Bluewing (11 page)

“I don’t know what we are,” I said. “It hasn’t been our top priority as of late.”

“Love is always a top priority,” she said, and blushed.

Now it was my turn to scrutinize her. “What about you and my brother?” The question came out a little sharper than I’d intended.

“He and I—”

But there was a scuffle behind us, and Gabe appeared around the corner. His hair flopped into his eyes, and I noticed the way the sunlight hit the edges and turned them to gold. His mouth tipped sideways in a terse smile. “Ready?”

“Ready,” I said, glad to change the subject and get moving. Talking about emotions made me itchy and restless. I didn’t know what I felt. There was too much inside my head, and I hadn’t had the luxury of sorting it out, not while I was grappling for survival, worrying over my sister, dealing with Blackcoats, and trying to arrange the rescue of my beloved friends.

Or was Everiss right? Was all that just an excuse to delay addressing my feelings?

I pushed all these troublesome ideas into the back of my mind and set out across the snow. Gabe and Everiss followed without a word.

We kept to the tree line but didn’t enter it until we’d rounded the edge of Echlos. There’d been a path here 500 years ago. Gabe knew it better than I did, so I let him lead. The path itself was long gone, but the impression of it remained as an old deer run now. Trees twisted overhead and bent close around us.

“Where are we going?” Everiss panted, stumbling behind me as I ducked under branches and yanked my cloak free of grasping twigs.

“We need to check all the traps, and we need to search the woods for berries. Unfortunately for us, Ivy is the one who always knew the best places,” I said.

Ivy
. Thinking of her filled me with worry. Was she seeking a pass to give her access to the Frost right now? Would she get it? If she was unable to obtain it, when would we see her again?

“I seem to remember there being a lot of berry bushes around the house of the Compound director,” Gabe commented. “We should try there.”

I remembered that house—an opulent building with sweeping white curves and a roof like a bird’s wing. The fields and gardens around it had been filled with snow blossoms—brought here because they were the favorite flower of the director’s wife. They’d been bred to withstand extreme cold, and that was why they now bloomed amid our harsh winters.

“It’s far from here,” I observed. “But all right.”

We set out across the wilderness, weaving around massive rocks that protruded from the snowy earth, pushing aside branches laden with ice. When we finally reached the field that led to the house, Everiss stopped and sucked in a breath. “What is that?”

A portion of the house and roof were still visible, covered in vines and snow and shimmering in the pale sunlight like a fallen dove. A swath of blue lay between us and our destination. Snow blossoms. Thousands of them.

“Could this place be any safer from Watchers?” Gabe mused, looking at the snow blossoms in amazement. “This field is literally carpeted with them. They’ve spread everywhere.”

I waded through the sea of flowers. The fragrance wafted around me and tickled my nose.

“Where are you going?” Everiss asked, a hint of panic entering her voice.

“Gabe said he remembered berry bushes growing here,” I said. “We need to find them.”

“The berry bushes used to grow on the north side,” he offered. “Behind the fountains.”

“Fountains,” Everiss repeated, her eyes wide. “What is this place?”

“It used to be the home of a very rich man,” Gabe said.

“Why has no one found it before?”

“Watchers,” I said with a short laugh. “Nobody else dares come this far out except crazy and desperate people like us.”

As the house grew closer, the details sharpened. The mansion was massive, dozens of times the size of the Mayor’s house in the village. Columns covered in lichen and hardened vines stood like sentries frozen in eternal duty. Trees grew through the holes where windows had once been. A ghostly air clung to everything, silence mingled with the sadness of beauty long neglected.

“It’s eerie,” Everiss whispered. “Have you heard the tales the Trappers tell about the ghosts that roam the far edges of the Frost? Perhaps they live here.”

I ignored her. A thought was taking shape in my head. “Do you suppose there could be anything worth salvaging inside?”

Gabe eyed the ruin with skeptical interest. “It’s possible, I suppose.”

“Inside?” Everiss repeated nervously.

“Cooking pots, tools of some kind...” Excitement caught fire in my blood and propelled me forward. I headed for the first opening I saw. Who knew what wonders might be waiting within this place, preserved from looters all these years by the long distance from the village and a handful of silly ghost stories?

I climbed over a pair of rocks and shimmied up a tree to peer into the closest window-hole. The cool scent of earth—much like the air of a cave—wafted at me. I put my hands on the crumbling window frame and hooked one leg over the sill.

“Lia!” Everiss called after me, her tone frantic. “We don’t know what’s in there.”

“I don’t believe in ghosts, Everiss.”

She whimpered in response. “Ellis Trapper was
very
sure of what he saw.”

I heard the scrape of shoes against bark, and then Gabe appeared beside me, panting. “If you’re going in, then I am, too.”

I swung my other leg over the sill and jumped.

The fall was short, and I landed on a spongy floor covered in lichen. A hole in the roof let in dappled light, chandeliers dangled from a peeling ceiling, and a pair of marble staircases swirled up to the second floor like the wings of a swan. Trees pushed up through the tiles on the floor and stretched toward the light of the windows. Everything smelled like dirt and stones and secret places. And it was beautiful, this ruined grandeur. Shadows lay over everything, tinting the world blue-gray, the color shifting as the sunlight disappeared and reappeared with Gabe’s entrance after me. He tumbled to the ground and rose unsteadily.

Behind us came a few muffled curses, and then Everiss appeared on the window ledge. She blew hair out of her eyes, scowled, and dropped down beside Gabe with a flutter of her cape and a bounce of her curls.

“I’m not staying outside alone,” she protested, when we both glanced at her.

“We should look around,” I said, and my voice echoed.

I crossed the room to the pair of staircases. I tested one of the crumbling steps with my foot, and thought better of it. Who knew if this place was even stable anymore? I passed the stairs and went down a long hall. Doors opened off either side. I stuck my head into the rooms—they were all the same, hollow gray boxes sprouting with life from the encroaching forest. Trees grew through what had once been windows. Glowing fungi made streaks of blue down the walls. The wilderness was devouring everything inch by inch, year by year. Anything that wasn’t stone or some other impenetrable material had long ago succumbed to the elements.

The kitchen was at the end of the hall. It might have been ornate once, but everything was dirty and unrecognizable now. Chunks of the wall had been torn away. The floor was in pieces. I stepped around the bones of a small animal and opened a door in the wall. The hinges screeched. Inside, I found shelves covered in dust.

A pantry. Metal gleamed back at me. Pots, pans. Stacks of them.

“We don’t have any food, but here we have lots to cook it in,” I said.

Everiss gasped in surprise as she entered the room behind me. “This kitchen is larger than my childhood home.”

Gabe reached my side and looked into the pantry.

“Do you remember the things we used to have to eat back then? Piles of potatoes with melted cheese, desserts with cream on them, pork and sauces and fresh fruits...”

My mouth watered. “I remember,” I said, feeling a bit faint as the taste of my favorite dessert, apple tarts, filled my memory.

I looked past the pans and saw a dark seam in the wall. “Wait—there’s another door here.”

“What?” He looked. “You’re right.”

I pressed my fingers against the seam in an effort to open it. “This is sealed somehow...”

He leaned across me and touched a button recessed into the wall. The door slid aside, and I shot him a look.

“How’d you know that?”

Gabe shrugged. “I did spend several months in that world,” he said. “I know how to work the doors.”

Darkness lay beyond the doorway. I could just barely see the outline of steps leading down into the blackness. We’d need a light. I returned to the hall where I’d seen the glow fungus and plucked a few pieces. I handed some to Gabe. He took the fungi and balanced it in the center of his gloved palm. I offered a piece to Everiss, and then I turned back to the steps and inhaled the scent of dank underground.

“Let’s go.”

I listened to every creak and mutter that the building made beneath us as we descended. The steps seemed solid, but still I moved carefully. When we reached the bottom, I felt more tiled floor beneath my feet, this time unbroken and smooth as glass. There was no decay down here, not that I could see. I held the fungi aloft, and a faint glow illuminated the space. Shelves stocked with boxes lined the walls.

Food?

I sucked in sharply. Beside me, Gabe muttered an exclamation beneath his breath. Everiss simply gasped. We all rushed for the shelves at the same time, pulling down containers to see the labels.

“Sugar,” Everiss read aloud, her voice cracking. “Honey. Salt. It’s a miracle.”

“Sausage,” Gabe said. He handed the cans to me as he read them. “Beans.”

“Do you think they’re still any good?” I turned one of the cans over in my hand. Surely 500 years was a long time for anything to last. My stomach tightened with hunger as I spotted a can marked “stewed apples.”

“I don’t know.” Gabe selected another can and stared at it thoughtfully.

“Take as many as we can carry,” I said. “And let’s get out of here.”

“Yes.” Everiss’s curls quivered as she nodded her head. “Let’s.”

We filled our sacks with supplies and then retraced our steps to the ruined kitchen above. The light that filtered in through the holes in the walls had turned bluish. The sun would set soon.

“Wait,” Gabe said, remembering. “The berry bushes.”

~

We headed through the kitchen and down another hall. Gabe kicked away years of growth that had accumulated around a hole where a door had long ago disintegrated. We climbed through it, blinking in the sunlight. The terrace beneath our feet was marble, coated in lichen and ice.

I spotted the bushes first. They grew rampant below the terrace, laden with heavy purple winterberries. A pang of hunger barbed my stomach, and I scrambled down the steps to the landing below. Everiss and Gabe followed, debating the best way to carry the berries back without crushing them all.

We picked until our gloves were stained with streaks like blood, and we ate enough to turn our lips purple. When we’d filled the rest of the sacks, we stopped.

“What’s that?” I asked, pointing at the top of what looked like an ice-slicked roof visible just beyond another clump of trees.

Gabe squinted. “I don’t know.”

I started toward it.

“Lia, it’s getting late. The stories...” Everiss began.

I pushed through the wet branches and broke into a clearing with a snap of ice and brittle wood. A building made entirely of what appeared to be glass stood before me. The walls and roof shimmered like ice veined with steel. Frost made delicate patterns across the individual panes. The roof rose into a dome.

Gabe shoved through the brush and stopped beside me. “It’s a greenhouse,” he said, his exhale of wonder a puff of white in the air.

“A green house?”

“A greenhouse. They’re made of transparent material to let in sunlight. They’re warm inside. Plants can grow there even when it’s cold. We have many of them in Aeralis.”

I took a step toward the greenhouse. The sun played across the surface, glinting and sparkling, mesmerizing me. I reached out one gloved finger and touched the glass.

“How has it not been destroyed after all these years?” I said, looking over my shoulder at him. “It’s so fragile-looking. Like glass.”

“I don’t think that’s glass,” he said. “It’s probably something stronger.”

I pondered this as I stroked one hand down the slick surface, wiping away the crust of ice. Through the material beneath, I saw a blur of green.

Excitement quickened in my chest.

I rounded the corner of the structure, looking for a door. At the end, I spotted a seam in the wall. I hurried forward, and Gabe followed me.

“The building looks intact,” he muttered, half to himself and half to me. “It’s really incredible.”

Everiss made a helpless sound as she trailed behind us. “I’m not going in there.”

“Then wait outside,” I said.

I reached the door. There was no knob. I ran my fingers over the seam, searching until my index finger snagged in a hollowed space and the door rushed open with a hiss. Steam swept around us, colliding with the freezing air of the Frost. Gabe and I stepped inside. Everiss didn’t join us.

The door slid shut again.

Moisture beaded on my eyelashes and the end of my nose. My feet sunk into grass. I stared.

All around us, sprawling green vegetation pushed toward the ceiling, unruly after centuries of unchecked life cycles. Budding shrubs spilled over a narrow path that disappeared into a grove of trees. The growth obscured my view of the ends of the greenhouse, making me feel as though I’d stumbled into a hidden forest. It was so warm. I pushed back my sleeves and stripped off my mittens.

Gabe reached out and plucked a piece of fruit from a trailing vine. He gazed at it wonderingly. “I can’t believe this place remained intact while everything else fell into ruin.”

“How is it even possible?” I turned a circle, gazing at the greenery around me. The mysteries of the Ancient Ones’ technology were beyond my grasp, yet this seemed downright miraculous.

“Perhaps it was built to supply air and water indefinitely, and it just never stopped. Look.” He pointed at vents where air entered the structure, causing plant stalks to wave. “It probably collects melted ice and snow from the roof. Then the water is redistributed inside.”