Born out of death on shores of great lake,

Herald with songs for just their poor sakes

Flee to the city, a fortress of stone

Protect the people of flesh and bone

Establish your army, on mountain throne

Children you be, yet lives you have sown

Dagger and dart they both have owned

Till light and dawn, to them are loaned

***

        Lier shuddered; he felt as if his body was wrapped in ice. He fought to open his eyes in the dark and found himself staring at the bright of a full moon. The sky was clear but black with inky night. The teeth-chattering cold didn’t cease, in fact, it pervaded his being. The only warmth seemed to come from the tips of his fingers. Weak from the freezing temperature, Lier let his head loll to the side.

        Cava trembled; she felt frozen, tender and fragile. The thought came to Cava she felt like a twig in the dead of winter, dead and very brittle. Her teeth clenched together as her body woke to the wintry air around her. The only warmth seemed to come from the tips of her fingers. Daring to twist her neck to see, Cava peeked out one eye.

        Lier almost forgot the cold around him when he saw her. The warmth came from the body of a girl. They were lying in ankle-deep snow, hand in hand both clad in mere pants and a sleeveless tunic. For some reason, Lier thought he recognized the girl. It was this thought that caused him to stumble on the distressing fact that he could not remember his past. She was pretty; light eyes and pale skin. Her hair, a complimenting mix of yellow and red, but she seemed familiar. Where did I see her before?  Lier wondered.

        Cava blinked, afraid her face would reveal her alarm or that her alarm did in fact show and her face would crack from the cold. The warmth came from the body of a boy, almost her exact age. She was on her back, in ankle-deep snow, her hand in his. She thought he looked like a friend from her past, not that she remembered her past well enough to know. Who am I? Cava gasped and struggled to her feet. The boy leapt to a stand and helped Cava up, as she rose, she noted how unsteady the boy seemed. He was cold too, not impervious to the biting, frigid world. If it weren’t for their combined warmth, Cava would have pulled away, and if it weren’t for the cold that drained the color from her face, she might have blushed. The boy was taller than her by a head, but he was thin. His face was pallid; as she was sure hers was as well. His hair was yellow-red, like copper; Cava felt she truly knew this boy.

        Lier cleared his throat and tried to speak, but his throat was dry as a desert and his tongue felt rough against his lips. All he could manage was several steaming breaths in the cold night air that blew into the girl’s face, much to his chagrin, and dissipated into the dark sky. “Who are you?” the girl asked. Lier coughed several times, working heat from his innermost being up into his chest, hoping to defrost his lungs.

        “Lier,” he answered. Lier would later come to question how he knew his name, when moments ago it eluded him.

        “I’m C-Cava,” the girl replied. Both children wondered how on Earth they could have ended up in this predicament, wrapped in each other’s arms for survival. “Do you know w-where we are?” Cava asked Lier. Lier felt his heart stop pounding for a moment and feared he would die. Where was he? He looked around to see if he might glimpse a recognizable landmark. Everything looked alien to Lier. No milestones, marker or familiar sight greeted his sore eyes. Then he laid eyes on the vast lake. The expanse of ice must’ve been the size of a large sea, huge enough to swallow great ships and drown their cargo.

        “D-do you know the lake?” Lier queried Cava hopefully. Cava blinked and looked beyond Lier’s shoulder; neither wanted to move for fear of letting the cold into the last bastions of warmth between them. There was a thin layer of ice over the surface and it reflected the light of the moon, illuminating the land as far as the woods in the distance. But the lake itself looked as foreign to her as the land had looked to Lier. At least, Cava thought, I thought Lier was familiar. I don’t recognize the lake at all! “C-Cava?” Lier nudged the top of her head with his chin, hoping she hadn’t fallen asleep or worse.

        “I don’t k-know.”

        Lier swallowed hard and fought the panic that welled up in him as a response to the morbid answer. He tried to remember anything that might let them survive the night. They didn’t know how long the night had been or how long it would stretch out for. They didn’t know if the other was a murderer or a thief. They didn’t know how they came to their present state or how they had come to be at all. They didn’t know where they were or how to get anywhere better…no, they knew one way. Lier shook his head to clear the vile suggestion from his mind; death was not preferable to life, at least, not as far as Lier knew.

        Cava trembled as her blood thawed, she could feel herself shaking against Lier’s chest. How much more warmth was she getting than he, he was folded around her. True, Lier wasn’t providing adequate protection from the cold, but he had less fortification than she did. While Cava’s mind followed that train of thought, something about the north-eastern horizon caught her eye. It was the land at the mouth of the dark woods. There was a faint halo of light over the crests of snow! Light! What did that mean? “C-Cava?” Lier whispered, “Do y-you see that light?” Lier couldn’t believe it when Cava answered, “yes.” Fearing his hope would be the end of him, Lier offered his theory.

        “L-light means a town,” Lier felt his body wrack with the cold, “town m-means…”

        “People!” Cava gasped; together the pair made their way slowly towards the light. Lier’s hope raged fiercely against a cold, logical thought. What if the light was merely dawn? Lier knew he couldn’t make it as far as the other side of the woods before his strength failed. Cava seemed to pull Lier through the drifts of snow and he felt grateful to have been stuck on icy shores with this girl. Lier thought a more bitter, or logical person, would have simply abandoned him to find civilization alone. After all, what did it matter if he died? Who was he? Nobody would miss him. “Hey!” Cava reached up and slapped Lier’s face sharply, “D-don’t die on me n-now!” Lier didn’t have the strength to reply as it was; the cold had gotten to his lungs again. How long had he lain in the snow with nothing but a pair of trousers and a sleeveless tunic? He wasn’t even wearing boots!

        The pair cleaved deep tracks in the snow as the dark of night painted the landscape a light blue. Dunes of ice and hidden pits fashioned a formidable landscape for the pair to traverse over. Cava sensed Lier didn’t want to be a burden; he was trying to keep pace with her. Cava hoped that if one of them could make it, it would be Lier. But logic interrupted her thoughts, Lier was weaker than she and she was warmer. She’d have the better chance, but what could she do for Lier? She couldn’t fold around him to give him warmth! That would result in both of their frosty demises. She stumbled, but Lier caught her and stopped her from falling waist deep into a pit of snow. Neither said anything; but the light never seemed closer and their collective strength waned faster than either had anticipated. Finally, after moving at least half a mile from the lake shore, Cava and Lier succumbed to the cold. Falling to his knees in the snow, Lier helped Cava into a sitting position. Lier knew that if he was to be found dead as a doornail, he wanted to look as if he’d fought for every last second.

        “D-do you k-know how old you a-are?” Cava asked.

        “S-sixteen a-about,” Lier replied.

        “M-me t-too.”

        “H-hold on C-cava,” Lier urged her, “w-when you h-have s-strength, y-you m-may m-make it!”

        “Y-you h-hold on,” Cava trembled, “t-the v-villagers m-may f-find us.”

        Lier wanted to point out the many holes in Cava’s thinking, but didn’t have the strength. He felt strange; dying hadn’t been on his mind much. He felt his life had been too short. I was born on a lake shore, half frozen. I died a mile from that lake shore, fully frozen and no more than an hour later.

        “They’re here!” a man’s voice gasped. The last thing Lier remembered was the silhouette of a short black horse.

Cava opened her eyes in a warm bed. The blanket seemed to be made of wool and it felt like it was taking the heat from the fireplace and transferring it into her body. Refreshed didn’t begin to explain how revived she felt; she was restored! Cava tried to recall her last recollection in the snow. Lier was drifting away; he looked blue! A man on a small horse had found them, or had it been a man? He rode a horse like a man, but his body was a mass of shadows and what she had seen of his face revealed a pointed beak but not much else. Cava slid out of the bed; she was wrapped in a robe. Her tunic and trousers had been replaced by a warm wool robe. She could see her shirt and pants hanging by the fireplace to dry and she could also see where Lier’s clothes lay. Cava crept as silently as she could to the door on the far side of the room. Pressing an ear to the door, she heard two voices.

        “We are fortunate Squire Quinn owed us those favors,” a female’s voice whispered. Cava thought she heard something soft, like the movement of paper.

        “They were fortunate the seers had foretold their appearance,” a man’s voice replied, “and not a moment too soon.” Cava recognized it as the voice of the bird creature. Another soft paper sound echoed the man’s voice. It was a strange voice to belong to a bird, not high or fast. Deliberately slow and rhythmic seemed to match the voice’s description. Like the heartbeat of a calm beast, powerful and soothing.

        Cava opened the door a smidge and peeked through. There were two people in the next room, a kitchen area it seemed. A make-shift bed was made on a bench near the stove, and Lier lay there like Cava had on the bed: wrapped in a wool robe. Sitting at the table among candlelight were two people, indistinguishable by appearance. They wore long white robes and hoods that concealed their faces. Set beside each individual was a handsomely crafted metal mask, one a grinning feline, the other a scowling crow. The two sat facing each other, the man (whose voice Cava recognized) had his back to her; they were playing a game of cards. Suddenly Cava felt a silence descend on the table. The woman (Cava assumed the woman was the one farther away and whose face was hidden behind a cowl of shadows), slowly moved her hand to the feline mask and lifted it into the shadows of her hood. In unison, the male counterpart moved and seized his mask, securing it to his face. They stood and the man turned to face the door. “Little mice with big ears,” the crow man chuckled.