Dreams of the Eaten by Arianne Thompson

Author:Arianne Thompson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fantasy
Publisher: Rebellion Publishing Ltd

SOMEONE WAS PULLING Día’s hair.

She flinched and groaned, adrift on a stormy dark ocean. No distractions. She had to keep afloat. She had to stay awake.

Awake...

A harder pull. A small, sharp pain piercing the aching swells. Just noticing it was an effort. Opening her eyes was another. Remembering was another.

Halfwick. Kneeling there in the moonlight, a speechless, deathless horror. Why was he still here?

“Wake,” Día mumbled.

A third pull, the hardest yet – putrid fingers pinching the scant tufts of her hair. Día flinched out from under his grasp, sprawling backwards as a wave of nausea threatened to sink her. Too much. Too long. She’d taken on too much water.

And Halfwick just knelt there, his arm sinking slowly, as if by concerted effort.

They had to get up. Día groped for his hand, missed, tried again. Her fingers found his forearm, the flesh under his sleeve no longer rotting-soft, but as tough as an iceboxed steak.

Frozen.

They’d stayed too long. The night had caught up with him. His eyes didn’t even follow her, but remained locked on the place where she had sat, congealed into a fixed, unblinking stare.

“No,” Día croaked. She needed him to get up – to go get help. Why did he always have to be useless right when she needed him?

Fire. He needed fire. Just enough to limber up his joints – just enough to get moving.

Día fumbled for something to burn. No wood. No plants. Too weak to tear her cassock – but she had his jacket. She pulled it from her shoulders and wadded it up between her feet, a clumsy crane incubating a filthy denim egg. The wind knifed through her. She shut it out, riding dangerously low on the dark waves as she sought out the tiny sun inside her, kindling it for one last burst of heat and light and love.

Nothing happened.

Not a singe, not a smolder, not even a blush of warmth. Her hair was all gone – her strength was all gone – and Día was nothing now but a wickless wisp, dwindling to extinction in a pool of cooling wax. Her body was failing, and soon she would die.

But Halfwick wouldn’t. He couldn’t. He was her accidental resurrection, God’s obnoxious miracle. She had made him, however inadvertently – had supplied and abetted him at every turn of his journey. And if that wasn’t just a series of fatal mistakes on her part – if she was going to keep believing that she had acted well and faithfully, that her life had served a worthwhile purpose – then she would have to serve him one more time.

Día sank down to lay her head on her knee. She guided his hand to her temple, every inch an effort for his frozen shoulder. Then she closed her eyes and waited.

“Go on,” she said, her voice almost a whisper. “Do it.”

He was a Northman, after all – one potent enough to freeze the noose around his own neck. But freezing was merely the withdrawal of

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