In the Halls of Snow

There was a deer splayed on the road. Its entrails ran wetly across the stretch of damp earth and slick pebbles, leaving deep brownish stains in its wake. Its eyes were open, a glassy white like the frozen river that ran alongside the track. Meredram circumvented the carcass on the tips of his toe pads, his nails clicking, careful not to slip on stomach or liver, sickly green and mushy; leftover poisons. His dry lips whispered a quick blessing for the unfortunate animal before he went on.
The road ahead ran in undulating ripples over the tail end of the mountains. He had traveled all day and evening was waning into a night that promised fresh snow. He looked in dismay at the frosted grasses and laden boughs of trees on either side. A nice place to look at, not sleep in. He heaved a steaming breath and rubbed his gloved hands together; the new rabbit fur lining was doing little to ward off the chill. His vulpine legs bristled, a breeze ruffling their fur. He wished, like he had so many times before, that he was a full-fleshed four-legged animal, not stuck somewhere between quadru- and biped species. His lower half was not unduly, but his upper flesh tingled with cold despite his many layers. He snuggled his chin deeper into the fluffy neck roll on his cloak and coughed quietly. A kingfisher stirred from the branch it sat upon, staring down at the unmoving water in consternation; dinner was elsewhere tonight. It flew off.
The path forked to the right, and Meredram’s eyes brightened. He’d made it in time after all! He stopped at the intersection and scouted his new route. An expanse of grass-covered dikes seemed to stretch to the horizon and beyond, holding back the frozen waters of the inland sea. Virgin snow abounded, running in organic lines atop them right to the foot of the mountain proper. Tapping his curved walking stick before his own weight, he made his way slowly across. Snow shoe rabbits ran towards the further fields at his noisy approach. A lean vixen peeked from her den to watch his struggled tramp. His cloak and leg-bindings caught the snow and dragged it along, almost nullifying his progress. Patches of ice, obscured by the snow, had him slipping more times than not. Even the thick pads on his furry paws could not give him much purchase. He remembered Alderra’s cloven leg-hooves with sadness; the way she used to jump about the cliffs alongside the four-legged goats, smiling from ear to floppy ear. His teeth chattered. He wished he’d brought his fur tunic.
The mountain remained a cold presence in the distance, tall as his outstretched hand, topped with thick masses of snow. It took him nearly three hours to reach its base, and by then night had fallen, and the last glimpse of it he had caught had been of gray clouds milling about its head. Stars winked between the sky cover at intervals. Meredram felt his way along in the near darkness with his stick and finely-tuned fox ears. They swiveled to and fro, catching the slightest sound. His grandmother had taught him how to sharpen his senses, how to tap into nature’s power and employ it properly so that he might never lose his way again. He was glad of her tutelage as the burning sensation in his four-toed feet traveled up his legs and throbbed in his shins. He did not want to imagine one of the fully human races traveling out here alone, their hearing a mere quarter of his mixed blood’s own, and their sense of smell nearly useless. They would be lost in no time, reduced to nothing more than easy prey for hungry predators. Meredram sniffed accordingly, scenting nothing out of the ordinary. Using the occasional greeting of the stars and the lumbering passage of the veiled full moon as directional markers, the male made his way diagonally up the rocky slope. Only a little further and he should be there. The air pierced his lungs with needles of ice, froze his ribcage into place, and lined his stomach with a painful carpet while he toiled on. Trees began to appear, another sign that he was on the right way. Scraggly bent, ancient crones, born with the mountain in the mists of time past, clung to the fissures and cracks with spindly roots like rope coming undone. The male used them as handholds to pull himself along and over an especially wide chasm. He did not look down, did not want to know what lay at the lightless bottom of the white-rimmed maw.
A ledge appeared above him, a carpet of snow-covered stairs running down one side. He ascended them carefully, his breathing shallow and controlled. His eyes darted ahead, targeting thin patches of ice. He could hear it cracking and glanced behind him. A gasp hung like a cloud before him. A wide crack had appeared a few steps down from where he stood, angular fingers already reaching towards him. Pieces began to separate and slide with a low rumbling back down the mountainside. Meredram turned and clambered faster, swinging his arms about for balance. The ledge was only a few steps away. The ground beneath his feet began to shift. Jagged edges of ice bore into the soles of his feet. He could feel the hot sting of drawn blood seep into his fur, but pushed himself off the ground in a final leap. The male grasped the edge of the structure, and pulling himself up, turned over his shoulder to watch the snow rush away with an eerie drawn-out howl. One of the crone-trees was wrenched from her position and swept along, a twisted corpse in a flood of ice. The man sighed and rose, ignoring the protest from his feet.
Before him a chamber spread, cut in a circular arch into the rock. The granite floor was polished from the many animalistic feet that had traversed it over time. He walked across it, gliding on its dulled sheen as if on a mirror, and halted before a marble pedestal rising from a ring of quartz in the chamber’s center. On it an oblong glass box sat, filled with cushions of velvet; and nestled within the feathery downs laid a woman. Her eyes were closed, her budding lips slack, and her slender hands clasped one atop the other across her unmoving stomach. Her goat ears were bloodless and wrinkled from progressing decay. A bluish hue tinted her flesh, but Meredram did not flinch when he ran a finger across her cold cheeks. He let his gaze wander past her tiny waist, encircled by a woven belt of leather and emeralds, to her rust-colored bristly fur and cloven hooves, dirt-free and placed demurely close together. He remembered the dress, a thick earthy cotton shift with a leaf-green overdress, which he had gotten her on their Binding Day. Alderra had laughed her chiming sweet laugh and hugged him, the garment billowing between them. How happy she’d been.
Meredram fell to his knees, dragging the sarcophagus down with him. It slid off the marble slab and shattered into countless fragments beside him. Shards burrowed into his arms and paralyzed one of his hands. They cut the nerves of his legs and sliced his throat with a bright splash of crimson that stained the smooth floor. He felt his vision begin to blur and groped with his good hand. The woman had come to lay on her side amidst the wreckage, somewhat stiff still. Her russet hair hung in loose waves over her shoulder and back, casting delicate shadows across her brows that breathed life where there was none. The man dragged himself to her and cradled her to him. Blood seeped from his temples and dropped onto her lips, ran down her chin. Memories flashed before his eyes; of Alderra hanging up the washing and scraping dirt out of her hooves; of her cooking and bent double gathering herbs in their garden; of the illness that took her, sudden and violent; and of the doctors that refused to see her, being not of vulpine descent. But even on her deathbed she had smiled up at him, encouraged him to keep going. Held his hand and told him he’d be alright, that in due time they would meet again.
Meredram kissed her gently now, remembering her radiance. He smiled warmly. “I’m home.” His vision flashed to black and he coughed in a fit of excruciating pain, feeling liquid spill past his teeth. He hugged her closer and sank his head to the floor, next to hers. “I’m home.”