Ander - Part 6: Subchapter 95
95
Ander's fingers had gone completely numb, but that was okay. He could dig much faster without that burning sensation.
You're not my son...
He plunged his hands into the ditch.
I don't have any sons...
He scraped them through the snow.
I don't have anyone anymore...
And plunged them back in again. His arms and shoulders ached, but every time he stopped to catch his breath, he would see her, standing all by herself in a vast sea of nothingness, begging not to be left alone.
It was a feeling he knew so well.
"Ander!" Kiana suddenly fell in beside him, her hair and clothes rippling in the wind. A fine layer of frost was stuck to her face.
"What are you doing here?" Ander almost had to shout just to be heard. "This isn't safe!"
"I know it's not!" She stuck her hands into the snow all the way up to her wrists and scooped out as much as she could, making a shallow little trench.
"Get back to the wall, Kiana!"
"I refuse!"
"Why!?"
"Because I understand, Ander!" That wasn't a scream, is was a heart-ripping shriek to rival even this bitter wind. "I understand what it feels like! I understand what you've been going through! I - no..." Her hands hesitated. "I can't say that as absolute truth. These are not my people. These are not my family. These are not my friends. I do not know their names. I do not know their customs, their pastimes, their favourite foods. I do not know anything about them other than the faces they make when they throw rocks at me and speak of tearing me apart and burning me the next morning. I know nothing of their deeds other than what they did to you and what they tried to do to my family. If I am to be entirely honest with you, Ander, I think I... I think I hate your people. I do not say that easily. I have never hated anyone before. But these things beneath our feet, they are wicked, mindless creatures, and I will never, ever forgive them for trying to take you away from me. And if I had to choose between the lives of a thousand monsters, or the single little life growing inside of me, I would condemn them all to die without a second thought."
She said all those things, and yet her small hands were still digging through the snow, right next to his own. Her dainty fingers were still curled into hooks. Her face was still set and determined as she lunged forward and pulled back, grunting with exertion each time.
"Then why help me?" Ander asked. "If you really feel that way, if you really hate them so much, why try to save them?"
"Oh, Ander..." she said. "Don't you see?"
Ander was focussed on the trench yawning wider and wider beneath his knees. To him, the whole world had been reduced to an endless mouth of snow and two pairs of hands: his own; rough and callused, and Kiana's; small and delicate. He did not immediately notice that one of them had disappeared until he felt it caressing his cheek, cold as ice, but still soft and loving. He allowed his gaze to travel across her arm and up to her eyes. A single tear was slowly rolling down her face, cleaving the patch of frost on her cheek in two.
"It's you, silly. It's always you," she said, smiling. "When I saw you jump down, when I saw how you didn't even hesitate, I realised something. I felt it right here." She clutched at her heart and curled her fingers into a fist, scrunching up the fabric of her dress. "I see them only as monsters, and I don't think that will ever change. But... looking out over all this snow, all white, no colour, no movement, no life, seeing everything erased and knowing it was all caused by my breath... it made me feel like a monster. It made me feel like I was on the other side of the bars, throwing rocks, laughing and spitting and looking forward to the sacrifice. And if I feel so much pain for these creatures I hate so badly, if it hurts so much just thinking about what I've done to them... then... how much worse must it be for you? I love you, Ander. I love you so much. That's why I want to help you. That's why I want to dig for you until my fingers bleed. But, Ander, there is one more reason. One more reason I want to save your people. It's something I have known for a long time, but you have yet to understand."
"One more...? Kiana, what are you talking about?"
She looked up. All the frost had vanished from her face. "You make people want to follow in your footsteps."
Ander didn't understand what she was trying to say.
That was until he looked back the way he came.
He had thought he was alone down here. He had thought he would be the only one to dig through the snow. He had thought he was the only one stupid enough to try and save the monsters who had come to destroy everything they hold dear.
He was wrong.
The pass was absolutely swarming with Foxes, all working together. They hunkered down in groups of up to a dozen or more, digging with improvised tools. They carried buckets of snow over the wall and came running back with the empties. They pulled Wolves from certain death and wiped their faces clean. Everywhere he looked a tiny miracle was unfolding, far too many to take in all at once.
Renna was helping a she-wolf over the tilted wall. They were both hunched over, barely able to walk, and every step they made together sent a small trickle of snow sliding down across their footprints. The she-wolf glanced back, and Ander was shocked to see that it was Aisa, Renna's birth-mother, the one who had slapped and beaten her own daughter in front of the entire tribe for saving his life. There were clear tracks of tears across her cheeks and, even though Renna was the one doing most of the supporting, Aisa was holding her so tightly to her side, as if to embrace her and shield her from the wind at the same time.
She seemed so different now.
At the very top of the wall, staring down at the pass in utter slack-jawed confusion (an expression probably not too different from Ander's own) was Ivio. There was an old brown coat slung over his shoulders, flapping in the wind, and he was holding on with both hands to keep it from flying off. A middle-aged Fox with grey ears was pulling on his elbow, urging him towards the safety of the woods, but Ivio was frozen in place, and it wasn't too hard to figure out what he was looking at.
Dorin was down there, and even though he looked absolutely dreadful, with a dark splash of coagulated blood staining the back of his head, he had joined with Rufio and Michael and a bunch of other Foxes and was frantically digging through the snow, shovelling out big double-handfuls as fast as he could.
That was the Wolf that had tortured Danado. That was the Wolf that had killed Lana. That was the Wolf that had nearly killed Hezzi. And now...
Now he was risking his life to save the lives of others.
He was different now.
He wasn't the only Wolf down there, though. Nilia and Mateo had developed an efficient rhythm together, taking turns to shovel through the snow, neatly falling into each other's gaps. Mellah and Sorrin were working together, too, digging through the fine white powder with buckets that had previously contained arrows. Hezzi was near the base of the wall, digging in a frenzy like an animal, launching clumps of snow out between his legs.
Ivio suddenly shoved the coat back into the Fox's arms and stumble-slid all the way down to the bottom, where he fell to his knees and immediately began to dig with his bare hands.
This was the same Wolf who would sometimes cackle like a lunatic for no apparent reason. This was the Wolf who would sometimes wake the entire tribe in the middle of the night with bloodcurdling screams. This was the Wolf who wanted nothing more than to kill and maim. This was the Wolf who would have killed Ander, had Danado not been there to put a stop to it. This was a Wolf whose very name was born from insanity, but now, even though he was injured, even though there was blood seeping from his hands and feet, even though he was shivering so badly he could barely get his arms to move, even though it was so cold his breath plumed out in front of his nose in thin clouds of white vapour, he had turned down the promise of shelter and a warm fire in favour of clawing through the ice cold snow.
He was completely different from what he was before.
Voices echoed through the pass, bouncing back and forth between the unforgiving walls of the mountain.
"We got another one over here!"
"Gods almighty he's just a kid!"
"Get 'im out! Hurry!"
Kiana hugged him close. "You bring out the best in people, Ander. No matter how deeply it's buried."
And breaking away from the general chaos nearer to the wall, stepping carefully inside the trench he had carved through the snow on his way over here, fighting against the wind, was one of the strongest vixens he knew.
Sarah.
"Andrew!" Her voice was nearly swallowed up by the roar of the gale, but she powered through, keeping her head low, and dropped down beside him.
"Sarah? What are you -"
She leaned forward, shoved her hands into the snow, and scraped a big pile of it off to the side. She gritted her teeth against the biting cold and went back for more, gasping and grunting.
Ander could hardly believe it. This vixen, who had surprised him time and time again, still had the power to leave him speechless.
"Why?" It was all he could manage. Just that one word.
She stopped digging only long enough to look him in the eye. Her gaze was direct and unwavering, possessing a unique kind of strength known only to those such as her. "Because what kind of a mother would I be otherwise?"
Those eyes. Ander was certain she had had those exact same eyes on the night she fled through this very pass with a tiny Wolf in her arms. He was certain she had gritted her teeth in the exact same way. He was certain she had kept going just like this, just for him.
Because she was his mother.
I nearly killed myself to keep you safe! I loved you so much, and I was forced to take all that love and give it away! No, it was taken from me! You were taken from me, Andrew! I would have given anything, anything to be your mother for just one minute longer!
She knew it was Shekka buried beneath their feet. Of that, Ander had no doubt.
She was given such a beautiful gift, a precious gift, and to hear her say those things about you... I just... I can't...
And yet she was still here, by his side, digging through the snow, scraping her fingers raw. Because...
I thought I was saving you... I tried so hard. I bled. I cried. I almost lost my life, and that would have been fine by me. Anything... anything to keep you safe. I wanted you to grow and be healthy. I wanted you to live. I wanted you to have someone to call 'mother', even if that someone wasn't me...
"Thank you..." Ander said, meaning it from the bottom of his heart. "Mother."
Sarah's hands froze halfway down the slope and she looked up sharply, a shimmer already forming in the corners of her eyes. "Andrew? Did you just...?"
"Thank you, Mother," he said it again. Tears fell from his eyes unabated. They burned like fire in the freezing cold.
Sarah threw her arms around him, held him tight, cried against his shoulder, and it was as he was being embraced by these two vixens from both sides that Ander marvelled at how powerful the love of a mother could really be.
Sarah, his birth-mother, who had risked her life a hundred times over to protect her child, who had kept going long after any other would have perished.
Kiana, the mother of his unborn child, who had stepped in when he was at his most vulnerable, who had toppled a mountain to protect their baby.
The two of them, here, together.
"Come on," Kiana wiped her face on her sleeve and put her shivering hands back into the snow. "We can't waste any more time!"
Sarah sniffed and wiped her eyes with the palm of her hand; first one side, then the other. "You're right! Come on, Andrew, put those big old hands of yours to good use!" She bent forward and started to dig, fresh tears now falling into the trench they were steadily opening wider, handful by handful.
Two mothers working to save a third.
Ander plunged his hands into the snow alongside the hands of the strongest vixens he knew, and he dug. He dug until his lungs burned in his chest. He dug until his shoulders screamed. He dug until his fingers left long streaks of blood in the snow with every scrape.
He dug until a seventh hand suddenly appeared, sticking out of the maw of the earth, a cold hand with bone charms hanging from the wrist.
A hand covered in frozen blood.
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