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The sun stroked the mountains on their western face. Like the hand of a woman that you love. He’d watched it slowly sink below their gilded, snowy caps and cast jagged shadows stretching east, ever lengthening, as he journeyed home. His gaze drifted absently, tracing the shadows, landing on two distant figures approaching from an enemy city. Another trader, and an animal to carry his goods.

Making good pace now. The fish he caught knocked like claves against each other in the sack, pike and carp and whatever else would bite. Even frozen, they smelled of silt. The wind blew that earthy scent into Ori before it swept up the mountain face, casting powder snow up into the sky from which it descended. The wind was ushering clouds over the valley. The grey blanket paved the heavens. He reached the mountain base as the light turned grey. He chopped wood from fallen birch trees with his hatchet and started a fire.

Small snowflakes flurried in the wind. They caught onto Ori’s eyelashes. Melted onto his cheeks when he blinked. He breathed into cupped hands between bites of brown bread. The last of his final night’s rations. By afternoon, he would have crossed the mountain range. His heart fluttered at the thought of being home. Ori pulled his white goat hide over his head. The snowflakes danced with their infinity on the valley. In the failing light and snowfall, he could just see. They were coming.

He scattered his things in the shrubbery. When he returned, he saw the figures were closer. Hard to tell; perhaps a hundred metres. He stamped out the fire.

Through the thicket, he could see their outlines as they neared. The horse carried a soldier. He wore the same white goat hide as Ori. It had camouflaged into the snow in the afternoon. Another man on foot. His clothes billowed like the smoke still smouldering from the fire. A prisoner.

Maybe twenty-five metres. The prisoner stumbled. The soldier barked, dragging him back to his feet by his chains like a collapsed marionette. They clinked in step as they drew nearer. Five metres. Ori crouched lower into the bushes.

“Thief! Show yourself!”

The wind hissed between the leaves. The prisoner lowered himself to his knees. The soldier hoisted him up by his chains.

He was a woman. The prisoner. Ori rubbed the snowflakes from his eyes.

Snow on the slope gave way under the weight of the fish. They spilled from his sack. Two pikes slid across the snow and in front of the soldier. He grinned.

“I’ll wait all night if I must.”

Her eyes were cast down. Vapour floated between her lips. Ori saw his own breath plume in front of him. He closed his mouth. She reminded him of someone he knew. It was impossible. She was an enemy to his people and had fallen into the web of a very dim-witted spider.

The horse stamped its foot and tossed its mane. The prisoner shrunk from the beast. The soldier drew his rifle, its muzzle like a fish bone. It drifted right to left, taunting.

Ori called, “I’m unarmed.”

Upon hearing his own language, the soldier lowered his weapon. Ori clasped his fingers together behind his head. He rose slowly. The snow crunched underfoot as he circled the bushes. The prisoner stared in horror.

He gathered the spilled fish. The soldier watched him closely. When Ori’s back straightened, so did his. “Light this fire.”

One match failed. Then another. The wind. Relentless. Ori looked up. The prisoner hobbled from foot to foot.

“Quickly, now!”

The fire sputtered. The stronger it burned, the more flakes it melted to curtail its flames. Unending tension. Like ideas of revolution spreading in people. The wider it spread, but there comes a critical point, like with this fire. The glow was gentle like the sun on the mountains.

The soldier cleared his throat, still seated on his horse. “Your assistance is required by the state.”

Ori said nothing.

The soldier hesitated, then continued. “This woman robbed some traders with a male accomplice. One man is dead.”

“The man she was with?”

“No, I’m running around the valley in the dark looking for that bastard! Have you seen him?”

“You’re the only two I’ve seen all day.”

“Which direction were you from?”

“Left.”

“Left?”

“Well, my left, I guess. That would be your right.”

The soldier, stern, looked across the valley in the direction of the river.

The prisoner stood like a lame fawn.

“You saw her robbing the men?”

“She was reported.”

“She, specifically? What’s her name?”

The soldier flushed. “They said a man and a woman robbed them.”

“How do you know it was her?”

“I saw her with a man on the valley today. They ran when they saw me!” the soldier barked. He slid off his horse. “The state requires your assistance.”

“More assistance?”

“I’ll never catch him with her chained to me.”

“You could let her go.”

“She will stay with you until I find him.”

He led her to a birch tree and fastened her chains.

“I can’t afford to wait for you! I need to return to the city before the end of tomorrow.”

“I’ll be back before sunrise.” The soldier mounted his horse. It sneezed. “Your plans will not be affected.”

“But what if she is the thief –.”

“She is.”

Ori whipped around, looking up and down the mountain face, into the abyss of twirling snowflakes over the valley. “Having her here will make me a target!”

The soldier tossed something metal at him and he flinched. It landed in the snow. A handgun.

They galloped away. Ori loaded the gun and scanned the valley. He saw nothing beyond the firelight. He heard nothing except the crackling wood, and the woman’s soft whimpers. She cried with her cheek pressed against the birch trunk. Ori took his scarf and gagged her with it.

He tried to sleep. He faced away from her and the glowing embers. She cried a while, then quietened. He heard her twisting and rolling in the dirt.

He looked[IN1] . Her knees were curled into her chest and she was wincing. Her eyes were turned down, though not closed, so the firelight danced in the glowing crescents of her irises. Like water from trodden snow. The fuzz on her cheeks traced faint lines along the sides of her face. His scarf was dark and wet at her mouth. He couldn’t believe she was guilty.

 “A-are you, in pain?”

Her eyes shot up. A shock rushed through Ori, like snapping a stick under his foot. “Are you hungry?”

He stood. She squealed. Her body squirmed, electrified, a fish thrust from the water, feet shuffling as she rushed to prop herself up against the tree trunk. Ori clawed around in his pack.

He pulled down his scarf, so it hung loose around her throat. He held out tomorrow’s bread roll. “Here.”

Her eyes narrowed.

He tore off a piece and placed it in his mouth. Salty and dry. The roll brushed her cheek. She recoiled.

The wind subsided, but the snow continued to fall. The mountain was silent. The face of God. Immutable. Ancient. Helpless to prevent the suffering of the small creatures around it. He rose at intervals to brush the snow off her clothes, using the back of his hand, careful not to touch her.

“Are you cold?”

She turned away.

He cloaked her in his goat hide. She shone in the firelight like virgin snow. Her amber eyes like the first hint of spring.

A rustle whispered from the mountains. The burglars. The prisoner’s face was one of terror. Ori stood and tried to peer through the snow. Two pairs of green, glowing eyes. One pair disappeared, while the last remained.

Ori pointed. “Goats.”

She nodded.

He gestured to himself. “Ori.”

She turned away.

All night he watched for the soldier. But he never came. All night he watched for ambushers. Thieves or heroes to take the damsel off his hands, plus his catch or his life if she were guilty. Now it seemed somehow like she might be. But they never came.

Just the snowflake dance over the valley that slowed to a waltz as the wind tired and his hopes dwindled. She watched, too. Natures’ concert of millions of fairies in white tutus, gently gliding to their death. Sea of frigid dead bodies across the valley. They covered the night like static on a screen.

Ori shivered into the pale morning. The snow had stopped. Instead of numbing his skin, the cold now groped at his bones. His bounty’s smell was quickly fading, its quality diminishing and with it, the price the townsfolk would be willing to pay when buying them. He must leave soon. Regardless of the soldier. His eyes stung, puffy and tired. His fingers were stiff and frozen, like the pike still in his sack, as he collected his hatchet, the matches, checking for his hooks. He hoped that the news of the thieves had spread far and wide and scared off the other traders, so that the price of his fish would be high tonight. He hoped it was true. That there had been a robbery, at all. He hoped the wretch chained to a sickly birch tree was guilty, as he felt she was. He would abandon her here.

She was watching him. With that hard stare. Shrouded in his goat hide, while he had shivered all night. He looked at her. She turned away. Proud creature. Her eyes were muddy, like river water dripping down his legs. Could a thief be so proud? He saw her on trial in his city, eyes alight, defiant, hauled like a bull by guards to her punishment. He imagined it undeserved. He could save her the anguish now. The handgun lay by his foot. The mountains were silent, expect the flapping of a swallow that flashed by. He picked it up, felt its weight. She was still looking away from him, over the valley. White, wrapped in his hide. He saw her blood seeping through the fur.

She winced as he leaned over her. With pain in his joints, he pulled the goat hide from her shoulders and wrapped it around himself. Her warmth buzzed from its skin. He checked the gun was loaded. She began screaming, and thrashing.

What was he doing?

Ori retrieved the hatchet from his bag. He was not religious. Except when his heart crumpled under the weight of its own indecision like this – and it was something he would never admit. It took many swings. If she was innocent, God would protect her and ensure her escape. If guilty, the soldier would find her again. She could not outrun his horse. Or she would perish in a storm.

The trunk squeaked, then cracked. She didn’t move.

He emptied the gun of its bullets, pocketed them. The woman leaned forward as he tied the gun to the birch stump with some fishing line. She was still crouched. Her chains would unthread from the stump once she stood, but she remained. She watched him like the goat on the mountain.

Why won’t she leave? What did it matter, now? What was done was done; he could not trap her against another tree.

At noon, he reached the ridge. Making good progress, now. The snow had started, then stopped again. He tried to locate the birch stump, the woman or the soldier. What he saw was a nondescript mass of dry shrubs laden with snow. Many trees had surrendered to the wind. They lay dead beside frozen stumps. She was gone.

He thought of the soldier finding a gun empty of bullets, and the fresh snow that challenged the events of the night. Perhaps she stole the gun.

Sunburn stung beneath his chin. They rushed him from above when he was halfway down. He tumbled trying to escape and crushed his leg against a rock. They took his fish and his bag and his white hide cape. His face and hands blistered by the wind and sun, when night came, his limbs deadened, Ori died covered in snow.

Image credit: Denis Agati