Elaria Silverstan's Arc

Chapter 32 of 39

Elaria moved along the ridge until the birches thinned and the wind rose. Under her coat, the cooler had gone quiet. That was the wrong kind of quiet. She stopped in the lee of a rock and cracked the lid. Lia lay curled on the frostcloth, her wings limp, her blue skin gone dull. The snow inside the cooler was slush. Elaria's own body heat, trapped by the cloak and the running, had cooked through the seal again. She had maybe twenty minutes before the sprite stopped breathing. She scooped clean snow from the drift and packed it around Lia's cradle. It helped for a breath. Then it began to melt against her chest. She needed walls between herself and the cooler. She needed shelter that was not her body. She turned off the ridge and followed the crystal's pull downslope, away from the guards, into a stand of black pines. Between two of them stood a low cabin of frost-rimed logs, roof heavy with icicles, no smoke at the chimney. She put her shoulder to the door. It gave. The single room was colder inside than out, which was what she wanted. A cot, a table, a stack of split wood she would not touch. She set the cooler on the table, packed the last of her clean snow around Lia, and got to work. From her pack she pulled Eliost's white cloak and Lyra's spare frostcloth. She laid them flat and cut long strips with her belt knife. She lined the inside of the cloak with the frostcloth, layer over layer, and stitched the edges with sinew. Then she breathed cold along every seam, sealing the wool with a thin skin of ice. When she pulled it over her shoulders, her own warmth stopped at the lining. The cooler under it went still and cold again. Lia's wings twitched. Her color came back by degrees. A cough behind her. Elaria turned with the knife raised. A small figure stood in the open doorway, gray beard to his waist, green wool cap, a walking stick in one hand and two glass vials at his belt. He did not flinch at the knife. He looked at the cooler, then at her new cloak, and nodded once as if she had passed a test he had set long ago. "Sprite keeper," he said. "You wrapped her right. But you'll kill her by the third day if you keep carrying her against your ribs." He set a vial on the table. Pale blue liquid, slow as honey. "One drop on her tongue each dawn. It slows what your heat does to her. It will not save you from the curse you're carrying. That, we talk about next." Elaria lowered the knife. Lia's breath fogged the inside of the cooler lid, steady again. For the first time in two days, she had bought more than minutes.