Drektah’s snow-laden boots dragged through the layers of whiteness blanketing the mountainside. Blistering snow spattered her exposed cheeks; she bundled her fur cloak tighter to stave off the cold. Through the slated bone aperture over her eyes, protecting her from the most blinding rays reflecting the sun on snow, she saw him. Her brother laboured forward, ploughing a path for her. When he tired, they would trade off again. That’s how it had been for weeks.
They would stop to rest every few hours, cloaking themselves in a shared wolf’s fur stitched with heavy leather seams. They would eat dried meat rations, chewing through chattering teeth. Then, they would pack up their measly belongings and the other would take up the lead through the snowy mountains, forging through the untouched snow.
“The ancestors will favour us,” Anik told her as they huddled beneath the furs in exhaustion.
“I don’t feel favoured,” Drektah muttered. “I feel cursed.”
“The lights,” he said, looking up and breathing in the musky furs. “They’re brighter here. We’re close. I can feel it.”
She, too, had watched the colourful lights snaking across the inky black sky. But she didn’t share his hope. Not while their peoples’ fate rested on them.
The lights were the ancestor’s spirits, the Lidth, sent to guide them to the Ancient One. The ancestors chose Anik to bear the Lidth. The elders sent him with their best warriors. Drektah insisted on going too. Now, she and her brother were the only two left.
“We can do this.”
Though the furs trapped their body heat, she couldn’t help the familiar shiver passing up her spine; it curled around the back of her neck like the claws of a feral beast. “We never asked for this.”
His smile was the only true warmth. “I am here.”
A few days later, it took him, too, starting just as it had the others. They sat beneath the fur sharing the last of their waterskin when Anik unbandaged his foot and revealed his three smallest toes completely blackened. “I will be fine,” he said, shoving his foot back in the boot.
But of course, he wasn’t. And soon the shaking started. Then stopped.
She left his body to freeze like the others because she couldn’t do anything else. And still, the lights in the sky gyrated and whirled, ushering her on.
She was alone on the mountain.
Drektah stood on the rise of a cliff; below spanned a large valley. Nestled within the colourful layers of rocks were signs of greenness, and a half-frozen stream with cracking ice where a waterfall pushed tiny fissures through the thick, rippling sheets. She’d forgotten the sound of running water or the sight of anything but the mountain’s blanched indifference. She dropped her cloak to expose her bare face to the sunlight pouring through the clouds.
The ancestors had led her, just as Anik promised. “Sielijkt,” she said in whispered prayer, touching a gloved finger to the spot just above her eye. Faith renewal.
Drektah broke through the ice and dunked her face into the water, sucking down as much as she could before bursting out of the icy stream with a gasp. Her face numbed in the air. Only when her aching belly was full did she notice the subtle rumbling behind the frozen waterfall – and the shadowed shape of a colossal beast.
Its great opalescent eye blinked at her through the ice.
Drektah stumbled back, falling over her feet and landing painfully.
The beast unfolded itself from the rock, splitting the waterfall and sending massive icicles smashing to the ground. The lights of a thousand spirits twisted around its night-black body in shifting greens and blues. It stretched to its full height and stood like a small mountain, then levelled its great serpentine snout to her, its great wings quivering around its bulk.
The beast’s voice shook the air as more Lidth lights sprang up around its glowing eyes. “What are you doing here?”
Drektah fell to her knees. “Ancient One!” she cried, somehow finding her words. “I have come on behalf of my people.” Her voice cracked at the last.
The Ancient One tilted Their head, and she somehow knew it was a gesture to go on.
She raised her trembling voice. “An unending cold sweeps our land, blanketing us in ice and death. Our elders sent us to find you. My brother and I travelled for months. Please – can you help us? Can you warm the lands before my people starve?”
The Ancient One’s eyes roamed the blanched slopes beyond the green valley. “You would ask me to stop nature Herself?”
Drektah’s voice was a hoarse whisper. Had she come all this way for nothing? Lost her brother, for nothing? “I ask that you spare my people.” She couldn’t hold back the tears. They froze halfway down her cheeks. “Please.”
“Where is your brother, girl?”
Drektah swallowed the ache in her throat. “I am alone.”
The beast let out a low rumble. Its massive snout bent towards her until it was mere feet from her face. Drektah didn’t dare speak as its breath bathed her with mulch-scented air. “I cannot leave this valley – but I can bestow what you seek.”
“– Bestow?”
“Take their light and heal what has broken.” The Ancient One’s voice was a thrum, more inside her head than out. Before she could speak – before she could ask what They meant – the great beast dipped Their head and gently touched the tip of Their snout to Drektah’s upturned face.
A burst of sky lights exploded and Drektah collapsed into darkness.
When she awoke, she was alone in the valley, lying on packed snow. No running water; no green grass. She blinked up at the starlight. She’d grown so used to the lights above that their absence felt like a void.
Then, she felt a strange warmth and looked down. She radiated light. It danced over her, almost playful. She felt a pulse of something in her. Strength she hadn’t felt before. A pull to the sky, drawing her to her feet. She stood and the lights hugged her.
“Drektah…?”
She spun around. No one. She was alone.
“Drektah.”
“Brother?”
“Yes, I am here.”
“Here. Where? I don’t see you.” You are dead, is what she thought.
“The lights,” her brother’s voice came clear as if he stood beside her. “I’m in the lights. I am with you.”
She felt the power spark at her fingertips and alight around her. “Really?”