Followed by Fros(40)

“Oh.” I pushed back my chair and collected the work in progress, unfurling it on my bed. “It’s going to replace the dog drape. Aamina brings me the yarn.”

“Why not ask Prince Imad for a new one?”

“Because,” I said, refolding my amateur mosaic, “I like it when my hobbies have a purpose. And why bother Imad—Prince Imad—when I can take care of it myself?”

Lo set the bookmark on the table. “Show me where you struggle.”

Smiling—I couldn’t help it—I took a chair at the table and turned back to the first word that had given me trouble. I hadn’t marked it, for I had spent so much time trying to decode each hiccup in my reading I could relocate them with little effort.

“Here,” I said. “Baadhi Suto. ‘Suto’ is a chair, but . . .”

“It is a compound word,” Lo explained, underlining the term with his fingertip, the nails cut short. “Baadhi is ‘infant.’ This is an old term for basuto, or ‘rocking chair.’”

“Ah,” I said, rereading the sentence. I turned a few more pages. “And this one?”



When Aamina arrived the next day, along with the newest party of snow harvesters, she brought with her a large basket filled with dried spices, rice, milk, and a small kokud chicken wrapped tightly in linen.

“I have decided,” she said, winding her long braid back into a bun, “that you must learn to cook for yourself. I will teach you how to make the best curry in the Southlands.”

I thanked her profusely. In all honesty, I knew how to cook only a few dishes, as I had taken very little interest in “slaving” over ovens and cook pots during my life in Euwan. I hesitated to participate, not wanting to botch Aamina’s recipe, but after stretching a second pair of gloves over my fingers, I could slice meat and herbs with little damage. The recipe called for a number of bizarre-sounding vegetables, but due to the drought, those were in short supply. I hoped next year’s harvest would prove more bountiful.

I still struggled with the spicy flavors Zareedians—Aamina especially—seemed to love. But beyond my occasional choking and running nose, the food tasted magnificent, and I couldn’t help but think Marrine would love it.

Aamina left me enough supplies to make the dish on my own after she left, and I tried to the next day but to little avail. I burned the bottom of the pot—something horribly tricky to clean, when a decent scrub meant freezing the guck to the metal—and ice crystals swam through the finished product, but I ate it until my stomach ached. My meal seemed to solidify into one chunk of ice right at my center. For the first time since receiving my curse, I panicked over throwing up, worried that the bile would freeze in my throat and suffocate me. Fortunately, I kept it down, and Sadriel did not show up to tell me how close to his world I may have come.

After only a week, Lo visited once more, this time with the dawn. His pounding on the door woke me from a fitful sleep and lodged my heart right into the base of my skull, it frightened me so.

He looked tired, but smirked at me, the kind of look a man gets when he’s up to no good. Whether in Iyoden, Zareed, or the world beyond, it was an expression common to all men.

He held several planks of a strange wood in his arms. He dropped them right there in the doorway, along with a small linen sack of nails, a handsaw, and an iron hammer.

“What on earth is this for?” I asked, panting. I still had not caught my breath from my frightful awakening.

“A bookshelf,” he said. “Where you’ll fit it is up to you.”

I stared at him.

“You like your hobbies to have a purpose, hmm?” he asked, apparently thinking himself rather clever. “Build it, and I’ll bring you more books.”

I opened my mouth to say something but ended up just gaping as he turned from the cavern without another word, a gust of snowless wind tousling his black curls, unprotected without a mashadah. He rode swiftly back into the city. After all, the captain of the prince’s guard had little time to spend on cursed white women.

I looked at the wooden pile before me and smiled. Though my father’s trade was building wagons, I had never built a thing in my life. Still, I figured it would take a great deal of time, and time was something of which I had in abundance.

Shivering, I brought the supplies inside and tried to determine how I could piece them together. A bookshelf seemed simple enough, but I wanted to do it right, for I knew wood was a valuable commodity in Zareed, and I did not want to waste it.

When Aamina came again, I asked if she could bring me some writing utensils. In my wait for her return, I grew impatient and began nailing the shelves together on my own, which resulted in me splintering one of the boards.

Once I had a pencil and paper—the pencil hard to grip—I sketched out what I considered the best design for the shelf and went to work.

It was not easy.

My trembling hands and stiff fingers struggled with the tools. There was no one around to hold the boards for me while I nailed them together, so I ended up in many a strange position as I tried to work them out. I desperately wanted to finish the project before Lo’s return, whenever that might be. I knew he would visit again, and I looked forward to it, though not entirely for the promise of reading material. Lo was a stern and quiet man, but I had already learned that he could say in a moment of silence what a normal man would take an hour to relate. None of my other friends among the guard had come to see me, though I could hardly blame them. I cherished Aamina’s visits, but, deep down, I knew she came on Imad’s orders. Lo came of his own volition, and that meant worlds to me.