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My name is Ygritte, and I write this should I never return from the Glacier.
Last year, war came to us. It took my best friend Kay, off to be a soldier, with most of the other men of our village. Last month, he came back. My kind friend Kay, with his clever hands that made fur, leather, and wool into anything you asked, is broken inside, and missing an arm outside. He does not care for the books or stories he used to delight in reading, barely eats what I cook, stays inside by the fire always because the cold makes him ache.
He used to love the story of the Rimerein Unicorn, as much as I loved the forest troll stories. He would ask Grandmother to tell it to him again and again, how the unicorn appeared to an innocent child, lost in the snow and crying, and healed his family from the deadly winter fever. I am the best hunter left in our village, and I am going to the Glacier to track it down. It will heal him too, and his eyes will light up, and he will smile again.
Kay, I’m sorry, I’m lying again, trying to make myself sound better like I always do. Trying to make this story a fairy tale with a happy ending. The winter after you were gone was so bitter. Kay, the war broke something inside me too, just like you, only you can not move and I can not stay still. If I don’t return, please keep the cottage, keep well, and do not look for me.
8 Warmth
I set out with provisions enough to get me to the Glacier, my bow and arrows, and this journal. Before he left, Kay made me these boots, from leather I caught, and he knitted me this scarf. I have worn them always, and they are good, the work of his clever hands. He made them to keep me warm in the bitterest of snows, and they have kept me so. When I wrap the scarf around myself, I imagine I can still feel a spark of his warmth held within it. Kay’s hand is always still now, and he turns his eyes away when he sees his former work.
As I walked, some winter spirit, small like a child, watched me go. It would flee behind a tree if I tried to approach, only to peek out again when I turned away. It flitted after me like this, giggling when I turned about fast to catch a glimpse of it, like we were playing. We walked together for a time, but then it vanished between one tree and the next.
7 Warmth
The day was clear when I started, but it grew cold so quickly. Everything is stark white, covered in ice, and I stumble more than I walk. I should know this place, but I do not. Not anymore. This used to be a field of scattered cloudberry bushes, that bore fruit in the summer. Do you remember when our families would come out to pick them together, Kay? But there was a battle here, and now it is barren, the bushes torn to nothing, the grass and lichen that took years to grow churned into bare dirt, frozen hard and slick with frost. There is something here with me. Somewhere in the distance, or maybe right next to me, wearing a stark white shroud. Wandering. Looking for something. I want to hide and quake like a rabbit, praying it doesn’t find me, but there is nowhere to hide on the barren ground. I’m so cold, Kay. I don’t know if I’ll ever be warm.
4 Warmth
I spied a tower in the distance, tall enough to see even through the haze of the snow, and made my way towards it. I needed shelter, and it was a welcome sight. Ruined though it may be, it is something out of a story. The stones are carved with pictures, telling tales of heroes and their great deeds, and the tower and all the carvings are built to a massive scale, as though giants fifteen feet tall once lived here. I wish you could have seen it, Kay. The walls provided ample shelter for me to make a fire and rest a while. I had to climb up the stones of the wall to peep out the window, though there was nothing but a trio of standing stones in the distance. When I had the fire lit, the shadow I cast on the wall was as tall as one of the ones who used to live here, as though one of those long ago inhabitants had returned to play silent but welcoming hostess. When I left the next morning, I looked out across the view the window had showed me, but there were no stones anywhere along the plain. Perhaps the former inhabitants had stood by and wondered whose fire made merry in their old home once more?
5 Warmth
I am well out of the familiar land around our village now. I never used to go towards the Glacier anyway; it only gets colder and the weather more harsh the closer you get, and the best hunting grounds are to the south of the village. I don’t know what to expect from what lies ahead. I certainly didn’t expect to hear someone crying, the wind carrying the sound over the snow. When I called out, it stopped. I thought I saw a ptarmigan take flight, and regretted not having strung my bow, because it arrowed straight towards me. But it was no bird. I swear, it was a tiny person, with pale green moth wings like the newest unfurling spring leaves, crying like a lost child. Kay, they were a fairy, just like out of a story, lost and waiting for their friend to find them. They hugged me around the finger and begged me to stay with them so they wouldn’t be alone, and what could I say to that but yes?
They told me that most people only see snow flurries and hear ringing bells when a fairy tries to talk to them, and this comes straight from the source so you have to believe it, Kay. Their friend came along eventually, a big snow fox, and the two of us exchanged nods like were meeting in the village market. Then they went off on their way, and I went off on mine.
5 Warmth
The snowscape of the Glacier has been so still and silent as I travel through it, it’s easy to forget that I’m not the only mortal thing here. I was lucky that I have my honed hunter’s senses, or I might not have noticed the bear until it was too late. A massive grizzly, its brown fur hoary with silver. A beast doesn’t get to that age unless it’s both fierce and cunning, and it was clearly still spry as it crossed the snow. I half buried myself in a snowdrift trying to keep out of its way. I waited there until I couldn’t feel my toes before I finally poked my head out again. Luckily it was gone well past, leaving behind nothing but a set of massive pawprints in the snow.
2 Warmth
I decided to go in the opposite direction the bear had, and gods I’m glad I did. I’d been watching for tracks, looking for game passing by. There hasn’t been as much as I expected to be able to hunt for myself, and I’m going through my supplies fast. I saw a set of little ones that, cold and stupid as I was, took me a too long moment to identify. The marks of little boots in the snow, a child’s footprints. I ran. The snow and wind were already starting to erase them, and I couldn’t lose this trail. Do you remember the time you got lost in the snow when we were children, Kay? A late storm blowing up on the horizon, half the village in a panic looking for you, it was easy for me to slip out after you. That was when I first learned what a gift I had for tracking. And that you needed to be watched when something caught your interest, because you surely wouldn’t watch out for yourself. Found you out picking snowdrops, didn’t even know you were lost. I was so proud when I brought you back. Every time you wandered off, I went out and brought you back. Every time but the last. I wish you had just wandered off to look for snowdrops again.
Your garden died without you to look after it, Kay. I’m sorry. I tried to keep it alive, but you were gone so long, and I didn’t know how.
I’m sorry. That’s another lie. I let it die. I thought, now when he gets back home, he’ll know how I felt.
I found the child. Six years old and trudging through the snow without a single idea where home was. It took me a while to pick up the backtrail and get him back to his village. By the end, the original tracks were all gone, and I was following a hunch and the scent of woodsmoke. His folks were grateful. I only stayed long enough to have a quick meal and warm up again, even though they pressed me to stay. The village reminded me too much of home.
6 Warmth
There was an abandoned well a ways outside the village. Strange place to put a well. It’s all permafrost out here. No water in it either, just a dusting of snow at the bottom, and coins. It took me a minute to realize it was a wishing well, just like out of your book of fairy tales. I thought about making a wish but… I didn’t think it would come true. No sense in wasting a coin, I guess.
5 Warmth
I found another set of tracks in the snow. An adult’s this time. I recognized them, the nick on the heel, the pattern carved on the sole. The wind picked up as I started to follow them, and I swore I could almost hear a voice on it… It was your voice, Kay. You were calling out to me. You sounded so happy. I saw you in the distance, blurred by the snow, whole and smiling. I tried to run to you, but you were always just a little farther away. I didn’t even notice when the tracks vanished. I kept running even after I stopped hearing your voice. Until finally even that last glimpse of you faded away, and I realized I was a fool, chasing an apparition in the snow.
3 Warmth
I didn’t know badly off track that stupid little jaunt got me, so I ducked into a narrow cavern to catch my breath, and get my bearings out of the wind. It wasn’t much warmer in there than it was outside; the walls were coated in ice, so thick I couldn’t see the stone behind it, and the longer I looked, the more I started to see shadowy shapes deep within the ice. I felt like if I stood there long enough, the ice would creep over me too. Cover me up, hide all my stupid, selfish mistakes, just another shadow in the ice.
I’m so tired, Kay. Tired of hiding in the woods while the soldiers steal what little we have and destroy the rest. Tired of hearing the little ones cry with hunger when all I could find after trekking all day was one scrawny rabbit. Tired of waiting for you to come back. Tired of waiting still, now that you have. Tired.
The ice isn’t a wall. I see that now. It’s a mirror, and there’s an ugly girl inside it, sneering at me. An ugly, selfish, lying, angry girl. She says I deserve this. She says I can go to sleep and this will all go away. I’m so tired. Kay, I’m so cold. Kay, I’m so sorry.
0 Warmth
I woke up. I didn’t expect that. Sore all over, and shivering, but awake. Alive. Warm. I was in a little cottage, bundled up in furs, and tucked close to the fire. There was an old woman stirring a pot over it, faded black tattoos as wrinkled as the rest of her face, frost hoaring on her brown braids, but still broad, hale, and hearty. She fed me soup made from salted fish, and tea that tasted like a meadow in summertime, wildflowers, grass, and honey. She scolded me like Grandmother used to do, and I swear to you, a big raven sat up in the rafters and cawed and nodded along with her every word. I was silent. I didn’t know what to say. But she just kept refilling my cup, until I was filled up with summer warmth, and talked to me. She told me stories, about talking caribou, and the northern lights, and a prince and a princess. I felt like I was a child again, sitting by the fire and listening to Grandmother read to us. It’s been so long since I felt like that, comfortable, and safe. I remember them all, Kay. I’ll tell them all to you when I get back, and will you remember how to feel that way too?
Then she helped me get my pack up on my back, lifting it up easily even though it was heavy enough to thump onto my shoulders, and she walked me out a ways, before wishing me well and turning back towards her cottage. But when I looked behind me at her footprints in the snow… Kay, you know I’d never lie to you, right? I swear, the footprints walking alongside mine were the pawprints of an enormous old bear.
8 Warmth
I set out again. I don’t know what road I’m on, but I can see the Glacier before me, and the road runs towards it, so that’s good enough for me. Or at least it was, until I came to a fork in the road. Both paths seemed to head towards the Glacier, but what was down either one, I couldn’t say. As I wondered, I saw something shining in the snow by my feet. When I picked it up, it was a gold coin, with writing on it that I didn’t recognize, and a man’s face in profile, proud and stern with an aquiline nose. Someone must have traveled a long way to drop it here. I’m giving it a flip. Heads I go left from here, tails I go right. Wish me luck.
6 Warmth
I came into a clearing, the wind blowing in circles and kicking up the snow so thick that all I could see was white, but I felt something. I know I did. I think I must have wandered in circles for almost an hour, chasing that little feeling I get when the snow has covered up the tracks but everyone is counting on me to feed them and I just know that there’s a stag up ahead. And then, the wind died and the snow in the air cleared all at once, and I saw it.
Like the most perfect horse you’ve ever seen, like a little gray deer. Like a gentle lion. Like the ice spun into lace. It had a horn of the purest blue ice on its forehead, and its eyes… Its eyes were the Glacier. I saw myself in those eyes. Everything I’d done, every step I’d taken, and they were filled with tears. The most perfect, ageless, kindest thing I’d ever seen, and it was crying for me. It was like a dam inside me broke, and finally, I could cry too. I didn’t have to be brave and steadfast, the only hunter left in the village, the one people would panic if they saw weep. It laid its head on my chest and its tears thawed the ice in my heart, and it was finally safe for me to cry.
I cried for everyone I lost, to the war and the winter. I cried for when the raiders took mother’s spinning wheel for kindling, and I lost the last thing I had of her. For how much I regretted not going with you, for knowing how much the village would have suffered if I had. For you, for everything you lost, and what you suffered when I wasn’t there. For myself, and what I suffered when you weren’t there.
When I finished, my eyes finally felt clear, my heart felt light, and I was alone. The unicorn was gone with no sign it had ever been except for the still air. And for the way I felt.
I’m coming home, Kay. The old woman filled my pack with the supplies I didn't bring for the return trip, and I know I can retrace my steps from here to her cottage. I’ll have the words to thank her this time. Maybe she’ll tell me more stories. Maybe I'll tell her one, about a little boy and a little girl who used to pick snowdrops together and dream of the Rimerein Unicorn.
This gold coin has brought me luck; if I toss it in the well on the way back, do you think my wish will come true? But I think, maybe, I don’t need that anymore. I’ll pick you some snowdrops on the way back instead, and keep the coin to show you when I tell you this story, when I finally make you laugh again and say I’m telling fairy tales again. I have so many stories to tell you, Kay, you who always called me a storyteller and never a liar. I’ll start with this one, and I swear, every word of it is true.