I am currently holed up in my house having a snow day, which feels at once melancholy and festive, so I wrote you all something that’s both. I hope you are having a December that’s more festive than melancholy.
*
Zara promised herself that today would be nice, for once. She had almost succeeded.
Winter Solstice celebrations were in full swing in the little village where the Crew had stopped off for a sort of vacation. The place was ablaze with happy people and candles and bright holly and mistletoe. So sweet it could make you throw up.
Despite her misgivings though, she’d been having fun. This village had a huge communal feast in the center of town, and her friends were all around her table, enjoying music, singing along to songs—beautifully in Killiker’s case, enthusiastically but tunelessly in Knowles’ and Cybilene’s case, Castor taking the time to teach Tode the songs, Rosie laughing musically and almost constantly at every new delight…
Zara even sang a little. Quietly. She wasn’t sure anyone but Rosie noticed, and Rosie didn’t say anything, only threw a companionable arm around her.
But as the evening went on, one too many drinks in and her friends circulating amongst the crowd and only Rosie and her companionable arm left, a cold melancholy began to spread from a point in her chest.
“You okay?” Rosie asked cheerily. “You went quiet.”
Zara snorted. “You’ve been doing all the talking.”
“Yeah, but I can tell when you’re listening,” Rosie teased her. “What’s up?”
Should she tell Rosie that she knew exactly what that cold little point in her lung was? Where it came from? Who it represented?
“I just got distracted,” Zara said, with the slightest shrug. “What were you saying?”
“Rosie!” Killiker’s voice boomed from across the cold courtyard. He waved her over. “Come dance with me!”
“I’m hanging out with Zara,” Rosie shot back.
“But you’re the only one who can keep up with me!” Killiker said, and he didn’t even try to hide the layer of magic in his voice when he laced his fingers together under his chin. “Please?”
Rosie laughed, half-standing even as she said, “Will you be okay?”
“I’ll be fine,” Zara said, waving her on. “Maybe I’ll dance too.”
“Now that would be something special,” Rosie said with a wink, and skipped off to meet her partner as the band struck up another song.
So Zara was left alone with the strange cold feeling that now was too sharp to ignore.
Somewhere in the world, Larkin was alive, in the cold, and desperately alone.
*
Larkin trudged through the snow.
The village where he had landed seemed to celebrate the Winter Solstice in the privacy of their homes. Or perhaps his luck was very bad, and he’d landed in some kind of weird cult enclave, and if he was caught celebrating Winter Solstice they’d hang him.
He sighed, his over-warm breath billowing like a dragon’s in the air. There was a job waiting for him in the next town over. If he remembered that, then maybe he could keep walking through the darkest night of the year.
Larkin could stop. He knew that there was an inn in this town—he could see the light up ahead—but a demonspawn showing up on the Solstice was a bad omen, as he’d already been told by someone he tried to buy bread from earlier, and he didn’t have much in the way of money right now. Hiring a room meant spending the night dozing off in a dining room that was undoubtedly hosting a raucous party, or on a thin hay mattress in a shared dormitory. And if celebrations turned sour and people decided to go back to the old ways and offer a sacrifice to appease the gods? A devilish outsider asleep in the next room would be only too convenient.
Who needed sleep anyway?
This job paid half up front, so theoretically Larkin could take the money when he arrived and immediately hire a room and sleep. And it wasn’t as if the cold was a problem—his skin was always blisteringly hot to other people’s touch, and he didn’t tend to feel the cold much at all. Better, maybe, to walk through the night.
Ahead of him, a woman—a human—passed by, pulling a sled loaded with wood. Larkin raised a hand in greeting as she looked up, startled by him.
And she spat in the snow and hurried away.
Larkin’s hand dropped. Now he felt the cold. Creeping not across his skin but into the pit of his stomach, bitterness and lonesomeness. It was Winter Solstice and he was alone, contemplating walking through the longest night, and it was his own fault. Was anything more pathetic?
It made him want to cry like a little kid, when Zara used to mop up his face and tell him she’d blow up whoever hurt him. Which was, of course, why he hadn’t seen her in more than a decade. Blowing people up. Starting fires. Hurting people.
It was a cold comfort—ha, cold—but at least walking through the night meant no one would be harmed on the Solstice.
Nevertheless, thinking of Zara made him conscious of that tiny point in his chest, almost inside his lung, the point that he tried to ignore most of the time but couldn’t help but investigate now, when she was on his mind. Usually it felt like a twisting knife of fear or a bitter hole or a feverish spot of anger, but lately…
He swallowed his pride, and felt what she felt.
And to his surprise, the feelings that bloomed were warmth, security, comradery—even a tiny, fragile dose of happiness.
Somewhere in the world, Zara was alive, warm and safe and surrounded by love.
Larkin’s hand floated to his chest unconsciously, as if reaching out to a warm fire, hoping the spot of warmth would spread. It wouldn’t, but maybe his unconscious didn’t know that.
Zara was safe. He didn’t know why or how, after she was unsafe for so long, but still, he was glad. And if she was safe, maybe he could keep going.
He patted the spot on his chest a couple of times, and took his next step through the darkest night of the year.