21 – 5

I close my eyes for but a moment, but much has changed when I can force them to open once more, far too much to have been so short a time. I'm no longer on the floor of Morrow's taproom but in its proprietor's arms. The thick-timbered ceiling doesn't block my sight of the night sky; it wheels overhead, fat clouds shedding snowflakes that gently fall around us. It's that I smell when I breathe, cold and clean, not bloody dust. Boots crunch through the freshly laid powder, a hurried rush of long-striding legs.

Where are we going? Where is he taking me?

The questions sit on my tongue, waiting to be heard and answered, but no matter how hard I strain to speak, there they remain. Neither will my limbs obey me; I cannot move my arms, nor can I curl my fingers. My legs, I can't feel at all. They may as well be replaced by crooked icicles, for all they good they do me.

Thinking of it now, that is another great change: the cold. No longer does it sit on my skin, but in it. Chill has crawled into my blood, my bones. I don't feel the snow that falls on me, nor the living warmth of Jeremiah carrying me. I feel the chill, crawling deeper, and little else.

“Hang on, kid.” Sweat glitters on Jeremiah's face, dripping down into his beard. He must have been running flat out – or very near to it – for some time. His arms tremble. “You're gonna be alright.” His fear, his terror, clings to his every word. “We're almost there, just – just hang on.”

What's he afraid of? What's happening? Again, I try to speak and again, no words are spoken. All that comes out is a weak groan.

I should've kept silent. It would've been less embarrassing.

“Ah, shit,” He grunts, adding alarm to his terror, both lending wings to his feet. He picks up his pace, jostling me in his arms, and it is here and now that I feel something other than crawling cold.

A great, piercing stab of pain, a heated rush of wretched sensation flooding throughout my cold-numbed body. It pierces the veil of chilled mist in my mind, bringing enough clarity of thought for me to realize that I might be bleeding to death. It's in my mouth, wet-metal slick on my tongue. It's on my skin, staining and streaming, dripping drops from my fingers to fall on fresh snow. My head lolls in the crook of Jeremiah's elbow. I see the trail we've left behind, large boots striding long and streaks of red painted alongside.

At least we'll know which way we came. I still don't know where we're going, though, nor why it's that I keep coming back to. I think I'm in shock.

Jeremiah stumbles to a halt, heaving like an overworked draft horse. He pulls a deep breath in and bellows, “Milo!” at the top of his lungs, loud enough to sound like thunder. He adjusts his hold of me, jostling me enough to spark another wash of pain and to turn my disobedient head so I can see where we are. “Milo!” He stomps forward, crosses that last little distance to the door of the Thorngage's house. “MILO!”

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Lantern light in the window. Not just the Thorngage's, but their neighbors'. What are they thinking, I wonder? Is it the Windrunners, do they ask, huddled in their darkened home, have they come for us?

They can't, I would answer.

Why not, they would ask.

I would show them my knife, the glitter of its keen edge, and the rust-red that stains the blade. I would say nothing more, and it would be all the answer they needed. They would recoil from it – fear it, and me – as any with sense would.

Why show them at all, then? What good is it to have their fear shift from Windrunner to me?

So they know their steps are no longer haunted by Windrunner shadows, and that any fear they have of me will start to fade when they watch me leave their home, vanishing entirely in the passing of time. My vision spins as Jeremiah shifts his hold to hammer on the Thorngage door. “It's me, damn it! Open the damn door!”

The lantern comes closer, warm sunlight in a cage of glass held high. I can't see their face. Their voice is muffled by the window, but it sounds like Milo. “Jer? That you?”

“YES!” Jeremiah's desperate, strident with it. He rattles the door in its frame. “She's dyin', Milo, come on!”

The lantern blurs, vanishes out of sight. A lock clicks, a bar lifts, and the door swings open. Milo's dark, tired eyes see it all and, like always, understand. They fill first with horror, then a terrified urgency. He turns and screams down the darkened hall, “CLARKE!”

- - -

I passed out again, I think, though for not as long as before.

I wake as Jeremiah sets me on the kitchen table. He cradles my head in the cup of his massive palm, setting it down gently. A tight smile parts his thick beard. “You're gonna be alright,” he says, “You hear me? Your girl's comin', she an' Milo are gonna fix you up, alright?”

Milo sets the lantern on the table, its light shining on my injury. His fingers shake as he plucks at the ragged edge of my shirt, peeling it away from the hole punched into my side by a crossbow bolt. It's still bleeding, a thick stream of it rolling down my increasingly pallid skin. “Shit,” he hisses, then shouts Clarke's name again. A distant door opens. He turns his attention to Jeremiah. “What happened?”

“'runners took over the bar,” Jeremiah answers, arms folded, head down. “She went after 'em. Got one, another ran off, but the last one got her. Stabbed her, with a crossbow bolt.”

“What happened to it?” Milo's words are hurried, tense. His hands are gentle, probing the area around the cut with soft presses of steadying hands. “Did you see?”

Jeremiah grunts. Nods. “She yanked it out.”

“All of it?”

Another nod. “Think so.”

Milo sighs. “Alright, so at least we don't have to get – that – out.” He moves up the table, looks down at me with a small, anguished curve to his lips. It's not a smile. Without looking away, he asks Jeremiah, “Is all this her blood?”

“Most is. Stuff on her face an' hair isn't.”

He nods. Traces my hairline. To me, he says, “We're gonna have a – talk – about this once you're better, you understand? You scared the shit outta us, runnin' off like that.” His eyes flick up, away. “She stay with you?”

Jeremiah grunts. “Mm-hm.”

“Good.” Milo says, “That's good.” He raises his voice. “Clarke, where the hell are you?!”

“I'm coming!”

I know that voice.

I know those feet, their rush up the hall.

I know those eyes, blue like the open sky.

Clarke gasps: short and sharp, like she's been punched in the chest. She covers her mouth with her hands, breathes my name through the gaps of her fingers, and for the first time since Jeremiah carried me out of the bar, I find a word that I can say.

I say her name.