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“But you are not Lost. You are an Intruder. And no Intruder is ever allowed to pass through the Veil and live. You will be executed the moment you are discovered. Unless we can keep you hidden. ”
Oliver took a ragged breath and pressed his eyes tightly closed. He pushed his fists against them as though that might somehow make it all go away.
“What are you talking about?” he demanded, opening his eyes and staring at the winter man. “He’s after you. Okay, I did you a favor, but I didn’t want to come here, I—”
The winter man had seemed hesitant. Now all such hesitation fell away. Jagged ice and frozen eyes, he did not so much lunge at Oliver as slide toward him. Sharp blue-white talons snatched up the front of Oliver’s wet shirt and frost formed on the fabric, crinkling as Frost clutched it tightly.
“That’s enough!” he hissed, his breath frigid in Oliver’s face. “I owe you my life, Oliver Bascombe. I shall not forget that. But a wasted effort it shall be if your foolishness keeps us here long enough for Hunters to arrive. The Falconer and his comrades will care nothing for your excuses. It is time that you—”
“No!” Oliver shouted at him. He plucked at his sodden shirt where it stuck to him and his boots squelched as he marched away. Panic thrummed in his chest. “I have to . . . ”
He stopped. Swallowed. Reached up to pinch the bridge of his nose. “I have to go back,” he whispered. Oliver shook his head. “Oh, shit. Oh, Julianna, I’m sorry. ”
The winter man must have sensed the change in him, for he stood back and waited, arms crossed. Oliver took several deep breaths. Where those snakes of fear had coiled in his stomach, he felt something harden. After a moment he took one final, shuddering breath. The breeze across the lake had kicked up a little and though the night was comfortably warm, he shivered in his wet clothes. The sweet air helped to wake him. The sparse trees rustled with the wind, but other than that, nothing moved.
Grim weight bore down upon his shoulders, but Oliver stood taller, managing it. “All right. ” His left eye twitched as he said it. “We’re here. I still only have the vaguest idea where here is, and you’re going to have to explain it all to me. All of it. But if we could be in danger, staying here, then you can talk while we go. ”
He ran a hand through his hair, mussing it up, trying to dry it a little. A little laugh escaped him. “Jesus. All right. ” Oliver glanced around again. “Which way? Toward the mountain?”
The winter man shook his head in consternation, icicles of hair shaking. “No. There is ice atop the mountains. That is the first place they would look for me. It would restore my power more quickly than I can manage myself, but I can’t return home until this is ended. We’ll go northeast to start, to get away from the lake, and then due east until we meet the Truce Road. ”
Oliver opened his mouth, but could summon no response. What was there left to say? He plucked again at his wet clothes where they stuck to his body. It would be an uncomfortable trek until they dried, and they had no supplies, no food at all. He wondered if Frost needed to eat, or would consider that Oliver did.
“What are we waiting for?”
Frost started off across the brittle grass on a diagonal path away from the lake. After a moment, Oliver followed him. He started to unbutton his shirt as he walked, thinking it would dry better if he let it wave in the breeze. But his mind was not on that task. Reluctantly, he turned to cast one final glance at the sky above the lake, the place where the Veil was thin enough for the Borderkind to pass through.
Lower, on the water, something caught his eye.
He had nearly reached that copse of trees— Frost had already begun to duck in amongst them, forging a direct path northeast— when he saw them. The surface of the lake had been broken by the emergence of small creatures, some of them still swimming but others wading onto the shore.
“Frost,” Oliver rasped.
The winter man continued on, unhearing.
Oliver called again, more loudly, and his companion halted at last, turning to regard him with deep frustration. He seemed prepared to face another argument about their course of action, until Oliver pointed back to the lake and the winter man saw the monsters at the water’s edge. Some of them had ambled out of the lake and begun sniffing at the place where Oliver had stood only moments before.
Their eyes gleamed wetly in the moonlight. The things were squat and rolled from side to side as they walked, long arms dragging beside them like chimpanzees. Their flesh was dark, but he thought he caught a hint of green in the moonlight, a putrid sort of hue. But as squat and ugly as their bodies were, their heads were far worse. Their faces were pinched, mouths pushed out like small snouts and eyes too close together. Worst of all was their skulls, which were concave on top, creating a strange kind of bowl out of their heads. Even those who had dropped to the ground to investigate managed to keep their heads upright. As they walked, shambling from side to side, their heads tilted back and forth to remain steady.
Otherwise the water in the bowl formed by their concave skulls would have spilled.
“We must go,” Frost said. “I warned you that we should not linger. They must have sensed us from deeper in the lake. We’ve drawn their interest. ”
He reached out to grab Oliver’s wrist. At the winter man’s touch, Oliver hissed from the cold and pulled away.
“What are they?”
“Kappa,” Frost replied.
Oliver frowned. “What the hell are—”
The Kappa seemed to notice them for the first time. Their heads all ratcheted around to stare and Oliver did not finish his thought. He could only stare back.
The creatures began to screech. The sound tore at his ears and he clapped his hands to the side of his head. They launched themselves across the scrub grass, some of them tottering along with their overlong arms raised high, and others running on all fours, reminding him once again of chimpanzees. Yet somehow they managed to keep their heads up, water sloshing in the strange bowls upon their heads but not tipping out.
Oliver had no idea what to do. He looked around at the trees to see if any were tall enough for him to climb, thick enough to support him. Would the little monsters be able to climb up after him? He started toward one of the trees, then thought better of it and turned to simply flee to the north, as fast and as far as his legs could carry him.
Icy fingers snatched him by the arm, painfully cold even through his shirt.
“Turn! Quickly!” Frost shouted.
Without thinking, Oliver complied. He spun around to face the things. Terror leaped in his heart, for now was the first time he noticed their mouths. Their jaws were wide and filled with tiny little razor teeth, row after row, like sharks.
“Oliver!” the winter man called.
Only then did he realize Frost had been talking to him.
The Kappa came on, and now he could hear the terrible sound of their clawed feet trammeling the grass, the shushing noise as the beasts rushed toward them.
“Bow!” Frost snapped.
Oliver frowned, breath coming too fast now, heart thundering suddenly in his chest. He shook his head as if to deny what he saw.
“Bow down!” the winter man roared.
Oliver glanced over and saw that Frost had already done so. The winter man was bent at the waist in a deep, formal bow. Oliver hesitated only an eyeblink longer, and then he followed suit. What choice did he have?
The screeching stopped, all at once. There came a sloshing noise from just a few feet in front of him, and then a thump. Flinching, waiting for claws and shark teeth to tear in to him, it was only when he heard the sloshing noise again that he looked up.
The Kappa had all stopped screeching, stopped attacking. One by one they were bowing. But the three nearest him, the ones who had been nearly on top of him a moment ago, had fallen over on the ground. An instant later, he understood.
Oliver stared in astonishment as each Kappa bowed, and the water from their ope
n, concave skulls spilled out onto the ground. One by one, as they did so, they slumped to the scrub grass, twitching, gleaming eyes roving wildly as though searching for something they could not see.
The winter man uttered a short, barking laugh so utterly unlike anything Oliver had heard from him thus far that the man jumped, startled, his terrified heart hammering once more.
Then Frost bowed once again. “Foolish demons. They should never stray so far from shore. ” The winter man grinned, showing sharp ice teeth, and turned to Oliver. “Now, run!”
This time there was no hesitation. Oliver did not even take a last look at the Kappa as he turned and fled with Frost. The winter man led the way, darting in amongst the trees. Oliver followed, his clothes stiff with dampness, and did not allow his discomfort to slow him. For several minutes they ran. His chest burned. From time to time Frost would brush past branches that became brittle with cold and snapped when Oliver pushed them out of the way. His breath came in heaving gasps and he was ready to plead with his companion to stop when they burst out of the small wood and found themselves at the base of a long, grassy slope. The snowcapped mountain was off to their left now, or near enough. They had been moving northeast all along.
Frost paused there and turned, still grinning, icy teeth gleaming in the moonlight. He laughed and threw up his hands and the wind gusted, twisting around him in a sudden maelstrom, and snow be-gan to fall from a perfectly clear sky. The warm night was abruptly chilled. Wet as he was, Oliver shivered.
“Quit that!” he snapped.
The winter man arched an eyebrow. Oliver had only seen him fearful and desperate and angry. This mischievous side to him was both endearing and somehow frightening.
With a single pass of frozen fingers through the air, the gust died and the snow evaporated. “You are alive, Oliver. Why don’t you celebrate that?”
The admonition struck home, but Oliver could not push his fear aside so easily. “Those things . . . you called them demons. ”
“So I did. I told you that there were many gods here. There are even more demons. ”
Oliver tried to catch his breath as he glanced back the way they had come. His view of the lake was obscured by the trees. “Won’t they come after us?”
The winter man tilted his head, and if Oliver was not mistaken, Frost actually rolled his eyes. “Those demons were from the land you call Japan . . . or they were, once upon a time, before the Veil was created. Their kind cannot refuse a gesture of politeness. We bowed. They were forced to bow. But without the water from the lake, they are too weak to attack. They would have to crawl back to the lake to get more, and even then, I doubt they would dare come so far from the water for fear of being stranded should it happen again. ”
“But you’re not sure,” Oliver said.
Frost shrugged. Strands of icicle hair hung across his eyes, but he did not push it away.
“We should go,” Oliver told him.
The winter man smiled. “As I have been saying to you since you first drew breath in this world. Perhaps you’ve learned something already. Do as I say and we might both live a little longer. ”
Oliver knitted his brows. “Oh. That’s comforting. Thanks for that. ”
“You are very welcome. ”
* * *
Hours passed as they trekked first northeast to the foothills of the mountains and then on a straight easterly course that brought them to a forest Frost said was simply called The Oldwood. It was a peaceful place, with twigs and pine needles underfoot and the trees spread apart enough that the moonlight shone through the canopy of branches and leaves above. There were no paths to speak of, but the going was easy enough. As they walked they heard animals moving through the brush and in the branches, and once Oliver was certain he saw a pair of deer in a clearing. They bolted before he could get a good look at them, but he had the idea one of them might have been walking on two legs.
The lake was far behind, and the Truce Road somewhere up ahead. Morning was still hours away, but instead of feeling the exhaustion he knew ought to have overtaken him by now, Oliver felt exhilarated. Despite the horror that still fluttered in his heart when he thought of the Falconer, the strangeness of this world, and the knowledge that his life was in dire peril, every step away from the place where he had come through the Veil felt to him like another step into liberty. With no way to return to face his father or his fiancée or any of their expectations, Oliver Bascombe felt free for the first time in his adult life.
The irony wasn’t lost on him.
For a time they walked in near silence. Now that they were out of imminent danger, Oliver had no idea how to talk to Frost. What did one say to a man made of ice and snow? It was almost funny, in the saddest possible way. All of his life he had wished that myths and legends were real, that he could meet a centaur or hear the song of the Sirens, like in the stories his mother had always read to him, the books he’d borrowed from her shelves. As a child he had imagined himself Odysseus embarking upon one great quest after another. His secret yearning to be an actor had been born of the same instincts and desires. Acting was a way to inhabit all of the things he wished he could believe about himself, but could never quite manage. On the stage he was heroic and noble, unique and courageous. Buckling beneath the pressure from his father to be responsible, to pursue his law career, had almost extinguished his creative spark. On the stage, he had hoped to keep that spark from snuffing out entirely.
Now he walked through a wild forest beside, and at times a few paces behind, Jack Frost himself, and he didn’t know what to say. With his fear subsiding and a kind of simmering wonder taking its place, he could not help but feel awed when he looked at Frost. The winter man was healed, though that line of darker blue ice where his wound had been remained. His jagged, icicle hair sprang and sometimes clinked as he walked and each step left a bit of rime upon the forest floor.
In time, though, as his muscles began to ache, Oliver’s focus began to drift. Even at night, with only the moonlight, he could see that this was not a forest like any other he had seen. There was a primeval quality to the trees. They were tall and ancient and of such variety that he felt sure some of the species were unknown to the world he’d come from.