Where the Wind Sings

“Where in all the thrice-cursed frozen hells am I?” Kazia DeWin asked the wind, because gods knew there was no one else around for miles to hear him.

Kazia stood in the middle of the frozen barrens with nothing but the clothes on his back and a sinking feeling in his chest. As he spun slowly, he couldn’t see anything but flat planes of ice, the horizon blocked by flurries of snow – not even the sun was visible through the ominous clouds that had rolled in sometime while he’d been wrestling free of his ropes. His pale lashes were caked with snow, damp beginning to seep into his boots. He couldn’t hear anything over the raging wind. Couldn’t feel anything except the sinister cold that had seeped past coat and skin and bone and burrowed down into his very soul. He’d never been this cold in his life. And yet he knew, with a dawning sense of dread, that he would grow colder still, because he now found himself lost in the gods-damned Wastes without a clue of which direction to go. 

Even the sparse tracks from the caravan’s sleds had been swept away by the wind. He squinted into the distance, trying in vain to see even a shadow of the five-sled party through the falling snow. A part of him was indignant; he couldn’t believe they just left him, tied up out in the middle of nowhere, branding him for death. He wanted to be furious, to let thoughts of ringing their necks fuel him, but the rage was a candle in the wind. He was simply far too numb to manage the energy for it. The other part of him – the cynic whom years of loss and harsh living on the streets of Win had carved him into – wasn’t surprised. They were short on food. The unexpected storm that hit them going through the Eastern Pass had buried an entire sled under an avalanche of ice, robbing a fourth of their food for the journey. It was far too little for their entire crew and cargo to make it from Del, the port on the east side of the inhospitable Wastes, to Win, the mining city carved into the West Mountains. The cynic in him understood the teenage horsekeeper with the strange features had been the most expendable. He swore he'd never take another job ferrying cargo if he got out of this alive. The Wastes simply weren't worth it.

Kazia was used to awful circumstances. Poor since birth and orphaned at thirteen, he’d always done whatever it took to survive, despite how much it chafed against his morals or blackened his heart. Perhaps this was what he deserved, the last in the long list of adversities that characterized his life. There was nothing for him in Win, no one left who would miss him. He could try to make it to shelter in the mountains he knew were somewhere past the snowy haze, but which direction to pick? Could he make it before the true storm set in? He spun in another circle, feeling the hopelessness of the situation seize his lungs and try to buckle his knees, the storm singing sweet songs of surrender in his ears. He could simply lie back down in the snow… 

The drifting thoughts stirred a memory he thought long buried. There were legends in the mountain city that the Win folk tell, stories almost as old as the mountains themselves that survived on the lips of the old, whispered to children by candlelight. Of whole cities of ice beneath the barrens, built by the magic of those who dwelled before. They said if you ventured too far into the Wastes, the ancient magic of the place might guide your lost soul home. Some said the people who had ice for skin and weaved magic through their blood still inhabited the sprawling civilizations, deep below, and if you listened close, you could hear their song on the wind… 

Kazia’s mother had always sworn that his father was of their folk, a man of frost and magic and unexpected warmth that had swept her away and then left her when his people needed him. She claimed it was why Kazia’s hair was so white, his eyes like a winter sky. He claimed she was crazy, even this many years after her death.  A mother making up stories to explain her son's uncanny features, so unlike the darker ones of everyone around him. And yet, in his hopeless daze, he almost thought he could hear the echo of music on the wind…

Suddenly, something caught his eye. In the distance, the whiteness cleared enough for Kazia to spot a dark lump in the snow, maybe fifty meters out. Hope sparked hot in his chest and he hurried towards it. Maybe the caravan had dropped something in their haste, some supplies he could use. But as he got closer, Kazia could see it wasn’t supplies at all… but a body, lying limp in the snow. He approached warily and nudged the form with the toe of his boot. The figure sat up abruptly and Kazia’s heart lurched into his throat as he leaped back, before recognition hit him. Kazia swore under his breath. Nato blinked big liquid brown eyes up at him and Kazia turned away, swearing again, this time more vehemently. He hadn’t known the boy for long and hadn't given much thought to his safety, the son of a merchant who’d paid the caravan handsomely for transporting his ten-year-old home ahead of himself. Dark realization swept through Kazia, leaving a bitter taste in his mouth. He should have figured; it was a known fact people died all the time during trips across the Wastes. It was simply the risk they all took. Just because, unlike Kazia, the young boy had someone who would miss him, didn’t mean the extra mouth to feed wasn’t just as expendable. If Win had taught him anything, it was that survival made monsters of men. 

“Kazia?” Nato asked timidly, his voice wobbly and teeth chattering. His dark curls were caked in snow, making his hair look almost as white as Kazia's, and his lips were already turning blue. “Where are we? What happened?”

Kazia closed his eyes tight, swore a final time, then abruptly turned and walked in the opposite direction. It was a terrifying situation they found themselves in, bitter and cruel and hopeless, but he couldn’t take the boy with him. He’d just slow him down. Kazia didn't have enough food squirrelled away in his pockets for himself, let alone another mouth. The food had been a precautionary measure in case he was shortchanged, not a week's supply, since if he’d honestly thought he’d be abandoned this far out gods knew he would’ve stolen more. Besides, even Kazia, who could handle the cold better than most, wasn't sure if he would make it to shelter before he froze; the boy's smaller body would give out quick in this cold, and then all the effort would be wasted. The boy would die regardless, but this way Kazia wouldn't have to watch it happen. Truly, no need to drag it out; a quick frozen death was the kindest thing for the boy. For them both. Or so he told himself.

“Kazia!” Nato called again, yelling to be heard over the wind. Kazia breathed deep through the stone of guilt in his chest and didn’t stop. It wouldn't be the first, or last, decision he regretted. He'd accepted he was a horrible person long ago; it was simply what it took to survive in their frozen hellscape of a world, and Kazia would be damned if those thrice-cursed bastards got their wish; he'd make it home on spite alone if he had to.

Then a sharp scream of terror pierced through the air like a knife through his chest. Kazia whirled around. He didn’t see Nato anywhere, but then, there– a depression in the ground. Kazia didn’t think. He just ran. Where there had been deceptively flat snow before, a crevasse had opened up, uncovered by the boy’s weight when he’d tried to follow Kazia. He was trapped between the packed snow walls, frantically scrambling about. Kazia fell to his knees and grasped a flailing hand, holding fast.

“I’ve got you,” he grunted out, trying to gain purchase on the icy ground. 

“Kazia!” It was more a sob this time, and Kazia fought to get a grip on the boy’s other arm. 

Kazia had been lying to himself earlier, he knew in that instant. If Nato had followed, Kazia would never have been able to turn him away. He could never stand to be like the caravan crew, who could throw away lives to save their own. Perhaps his heart wasn’t as black as he thought it was. “I’m not letting go,” he swore to the boy. Nato gripped him back like he didn’t believe him. 

It was a moot point, in the end, because an instant later there was a great CRACK as the packed snow Kazia was lying atop crumbled too, and together, the pair tumbled down into the darkness. 

❄ ❄ ❄  ❄ ❄ ❄

Kazia came to with a start, gasping. He groaned, clumsily sitting up. Nato groaned next to him, clearly still alive. Good. Kazia looked around in dazed wariness, blinking as the cavern around him came into focus. They were in a massive cave that stretched so far upward it disappeared into blackness. The walls were solid ice carved with swirling lines and stars and snowflakes that seemed to glow in the dim, as if by magic. He saw his mother, then, in his mind’s eye, talking animatedly of the place Kazia belonged, light dancing in her dark eyes. He heard again that sound on the wind he'd thought was something like music.

Footsteps approached and Kazia’s head snapped in their direction. For a moment, all he could do was stare, mouth agape. A man came to stand before him, long white hair dancing around him despite the lack of a breeze. 

“Are you lost?” the stranger asked. Winter sky eyes studied Kazia carefully, something like familiarity sparking deep within them. There was magic in those eyes, Kazia could feel it. 

There was nothing pulling him back to Win, past returning Nato home; nothing anchored him to a city he had never truly belonged in nor to people who had no qualms about throwing his life away. Here, though, there was something like possibility. It seemed like maybe the stories were right, and the magic of the wastes had guided his lost soul home. So, “No,” Kazia replied slowly, as he felt a grin spread across his face, “I don’t think I am.” 

Fin.