“Where are you going?” Lovisa yelled after her.
“You see those clouds?” she said. “I’m looking for one of the huts that man told us about. My foot is killing me. Do you know anything about feet? I need you to look at my foot.”
Grumbling, Lovisa joined her.
* * *
—
It took a great deal of scrambling on and off the path to find any sort of hut. By the time they did, it was snowing hard, sharp flakes whipped their cheeks, and Bitterblue was becoming truly frightened.
They might have found the hut sooner if it were actually a hut, rather than just a wooden door in the side of a hill. The door stuck too; both women had to push it together.
Inside, the walls were made of dirt, reinforced with wooden supports positioned close together. The floor and ceiling were wooden too, and fine, smooth. Posts stood upright all across the room, presumably bracing the ceiling, which held the weight of the hill above. A stack of firewood sat near a stove with a chimney, which surprised Bitterblue so much that she ran outside to find the capped metal pipe that popped out of the hill, perfectly visible once you knew it was there, but otherwise camouflaged among rocks.
More than that, the hut had two mattresses with pillows and blankets, a low table, a lamp full of oil, a small collection of books, plates and cutlery, and food. “Ship food,” Bitterblue said with pleasure, looking through the containers of dried meat and fruits, nuts, and biscuits hard as rock. “Biscuits to dip into tea,” she said, when the next tins produced dried, pungent leaves.
“It’s useless without water,” Lovisa said.
“Maybe they presume that if you’re here in a storm, you can melt snow for water,” said Bitterblue.
“You can do what you want,” said Lovisa. “I don’t drink snow-water tea in dirt rooms.”
Briefly, Bitterblue lost her temper. She grabbed a pot, marched out of the hut, and plunked it onto the ground. She watched with screaming impatience as practically none of the fast-falling snow landed in the pot. Who did Lovisa think she was, trying to out-snob a queen? Did she imagine that Bitterblue wanted to spend this day in a claustrophobic hut in a hill, instead of looking for the friends who thought she was dead? Her own sister! And Giddon, Giddon!
“Balls!” she shouted, in Lingian.
Then she jumped as Lovisa’s curious voice spoke behind her. “What does balls mean?”
“Balls,” Bitterblue repeated in frustration, as if that were an explanation. Then she said the word in Keepish, but Lovisa was clearly unenlightened.
“Like, balls to play a game with?” said Lovisa. “Is that a swear word in Lingian?”
“No!” said Bitterblue. “Like a man’s scrotum!”
“Oh! You call that balls?”
“Yes!”
“We call it kittens,” said Lovisa. “Because they’re so delicate.”
This undid Bitterblue. She laughed so hard that she had to lean her hand on Lovisa’s shoulder, gasping. “That’s my favorite thing in Winterkeep,” she finally said.
“That’s fair,” said Lovisa, “since mainly you’ve been trapped in an attic.” Then she smiled, a smile that made her look so young suddenly, and so sad, that all Bitterblue could think was that she was going to help this girl, one way or another.
“What do you think?” she said, even though she’d already decided. “I badly want to go on. But it’s snowing hard and I’m quite sure my foot is bleeding again.”
“There are horror stories about people who get caught in storms in Torla’s Neck,” said Lovisa. “If you want us to stay in this hole till it stops, I don’t care. Anyway, neither of us slept much last night.”
“That’s true,” said Bitterblue, relieved.
Inside, Lovisa sat on one of the mattresses, her back propped against the wall, and watched as Bitterblue started the fire. Then Lovisa began to remove her shoes and socks.
“They don’t smell good,” she said, holding her socks out to the queen, “but you should wear them. Those shoes are rubbing your feet raw.”
“If I take your socks away, the same will happen to your feet.”
“I don’t mind hurting,” Lovisa said simply. Then she laid herself down.
* * *
—
They both slept, for a long time. There was little else to do.
Then, in the middle of the night, Bitterblue woke to a howling wind.
What if the chimney gets clogged with snow? she thought to herself. And the smoke backs up into the room? And we can’t escape, because snow is blocking the door? She felt the weight of the hill above, imagined the hill collapsing, dirt clogging her nose and mouth. She imagined dying here, buried inside the ground. Her friends would never find her. They’d never know.
She threw her blankets off, crossed to the door, and pulled. It crashed open, cold air rushing in. When she stepped out and down, she understood suddenly that the door in the hill was positioned at the hill’s steepest point, and partly up its slope, where snow was unlikely to accumulate. And then she remembered the long chimney, protected from snow by its chimney cap.
I should trust the locals, she thought, going back inside, shivering, crawling into her bed. Giddon? I’m scared of me dying, or you dying, or Hava dying, now that I’m so close.
I know, he said. It isn’t going to happen.
Do you promise?
Yes, he said. I promise.
But no one can promise that, she cried, almost triumphantly, as if she’d caught him out in a lie.
I know, he said. But I’m promising it anyway, and you should believe me. Who’s more trustworthy, me or your anxiety?
That made Bitterblue laugh a little. And then her mind started playing with ideas of Giddon again. Sitting with him in his chair, pressed against him. Touching his chest. Touching his beard, which was scratchy. Kissing his mouth. Being kissed back.
Kissing Giddon, Bitterblue fell asleep.
* * *
—
The storm lasted the whole next day and night.
“The single good thing about it is that my foot is healing,” Bitterblue said grumpily. The hut was beginning to feel like her attic prison all over again. Only her fear of encouraging Lovisa’s gloom kept her from devolving into constant complaints. That and the books, which told amusingly heroic stories about the Keeper and showed pictures of her in many shapes and forms, sometimes with innumerable eyes and arms, sometimes more of a blob.
Lovisa wasn’t interested in the books, actually scowled when Bitterblue showed her one of the drawings, and hardly spoke. She ate, drank the tiny cups of tea Bitterblue made from melted snow, slept, and stared at the ceiling. “When we get to the town,” she said, “I’m going to send a signal message to the Ledra Magistry. Do you know what that means?”