Staying Warm

	The wind bit into me like thousands of icy teeth, cutting beneath my cloak, my leathers, my own fur coat and skin, settling into my body as a weakening, dull ache.  My extremities were becoming alien to me, glancing down at my glove confirmed for me that my fingers were stiffly moving, but that was the only way I could tell.  Ice clung to my whiskers, and my breath billowed before me like some dying dragon, weaker with each puff.
	Realistically, I wasn’t going to die, of course.  I was safely aboard a ship in good company – albeit a ship caught up in the ice of the Kadrush Sea.  This place and I were new to one another, this was the first season I’d ever spent in the frozen north, and though I’d thought at the outset that as one of the few crew members who came from Carvecia, I’d be accustomed to the cold weather, I had vastly underestimated what they’d meant when they said ‘cold’.
	The winters at home (it was odd to think of my valley as ‘home’ now, after having spent so long away from it) were bitter, fierce and hungry. . . but they were temporary.  This was a land of perpetual cold and ice.  The only difference with the turning of the seasons was how much ice, and how little the sun graced the land with its presence.  This was truly dead country, a term Ransom used to use for places in western Carvecia where nothing but scrub grass grew.  Nothing grew here, or likely ever had, or would.  This was the top of the world, the sailors had explained to me.  And just like some of the mountains back home that reached for the sky, here, the winter never truly left.  
	How trading up here could be worth it, I couldn’t imagine.  Granted, we hadn’t bet on getting locked in by the ice, the channel was supposed to be clear another month when we’d tried to make the passage.  If that had been the case, we’d have been moored in the northern Kadrush lands, not out here on the sea.  I’m not sure how much better that would have been.  But at the very least, we wouldn’t be risking the ship tipping with the ice swells.  Our guides assured us that very few ships had ever been capsized by the ice in these parts.  But if any could manage it, it would be the aging Manoratha.
	It had been nearly a month now.  We were well-provisioned, the men had had success ice fishing, and if worst came to worst, we could break into our goods to wait out the winter.  But spirits were low.  The cold, and the blinding white apathy of this place, so unaware and uncaring that we were here and alive, could bring anyone to dismal thinking.
	Even Grayson.
	The wolf’s mad-eyed, rambunctious younger years were behind him, and it had finally begun to show.  All at once.  It was as though the Manoratha’s plight followed in the wake of his own, the two were linked inextricably, it seemed.  In my culture, we would have called it his spirit.  It was odd to think of an object, a vessel of wood, pitch and canvas as being the beating heart of a man given shape, but so it was.
	Grayson had always been ill.  This fact had grown harder and harder to hide as the years had passed.  And it wasn’t the usual maladies of a sailor, this was more devastating, more haunting. . . he’d been born with it.  Puck had called it a ‘condition’.  The spirit-speakers back home would have called it a curse.  What it ultimately was didn’t matter.  What mattered was that it had plagued him his entire life, and over the last few years, it had become clear it would soon kill him.  And even Grayson Reed was not immune to existential dread.
	Perhaps that’s why we were here.  Though being trapped in the ice had clearly not been his plan, Grayson had mentioned there was an old friend he dearly wished to see in the Kadrush port we were headed for.  The barrels of black powder and grain we were trafficking were an excuse.
	He knew this might be the last season he could make this trip.  I hadn’t fought him on it, and neither had his crew.
	The seizures were getting worse, and far more frequent.  I had to walk with him any time he was anywhere near the water, or the railings of his own ship.  The true irony was that despite his condition, and despite being 47, he was otherwise healthy and fit.  He was fine. . . until he wasn’t.  I’d talked to him about the idea of going back to Carvecia with me, of course.  See Puck, or another skilled physician, try to minimize the dangers in his life and perhaps curtail the worsening symptoms.  But that wasn’t Grayson Reed.  He’d run from a safe life long ago, knowing the cost it could take from him.  Living on dry land would kill him faster than the disease, he said.  He was probably right.
	He would laugh dryly about it sometimes, and comment that at least he wasn’t malingering.  That he’d die relatively young and gorgeous, and when the worst of the seizures came, it would take him swiftly.  But that was, like most of his bluster, just talk.  I knew, as anyone who watched over him knew, that the seizures were painful, and terrifying.  Any one could take him from this world, at any time, and he would not go quietly.
	And with the Manoratha similarly seized, caught in the grip of a static, unmoving sea, anathema to the freedom it stood for to all of us on board, its Admiral had seemingly aged a decade in a few short weeks.  He kept to his quarters, the icy winds ensuring the planks of his own ship were not safe enough for him to venture out (any slip and fall could be dangerous for him now).  His muzzle was speckled with gray, some of the silver strands creeping even up over his ears and in the long tapestries of his dreadlocks.  His features were sharper, eyes deeper and more thoughtful than ever I’d seen them. 
	He’d never looked more regal to me.  And I’d told him as much.  It had earned me a weary smile.
	I suppose some women prefer their men young and bright-eyed, and I can understand why.  But there had been something truly profound about watching the wolf’s transformation over the years, and seeing him settle from all piss and vinegar to a more tempered wisdom had only endeared me to him further.  The tragedy of it of course was, he’d likely not have much time to reap the rewards of his experiences in old age.  And I’d have less time with this different version of the man.
	The inevitable, I was prepared for.  I had, of course, been through it before.
	Not that there’s any real way to prepare for it, of course.  But I’d endured once, and I would again.  And at least this time, we knew to make the most of our time.
	With those thoughts in my mind, I drifted back towards our shared quarters, navigating the icy planks with outstretched claws on my footpaws, looking skyward now and again in hopes I’d see any sign that the world I knew existed.  All there was – anywhere – was hazy white.  The distant, dim shape of the sun was little more than a diffused lantern, half sunk below the horizon.  It would never even fully rise today.
	I grabbed at the handle of our door and forced the nob to turn until the icy sheen on it crackled and broke.  Before I went inside, I gave the strange, still world one last huff of breath.  To hell with this place.  It was taking our time from us, and it didn’t give a damn we were here.  Everywhere else in the world that I’d traveled so far, I’d felt some connection.  Some sense of meaning, of my place in it.
	Here, if I died, I couldn’t even rot.  Perhaps I could feed whatever beasts somehow managed to survive on the glaciers.  It’s not that there was anything particularly evil or malignant about these lands. . . they just existed, with no solicitude for the needs of life.  The Kadrush simply was.
	There was a beauty in that, I suppose.  This place would likely remain unchanged, no matter the ravages of war or colonization.  It was too fierce to be tamed.
	I closed the door behind me, welcoming the warmth and the closed-in scents of the Admiral’s Quarters.  So, so long ago, I’d come into this very same room, a woman on the run from her past, unable to claim even my own name for fear of the demons that followed it.  I’d been Shivah then, and even now, he still called me that sometimes.  But I was Alongsaa once again.  It was on this very ship that I’d reclaimed myself, wrested my freedom away from the spirit of revenge that I’d fostered and festered inside of me.  And this ship was how I’d rebuilt myself as well, not backwards to the woman I’d once been – never backwards – but forwards into a life I’d not even had the perspective to imagine in my youth.
	There were likely few women in the world who’d seen as much of it as I had.  Not many Captains would have made the concessions Grayson had, to keep a woman on their ship.  A working ship, at that.  I was not a passenger here.  I was a bodyguard, sailor, explorer.  I’d been a revolutionary in a foreign land, and seen change sweep across an ancient country steeped in tradition.  I’d fought, bartered, and stolen, and alongside many other unwanteds, I’d made my way.  
	In time, I would at long last go home.  I would return to my Valley.  But for now . . . .
	“All it takes is a moment of that door swinging open to let the cold in,” his voice echoes from deep inside the beautiful mess that is this place, a creaking realm of ancient wood and various trophies from our travels and conquests.  None of it is truly valuable, but all is invaluable, to us and only us.  A complex and aged tapestry from an infamous Huudari Brothel hangs as a curtain between the cluttered living space and his bedroom, the worn, multicolored fabric depicting a dancing jackal.  I can see his figure outlined behind, a shadow cast by the lantern on the other side.  His glass ornaments, strung from the ceiling here and there, cast dancing lights about the room, flickering with the pulse of the lantern flame.
	I pad across the room, breathing in the smell of the place, with all of its familiar comfort and nostalgia. . . .
	. . . and sadness.  Not merely for the future, but for the stories this place holds, and those we’ve already lost.  But sadness, too, is a part of this life I love.  And much like the cold makes one yearn to be warm, the absence of those we lose is a reminder to bask in their warmth while they’re still with us.
	I push back the curtain, smiling at the wolf as I take in the sight of him.  He’s reclining easily in his disheveled bed, propped up against far too many pillows, his big paws poking out from beneath several layers of blankets.  His winter coat is in thick now, lending his bare chest a leafy, silver-flecked elegance that makes him look far more handsome than a man with his grooming habits has any right to be.  
	He’s reading, of all things.  Not that Grayson is uneducated, he was born to a rich family of trade magnates and, I’ve learned over the years, can read and speak most of four languages.  And with our current condition, there isn’t much to do really to occupy one’s time.  The book looks Huudari, which means he’s puzzling his way through it.  Their alphabet is complex.  
	He seems glad for the reprieve, and tosses the book aside onto the mountain of other amusements he’s gathered on his bedside table.  I shrug off my cloak and leathers and crawl my way under the blankets with him.  He makes room for me with a tender look, his big, rough paw settling around my side as he tugs me in close against him.
	“You’re so warm,” I purr, closing my eyes a moment as I snuggle in against his fur.  I press the cup of my ear against his chest, his heartbeat a comfort. 
	“I’m doing my very best to stay that way, unlike you,” he teases, nosing the crown of my head.  “I don’t understand why you keep going outside.  Do you expect in half a night’s time for the ice to have moved?”
	“Maybe,” I admit petulantly.  “At the very least, I want to know the moment it does, and I suspect you do as well.”
	“I have my men keep a watch for that,” he reminds me.  
	“Then again, maybe I don’t want the ship to be freed,” I glance upwards.  “So long as we’re stuck here, I’ll know exactly where to find you, and I’ll have you all to myself.”
	“I think I may guarantee you that you’ll always know exactly where to find me, for my remaining days,” he says, in a tone that a few years ago, I would have thought jesting, gallows humor.  But things being as they are, I think it’s actually more of a promise.  He’d long joked about disappearing, when the end began drawing near for him.  That he’d steal away on some small sailing ship, off on some last insane voyage, and make a legend of himself.
	But he’s already a legend.  Perhaps not for the reasons he’d anticipated, but we don’t get to write our own stories.  At best, we weigh in a little, and hope we’re remembered for one or two of the things we most prized in ourselves.  Grayson and I, for instance, could not have ever imagined some of the battles we were destined to fight, the enemies we were to face, and the lives we were to change.  His quarters were an atlas of our journeys, and a reminder to me in particular that even if we don’t always become what we set out to be, the unexpected adventures can be some of the most fulfilling.  
	He gives me that big wolfish smile, his eyes as fathomless blue as the ocean in the dark room, pupils blown wide.  And I have to laugh.  
	“You’re so in love with me,” I taunt.  “If your men only knew.”
	“If they don’t know by now, I’d be mightily ashamed of them,” he sniffs.  “I’m as transparent as. . .” He pauses, “. . . well, I was going to say the ice that’s got us locked in, but it’s actually-“
	“Blue,” I shake my head in wonderment.  “I’ve seen plenty of ice in my life, but never like the kind in this place.  The color, the shapes, the way it crackles and groans . . . .”
	“Aye, it’s something else,” he agrees, leaning back into his pillows.  “Lonely and treacherous, to be sure, but there is no other sight like it on earth.”
	I’m silent for a time.  At length, my paw tracing patterns on his chest, I murmur, “I know we’re losing time here.  But, I’m still glad we came.”
	“I’ve a promise to keep,” he says, referring to his friend again, I’m sure.  But then he looks to me.  “And as you said, at least we’ve all this time to ourselves.”
	“And here we are wasting it,” I purr at him, curling a leg around his hip and shimmying up over top of him.  I get a hint of his canines as he grins at me and growls playfully, and before long, I’m on my back, wrestling the oversized wolf.  We’re honestly more than a match for one another, despite the size difference.  He’s twice my weight, but he’s also wildly ticklish, I’ve discovered over the years.  Also, he just sucks at wrestling.
	“Nononono-!” He abandons trying to pin me in breathless laughter, as my dexterous fingers comb through the fur along his abdomen, seeking out his sides.  He buckles, clutching and curling in on himself as I go after his most vulnerable areas, tail lashing wildly against my thighs as I move up between them, now forcing him down into the bed.
	And as it turns out, right off of it.  With the ridiculous pile of blankets and pillows he’s amassed, it’s really hard to tell where the bed begins and ends.  We topple, or rather more slide, down to the ground with a resounding thud, and for a moment I can’t catch my breath for laughing.
	It’s only when I realize I’m not hearing him laughing any more that I begin to worry.  My heart skips a beat in my chest – it had been a light fall, onto a floor cushioned with fallen blankets, but still-
	But then he does laugh, just a soft ‘heh’, and I lift myself up on my hands and knees over him to confirm.  He seems fine, no glazed-off look, no tremors.  Just a tired smile.
	“Are you seeing lines?”  I ask all the same, cupping the ruff along his cheek.
	It’s testament to how critical the situation’s gotten that he takes me seriously, his grin falling away and his eyes searching blankly for a few moments, for the telltale shapes only he can see.
	“. . . no.”  He says at length.  “I’m fine.”
	I let out a long breath.  “Damnit, I’m so sorry.  I’m so sorry. . . .”
	“Stop,” he assures me, his eyes fixing on mine.  Then a few moments later, emphatically.  “Please stop.”
	“I’m not going to stop worrying about you,” I whisper.  “I could never live with myself if-“
	“Nothing controls this disease,” he repeats the words he’s stated so many times now.  “Even Puquanah said as much.  Nothing can cure it, nothing can control it.  It does as it wills.”
	“But there are stressers-“
	“I think you mean ‘life’ in general,” he says dryly.  “And you know my feelings on that.  I’ve lived a full life, Alongsaa.  If I’d spent the whole of it avoiding ‘stressers’, it would have been empty.  I wouldn’t have this ship, or the journeys I’ve had with her.  I wouldn’t have met you-“
	“I know,” I say bitterly, glancing aside.  I can feel my eyes stinging.  Even now, even in front of him, a man who would never once fault a soul for crying, I hate it.  I’ve done so much crying.  A lifetime’s worth and then some.
	He leans down, his big muzzle covering mine, breathing his warmth into me.  Grayson always breathes out when he kisses you, like a sigh.  Somehow despite the fact that he’s the one dying, it feels for all the world like he’s breathing life into me.
	I don’t want to lose him.
	I curl my arms up around him, my fingers entangling in his ragged mane, pulling myself up against his encompassing figure.
	I don’t want to lose him.  I don’t want to lose him.  This isn’t fair.
	He isn’t the one who’s the most scared by all of this.  It’s me.  It’s always been me.
	I don’t want to lose him.  I’ll survive losing him.  But it’s so hard to be strong . . . even when you know you can soldier on.  Even when you’ve done it before.  It’s such a normal, mundane part of life. . . outliving the people you love.  It happens to all of us.  But it’s just.  So.  Hard.
	I squeeze my eyes shut tight, gripping him so tightly now, I know he’ll feel it.  He doesn’t say anything, though.  He just pulls me in closer.  He knows.
	“I’m scared, too,” he murmurs quietly.  He pulls up enough that we’re nose to nose, his gaze sinking into mine.  “But when it happens, you’ll be with me.  And no matter how bad it is, so long as the last thing I see is you, I’ll be happy.”  He leans down to kiss me once more, softly.  “And it won’t be tonight.”

	Three months later, we make it to Walpirsnicht, and after a tense week of negotiations with the bristling locals, and a lot of haggling and bickering between our purser and the local traders, we unload our wares and finally have a chance to travel inland.  The location Grayson is so set on visiting isn’t even a town, apparently.  I can’t understand the local tongue, but the few northern peoples he spoke to look at him very strangely when he asks which roads to take.  We opt to go on foot, the weather permitting.
	Every moment of my time with him now is valuable, I try to remind myself.  Every moment.  It’s hard to feel that way when we’re traveling overgrown, muddy, nearly invisible roads.  I know these northern territories are supposed to be rough, but I was born and raised in rough country.  This is ridiculous.
	We brought along a mule to carry our provisions, which I’m eternally grateful for after the second day the icy rain, mud and fallen trees see to it that we make very little progress.  The roads here could certainly use a ‘Warden’.
	Thoughts like that creep in at the strangest times.  Memories of long-dead loved ones.  It’s even harder to think that soon, I’ll have one more to add.  Nearly a decade of memories that will be tinged bittersweet.
	So yes.  Every moment matters.  I try to remain in good spirits, as we negotiate the mule down a rocky, steep embankment, washed out by runoff from the glaciers, Grayson says.  He claims we saw some of them on the way here, but when I told him all I’d seen was ice, all he did was laugh.  I suppose a glacier is just. . . a lot of ice?
	“This is the warm season?”  I question in a ragged, irritated tone.  “I can see my breath.  There’s ice in the rain. . . .”
	“Only near nightfall,” he insists, flashing a toothy smile at me.  “Earlier today, it was just normal, cold rain.”
	“Emphasis on ‘cold’,” I growl, shrugging my shoulders to collect my hood closer around my neck.  Not that it’s doing any good.  I have a good cloak, fur-lined, and it would keep snow out, but it’s doing nothing against the seeping, cold raindrops and ice matting into my fur.  I look backwards towards him, taking the reins of our beast of burden.  “Are you certain this is the only route we can take to find your friend?  I’m well accustomed to going off the beaten path, but this is unfamiliar country.”  At that I sweep my eyes to the grey, dismal horizon.  “I don’t know the topography, the local predators-“
	“The only other way to Ulther’s Pass is circuitous, and even if the roads are better-” he grunts, nearly tripping over an upturned root.  I grab his shoulder to steady him, and he shoots me a grateful look.  “-it would be two weeks at least out of the way.  These game trails get us there in four days.”  He pauses at that, glancing down at his foot paws, sunk into the mud.  “. . . maybe five.”
	“I just thought you were going to, well,” I blink against the rain, then look down, my words failing me.  “It’s just that. . . well, you said you’d wanted to spend as much time at sea as possible-“
	“Just say it, Shivah,” he looks to me.  “There’s a chance, taking this trip, that I die inland.”
	“I know a death at sea is what you’d prefer,” I say softly.
	“It is,” he smiles.  “But this is important.  It’s a trip I should have taken years ago.  It’s my choice, and I’ve accepted the risk.”  He planted his walking stick firmly in the icy mud, as he hoisted himself up over a half-sunken boulder, and turned to regard me, treating me to one of his most rascally grins.  “You’ll understand when we get there,” he says mysteriously.
	I gave him an odd look at that.  All-in-all, he’d been very unclear about who this friend was we were going to meet, or where exactly it was we were going.  When Grayson was unclear about something, it was almost always because he intended to surprise you.  And I had to admit, his surprises were, while not always good, usually pretty epic.
	Which worried me.  That was normal Grayson, not end-of-life Grayson.  Gods knew what he had planned, who this ‘friend’ was, or where we were going.  I half expected his ‘friend’ would be. . . a mountain, or something.  And I’d already had my fill in the past of soul-searching mountain journeys.
	We stopped for the day when the light began to wane, and pitched our camp.  If you could really call it that.  We’d brought only what we and the mule could carry, and since Grayson’s condition was fragile, he wasn’t carrying much.  So we had a small tent, a single sleeping role and a sheepskin.  Our chances of making any kind of fire with the weather as it was were slim to none, unless we found a cave or some kind of other natural barrier, and we’d seen nothing that would do over the last few hours we’d been looking.  I’d even tried to glimpse through the miserable sleet and mist towards the horizon, to see if there were any stone ridges or rocky outcroppings that might work, but the tree cover was thick, and in the end we’d settled on a particularly dense grove of spruce.  
	The trees in this area, I had to admit, were some of the densest, most rugged I’d seen of their ilk, in all my travels.  The soil must have been perfect for them.  They did us very little good, although I had plenty of fresh sprigs for some pine needle tea later.  But this particular clump was so thick, it did effectively keep most of the rain from reaching our tent, and that was enough for me.  A fire would still have been a poor idea, which was unfortunate because we were soaked to the bone, but cold at least hadn’t ever seemed to bring on Grayson’s seizures in the past.
	And of course, much to his delight, it meant we had an excuse to get naked.  Our fur would dry out better without being bogged down by our clothing, and even without a fire, hanging it out meant it would be slightly drier when we re-dressed in the morning.  Our rations were dried caribou meat, nuts and edible moss, so we didn’t need to worry about cooking anything.  In short, we’d survive.  It just wouldn’t be a comfortable night.
	Although, I had a big, thick-furred gray muzzle of a wolf to snuggle up to, so I guess I couldn’t really complain.  The big oaf was a wonderfully warm pillow, if nothing else.
	A wonderfully warm. . . groping pillow.  His big paws were, of course, all over me as we lay in our tiny tent, curled up atop the sheepskin and beneath our bedroll, which was doubling as a thick blanket.  We’d had our meager dinner, and after a long day leading a stubborn animal through rocky, washed-out trails and sleeting rain towards an unknown destination, I’d been looking forward to getting some much-needed sleep.  But the big wolf’s paws were moving to increasingly more sensitive areas, and it was becoming clear he was hoping for more than a nice long cuddle.
	“Nnngghhhh,” I groan, reaching back to swat at him.  “Really?  I’m not even free of your untoward advances out here in the north country?  In the sleet?  And mud?”
	“Mmmhh,” he just smirks against the ruff of my neck – I can feel it, “you wear mud so well, though.”
	I literally laugh out loud.  “You’ve got to be kidding me.”
	“You look beautiful wearing anything,” he replies, “or nothing.  Preferably nothing.”
	“Yeah, I’ll bet,” I snort.  
	But I relent.  I don’t stop his paws as they travel south, in fact I part my legs a bit, sighing as his somewhat rough paw pads stroke up between my nethers.  He knows me well enough by now that he can read my body, and I know he can tell I’m tired, worn.  So he takes his time, stroking me slowly and knowingly.  Grayson, despite all of his bluster and his dynamic personality, has never been one to rush affections.  I’d found him over the years to be one of the most patient men I’d ever been with, in fact.  I think a lot of it was that he enjoyed the ride, and preferred to drag it out. 
	I can feel him growing hard against my tail, and he’s equally slow in entering me, waiting until he can tell I’m good and ready.  I huff out a soft breath as he pushes into me.  It’s gotten easier than it once was to take him all, so I relax and before I know it, he’s filling me.
	We make love slowly, languidly, and like working the tension out of a muscle, I slowly begin to uncoil.  Before very long, I want more than he’s giving me, so I reach back and dig my fingers into his hip, my sign to him that I’m ready for more.  He’s quick to give it to me, increasing his pace.  
	The relaxation begins to boil away into a different, more welcome sort of tension, and before long I’m muffling my cries into the bedroll, and Grayson is not long following me.  I have to bite at the sheepskin when he pushes in his knot – I hadn’t expected he’d go that far tonight, I have to admit – but it’s not unwelcome, because it means in the aftermath, I’m pressed close to him, soaking in his warmth.
	His hands roam my body for a time afterwards, and through my content haze, I vaguely realize something important.
	“The rain’s stopped,” I say quietly into the dark.
	“For good, hopefully,” he rumbles.
	“One can hope,” I reply softly, my paw running circles around his thigh.
	We drift off just like that. . . a fact I will come to regret in the morning, after he’s slipped into his sheath and our sheepskin and my undercarriage are. . . a mess.  But he finds it immensely amusing, until I remind him we have to sleep on the same sheepskin for the rest of the journey.  Then he’s more grumbly.
	The next morning when we break camp, the skies are clear, although the land is still covered in a thick cloud of mist, so it’s hard to tell.  But the sun’s warming the trees, shedding their thin layer of ice, and as we take to the trail once more and eat our breakfast of trail rations, the temperature seems to be climbing.
	By mid-day, the fog has settled and the sun is shining on my back, drying my hood and warming my bones, and I’m overwhelmed by a sense of warmth and serenity.  With the weather cooperating, I can finally enjoy the wild, rugged beauty of this place.  And it is beautiful.    
	The earth here seems to stretch on for ages.  At one point along the trail, we find a high point, a lopsided slab of ancient rock I easily climb, to get a better vantage point, and the view is breathtaking.  It’s like the world stretches out to bend up along the sky, the two connecting in a dizzying maze of distant, icy mountains that snake along the horizon.  In a way, they remind me of some of the canyons back home, but greener, colder, and clearer.  The air here is so clear once the mist has gone, it feels like I could see forever.
	“There should be two peaks!”  Grayson calls up to me from where he stands beneath the stone slab.  He hadn’t risked climbing it.  High places are a definite no-go for him right now.  “Like a beautiful pair of-“
	“I get it,” I snarl down at him, rolling my eyes.  “I see them,” I say as I sweep my eyes out over the horizon again.  “Probably two days’ march from here, if we make good time.  Is that where we’re headed?  We didn’t bring climbing gear, and you shouldn’t now anyway-“
	“No, no,” he assures me with a wave of his hand.  “We’re headed between them.”
	I narrow my eyes, trying to get a good look at the. . . valley?  Between them?  It’s too hard to tell from here.  “Is that the mouth of a canyon?”  I ask uncertainly.
	“It’s the mouth of something,” he says in that taunting manner of his.  “You’ll see.”
	That’s all I get out of him, of course.  No matter my prodding over the next few days, he just keeps assuring me the journey will be worth it, and that words can’t describe, and so on.  Really, I think he just likes irritating me and keeping me on edge.
	Other than a run-in with a herd of lost caribou, (Grayson tries to insist we should hunt one, because he wants meat and doesn’t realize how difficult that task would be) and stumbling across the tracks of something much larger, which he tells me is likely one of the ancient feral Atlas bears that live in these mountains, we make it through the next few days without being harassed.  Well, I mean, I get harassed.  Constantly.  By Grayson.  But such is my life.
	The mountains begin to dominate our field of view, and though they’re vast and take up much of the skyline, they are nowhere near as tall as those in my homeland.  Grayson explains to me along the way that these were carved by those very sheets of ice he was speaking of before. . . the ‘glaciers’. . . or at least, that’s what the locals believe.  The proof is rather evident, there are lines like watermarks on the side of an old bath, etched into the very stone, showing where the waters and the ice once were before they receded. 
	He tells me a tale, a history the people of the Kadrush believe, which rings with an air of familiarity, like so many of my own people’s stories.  It involves a spirit, a white eagle, which brought with it the storms from the farthest northern reaches of the world every time it came here to roost.  With each season, the ice encroached, the waters froze, the storms began to roar, and the people who lived beneath the eagle beseeched it to leave before they starved.  The eagle explained to the tribal leaders that it brought the storms to protect them, but they did not believe it.  They said, ‘you kill our caribou, you freeze the ice so thick we cannot fish’, all they could think of was their hunger and the chill in their bones.  
	But then one year, the eagle did not come.  The ice that normally covered the rivers and lakes did not come, and the caribou could not migrate.  They tore up all the grass and lichen they could find, but soon starved.  The storms did not come, filling the mountains with snow and ice. . . and so there were no melt waters.  The fish could not travel upstream, could not spawn.  The bears grew hungry, desperate, and starving as well.  Many died.  And the Kadrush people learned too late that an eternal summer meant death for their land.  Death for their people.
	Grayson said the point of the story was that without some suffering, one could not truly enjoy the bounty of life.  But I think the story was more about life and death itself.  The world worked in cycles.  Even in the most arid lands, the coldest, there was a rhythm to it all.  Life, new and bursting, tiring, wearing, death, rotting, rejoining the whole.  We had our own myths about the same concept.  No matter who or what you were, from a living breathing creature to a storm, your existence served a purpose that would give back to the world even as it took.  And even when death, or destruction, or disaster seemed pointless, happened too soon or felt unfair, it would always serve some purpose. 
	I’d lost a child.  I knew this better than anyone.
	While I would never say what had happened to my baby was right, or needed to happen, it had happened.  And my child had rejoined the soil of my valley, and become a part of it again.  Just as the ice gave and took, the world had given and taken from me.  And it would take more before I was gone.
	Death was inevitable, but as necessary as the coming of the seasons.  Even the people in the myth did not avoid death, by chasing off the specter they blamed for it.  
	If this alone was why Grayson had come here, I could accept that.  This place was transformative, and we apparently hadn’t even reached our destination yet.  Just breathing the air was probably doing him some good – I know it was doing so for me.  The distant peaks, carved by gods knew how many years of rolling ice, wind and storms were a sight to behold, even through the tree-tops.  For most of this last day, we’d walked in silence, save the sound of the wind moving through the pine boughs and the peaks.  It was pure meditation.
	“There,” Grayson suddenly said, the word coming out through such an audible gasp, I briefly worried for his health.  But as we stepped out through the final grove of trees, I saw quite clearly what had taken his breath away.
	I mean no exaggeration when I say the sight before us was indescribable.  The mountains which until now I’d only seen the tops of stretched endlessly into the distance, kissing the clouds and the bluest sky I had ever seen.  Spring, or summer, (I hardly knew in such foreign lands) was much more clearly in full-bloom here, the peaks dappled in every shade of green, and dotted with rugged mountain flowers.  Small, sturdy trees clung amongst the lichen, moss and low grasses, their scarred, gnarled trunks and branches proof of the many seasons of hardship they’d endured.
	But what truly boggled the mind was the water.  I had not expected it.  A river, perhaps.  But what was before us was the mouth of a bay, and the spray that kissed the wind smelled vaguely salty, briny, like it came from the ocean, but not quite as strong.  It stretched on to infinity, snaking through the high peaks, likely out to sea. 
	Wait.
	“We could have sailed here!”  I cry out, irritated.  I glared at Grayson.  “Tell me I’m wrong.”
	“Well. . . no, not exactly.”   He pauses.  “I mean, yes, but-“
	“Why the hell did we slog through the mud for the last four days, then?!”
	“For this moment,” he smiles wanly, looking out over the bay once more.  “And because it would have taken nearly a month by sea to go around and enter the fjord from the north.”
	“The ‘fjord’?”  I blink at him.
	“That’s what they call these inlets,” he gestures.  “The Kadrush tribes have been using them for years.  For travel, for trade, for war. . . they know them better than the Amurescans, or anyone else, for that matter.  They can be a bit of a maze.  Hard to navigate, too, because sometimes they’re very shallow.  We would’ve had a real time of it getting the Manoratha this far.”
	“Alright,” I sigh, “I suppose it was. . . worth the walk.”
	He just smiles down at me, knowingly.  I can’t take my eyes off the sight.  I want to etch it into my mind so I can recall this moment for as long as I live.  
	Once again, Grayson Reed has surprised me.  Spectacularly.
	We take nearly an hour to walk the rocky beach, devouring the sights, sounds and smells of virgin shoreline, in an area of the world as untouched as any other.  Until something eventually occurs to me.
	“Your friend,” I pause, my toes testing the icy waters.  Yep.  Icy.  “I mean, you clearly knew this place, but,” I look down the coastline.  The mouth of the fjord here butted up against the cliffs directly, which means there was no coast I wasn’t seeing.  At least not as far as the eye could see.  “I don’t see any. . . dwellings, or-“
	“Come,” he takes me arm-in-arm, and begins walking down the beach.  I’m not sure what I’m looking for, so I just keep taking in the sights.  But before long, he brings me up to the lapping shore, and gestures, as far as I can tell, out into the water.
	“What. . . exactly. . . ?”  I look to him uncertainly.
	“Peer past the waves,” he instructs.  “The water is clear.  You’ll see it.”
	I narrow my eyes, trying to look in the direction he’s indicating, but it’s vague.  The waters here are clear, but reflective, so it’s hard to stare between the waves, as Grayson’s seems to want me to do.  
	But then, almost having to unfocus my eyes to see it, I do.  There, beneath the shallower waters of the bay, but deep enough that it’s fully submerged. . . is a ship.  A longship, by the shape of it.  But it’s been there long enough that it’s partially decayed, melding into the fjord floor, like the skeleton of a great beast.
	I gasp aloud, stepping a foot or so into the waves, as if that would bring me any appreciably closer to it.  It’s hard to tell how old it is, how it sank, when it sank.
	“She was called the Jormungander,” he says, his voice carrying almost as clearly as the air here.  I can feel the strength in it, the command he’s used for the last two decades to direct his men and keep his aging fleet under control.   “The man who Captained her was a Kadrush wolf named Calder Iverstrom.”
	“Your friend?”  I guess.
	“In a way,” he smiles, his eyes gone distant.  “My ancestor.  One half of the Reed family were Kadrush wolves.  They traveled down through the north to Amuresca before coming across the sea to where we ultimately settled, in Carvecia.  We were furriers, then.  Trappers and traders.  But we used to be warriors, defending our waters against the foreign incursions from Amuresca. . . and before that, raiding them.  The Amurescans are all simply children of the Kadrush wolves, you know.  They went. . . a different direction, thanks to their religion.  But in the end, we are one people.”
	“So how long ago did that ship sink?”  I wonder aloud, trying to make sense of the timeline in my head.
	“Hundreds of years ago,” he replies.
	“That’s impossible,” I insist, noting how well-defined the outline of the ship is.  “How-“
	“The cold water here maintains it almost indefinitely.  It doesn’t rot as easily as it would in warmer waters,” he explains.
	“So you never knew this man,” I surmise.  “You called him an ‘old friend’.”
	“In a way, he is,” he looks to me.  “He was the hero of my youth, the figure in many of the stories my family told around the hearth.  He was everything I wanted to be, and was told I never could be.  I all but shaped my life around his legend.  The pilgrimage here is something most of the Reed family has taken at some point in their life, and when I was told it was a trip I would never take. . . that was the year I decided I would sail the seas, come hell or high water.”
	“How did he die?”  I ask, the distant silhouette of the ship seeming far more haunting now that I’m certain it’s a grave.  So close to shore?
	“. . . back then, they considered it a curse.”  He says, quietly.  “I suppose even these days, some call it that.”
	“It’s in your blood,” I realize aloud.  “This. . . condition?”
	He simply nods, sagely.
	“It didn’t stop him,” he says, the ghost of a smile coming over his features.  “And when he died, they burnt him with his ship.  Right here in the waters he sailed.  Our family honors his grave, whenever we’re able.”
	At that, he reaches into the pocket of his greatcoat, and pulls out a gold crown.  I notice it’s not just any Amurescan crown. . . it looks more ancient than that.  With a start, I realize he’s worn it most of the time I’ve known him. . . in his mane.
	“Ancient currency,” he tells me, showing me the weathered impression of an eagle on one side, the vague shape of a mountain. . . no. . . a fjord, on the other.  “I’ve kept it on my person since I was young.  Awaiting this very moment.”
	He looks out across the heavenly landscape, and the ancient grave resting beneath the shimmering waters.  And without further hesitation, he reels back his arm and launches it into the water, the gold speck disappearing beneath the waves, presumably to join many more like it.
	“No flowers?”  I ask him with a slight smile, slipping an arm around his waist.
	“We Reed wolves have always preferred gold to flowers,” he grins down at me.  “And women to gold.”
	“Well I’ll only throw one of the two in the ocean when you kick it,” I chuckle, leaning against him.  
	He starts to laugh, and before long, so do I.  And just like that, the ice breaks and recedes.  The fear of mortality, of both death and being left alive, is as ridiculous as fearing the change of the seasons.  I will survive it until I don’t. . . as will Grayson.  But he clearly hasn’t ever let the fear of death keep him from pursuing what he wants in life, and neither will I.