Somehow home was a foreign concept now, taking one slow step in front of the other. It was like she didn't really have a home and never had--just memories of a house, a yard, and her parents' faces. She had no fuzzy feelings deep in her gut that she could turn to for comfort out there when every part of her got so cold and desperate for any concept of warmth, even metaphorically. She had no warmth. She had nothing but snow, snow, snow. There were many trees and plants and even small animals, hunkered down against the weather, all around her, but she was born and bred in the suburbs and had no clue of what to do with all the natural stuff out there. Oh, the benefit of hindsight, to remember those extreme survivalist shows she'd never really enjoyed watching on television, and thinking how nice it would be if she'd watched just a few episodes. Or even school English classes were full of old books someone had written a hundred years ago about kids surviving on their own--Hatchet, The Wild, or My Side of The Mountain--if only she'd chosen any of those books to read and do the dumb essays on instead of the novels she'd picked out that were more fun.
It was a side-line of thought, but soon it thankfully drifted away as her ears became hard and frostbitten in the cold and her fingers began to seize up and her feet started stumbling more until she no longer had the strength to think much at all. All she could think of was taking one step forward, and then another, and travel yet more miles on and on, hoping she'd stumble upon some small hidden inlet or village to hunker down in. She also feared that she might end up in another big city by accident where she'd revel in the peace of being somewhere she could get a meal and place to stay, even knowing she'd have to leave it right away because her pursuers were more likely to find her in more populated areas simply because they were more likely to search through cities than the stark wilderness she found herself in.
She finally saw a light peeking out at her through the trees, and in just a few more steps she collapsed on the doorstep there. She gave a weak knock at the door, and it opened as much as the security chain would allow.
The women behind the door said something to her, no doubt in Russian, which she was still terrible at speaking several days ago when she was well-fed and warm on the train. She weakly shook her head. The woman sighed and switched to muttering at her in English, scolding her for being so stupid as to travel in the storm and asking her how she'd gotten there, so far away from anywhere else.
"Please let me stay here," Alyss said, barely aware of her surroundings. "I need to stay here. I need to stay away from him, from Aeron."
The old lady looked at her in alarm. "Aeron, the prince?" Alyss didn't think to ask her how she knew of him; she just nodded. Her eyelids grew heavy and she slowly fell into slumber. "Wait, little girl! Aeron, tell me about why Aeron wants you," she said. Alyss just shrugged. Sleep overcame her.
She woke up in the morning to clothes and the smell of a hot breakfast. "I can do this much for you," the lady called out from the other end of the cabin, "but no more. I won't help you if trouble comes after you." She muttered that she knew it surely would, but she wasn't going to put her neck on the line for the type of person who could survive a storm like that.
Eventually, the lady went out to the town market to do her daily shopping, and Alyss followed along behind her, now renewed and energized after one night's sleep so she felt ready to go exploring already. She bundled up in the extra warm clothes her host offered. Her ears and fingers and toes had already returned to full health and showed no signs of frostbite, so she doubted it was really necessary for her, but she took the extra layers offered to her anyway just to comfort the woman.
The marketplace was more like the bazaars she'd seen in Hollywood movies, full of tents and collapsible stalls the merchants were unpacking at that moment. There was already a respectable clump of people milling about to buy wares, and the merchants called out to passersby to convince them to buy this or buy that. A knot of people was engaged in haggling over the price of giant beets the size of her head next to her, and another group was talking over the benefits of a new rug. It was surely a surprising market, as many of the pieces for sale were fine goods and fancy furniture. Some of them reminded her more of the style of things in the palace than what she'd expected to see in Siberia.
"How can you guys get such expensive things out here?" the girl asked her guide.
The woman just shrugged and went around to the stalls she wanted to see, buying some radishes and parsnips with a side of beef. She explained that their town traveled a lot and did quite well for themselves. "We can keep these things," she added with a sharp eye at her guest, "because we look out for each other with our arms, and no thieves have been able to take anything from our people yet. It would be wisest not to try," she added. Alyss blushed and protested that she hadn't meant that at all, which her host eventually seemed willing to accept.
"I wouldn't
