Chapter Text
There’s a silence to the northern air you don’t get anywhere else. In the city, there’s a buzz about the place, a stagnant sound, perpetually arhythmic and grating, never remaining static long enough for me to get used to it. It’s a strange phenomenon, how the ordered life, shacked up in square building after square building, can produce such a shifting atmosphere. But out here, where the wild things dwell and the people are counted among them, the snow is an auditory equalizer. Footsteps, breath, insects, it all fades within but a few feet of a heavy snowfall.
I heft another log over my shoulder, not even registering the sap stain that is now a permanent part of my furs. I take a second to enjoy the smell of fresh-chopped pine before tossing it onto the fire in a shower of sparks. They rise in a chaotic dance up into the night sky, becoming indistinguishable from the stars a second later.
I feel your eyes on me. Judging my appearance, perhaps? I’m sure I look as a wild thing does, but I don’t mind. I wear my scars and my stains with pride. They are the mark of an active protector.
Finally, I am satisfied with the fire, kicking the recently added log into a clean teepee. Any flames that stick to my boot are quickly smothered as I turn to sit across from you, crunching heavily through the foot of powdery snow.
“So…” you start. I can see you are trying not to shiver, wrapping your shoddy leather cloak tighter around you. Maybe you want to appear strong. “You’re from the North, I take it.”
I nod, pointing upwards. “I am following the southern star. I have been told it will lead me to my destiny.”
“Destiny?” you ask, untensing your muscles, briefly forgetting the biting cold as you lean in closer to see my face.
I hesitate for a few seconds before responding. A hiss and a pop from the campfire, now rejuvenated, are all we can hear as the heavy powder obscures any sounds of life from outside our little camp. “I am Valkya Stone,” I start to say. “My destiny was taken from me.”
I close my eyes, adding further fuel to the feeling of absolute isolation, out here where the snow makes each fire an island. I draw in a breath, relishing the sensation until the frigid air hurts my throat. And then I begin my story.
When I was a little girl, I was told again and again of my destiny. “Valkya,” my mother would say, “you cannot play with the other children now. Your father must show you how the fishing spears are made.” Or, “Valkya, you must show respect to the aurora, for it is the bridge our ancestors walk when they watch over us.” Whatever it was, I was being told what to do, what to think, and how to do both. But I didn’t mind. My father said it was my duty to serve the tribe. I just wanted to make him happy.
He once told me, stroking my hair on a quiet night, “You are my daughter, and so you will lead the tribe in my stead when I join our ancestors.”
I look up at him in confusion, then, and ask him why it was up to me. “Why does someone else not lead the tribe? I am not special,” I told him.
He chuckled. “You are special, Valkya. The ancestors chose you to be my daughter, and so you have been chosen to be the chieftain. You will see. One day, they will send you a sign. It is your destiny.”
My eyes grew wide. “You mean… like yours?”
My father smiled down at me, so much warmth behind his eyes. “Yes, little one. Do you want to hear the story of my sign?” I nodded, not daring to open my mouth for fear that he wouldn’t tell me.
“Alright,” he said. I crossed my legs and straightened my back, not wanting to miss a moment. “Once, when I was no older than sixteen years, I found a clearing in the woods. Half a circle of stones sat in the middle, almost a perfect crescent. I came back for seven days, but nothing changed, until the night of the full moon. When the moon shone upon the clearing, the ice on the branches around me reflected the light in a wondrous way, and a thousand motes of moonlight all shone upon me. I knew then what the clearing was. My ancestors had claimed my right to be the next chieftain. The moon had shone upon the stones, like my name, and upon me.”
I was silent for a few moments before realizing he was finished. “And then what?” I asked, eagerly.
He blinked twice. “Oh, um. I’m not sure. I went home, probably.”
My face fell. “Father, that was a boring ending!”
He shrugged. “Life is not a story meant to keep children happy around a campfire. Now off to bed. You have a long road ahead of you.”
My destiny was never really mine, you understand. It was always something someone else had set out for me. But I took to it anyway. And slowly, it started to become mine. I learned how to hunt, how to heal, how to fish, and most of all how to lead. I grew tall, like my mother, and gained a few scars of my own.
And my father always told me he was sixteen years when he received his sign. I’d never said it out loud, but I always hoped when I was sixteen years, I’d see mine. But the year came and went, and there was snow, and there was a growing season, and I’d never received a sign. I was staring at the sky one night, looking for any sign from my ancestors that they were watching, waiting to show me my destiny, when I noticed it.
A chill ran up my spine deeper than the coldest winter nights, and I ran into my father’s tent. “Father! Mother!” I said, shaking them awake.
“What is it, Valkya?” my father asked me.
“The aurora, father,” I cried. “Look at the aurora!”
They stepped out, the whole camp beginning to wake up, shuffling into a huddling group as we all stared up, looking at the glimmering sky-bridge. If you’d simply glanced at it, you might have even thought it was normal, but if you stared for more than a few seconds, you could see it: A break. It was split in two, a slowly widening crack in the bridge beginning to rain down stardust as it dissolved.
“What’s happening?” I asked, terrified. My mother shook her head. “It’s the ancestors, little one. Something has happened to them.”
Slowly, a panic started to settle over the group, a deep fear that we had never felt before. I’d felt the fear of a wild hunter stalking me, I’d felt the fear of an impending winter storm, but I had never felt this fear.
“What do we do?” someone asked. Everyone was silent, because we already knew the answer: There was nothing to be done.
I didn’t get any more sleep that night. I don’t think anyone did. I stayed up for three hours straight, watching the aurora slowly dissolve, hoping beyond hope that it would stop, reverse, hoping for a miracle. But no miracle came.
And then something new occurred to me: If my ancestors could not reach our world, how could they send me a sign? My destiny, the thing that had kept me going, was now gone.
The next few days were quiet, people milling about the village and going through the motions, but a slow, chill dread had settled over us. If there was no one watching over us anymore, there was hardly much point to continuing on in the fashion we had, but no one knew what to do. Even my father, the strongest of us, seemed lost.
It was but a week later, sitting in my tent, I thought of it. The aurora had split and fallen in the south. But if it had fallen, maybe it was possible to find the pieces. Maybe, if I followed it to the end, I could find out what happened.
Maybe I could even figure out how to fix it.
I knew what my father would say. He would want me to stay, to lead the people in his stead when he was gone, but I couldn’t just sit there and watch our community die. In the darkness, alone, I gritted my teeth and settled. I would find the sky-bridge. I would bring our ancestors back. And I would find out who did this.
I couldn’t wait, or I would change my mind, so I started packing immediately. It was as I was strapping Frostward to my back that I heard the tent rustling behind me. My mother was standing there, a look in her eyes I’d never seen before.
“You’re leaving,” she said, the words hanging heavy in the air like falling snow.
I felt the pricking of tears at the corner of my vision. “Yes,” I said, not trying to hide the guilt I felt. “I won’t let you stop me. I have to find our ancestors. I have to get my destiny back.”
She smiled at me, a gesture I was not expecting. “I know, child. This is your destiny.”
I blinked the tears out of my eyes. “You’re… letting me go?”
She nodded. “It’s something all mothers must learn to do. All fathers, too, but…” she looked over her shoulder at the slumbering mound of my father. “I do not think he is ready. Go now. Be quiet. Stay safe. And…” she took off her necklace, a periapt of a red gem I’d never seen her without. When I was a little girl, and it was quiet, and dark, I would press against her chest, and feel the warmth of the gem like a heartbeat all its own.
She pressed it into my palm, eyes clouded with worry. “Take this with you. It will protect you.” I’d never given it much thought before, but now I gazed curiously into the adornment, with an inexplicable feeling that it was gazing back. But it felt… safe, like my mother herself was watching me.
I took a deep breath, gritted my teeth.
And then I left.
The silence finally returns, fire dimly crackling and popping bringing us back to the present. “It has been a year since then,” I continue. “I have learned and done much, as has my shai’rai, but my destiny is far from met.” I gaze into the fire, feeling my connection to my parents, tenuous as ever. “I have to hold on to the hope that I can fix this.”
I blink a few times, clearing my head, and smile at you as warmly as I can manage. “But enough about me,” I say, wrapping a fur blanket around you. “You must be freezing. Let’s get you inside.”
I gently guide you into the fur roll and glance over my shoulder at the sky, devoid of the aurora, as it has been every night for the last year. I whisper, “I have a long road ahead of me.”