CHAPTER FIFTY ONE

Children played, all across the snowy mounds. There were children on sleds bucketing down the slopes, and there were children dragging sleds up the slopes, and there were children forming snow sculptures, and there were children jumping off a large boulder to land in a snow drift. The children were white, almost blue, and although they played like children, with vigour and intention, they were silent. They were so intent on their own activity that they didn’t turn toward the horses whose hooves were muffled and deadened by the snow.

The first horse with its passengers, Jane and Tom, leapt as it ran to get through the deepening snow. Jane kept her eye on the children moving silently across the slope.

Then something went wrong.

The horse sprang but landed awkwardly on a rocky ledge. It sent a small boulder skittering off the ledge, and the boulder fell several feet before landing in the snow with a deep phlump. Immediately several children turned, their blank faces incurious, yet somehow hungry.

They saw the horses.

More silent children turned from their activities, their faces deathly white, their eyes blank, their mouths slowly opening into dark little caves.

A moment later there were hundreds of silent children moving across the ice. They were white faced and white limbed, and they (boys and girls) wore little skirts the colour of sheets in a morgue. They ran with a swishing, raggedy, bumping rhythm, converging toward the second horse. The one ridden by Trinket. They opened and shut their mouths in an eating motion.

Trinket whooped and there seemed to be genuine joy in the sound. She stood on her horse, bent her legs, lowered her hips, and she drew and shot the approaching children, one after another.

The children, winged by Trinket’s arrows, dropped into the snow where they lay still, for a moment, as though dead. Then they rose again, their little hands pulling the arrow out of wherever it had embedded itself: the shoulder, the chest, the eye.

Their eyes settled on Trinket and they resumed their ragged run.

Trinket drew and fired, drew and fired.

This was a game and Trinket was flushed with the excitement of playing. Her green face blazed, like the sun against a green pond. Her legs were bent and strong. This was living to her. This was seizing life by the maw. Her arrows were slowing the children.

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

Jane was concerned about four children who were above Jane’s position, pushing a sled up the slope. The child at the back of the sled heard the commotion and turned and pointed at Jane and Tom. Immediately all four of the children let go of the sled and began a shambling run across the snow. They had their mouths open and their teeth were like tiny little blades of glass, shining blue.

The first child, a small girl, with bone white skin and eyes the colour of old sheets, led the way with a fast and awkward gait. She seemed to recognise Tom (as Elion) and an atavistic gleam came into her eyes - an ancient understanding of the importance of that boy. There was no mistaking her intention, with her mouth opening and closing, and her glass teeth gleaming blue.

She swung her arms and legs, and her bare feet skimmed across the snow. She leapt a wall of ice and landed in a crumple as though she were made of paper. She sprung back to a stand and kept coming.

Jane knew that they had to get away from this silent child and her companions, who were all on a trajectory to intercept Jane’s horse. Jane dug her heels into the belly of the horse and slapped the reins across the horse’s shoulders. Tom leaned across Jane’s back and clung like a leech. The horse put its head down and surged. Its eyes were round mirrors of fear.

The child ran then flung herself at the horse and managed to grab Jane’s leg. Her fingernails, which were long and sharp, sliced into Jane’s calf muscle as easily as a surgeon's scalpel. Jane shook her leg but was unable to dislodge the girl. The girl dragged herself up Jane’s leg and opened her mouth. Her glassy teeth were razor sharp.

She sank her teeth into Jane’s leg, and the pain was otherworldly. Jane must have screamed, because she heard a scream that swirled into the falling snow. The scream sounded as though it came from someone else … from somewhere else.

Trinket loosed an arrow, and the arrow sped forward, barely missing the rump of Jane’s horse, barely missing Tom’s heel, and finally punched into the side of the silent child’s face. The child immediately let go, and opened her mouth so wide it seemed her lips would snap like a rubber band. She dropped, soundlessly, into the snow.

Bounding and leaping the horses were finally leaving the children behind, and so the children stopped their flopping run. They stood still and their eyes watched, without expression, the retreating horses.

Now the path got hemmed in by high cliffs before bursting from the cathedral of snow into a narrow cave with a dry floor and crisp cold air.

Jane was slumped forward over the horse’s neck, her cheek in the mane. The pain had knocked her down. The pain sobbed. She was twitching. Her mouth was opening and closing.

Tom squeezed her on the side.

‘Are you really hurt?’

She didn’t answer.

The horse began to slow.

Jane was crying, but now from sorrow or self pity. These were tears of extremity … of a body breaking down.

The horse slowed to a walk. Then stopped.

Trinket rode past and wheeled her horse sideways in front of Jane’s horse. Trinket’s horse stepped left and right and snorted and raised its head up and down.

Trinket’s eyes were dancing and alive.

She stared at Jane for a moment, then said, ‘Sit up my lady.’

After a moment, Jane crawled her way into a sitting position. Her eyes were red. Her breath sounded like she was trying to drag oxygen through oil.

Trinket spoke strong. She spoke with authority.

’There has been a change of plans.’