Summerhill (21 page)

Already, the icy cold of the outside was robbing Summerhill of all benefit he’d gotten from staying in by the fire for a short time. He hugged his arms close to himself as he looked around the snow-covered farm and the mountains surrounding it. These people hadn’t just come from nowhere; there had to be somewhere else in this world where he could go for help.

As he trudged his way out of the farm, Summerhill stopped once more at the dead fruit tree. He thought again about the family in their tiny cottage with their bland food and cramped living area. How long before the crops of this snowy farm could be harvested? How long before it was possible to hunt for meat or trade for goods or have contact with anyone who didn’t already live here?

Summerhill pressed his hand against the dead, frosted-over bark. In its current state, the tree was good for little more than firewood, but Summerhill could change that. He took a deep breath, the air chilling his lungs, and then he exhaled as he willed the tree back to life. He put the spark of his own vital essence into it, and changed the nature of the tree itself, changed it into something this world had never seen. Before his eyes, the bare branches twisted, grew, and reshaped themselves before bursting forth with flowers, a spray of vibrant color against the cloudy gray sky.

The wind picked up, and a small flurry of petals blew away as various blossoms turned into fruit. Summerhill filled the branches with several different kinds, each a different color and shape. He imagined different flavors into them, too, and when that was set, he insured that the tree would bear such fruit year-round, that it would resist the cold and remain strong.

He was still cold and hungry and tired, but he was now filled with a sense of rightness. A smile spread across his muzzle, and he looked up to see that some more flower petals had been caught up in a swirling eddy of wind. One by one, those petals broke away and drifted off in the same direction, and the dog followed them, even if the snow made it impossible to keep up.

There was a way out of this world. He’d found his way out of the World of the Pale Gray Sky, out of the nevereef, and out of the darkness. He’d find his way out of here, and then he’d find his way back to Katherine, wherever or whenever she might be. Yes, his host at the cottage had been correct in that he was foolishly unprepared for his journey, but he’d just have to press on and hope he found better ways to prepare himself along the way.

The mountains turned out to be taller than they had looked at first. While not insurmountable crags that scraped at the sky, they were still steep, and though Summerhill didn’t need any climbing gear to make his way up, the patches of knee-deep snow and the constant wind in his face made it slow, arduous going. The gray clouds whirled overhead, still yielding no sign of any sun.

After what he was sure had been hours of trekking uphill, Summerhill noted that it hadn’t gotten appreciably darker than it had been when he had first arrived. Was this place like the World of the Pale Gray Sky, with no sun to rise and set? Or were the days just interminably long, the sky forever hidden by swirls of gray? The dog scoffed as he thought about how desperate he had been to escape his old life, only to now be stuck trapped in a desolate place that was far too much like the prison he’d once called home.

At last he reached the top of the mountain, after far more time and effort than he’d expected. Far below was another valley, longer and narrower than the one he’d just left, and beyond that were mountains taller than the ones he’d just scaled. From this height, he could see no signs of any cottages, any smoke from chimneys, or any paths that travelers or traders might use to make their way through.

Summerhill made his way down into the valley, trying to spot anything in the way of landmarks or hints of civilization along the way. He walked for hours and hours, until he was exhausted. He dug into the hollow space below a dead tree and slept there for as long as he could before waking to find the sky just as dull and half-lit as before. Resuming his trek, he made it nearly to the top of the next mountain before making camp in a rocky alcove that could barely be called a cave, resting through a night that did not come.

In the morning, he told himself, he’d make his way into the next valley, and he would keep searching until he found someone else. Someone else was out there, he was sure, and if they couldn’t or wouldn’t help him, he’d find someone else again.

Twenty

Wintertime

For weeks, Summerhill had wandered the mountains, but he refused to accept the conventional wisdom of the local inhabitants that mountains were all that existed. During those weeks, the sky never darkened nor got brighter, and the cold never lifted, but the world wasn’t empty. There were still the natives, and their ways and culture, from what little Summerhill could glean of them, suggested that at some point, perhaps long ago, there had been more than what there was now.

It was in that third valley that Summerhill finally had his second run-in with the natives. They, too, were robed and cowled and kept their forms hidden, but instead of a single hovel, they lived in a hamlet of three small cottages with a tiny farm of their own. Like Summerhill’s first host, they told him that the only way out of the mountains was via the Plain of Ice that appeared on the brink of death, but he refused to believe that. They told him how the winter never ended, how they lived off of what little they could make grow in the ice and cold, along with meat from what few beasts survived in the wild.

Even these people, miserable though their conditions were, hadn’t lost their will to live and surrendered to the winter. They hadn’t lost all hope that there was something better, and neither would Summerhill.

In fact, if it hadn’t been for the natives, Summerhill likely would have frozen to death several times over. Though none ever let him stay for very long, none of the homes he came across ever turned him away completely, even if it was just to sit for a spell in front of the fire. Twice he’d needed to trade for new clothing after the ice and snow had reduced his old garments to tatters, using his talents with plants to give the people food in exchange. He’d even been able to learn some tips and tricks on how to navigate the land, and places to go when in search of other snowbound villages hidden in the winding network of valleys.

After a month of travel, Summerhill found the largest single settlement he’d seen since his arrival: a group of five cabins built on a flat stretch of land high in the mountains, surrounding the pathetic remnants of a hot spring. A recent landslide had taken out a crop of nut-bearing trees and a patch of land where root vegetables could grow. Summerhill used some of his own life’s energy to bring the trees back and to allow the vegetables to thrive in the soil once more.

In exchange, the small band of natives heralded him as a sorcerer, and told tales around the fire of the hero who was to have banished the eternal winter.

Long ago, they told him, sometime after this winter had fallen, a champion of the people had set off to find some way to return the world to its former glory. He traveled the valleys and got help from all he could, and then, seeing no other course to take, resigned himself to making his way across the Plain of Ice in the hope of finding a way to bring some life back into this dying place.

Before Summerhill could balk and dismiss the message of the story, the storyteller continued, speaking of the Plain of Ice as if it were a real place. This got Summerhill’s attention, but unfortunately for the story and the hero and the rest of the world, this hero never did return.

“Is there really a Plain of Ice?” he asked the storyteller. “An actual place, and not just a gateway to death?”

The storyteller chuckled with the eerie, raspy laugh that the hooded natives had. “There is a Plain of Ice,” he assured Summerhill, “though that is not to say that it is anything more than a gateway to death all the same.”

“How does one get there?” Summerhill asked, unable to mask his excitement at this revelation, strange though it was. “Nobody else seems to think it exists.”

“It exists,” the storyteller said. “But you must travel far.”

Summerhill smiled in understanding. “I have already traveled far. I am willing to travel father still.”

“Then travel farther still you must, sorcerer,” the storyteller said, his dark voice taking on an even more serious edge. “First, you must travel farther than anyone has ever traveled. Travel until you find the mountains that are higher than anyone has climbed. Climb those mountains, and you will be able to see where the world stops.”

The storyteller paused to take a long sip from his small, hot bowl of vegetable stew. “Far above, up in the sky, will be the Sun That Gives No Heat, shining upon the Plain of Ice. From there... Well, one way or the other, it leads to the world beyond this one.”

Summerhill lay awake when he should have been sleeping and resting for the next leg of his journey, unable to stop thinking of the storyteller’s words. In place of a stubborn insistence that there was nothing beyond the mountains, he now had fantastical directions to a place that was impossible to reach.

But impossible, as Summerhill had learned during his time with Katherine, was something he had a leg up on.

And so Summerhill set out once again, traveling the mountains as before. This time, however, the trek grew more arduous. The paths through the mountain peaks grew more treacherous, and the homes and farms grew fewer and farther between. Each time he stopped to sleep, he felt himself grow mildly delirious from exhaustion.

The isolation was maddening. Having run out of people to talk to, he sometimes took to talking to himself, just to have something to do. He yearned for the sharp-edged company of Katherine, vowing every time he set out anew that soon, he would find her, wherever she might be. Sometimes, he felt lonesome for the otter Tekutan, though even after long hours with nothing but his own thoughts to occupy him, he could not remember who that was, or why his absence would inspire such feelings.

In one ice-filled mountain pass, he found a solemn marker of carved stone, noting the passage of the hero who never returned. Hours after coming across it, however, he became convinced that it had been nothing more than his mind playing tricks on him after days spent alone trudging through the snow and the cold.

But then, a day later, after cresting the tallest mountain he could remember climbing, he brought his hand to his head to shield his eyes from the bright, burning light that struck them.

High in the sky, burning from behind a wispy haze of clouds, was a brilliant white sun, which shone bright but which indeed did nothing to stave off the biting cold. Far below was an unbroken expanse of flat white that stretched out towards the horizon as far as the eye could see, reflecting the sun’s light to give the illusion of a sunset that was mere minutes away but would never come.

After being first captivated by the beauty and enormity of this Plain of Ice, Summerhill was filled with dismay at the thought of having to cross it. From here up in the mountains, it looked like it went on forever. It really was like gazing at the very end of the world. 

Then, Summerhill realized what he was really seeing: an ocean, frozen solid. At the near edge of the plain, he could make out the snow-covered beach, and from there out to the horizon was nothing but a smooth sheet of motionless white.

He turned around to face the way he’d come, back at the likewise endless series of mountains and valleys he’d crossed. If there ever had actually been a hero, and he’d made it this far, Summerhill might not have blamed him for deciding to abandon any crazy plan to try to cross the Plain of Ice.

But Summerhill only had crazy plans. It was either this or nothing. Either this, or go back. Search a whole frozen world of mountains in the hope that maybe there were other legends, other ways to escape. Do that, and hope he didn’t freeze to death in the process.

He pulled his coat more snugly against himself, looked at what little food he had left after his journey here, and gritted his teeth before setting out to cross the Plain of Ice.

Two days of constant walking later, there was still nothing but gray clouds, a cold sun, the horizon, and the flat, unending sea. There was no telling how far he’d come. There was no telling how far there was to go. There was nothing else.

Summerhill’s old life seemed so far away. His memories of his adventures aboard the
Nusquam
and his too-brief journey with Katherine seemed to belong to another person. On occasion, he saw glimpses of the otter he didn’t remember, creeping in as delusional traces of movement against the frozen sea, glimpsed out of the corners of his dried-out eyes.

The unreachable horizon taunted him with blinding whiteness that kept interrupting the pleasant visions he tried to distract himself with. His body shivered with cold that his coat could not protect against. His stomach begged for food, but he had run out of his meager stores, and he could make no plants grow from within the lifeless ice even if he’d still had the strength to do so.

With his delirium-ridden loneliness and a grip on reality that kept slipping, Summerhill’s body and spirit both grew weaker. He soon lacked even the energy to wonder why he’d ever come out here. He lacked the energy to walk. He lacked the energy to stand.

With that, Summerhill went limp, and it felt so good to collapse, to not have to walk anymore, to not have to stand anymore. He lay there, his breathing slowing, his eyes freezing over before they could shut, and he welcomed the blissful emptiness as he let himself drift off to die alone in the snow.