My knocks rouse the slumbering heart in the drafty cabin. I step back from the door, hug my arms together, wait like an unscratched itch.

The once-slumbering heart stumbles ever. So slowly. I shiver despite myself.

The door creaks. It bumps my arm and I shuffle out of reach.

"Who's there?"

Through the half ajar door, a barest silver glimmers off a knife.

"I wanted to know why there's a stone box blocking the road," I say. The glint doesn't move. "I just arrived here."

She siddles into the starlight, footsteps inquisitive on the gravel. Yet she makes no effort to conceal the knife pointing from her fingers. "You woke a stranger in the middle of the night to ask what's obstructing the road?" her lips move like she's going to continue, except her tongue forgot the rest of the words.

"Yes. I suppose I did," I bite my lip. "Sorry."

She shakes her head and shuffles back to her cabin, fingers groping for the frame. "I have no clue where that came from. I practically walked right into it just yesterday before my walking stick caught it," she shakes her head again and slams the door, blood--textured like waxy-leaves--slinking toward the slumbering corner.

I knock on the rough wood.

"What?" the muffled voice asks.

"Did you...hear anything?"

The blood paces back to the door. "When my walking stick caught that stone box?" her voice vibrates. "Yes. I think there's a creature living inside it."

My skin tingles.

"Why, did you nearly walk into it too?" she chuckles, then mutters, "coming into a half-built town at night."

"I don't think it's a creature," I whisper.

"What was that?"

"I knocked on the stone," I say louder. "The echo was pretty big."

"Oh, I know. Probably a grand old creature. And that's all I want to know about it, so good night, thank you," she slides away from the door.

I tilt my head up to the sky, the glittering stars. I suppose she wouldn't like knowing a stone box appeared because of a stone mage, to contain a child.

Back to the child's cage I trek, then stand on tiptoe to reach for the ledge. Maybe, if I stood on the backpack, I could climb up and maybe, there would be a way to lift him out. Maybe, a jet bird could comet carefully enough to not hurt the child trapped within.

"Hello?" I whisper at the stone. Crystalline blood stirs within.

***

Dear dead, after Tatter-cloak left, and the guards left, you liked to believe you did productive things. Like making a snow pillow in the hole for the sea cat's skull to rest on. Like eating raw crawling fungi, grimacing at the bitter slime, swallowing it anyway to build up your strength for traveling. Like lugging yourself on four limbs to the house, disguising your trail with sweeps of your uncharred cloak hem, happening upon the broken down doorway and reaching about inside for snowshoes. You didn't find any.

You made a circuit around the house, boots tromping through layers and layers of snow. You left a trail, however you tried to sweep it. Your excuse then was that the jet bird circling in the cloudless sky wouldn't let anyone close enough to the house to notice.

The circuit wasn't so you could say goodbye, obviously. It was so you could find a better backpack than a tied-together cloak. Of course, the house only had one backpack; it lay buried beneath the depths of snow that used to be the cave ceiling--or, perhaps, it had burned when they broke the fridge open.

You shuddered thinking about that, prickling pain up your spine, uncomfort squatting in your throat. Soldiers, barging into your kitchen and kicking the oven, unrooting an old rock, setting aflame the cupboards. How violating your only home.

Your circuit, which wasn't so you could say goodbye, ended outside the kitchen; there you knelt, beside the broken window. The snow sloped the ground high enough that you had to stoop over to peer inside. You blinked, eyes adjusting to the dimness, the kitchen sink blurring a vague shadow. The tile seemed soot-stained. The counters still stood, or sagged, however clawed with dead flames.

You couldn't glimpse the oven, no heat emanated through the window but that didn't mean an old rock wasn't still okay. "Thank you," you whispered through the window. Reached out gently for the sense of the old rock's blood, however weak, you told yourself it would be okay.

You told yourself it wasn't for long, blinking your eyes. You just had to go somewhere else because it wasn't safe, temporarily. You would prepare to visit the mountains, travel to a city and trade for supplies, that wasn't that different from anything you'd done before.

You liked to believe you did productive things. Even if you found nothing to take with you in your circuit of the house, no snowshoes or backpack. You returned to the hole in the snow heap, bent over and scooped up a sea cat's bones in your palms to set them standing outside. You slung the knotted cloak over your shoulder. Stood, kicked at the hole in miniature replication of how the cave had collapsed, chest, stomach, throat all squashed up to nothing.

Then you tromped away, away from the frost orchards, you'd never traveled this direction from the house; you'd never had a reason to. The sea cat clanked behind you, a bound cloak bumped with winter-sized vegetables over your shoulder.

It wasn't goodbye. Obviously.

***

Beside the stone prison, I mutter under my breath a song. For the child, hoping he can hear me. For the gray stars, glaring at me. I sink to the ground, ponder bringing a backpack for a pillow, the jet bird for a night guard, except I doubt my skin will do well sleeping on jagged gravel barely beaten into a path. So I will sing, then. And return to a beach to sleep this dawn away.

The words I sing are mostly nonsense, partially syllables which I call a made up language, rather than nonsense. I hadn't practiced before, I didn't come with a script, and a made up language sounds sweeter anyway, something only the two of us share; my heart, his heart, tasting the same thing, like we could synchronize over the same sounds neither of us have heard before. Harmonize with no rehearsal.

Of course, he doesn't sing back. He barely stirs. So I suppose my song is for the stars only, glaring at me.

I sing myself in circles until my lips dry. Until I run out of even nonsense words to say. I press my ear to the silent stone hunting for an audible heartbeat. A fist, knocking, begging for freedom. A sign to continue, or to stop. A twinkle that the glaring stars have heard me, that they comprehend the made up language because they were the ones who made it up.

Silence. Stillness. My body aches. I curl over my knees and the scabs on my backside pull my skin.

I don't want to go shuffling to a beach, go to sleep.

I don't want to go.

I could sing about my day, my night, but he was there. The child. Face to face with the dead people in a fire, a burner army. A dead aunt, a dead bread-maker, a bony fish--is that all that might haunt him? Or does he have more?

I could sing about my day, my night, but the parts he wasn't there for, well, I don't want to tell him. I don't want to repeat myself.

My skin barely tingles with heat anymore--no fire roars close enough to warm those senses--so I could sing about safety, the comforting cold, the quiet; how faraway from any flames we lie.

I sit up, shut my eyes, reach outward for awkward words strung to a simple melody.

"The dark of night will come for you,

The red horizon dies.

The storms of day will haunt you child,

At night they'll go away.

If mortal senses lie to you,

If fires seek your skin,

Come home to silence

And protection,

This pain will fade away.

Come home to silence

And protection,

Find freedom in your night."

Silence. Stillness. My body aches. "I am a better death mage in the dark," I whisper. "I'm not sure about singing."

No reply.

I push myself to my feet, caressing the stone. "I know you can't see them, but the stars look beautiful tonight." Of course I'm lying. The stars glare tonight. But the child doesn't know that. Turning, I trod away to a beach, a breeze fluttering my cloak. "Have nice dreams, child. I'll come for you in the morning."

A backpack and a jet bird wait for me.

***

Dear dead, the hiding places you found, the distance you traveled, all of it screamed sharply as distinct notes wailing from a set of strings.

That is, you remembered each moment as a painful melody.

The first night, a snowbank, the frozen flakes trapping heat to keep you warm. The next morning a sun glared so bright you kept your eyes closed and crawled about by touch. You ate raw tubers, picked out mushroom caps, packed snow into them and melted water with your body heat. Tatter-cloak came near mid-day, you thought, you had your eyes closed most of the time, and besides, it was winter. The red sun hardly danced over the horizon, never approaching anything like sun-high.

He brought supplies in a sack; gloves, cloaks, snowshoes. An old fruit's seed pit, from a cursed death tent on a black beach. He mumbled, while kicking the snow, that he thought it might help you remember today. A memory of this moment.

You nodded; you remembered that day, walking from the beach with the queen's skeleton. Perhaps this one would hurt less in memory too.

He crossed his arms under his torn cloak and informed you the tugging of blood unsettled him now, since he knew what it was. You nodded tightly, of course that made sense, how should we find each other then?

He suggested the town by the coast, a street corner in two days, the army was hoping to move out the next morning and trek across the ashy wasteland of the frost orchards by nightfall. You nodded, slurping water from a beige mushroom cap, of course that made sense, you would find a street corner with a bench, out near the docks.

Together you stood in silence, a sack slumped between you. You prodded it with your boot, making a squishy indent.

"I hope you don't mind," he said, "the...bird is scaring the soldiers away who we want to investigate the house--"

"Of course I mind," you lashed out, softly. "They have no belongings there. No army is going to dig up the remnants of my life that they burned down and scavenge it for supplies."

"--right. I'm sorry. Some of them want justice and are convinced they can find evidence of who burned down the monarch's house. Between them and the bird, I just don't want anyone getting hurt."

You shook your head, swallowing back words. Anyone getting hurt? Tell that to the shattered jars of blood, the boy's bones now buried by a collapsed cave you carved from a slow-moving glacier, tell that to the death mage four nights ago who thought she knew about the flames. Knew what they could do. Anyone getting hurt?

"The jet bird will do what she wants," you stared into slushy water inside a mushroom. "I don't control her."

"I know," he sighed. "I'm really sorry."

"I'm sorry too," about the palace, about leaving, about lashing out.

More silent standing.

"I guess I better head back then."

You nodded, glanced up to search his deep eyes. "I'll see you in two days."

The next night you slept where you thought the ocean ended and land began, but so covered in white the world was that you couldn't tell exactly. Where snowbanks ended, where eerie flat ice began, you dug out a hole in the snow with gloved hands and the rounded corners of snowshoes.

You fit snugly; the sea cat could curl behind your knees, leggings tucked up to your chin. The sack blocked most of the hole, whistling with a sharp wind exhaling away from you so you didn't get snowed in.

The second day, an icy tundra, glaring and bitter. You snowshoe-trekked over beaches you imagined beneath the snow--glittering black with smooth rocks, sand worn before volcanic cliff sides. You forayed out over the water, the ice creaking like dying whales--horizon-stretched sounds that vibrated your whole body. You found fish bones who-knew-how-far from shore, you brought them up to dance beneath your bootsteps but layers of ice forbade them from your touch.

Third night, a hotel in a seaside town, given for free by a stranger who found you shivering to pieces on a bench by the docks.

You thanked her, memorized the rust-orange curl of her cloak, the array of fat braids haloing her face, eyes dark like the interior folds of a blanket. She told you she didn't need repaying, she was a native here but her trade had profited greatly from an Empress's laws, so she had the funds.

You, teeth chattering in a poorly lit lobby, boots soaking ice into the rug, asked how that worked.

"Safer waters," she sighed. "The Empress protects us now, instead of hindering us. We don't have to pay tariffs on foreign shores anymore, and I have more places to pick up crewmembers. But I don't deserve that. She's killed my cousins up the coast in one of those fires. Ruined my sister's fur trade."

"Oh," you set a lumpy sack awkwardly at your feet. Sea cat bones faintly clanked; hopefully she hadn't heard.

She stood up straighter. "So I decided to give some of my wealth back to my people."

"By paying for their hotel rooms?" you chattered.

Her shoulders slumped back down. "You're the first one, actually."

"Oh."

"I think this whole town is empty."

"It is winter," you nodded.

"And my ship is far to the north without me," she grumbled. "My excuse was that I was negotiating some great opportunities for when the sea ice shrunk."

"You could--do you want to trade with the monarch?" you shivered. "If you really want to help."

Third day, you met Tatter-cloak with an accomplice, a merchant whose name you'd intentionally forgotten. Told them they could help each other. And when the merchant left talks of introductions and trade deals with a grin to match the glittering sea ice, you and Tatter-cloak stood awkwardly on the slushy stones, what was there to actually talk about?

Tatter-cloak started with news: the army had moved out. The house was no longer being investigated. They'd make it to the palace in just a couple days.

Tatter-cloak brought you money, so you supposed that meant you were traders to each other now; you finding allies, them giving money.

"I'm not sure how often I can keep leaving," Tatter-cloak said. "This time will work, because I can say I brought a merchant to our side," their gaze flicked up the winding street, towards a rust-orange cloak waiting patiently outside a lantern-lit hotel doorway. "But..."

The silence returned. Your senses reached out to a faraway jet bird, in flight like a furious wind. You said the words already floating between you: "maybe we quit trying to meet so often."

Tatter-cloak's expression wrinkled like an old mushroom. "What? No."

"I can't just sit around waiting. Do I follow you and the army to the palace and camp out in the tundra? Just so we can come and talk like this every other day?"

"No," they shook their head, unbound hair waving. "No, I know that doesn't work, I just don't know how to make this work, it has too, I--"

You caught their fluttering glove, brought their hand to stillness. For a breath you stared at the bright yellow threadwork on the glove's palm, scrawling rich loops up the fingers. The stitching might have formed words, before the artist added innumerable loops. "Maybe we quit trying to meet so often," you repeated, gaze flicking up. "Three times is enough to say g--" you stopped to clear your throat. "I come to this town every summer, when the snows melt. I don't intend to change that."

"Then I will come too," they whispered, clasping your red hands in their gloves. "I'm...sorry. That an army or a palace city isn't where you belong."

"I wish you luck taking down an Empress to free your lands."

"Thank you."

"Thank you," you pried your hands away, quickly, before you lost resolve. "See you later. Uyagaq."

Walking away, you couldn't help looking back. An itching in your spine, maybe. A breeze, a mist rising from the docks tickling your eyes. They waved at you, cloak fluttering in the gray street, mouthing something repeatedly. You couldn't figure out what.

Fourth night, wide awake in a hotel bed scented of crinkled brown flowers, you recalled the scrawled curse in the cave meaning my own. You mouthed the syllables in your lips, shaping silent consonants--the same motions as Tatter-cloak's the day before. My own, they'd said. My own, power surged, a silent claiming call spreading over the dark hotel room and rough quilts and jet bird hidden in the pillows beside you.

"And yours too," you whispered. "Goodbye."