34. A Moment of Reassurance for Those FearfulDespondent

34. A Moment of Reassurance for Those Fearful or Despondent

Though the hungry Lady wriggles out of her restraints, and the storm is very bad, Yarrow does not die here. There is a house beyond the trees—a shack, really—which she could not see, and even as we turn our attention elsewhere, that house's inhabitant is scurrying home to escape the snow. Yarrow is in their path, and will be found. This is not to say something bad will not happen to Yarrow later: the Beast, after all, is on its way. It is only to say that, at the moment, Yarrow is safer than we may have feared.

The Beast rises, bit by bit, its mind and appetite sharpening. It remembers the crunch of stone between its teeth. It remembers the Ladies. It tugs against the luminous chain around its neck. The heat beneath propels it; the cold above, which it has created, calls to it. Those statements are all approximate, for to truly know the Beast would be to open a void in the mind.

In a dark place in Black Tower, Frin keeps watch over Hawthorn. He feels a shard of cold in his heart and mistakes it for worry. In her sleep, Hawthorn feels it as well, and it is part and parcel of the nightmare she now wanders in. She shivers, and Frin puts a hand on her shoulder to warm and quiet her.

Asleep before a fire in a shack, the same chill threads its way through Yarrow's dreams, but her fever takes it up and spins it into other forms. She tosses, her skin slick with sweat, half her mind pinned by the hot pain that stretches toward her heart, the other wandering in that cold tangle of fear.

In Grey House, huddled in the kitchen where a low fire consumes sticks of furniture, Arnica, the girls, and Servant feel it, and mistake it for another tooth in winter's maw. Arnica throws a table leg on the fire: she knows there is little left in the house that is safe to burn, and she also knows she will leave soon. Perhaps she will head to Red Tower, where it is still spring or summer. Perhaps she will explore what is beyond the walls. Ban and Grith see the departure in her eyes. It is another bit of their life falling away.

In the West Passage, where Peregrine and Tertius have made camp, Peregrine senses a change in the wind, and above the walls the blizzard roars toward Red Tower. Nothing has ever extinguished that beacon, not war or famine or revolution. But Peregrine fears this winter storm, and shivers in his pink tent.

In Blue and Red and Black and Yellow, lamps burn amid the storm. There is no light in Grey Tower, and never has been. But in all the courts and mansions of the palace, including those in Grey, there are lights. And Yarrow is as safe as she can be.