"It's gotten so much colder since dawn," Roun remarked, pulling deeper into his cloak.
"We can't be far from the place on the Weilder's map," Epiphany murmured, before she turned to me. "Do you think the cold has to do with...
"It's snowing!" I exclaimed. We turned our faces toward the sky. I laughed. "It's the first snow of the winter!"
"Maybe our luck is changing!" Roun said. I leaned back to catch a snowflake on my tongue and a wreath of skyflowers fell over my eyes. Roun laughed.
"We should get moving," Epiphany said. I pushed the wreath up my forehead and looked at her. The excitement that was missing from her voice was not to be found in her face, either.
"What's wrong, Epiphany?" I asked. "You love snow!"
"This feels wrong. There has been no snow all winter. And skyflowers are for midsummer- the last skyflower should have disappeared long ago. Come on." She stood, turned, and glanced back. I hurried after, smiling despite myself.
"But, Epiphany, don't you remember the legends about skyflowers blooming in midwinter? Under snowdrifts and during blizzards?"
"Those are legends. When was the last time you saw a winter skyflower?"
"What can be bad about skyflowers?"
"They're blooming here and now for a reason." Roun caught up with us. Epiphany glanced back at him and then said, "Let's just hurry forward."
A wind picked up and twirled snowflakes between our legs. The fine powder had already covered the world one shade paler. We hurried against the gusts, working to top the next hill. Epiphany and Roun reached the crest a little before me, and they stopped as if frozen. I ran to the top.
The plain below had been devastated. Not a blade of grass grew on it, as far as the eye could see, and the earth had been churned into an almost impassable sea of frozen mud. Even the path had been lost.
"Do we cross it?" I asked.
Epiphany thought for a moment. "The Weilder had to have come this way. We should follow her path."
"NO!" Roun yelled.
"You can't stop us," Epiphany replied, her words sharp. She was about to turn away when Roun grabbed her wrists.
"The Weilder is dead. How far are you willing to follow her?"
"As far as we have to." Epiphany looked at me. I could only nod. She turned to walk down and across the frozen torn earth, and I followed. Roun gave me a desperate look.
"I'm sorry, Roun." And I followed Epiphany. Roun came after, disappointed one more time. I felt sorry for him. I knew he was only looking out for me, but I knew that I was the One and could not stop now. I would save the world. Shivering excitedly in the snow, I followed Epiphany. The skyflower wreaths I had made still hung about her, and I followed the blue through the white.
An image of Epiphany, screaming, flashed through my head. "He wants to get you away from me! To separate us! To tear us apart, as the petals of a skyflower, and fling us away on the wind, blowing ever separate! Even at dusk, when things go to their homes, we will still blow, lonely, because we were pulled apart by him..." I quickly shook my head and drove the image away.
But I still heard the screaming, now distant, carried to me on gusts of wind. Epiphany glanced at me- she heard it too. I looked back at Roun. He walked with the hood of his cloak down, his head cocked, his snowy hair whisking across his puzzled face.
The screaming grew louder. It sent violent shivers up and down my spine. I remembered it like I remembered a dream, but it frightened me like the recollection of a nightmare. I tried not to listen. The sky ahead grew darker, and the day lost another shade of seeming reality. Our walking slowed, and we drew closer together. I took one more step, and the darkness and screaming joined into one horrible monstrosity, a black storm. But its violent spiraling turned upon itself, not shifting one fraction, looking as if it had spun since the beginning of time.
"It's just like the one that destroyed our farms..." I whispered. "Look," Epiphany whispered back. "There."
Between the storm and us lay dead men and women, old and young. And too close was one whose red hair was not entirely disguised by age. Epiphany closed her eyes and turned away. Roun stood silently, head bowed. I stared, unable to break my gaze, unthinking, trying to fight my own horror.
"All of them." I could somehow hear Epiphany's soft words over the storm. "All of them, and it wasn't enough. They needed a power they didn't have."
For one moment, I closed my eyes and breathed. Then I was running, toward the storm.
"Zia!" Epiphany almost exclaimed, surprised.
"ZIA!" Roun yelled after me.
I stumbled over the torn earth, into the screaming. I ran without fear almost to the edge of the black Dark, my feet pounding to the rhythm in my head. "I am the One, I am the One, I am the One, I am the One..." When I had run as far as I had to, when the storm towered in front of me, I looked at it, panting angrily, and yelled.
"Dark!" The storm continued whirling, but it listened. "Darkness that is trying to destroy the world! Darkness which has turned the world sideways and is trying to shake it apart!" I yelled with all the anger I had ever pent up. I shook all of the anger from myself and screamed it into the storm. "I am the One! And I will fight you! And I will destroy you!" The storm whirled in slow violence so close that its winds whipped my hair and pulled the skyflowers from it. The Dark seemed to wait, challenging me. Laughing at me. Just as everyone, everyone but the two nearest to my heart, had always laughed, outwardly or inwardly, against me and who I was. And I had never been so angry. "I WILL! I WILL SAVE THE WORLD!" I leapt into the storm.
I could not tell if my feet hit the ground. The storm was so dark and suffocating that I was forced down. I could not fight or run or scream or breathe. I closed my eyes against the storm and colored spots flew against the darkness within my head. I curled into the belly of the storm, alone and helpless.
Through the eyes that I thought were closed I saw Roun striding toward me, unaffected by the storm. I reached out to him, through the darkness, but a figure, cloak torn off and dressed in blinding white, Epiphany, screamed at him, though I heard no sound, and struggled against him. And then the storm thickened and I could not even see. I felt myself picked up, held tightly, and carried surely toward the light. In one wrenching movement I was torn free of the storm, and in the glaring light, I could almost see the black hair of the person carrying me.
"That was stupid, Zia. Stupid, stupid, stupid..."
My soul crumpled up in disappointment. "Nothing happened."
"No, nothing happened." Roun's voice was not so harsh now.
"You can put me down now."
"Not yet." Roun carried me far away from the storm, until the screaming almost disappeared into the distance. He put me down on my unsteady feet in an inch of snow. I swayed a bit and grabbed onto a nearby shoulder. I had not realized that Epiphany had been silently walking next to me. She steadied me now.
"Are you all right?" she asked. I nodded.
"Let's get out of this plain," Roun said. "You need to rest for a bit, and there's not too much time before evening."
"We can make plans as soon as you're ready," Epiphany said. "Maybe in the morning."
The walk away from the storm was much longer than the walk toward it. I slipped over the rough snow-covered ground, with Epiphany holding on to me, until finally the frozen mud below the snow turned to dried grass. We traveled over one more crest. The storm and screaming and ruined earth were shielded by the hill, and we stopped. But there was no camp to make. We could not make a fire because of the snow, and in any case, there was nothing to burn. We each ate a slice of stale bread and wrapped ourselves in a blanket. Our cloaks had been lost in the storm, which had been so violent that it had even torn my clothes. I was surprised that I had not lost my boots. Even their tough leather had not remained whole in the storm.
There was nothing to do but huddle together, wrapped in blankets. I was too cold to think. I shivered against Roun and Epiphany until I fell asleep.