Page 101 of Heart of Snow
Blackness.
Even after opening my heavy-lidded eyes, there was only blackness everywhere. I sucked a slow breath, grasping at the air that refused to find my lungs. Putrid air, thick with stink and damp. Thick with death.
It meant I’d survived.
My numbed hands were folded over my chest, still too dead to move, but beneath them I could feel the slow rise of my ribs.
One breath, one pulsing heartbeat, then nothing. Another breath, another heartbeat. Silence. Time had slowed to just this here and now, measured by nothing more than the dense pulse of blood coursing through every heartbeat.
And with each pulse I became more alive, more awake to my surroundings.
The air around me was warm, close to my face as if something hovered over me, but until my hands had the strength to reach up and investigate, I refused to consider what it might be.
Heartbeat upon heartbeat passed as the fog of my mind cleared and feeling slowly returned to my extremities. My toe twitched. My fingers wiggled. My limbs awakened.
My hand quivered as I tentatively raised it up to touch a domed surface, smooth as glass and wet with moisture, which I traced down on either side of me to meet with whatever table or platform I’d been laid upon. I was closed inside some kind of glass coffin. Trapped. A sudden panic threw me into action, and I kicked against the lid, my feeble legs landing dull on the thick glass. I had to calm myself, to slow my frantic breathing and think clearly. The glass was wet and the space warm. If it was tight enough to store my body’s heat, it might be tight enoughto seal out any fresh air too. I’d need to move quickly, to use my breath and strength efficiently if I hoped to escape.
With my body still trembling, I thrust my arms against the lid, but they were too weak to earn any movement. Keeping my hands on the glass, I pulled my knees to my chest, wedging them between myself and the coffin and hoisting the lid enough to let in a rush of reeking air. When my wobbling limbs could no longer bear the weight, the lid dropped around me with a heavy thud.
I let myself rest, took in a few more breaths, then tried again. This time the lid moved a small distance, pinning my gown beneath it when it fell back down. No air seeped inside. I had no notion how wide the platform was but knew if I could scoot the lid little by little until I came to the side of the table, I could create a gap under the lid to let in more breathable air.
Fabric ripped the next time I lifted my legs and arms to push the lid. More musty air rushed in, more fabric tore with each lid lift, and slowly I made incremental gains. My breath was coming faster with the exertion, eating up the outside air before my muscles were ready to hoist the lid again, but my lungs demanded it. When I dropped the lid for the seventh or eighth or twentieth time, a steady stream of cool air raced in at one side.
I’d reached the edge of the table.
I greedily sucked in the vile air, my whole body sagging against the hard stone as I took in breath after breath until my heartbeat settled. Though my muscles shook with fatigue, the fire had eased out of them, letting me focus on something more than pain.
Ilsa had not come. No lanterns sat by, lit and waiting for me to wake. There were no blankets or food and drink at the ready. Either I’d revived too soon or too late, or no one was coming for me.
I chuckled a dry, humorless laugh. Against impossibility, I’d managed to survive the toxin, only to die of starvation, trapped under glass inside a crypt.
A sudden scurry made me freeze. I listened intently as tiny claws scratched over stone, then faded, leaving me to the iron silence of the dead. How many cold, hardened bodies were in this crypt? What did they look like now that time and vermin had eaten their flesh?
The hairs on my neck raised, but I reproached myself. They were only empty bodies now, with spirits gone. I needn’t fear what couldn’t harm me. I shouldn’t think on them at all when I had to plan for escape.
The coffin lid was the first obstacle. I’d have to push my way out from underneath it. Once free, I’d feel my way toward the wall and follow it to find a door or opening of some kind.
My stomach grumbled and wriggled. No point waiting to start.
Pulling my knees back up to my chest, I set my tired muscles to work, grinding my sore shoulder, hip, and backbone against the stone as I returned to moving the lid portion by portion. The gap of air at my side grew wider, though still not wide enough for me to fit through. I pushed more, widening the gap until I’d scooted far enough that the right side of my body hung mid-air off the table. There was no leverage on that side for me to push off, leaving me unbalanced when I tried to lift the lid again. With the lid teetering at the edge of the table, I dared only the slightest of movements, but it was enough that the lid tilted dangerously. And when it finally tipped, it pulled me down with it. Glass shattered over the stone floor, and I landed in the piercing remains, my head slapping against the ground hard enough that bright circles erupted in my vision.
My mind repeated the sound of cracking glass as my thoughts turned hazy. Pricks of pain morphed into burning wounds allover my arms and legs, stabbing up my stomach and face. And I could smell blood.
As I shifted to kneel, shards tinkled around me, cutting into my bare palms and gown to stab my knees. I pushed searching hands out into the blackness until they hit something hard, like stone, then used the stone slab to gingerly pull myself upward. My brain pounded, and if there’d been enough light to see, I was certain the blow to my head would have turned my vision double. As it was, I had to brace myself against the stony support until the hammering turned to a steady ache.
My shoes crunched through glass as I slid my hands over the slab’s edge to walk around the platform. A sticky, webbed thing brushed my face, and I frantically batted it away, but when I reached for the platform again, my hands hit stone much sooner than expected. Only this stone was different. Marbled and with little hills and valleys of intricate carvings. A sarcophagus.
My muted shriek bounced over the walls, and I skittered away, blindly stumbling out into dark nothingness. I swept my hands back and forth in front of me, willing myself to be calm, to not panic. I focused on the clip of my shoes and the whisper of my gown across the paved floor, but something else whispered too. I froze.
A faint, steady hissing came from behind me, exactly in the direction of the sarcophagus.
Terror chased out reason, and I ran, flailing my outstretched arms back and forth to keep from plowing headlong into anything, but I hadn’t accounted for the low platforms. I slammed stomach-first against another stone slab, my hands barely saving me from knocking my head against another sarcophagus. Still, I’d touched it, and it started hissing too, joining its raspy voice with the other. I backed away carefully, and when my shoulders bumped into a tall stone column, I pressed my back hard against it to follow its wide arc.
The hissing was behind me, on the other side of the column, and fear tempted me to sink to the floor in a heap, but I had to find a way out. Braving the dark once more, I set my hands in front of me and walked out into the emptiness, forcing my steps to be slow. I moved in the direction I prayed was a wall, keeping one hand high and the other low enough to discover a platform before I collided with it.
My pulsing head was turning dizzy. The panting, frantic breaths of stale air likely made the dizziness worse, but every time I calmed my breathing, the hissing behind me grew louder.
I kept each foot moving in front of the other. Only a few more steps. The wall had to be close.
