, edged with old ice. It was made to fit a chapel gap. Someone before her had built it for this exact wind. She dragged it under the tower and braced it against the stair. She packed snow along the base. Then she drew cold from her good hand and welded the screen to the stone with a rib of ice. The column of wind above her broke and scattered. She worked the smaller leaks next. She sealed the cracked pane with a patch of ice pressed flat. She filled the split frame with packed snow and froze it hard. She plugged the beam hole with her folded under-tunic and locked it in with a shell of frost. Each pull of cold cost her. Her fingers went stiff to the second knuckle. She kept going until every draft she could feel was gone. The room settled. The snow fan at the door stopped growing. The candle stubs stood still. She could hear her own breath again, and the faint tick of the cooler's lid as the ice inside adjusted. She carried Lia to a wooden manger by the altar. Soft cloth was folded inside it, dry and clean. She set the cooler in the hollow and banked cloth around its walls. She opened the lid a finger's width so the sprite could take the cold room air. Lia's thread brightened another notch. Elaria sat on the stone beside the manger. The warmth crystal against her ribs was warmer now, steady, no longer faint. It had begun to answer something. She did not know what. She closed her hand around it through her coat and felt the pulse of it against her palm, and understood that the return walk would not be the same walk she had planned.