She is delirious.

Jian isn't sure how long it's been since the bridge, or even whether she's in one piece. Her arms and legs feel as if great weights have been tied to them, and she comes conscious now and then, certain she's at the bottom of the river. She expects to feel burning pain where the ice sliced across her thigh, but the wound never throbs. She can wiggle her toes and fingers. Breathe deep.

No water sputters from her lungs.

Could it all have been a dream? Perhaps the flimsy, hand-cut bridge never splintered at all?

No, of course not, because Jian knows she'd be able to move, to rise, if she weren't trapped under this heavy weight. She opens her eyes, and he's there.

"How do you feel?"

His voice is like music. Melodic, and barely deeper than her own, it feels warm and safe. Jian wonders if he's bespelled her, using the ancient techniques of the South. How else could he appear before her like this, pull her from the water like a child's toy, and weight her body to the ground?

Yet Jian is unafraid. This boy looks like Aselun, so much he could be her long-lost child. He must be touched by the Goddess, too.

She realizes she hasn't answered.

"I am alive," Jian says.

The boy bursts into laughter. Jian thinks he must have expected a more specific response.

"Are you Aselun's son?" she asks.

"Are you still feverish?" He frowns and returns her question with one of his own. Then he places one slender fingertip on her brow, in the space between her eyes. His skin is curiously absent of warmth; not hot, yet not cold, either. It's as if he were carved from alabaster, both in temperature and hue.

"So you weren't sent by Aselun?"

"I don't know who that is." He takes his hand away, apparently satisfied with her pallor. "Your fever's gone down. Let's take away some of the blankets."

The weight slides clumsily from her chest. He's holding Mother's good whistelm blanket, the one Jian uses to bed down at night. The blanket is piled with dried straw and Jian's extra clothing.

Now she feels tattered cloth tangled around her right leg; the remains of her leggings. Jian puts her hand there and finds a bulky dressing where her thigh made contact with the ice. "You saved me."

Out in the wilderness, almost at the End of Lands, this boy had happened across her plight. Somehow.

She remembers something Elder Tuina said when Jian was much younger. 'Those blessed by the Goddess are born with a purpose. They live different lives than you or I, child. That's why you don't see them stray far from Homeland.'

This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.

'What about Aselun?' Jian had asked.

'Someday, I'd love to hear Aselun's tales of her youth,' Tuina said. 'But I'll be long gone before she will. I suppose she must have done her service to Maere, to have stayed with us all these years.'

Could this boy have been sent to Jian by Maere Herself?

He sits back lightly on his heels, the slightest frown creasing bloodless lips. "I found you clinging to a rock in the middle of the stream, half-conscious. I'm surprised you were even alive after that. How long were you in the water?"

"Don't know." Thinking about it brings back a jolt of terror. She'd thought she was going to die there, alone in the forest. "I built a bridge in the summer, to get to the other side of the stream. All the good plants are over on that side. It felt sturdy, but it must have grown brittle with the cold."

"You're lucky to be alive."

She knows it. Had there been more ice over the stream, Jian has little doubt she would have gone through and never found a place to come back up.

Talking has made her exhausted. He stills her attempts to sit up. "Don't. Rest, for now."

"All right." That's what she wants, too.

"What's your name?"

"It's Jian."

"Jian," he repeats, slowly, as if tasting the name. Yet he doesn't offer one in return.

"What's yours?" she prompts.

He doesn't respond. Jian has to fight to keep her eyes open, and she's shivering. The boy reaches for the whistelm blanket and covers her again. He lightly rests his fingertips on her shoulder. "Sleep a little longer."

She has the feeling he'll leave the moment her eyes close, and never return. Something about his mannerisms, his unwillingness to look her in the face, makes Jian think he is afraid of something, or someone.

"'Those blessed by the Goddess are born with a purpose.'" She recites Elder Tuina's words. "Are you in a hurry?"

After a long pause, he says, "I'm not going anywhere in particular, yet."

"Then, will you stay with me awhile?"

He settles lightly on the cool ground beside her bedroll, cross-legged. "I can stay."

"Thank you." Jian closes her eyes. "Thank you for saving me."

"My pleasure."

Another silence passes between them, though Jian cannot tell if it is short or long. She's almost startled awake when he speaks again. "You can call me Yugen."

"Yugen." She repeats it, testing the name, as he had done hers. "I've never heard such a name. Not in Elsinoor."

"It's familial," he says, as if that should explain everything. "So, you're from Elsinoor."

"You know it?"

"By name."

"Oh. So you're not from the northern lands, I guess. Is your family far away from here?"

"Very far. I've been on my own for a long time." She senses him shifting, getting more comfortable. "And you're a strange sight to see on her own, too. Where's your family?"

"In the village. Not far."

"Should I fetch someone for you?" Jian can tell from the hesitant way he asks that he doesn't want to do it, and she can't blame him. She's heard the stories of how Aselun first came to the village, and how long it took her to earn their trust. Elsinoorans would always be wary of southlanders, no matter their favour with Maere. Yugen's violet eyes and silver hair would put them into a frenzy for days.

Jian can't go home either, not yet, but she doesn't have the energy to explain the northern custom of the Trial. "No. I feel much better. How bad is my leg?"

"It's in good shape."

She doesn't believe him, because she felt the jagged edge of the half-formed ice slice across her thigh. It isn't painful, however, and the dressings aren't bleeding through, so she doesn't press the matter. "Thank you," she says again.

"It's nothing. In fact, it's kind of nice to be talking to someone."

When Jian cracks one eyelid, he's staring out at the mouth of the cave, and she can't help but notice how forlorn he looks.