Snow Like Ashes(85)

“What is that?” I breathe.

Nessa looks at me over her shoulder. “They want to meet you.”

Conall steps up to the hole first and plummets into the blackness. A thump tells me he didn’t fall far, and sure enough, two hands shoot back up for Nessa. She drops forward and vanishes into the dark, and only Garrigan remains with me.

“Where does it lead?”

He motions to the hole and offers a weak shrug. “You’ll be fine,” he promises. In his eyes is a perfect blend of Nessa’s hope and Conall’s sternness. Garrigan is the glue that keeps them from tearing one another apart.

I slide across the ground. My boots nudge dirt into the tunnel, a blackness so complete I can only feel Conall staring up at me, can’t find his eyes or his outline.

Two hands reach for me. “Come.”

I exhale and fall forward, letting his thick hands catch me and set me on a dirt floor. The door thunks shut above us and Garrigan smoothes dirt back over it, the quiet swishing of pebbles on wood the only noise.

Fingers find mine, but they’re not Conall’s. This hand is delicate, cold, like a porcelain doll come to life. Nessa leads me to the side of the hall and presses my hand flat on the rock, jagged edges of dirt and thick boulders protruding in awkward bumps. Should I—

I stop. There’s something on the wall, uneven ruts filling almost every smooth space.

“What is it?” I put both hands to the rock and follow the carvings. They’re everywhere, twisting down and up, shooting over the low ceiling and darting across the floor.

Nessa fumbles with something beside me and a quick scraping noise brings a flicker of fire to life. She lifts the candle, her pale face glowing yellow in the light.

Conall watches us from the perimeter of the candle’s light, his disapproving glower a heavy weight. “We don’t have time.”

“Hush,” Nessa tells him. “She needs to see it. And it’s good for us to see it too.”

That makes him quiet, and his eyes dart to the walls around us, his expression relaxing ever so slightly. I exhale, my own tense muscles unwinding.

“They’re memories,” Nessa continues, her eyes on the ceiling. “Memories of Winter.”

Thousands of words curl around this narrow hall, filling the rocks with jagged sentences, stretching all the way down to a door at the end.

One paragraph has been etched in black stone, the words worn with age.


My daughter’s name was Jemmia. She wanted to go to Yakim to attend Lord Aldred University. She was nineteen.


Another is carved into the rock itself.


On the first day of proper winter, every Winterian would gather for a festival in their town’s market. We would eat frozen strawberries and ground ice flavored with wine to celebrate winter’s birth the world over.


More and more:


Havena Green worked at the Tadil Mine in the Klaryn Mountains.


My father died a soldier, fighting on the front lines when Spring attacked. His name was Trevor Longsfield and his wife was Georgia Longsfield.


All Winterians are cradled in bowls of snow on the fifth day after their birth. I’ve never seen a Winterian baby cry during this ritual—in fact, they seem to enjoy it.


Winterian wedding ceremonies are held during the first morning snow. The bride and groom drink from a cup of water, and the water that remains is frozen in a perfect circle to represent unity. The circle is buried underneath the ceremony site.


A duchess of Ventralli visited once and complained that Jannuari’s frigid air made our kingdom unbearable. Her butler promptly responded, “My lady, Spring has been trying to change Winter’s chill for centuries. I doubt you can do it faster than them.”


My eyes swim with words in black stone and carved into the wall, words curved around impenetrable boulders and faded with age. All of them soaking into me, spiraling around in the flickering candlelight. I’ve heard some of these traditions before in Sir’s lectures—frozen berries and celebrating the first day of proper winter. But the rest, babies in bowls of snow, each individual history …

I wish I had known this. I wish I had had these words with me every moment of my life.

“When Angra attacked, he burned everything, archives and histories and books. So we decided to record our history in the tunnels.” Nessa cradles the candle in her palm, the light casting an ethereal glow around her body.

“Tunnels?” I look at her, my forehead pinching.

“When they made the Abril work camp,” she says, “they did so on an existing slum in the center of the city. Winterians built it, though—Spring soldiers just supervised. Lots of the original buildings had basements, cellars that we left intact. They became tunnels for us, a secret world the Spring soldiers didn’t know about. All the tunnels lead—”