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Deepwinter
(© Biswapriya Purkayastha)

Page 2

High above his head, the sky was cloudless for the moment, except for long wisps of cirrus, and brilliant moonlight rained down on the world. The moon glittered on the snow, so that the land was brighter than the sky; it gleamed on the ice that covered the stream down in the valley, and, when he breathed out, it turned his breath into a gleaming cloud of tiny ice crystals.

It was quite amazingly cold.

It was the cold that got him going, because he could no longer bear the bite of it settling through his thick clothing down into his bones. The cold was like a living thing that twined about him, embraced him, and tried to draw him into itself. He felt its teeth inside his lungs with every breath he took, gnawing him from the inside. He felt its hands run over his body, testing him, prodding and pinching. The cold promised death. The cold was death. It whispered to him, and told him that it would claim him before the morning. It would have driven him back into the shelter of the cave if he had waited another instant, so he took one last look around and plunged down the slope towards the stream.

Down where the frozen strip of water lay, the snows that had slid down the sides of the valley all Deepwinter had hardened and packed themselves so that it was like walking on a hard floor. His boots sank above the ankles in the previous day’s fall of soft powdery snow. When he turned for one last look back at the cave, he could see his footmarks imprinted deeply enough to show up in the moonlight.

Bekur had not left the cave without a specific destination in mind. He did not plan to wander in the snow until exhaustion and exposure claimed him. He knew of a place, far down the river where the cliffs arose on either side, where he could stay alone, and hunt for himself, and live as long as he could, without being a burden to anyone. It was a long walk, and he had not gone that way in many a long year, but it was the place he had decided on, before he had ever left the cave.

He started walking along the side of the frozen river. The wind had begun to rise, whipping along the ground, raising a fine flurry of snow as it blew. And if he had thought the cold intense before, it was as nothing to what it was like now; it sliced through his body like a million knives. The wind rose and rose; when he looked up, he saw that the sky was now full of shredded clouds, and the stars appeared and disappeared as though the wind was ripping them out of the sky.

It was clearly impossible to remain on the riverside, so, reluctantly, because it was much harder going and would take up so much more time, he left the river and went up the side of the valley into the shelter of the trees. He didn’t go far into them, because it was dark there and because the snow was deep-piled and treacherously slippery. He just moved far enough that the wind could not get at him with quite the same force. On his right the moon still shone on the frozen river, and the banks were white in the moonlight. It was all so white and so beautiful that he paused again, and came to the edge of the trees, for a good look, a thing of beauty to take with him to eternity should he not survive the night. Because the wind stung his eyes if he looked down the river, he chose to look back.

There were footprints on the snow.

He saw them at first without really noticing; the wind had blurred the prints and brushed them mostly away. He looked at them and looked away at the moonlit slopes across the river, then when he looked back the wind dropped a little and he saw them. Then he thought that they were his own prints, but he had moved off the bank long enough to have moved far too long a distance to be able to see his own footprints now. Then he saw something else and the sight made him feel a different kind of cold lay icy hands on his spine: the prints were still being formed. Even as he watched, they were still being formed, but there were no feet forming them. When he looked beyond them he could see the broad stretch of the frozen river, and the forested sides of the valley, and in the distance, he could just see the slopes where the caves of the Tribe were.

Not for no reason had Bekur, in his youth, won renown as someone with the bravery of a wild boar. As steadily as his old legs could bear him, he stepped out on to the river bank and walked towards the advancing prints. As he did, the wind stopped suddenly. As though a door had been closed somewhere, it completely fell away.

[ Continue to page 3 ]

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Information
Genre:General Horror
Type:Short story
Rating:7.11 / 10
Rated By:14 users
Comments: 0 users
Total Hits:23259

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