She Is The Darkness

47

The storm lingered a long time. A couple times I almost became lost just getting from my shelter to One-Eye's wagon or Croaker's shelter. The blizzard brought air so cold we had to move Smoke into Croaker's place to keep him from freezing. The soldiers suffered badly, though mostly through their own failure to provide themselves with adequate shelter. Captives had warned them that winter here would be much harsher than any they had ever known.

Once again I got to know the joys of sharing quarters with Mother Gota.

Thai Dei insisted she had to get in out of the weather and I have been developing a soft streak as I get older. I allowed it.

She behaved uncharacteristically for Ky Gota. She kept her own counsel most of the time. She stayed out of the way. She helped Thai Dei dig out cold earth and carry it away so we would have more room. She did not say a disparaging word about all the time I spent writing. She worked hard, though I never had been able to criticize her on that account, ever.

She made me nervous. She was almost human. Though she made very little effort to be pleasant or friendly.

The Captain, though, was sharing space with One-Eye and Smoke for the duration. He was much less happy than I was. And I was not happy because I was getting almost no chance to travel with Smoke. When I did stumble over there they would not let me go ghostwalking long enough to do more than check something specific, which was always something on a list they had prepared but claimed not to have had time to check for themselves.

Croaker did not ghostwalk much but he did not let the blizzard and its aftermath keep him from working on other stuff.

Over there in Overlook, Longshadow and Howler were putting in hours as long as ours. And when he was not with his ally Howler, the Shadowmaster had his head together with Narayan.

Singh seemed to have perked up now that he had an almost friend. The Daughter of Night seemed content to ignore everybody and live entirely within herself.

Fighting continued inside the fortress. I almost had to envy our guys who were trapped in there. They were scared all the time but they were warm and most of the time they had enough to eat.

Fresh snow fell every three days. Harsh winds never stopped blowing. I began to worry about the wood we needed to keep going. The snow was so deep it was almost impossible to get around. Nobody knew how to make snowshoes. Probably only three or four Old Crew guys besides me knew what snowshoes were.

I thought it was a great time for Longshadow to send out some of his pet shadows but he failed to grab the advantage. He was not confident that Howler could withstand Lady by himself, nor, I suspect, did he want to turn his back on his partner for long.

The dreams intensified. They diversified as well. I went to the plain of death and the caves of ice and I went to the Nyueng Bao delta swamps to see Sahra and into the hills and mountains behind us where I caught glimpses of Goblin and Mogaba in huddled hiding places trying to wait out the weather.

Those dreams all seemed very real.

Even more real seemed my dreams of Soulcatcher, whose lonesome misery was epic. The place she had chosen to hole up seemed to pull snow and wind both, till the former was deeper than she was tall.

The first two times I suffered these dreams I took them passively. The third night my own presence there seemed so real that I tried tinkering with reality.

The dream did not change but my place within it did.

I experimented much more next night.

The morning afterward, after a not entirely inedible breakfast prepared by Mother Gota, I slogged through the snow to visit the Captain.

"Had to get away?" he asked.

"They're not being bad. The old woman's even fixing food that's palatable. If you're not real picky."

"What's up? Where's your shadow?"

"I guess he didn't want to deal with the snow." The snow was the first thing I had seen that made Thai Dei want to back down. This winter was his first extensive experience with the white stuff.

"None of us do. Anything from the old guy?"

"In this weather? You're kidding." He was still sure that Uncle Doj was up to something. Maybe I ought to dream about him. "What I wanted you to know is, my dreams are getting really strange." I explained.

"Is it your imagination or are you really going out?"

"It feels like being out there with Smoke. Almost. I don't have any feeling of control. So far."

Croaker grunted. He looked thoughtful, seeing some possibilities. I saw a few myself.

"What I thought was, I could make a quick circuit with Smoke to see how closely reality conforms to what I dreamed." I had little trouble accepting the possibility because I had been experiencing such unusual dreams for so long.

"Do it. Without wasting any time."

"What's your hurry? This snow isn't going anywhere for a while."

Croaker grunted again.

He was turning into a genuine old fart.

The flight with Smoke showed me nothing I had not seen in my dreams. It did not show me Soulcatcher. Smoke still refused to get close. But I passed high overhead and saw that she was indeed caught in a side canyon where the snow was extremely deep.