footsteps breaking through the ice-rimed snow comes to him. When he turns, he finds a girl and a boy trudging over the top of a shallow rise toward him. Their footsteps mar the otherwise perfect layer of snow. This seems like an affront-though to whom, and why, he is not sure.
Nasim shivers as they approach. Rarely does he feel cold, even in the wind, but here somehow the chill sinks beneath his skin, draws the warmth from his bones.
The girl is young, perhaps only twelve. Her hair is light brown, almost golden, and she is fair of face, and if she cannot be considered beautiful now it is only because there is still so much youth in her features. One day not far from now, she will blossom, and men will look upon her with awe. The boy watches Nasim from behind unkempt hair. He is dark of expression, as if he has come against his will.
It takes him time, but he realizes that the girl is Yadhan, as she was before she was sacrificed-or perhaps how she might have been; he is unsure. And the boy is the other akhoz, the one who fell to Yadhan.
When at last they stand before him, Yadhan holds out her hand.
He does not take it, and she stares at him, her expression turning severe. And then her gaze is drawn downward to the place where the hearts of the akhoz lie beneath his shirt. She frowns, and Nasim becomes conscious of their weight. He can feel, as the wind blows softly over the snow, a telltale pulsing. They are not in time; somehow this is more disturbing than the fact that they are beating at all.
Nasim takes her hand, and together the three of them head toward the rise, except now the footprints are gone, and they are trudging through virgin snow.
The going is slow and arduous, for the snow is deep, but they continue until they reach the ridge. Below them rests a lake, its surface frozen over. Though the surface is marred by cuts of white, the water beneath is dark and foreboding. Nasim stops, feeling suddenly worried over what he might find should he continue. The boy turns and walks back toward him with grim intention until the girl steps in his path. The boy stares at Nasim over her shoulder, but then he lowers his head and stills. Only then does Yadhan turn to him and take his hand.
She is warm, warmer than she was only moments ago.
She seems to notice, for she meets his gaze and smiles, as if to console him. What is happening he doesn’t understand, but he knows they have little time left together.
The three of them continue toward the lake, slipping down the slope, which becomes steep closer to the lake’s edge, and soon they are out among the ice, the snow dancing in circles as the wind plays. Nasim feels something at the center of the lake. There is an aberration there among the dark undersurface of the ice.
He drops Yadhan’s hand and begins to run. He knows what he will see, but he is still horrified when he slides to his knees over Rabiah’s form. She rests beneath the surface, her eyes open, her hands splayed against the underside of the ice, hoping for release while knowing it cannot be.
Yadhan steps beside him. The boy is near but seems reluctant to approach.
“How do we free her?” Nasim asks Yadhan.
Her eyes are drawn to the horizon.
“ How do we free her? ” he yells, and at last she pulls her gaze downward. She kneels next to him and places her hands on the surface of the ice. It melts at her touch, but then, as if in response, a hissing and cracking sound comes. She jerks her hands away. Shards of ice fly from where her hands once were. In moments, all signs of her presence are wiped away as the surface freezes over once more.
As it has always been since his awakening, Nasim feels Adhiya. He feels the hezhan who stand just beyond the veil. They would come willingly if he only could pierce the thin shroud that separates them. But try as he might, he cannot. As always, there is something that holds him back.
He slams the surface of the ice, hoping it will yield. He beats his fists raw, and still there is no change.
Rabiah stares at him. Her eyes take in the sky and the girl next to him, and as she spreads her hands wider, the weight of the ice, the immensity of it, seems to dawn on her, and she becomes frantic. She claws at the ice. She pounds at it, but her movements are slowed, a fly caught in sap.
Nasim stands and stomps upon the ice. A surge of fear wells up inside him. Rabiah came at his bidding- his choice, not hers-and now she sits below him, separated by ice as thick as the world itself.
“Help her!” Nasim screams.
Yadhan tries. She places her hands against the ice once more. It melts in an area much wider than it had the first time. She sinks until her knees and shins and feet and hands are below the water. Her strength flags, and the ice begins to encroach. It moves quickly, the entire surface of the lake cracking as the water solidifies around her limbs. She pulls one arm free, but she is becoming trapped.
The boy stands by, staring only at the horizon.
Nasim moves to him, slipping on the slick ice. He grabs the boy’s robes, shakes him and points to the girl. “You must help!”
The boy turns his head and stares vacantly at Nasim’s hand upon his shoulder, and then he looks to Yadhan, who has begun to whimper from the cold. In response to Nasim’s plea, he merely returns his longing gaze toward that which lies beyond.
Nasim slides back to Rabiah, who has sunk lower beneath the surface.
Yadhan pulls at her arm. She is losing what strength she has left.
Nasim shivers with rage, but he realizes in his moment of panic that he can feel Adhiya. He can feel it through Rabiah. He coaxes the feeling, and it grows. It seizes his gut, and soon it is all he can do to remain standing. He grabs his midsection and curls inward, a gesture he’s intimately familiar with.
The aether, so present moments ago, vanishes, and he feels as though here in this one place the world is not divided. There are not two worlds. Only one.
He can touch the hezhan. They are not separate from him. They are part and parcel of his existence, and he of theirs. He does not bid them to come. He does not demand. It is they, it seems, who voice a call to action, and it is he that responds.
The place that lies at the center of him begins to warm. The feeling grows as the landscape around him brightens. The sun, which had been cold and cheerless, is now bright in the sky, piercing. The feeling swells until the blue sky peels away and all that is left is a searing brightness that fills him and the land around him.
Suddenly the world falls away.
He plunges into water.
The darkness of the lake surrounds him, as does the suffocating water.
He sinks, searching for Rabiah, as the surface above begins to mend, threatening to trap him here. He swims downward, and sees her reaching up toward him. He grabs her arm-giving her some small amount of the fires that rage within him still-and propels them both up toward the surface.
The ice has closed over, but he will not be denied. He breaks it with his fist, and soon he is at the edge, pulling Rabiah up and into the air.
She gasps, coughing and retching, but she is here, alive.
Yadhan helps them out from the lake. They gain the solidity of the ice as Nasim releases much of the heat within him. He does not, however, release it completely. He is afraid to. If he cannot retain his hold on it, he will lose it once more-of this he is sure.
Rabiah stares at him, unsure of herself, unsure of this place. Nasim knows she cannot stay. There is work to do yet, but she will die if she goes on.
“Take her back,” Nasim says.
Yadhan, her face serene and inscrutable, looks to Rabiah, and then she goes to the boy and guides him to Rabiah’s side. The boy seems surprised that Rabiah is here, but after a moment this passes, and he takes her hand.
“Go,” Nasim says. “I will find you.”
Rabiah does not argue, and as the boy leads her away, shivering and shaking, she nods.
Soon, they are lost behind the nearby ridge.
Nasim already knows that the boy will travel to the horizon after he returns Rabiah to Erahm. He will go, and it will not be to Adhiya. He will be lost to the world, lost to the next-and not just him, but the soul of the hezhan that had occupied him for so long. In a way it is a blessing-the two of them locked together, struggling with one another for so long, was cruel and inhuman-but in another it is sad. Profoundly sad. They will not learn or grow or teach. They will not be reborn to learn from their mistakes. They will never reach their higher plane.
Yadhan waits. She was able to lead Nasim here, but now she doesn’t know where to go. Neither does Nasim,
