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2

"Nilia, I'm - Oof! I'm okay I - Oof! I swear!" Mateo was cold, he was hungry, he was tired, he was fairly certain that Nilia had cracked at least four of his ribs during her overly enthusiastic hug (even the non-enthusiastic ones were no laughing matter), and now she was slapping the snow off him with great big swipes of those giant, bear-like hands of hers, possibly giving him a concussion on top of everything else, but despite all that, he was happy. He was relieved. He never fully realised how worried he had been until this very moment, when it all came sliding off his shoulders.

She was alive. They both were. He had actually kept a promise for once.

"Are you sure? You might be in shock. You could have a broken neck and not even know."

"I'm pretty sure I would have noticed if my neck were broken."

Mateo was about to ask her if she was okay (a ridiculous question, since he was certain she was built even sturdier than the mountain that had almost come down upon their heads), when she wrapped her arms around him yet again, pinning his arms to his sides. He braced himself for yet another one of her bonecrushing squeeze-fests, but this time was different. She simply held him, shivering ever so slightly, taking long, slow breaths.

"You scared the hell out of me, you rat bastard," she whispered in his ear.

"Then I need to do a better job. I told you I'd feel your fear for you, remember?"

She chuckled. It was such a light, beautiful sound. "I think... I think I can finally start to feel for myself again. Thanks to you."

Mateo desperately did not want to cry in front of so many of his fellow Foxes, but, just like with all his emotions, he was absolutely rubbish at keeping it all in, and the tears simply came.

"Do you think you can stand?" she asked.

"Seriously, Nilia, I'm not hurt," he said, hoping that the crack in his voice was just his imagination.

They stood up together, half-hugging and half-supporting each other. Mateo's legs felt like boiled beanstalks, but they held him up just fine, which was a relief because Nilia's comment about shock and broken bones had freaked him out a little more than he would have liked to admit.

"'Scuze us, love birds, coming through!" Bartholomew shot by on the left, followed closely by his brother, who was carrying a rusted old pewter pot above his head for some reason.

"Muffin stuffin; bread an' butter, et cetera, et cetera!" he said, zipping by with nary a second glance, and he wasn't the only one. There were Foxes streaming by all over the place, not moving back towards the valley, but forward, where the gigantic white wall of chilly death had come from, carrying all manner of odd equipment with them: pots, spades, planks, and even ladles (probably nicked from the basecamp in the woods).

"What is everyone doing?" Nilia asked, tilting her head in the most quizzical manner Mateo had ever seen. He couldn't be sure, but he had a pretty good idea of what was going on.

They were being Foxes.

"Come on!" He grabbed her by the hand and started to climb up. Or perhaps 'scramble' would have been a better way to put it. With the wall leaning in on them like this, it was like trying to walk up the wrong end of a ramp. Clumps of snow kept sliding out beneath their feet, revealing the planks of what was once a perfectly level walkway. One wrong step and they might end up tumbling all the way back into the woods.

Mateo was just about to reach out and grab one of the broken posts at the top when Nilia stopped dead in her tracks. He looked back, thinking that maybe she had stumbled, but she was just standing there, looking around in what could only be described as sheer panic.

"No, this isn't right..." she said, shaking her head. "This isn't..."

"What's wrong?"

"Everything!"

She was behaving like a trapped animal. Her eyes darted back and forth, as if looking for escape. It took a moment for him to realise that his fellow Foxes were the source of her distress. They kept filing past her, and those with torches in their hands temporarily cast an unforgiving orange glow upon her terrified face. They clambered over the jagged edge of the wall and dropped out of sight, and each time it seemed like she was just a hair's breadth from grabbing and pulling them back by the ears.

She knows what's happening, he thought. And she knows better than anyone how it could undo everything we've fought for, everything she's fought for.

"They can't do this, Mateo!" she screamed. "They don't know what they're doing!"

"Nilia."

"We have to stop them! We have to -"

"Nilia, look at me!" Mateo didn't mean to shout, but it got the job done. She stopped trying to look everywhere at once and focussed her emerald gaze on him instead, but she was still afraid. He could tell by how hard she was squeezing his hand. She was always so careful with him, even when she went a bit overboard, but not anymore. There was no tenderness in her grasp, only terror, and he was finding it very hard to keep a straight face. "I know this is foolish of us. I know we might be slitting our own throats. I know you've gone through hardships I cannot even begin to imagine, and now it looks like we're about to take everything you've fought and bled for and just throw it away. I understand that you would do anything to protect your friends and your new home. It's because you care so much, Nilia. And it's because you care so much that I know you can understand why we have to do this. Why I have to do this."

She slowly shook her head, and Mateo was horrified to see that he had caused a tear to form in those beautiful green eyes. "You don't understand, Mateo," she said. "You think Banno's words were bad? You think their charge was bad? You know nothing! They were buried before they got a chance to do anything, and you should get down on bended knee and thank every one of your gods for that!"

"Nilia -"

"They're monsters, Mat! They don't understand mercy or compassion! They don't know what love is! All they have is hunger, but they don't try to get rid of it! They cherish it! They live to feed, because that's what monsters do! They came here to rip us apart and eat our flesh and drink our blood! You think I'm joking when I say that? You think I'm exaggerating? They're monsters, plain and simple, and if they have to freeze to death, if they have to choke on snow and suffocate down there, then let them! If it means the rest of us get to live, I would watch each of them suffer and die with a smile on my face! It's better than they deserve!"

"You don't mean that."

"Yes I do!"

"No. You don't. I know you don't. Because, if you really did mean that, if you really did feel that way, then you wouldn't be any different from them. You wouldn't have tried so hard to save Hezzi and all your friends. You wouldn't have shown mercy to those who came chasing after you. You wouldn't have led the way through this very pass with a dying Wolf on your back and hope in your heart! If you really did feel that way, Nilia, then you would be just another monster howling for blood. You wouldn't be here, with me. You'd be down there, buried in the snow. But it's because you're here, on this side of the wall, it's because I can hold your hand that I know you're not just another monster! You're different, Nilia! You're the most different person I've ever met! And it's because you're so different that you must be able to understand!"

"Different? Let me tell you something about being different, Mat!" Her lips were slowly curling back, showing the tips of her fangs. "For them, being different is a curse! They root it out and crush it underfoot whenever they get the chance! Do you even know what they did to the Wolf who was named for being different? They tortured him! They cursed him! They spat on him! They struck him to the ground! They bit him, scratched him, stabbed him! They broke him so badly that for the longest time I believed he was dead! And he did it for you! He did it for all of you, so you could live, and now you and your stupid tribe are undoing everything he nearly died for!"

"Oh really? Then tell me, Nilia, why is it that Ander was the first one to jump down?"

"Because he - What?"

Mateo dragged her the final few steps up the slope (no easy task without any traction) and gestured to the entire pass with a sweeping motion of his hand. "Look."

*

"Look!"

Nilia didn't want to look over those wooden spikes. It felt like, if she came too close, they would stab her right in the throat. Why did he have to be this way? Why now? He said he understood, he promised he would feel all the bad things for her, so why couldn't he see that this was a terrible mistake? Why...

Why was he trying to make her feel like a monster for protecting him?

She could pull him down from there. She could do it so easily. She could grab him and carry him back to the basecamp. He probably wouldn't even fight very hard. They could wait there. They could wait for his people to fail and for her people to -

Die.

She felt the burning hot sting of tears in her eyes and angrily wiped her arm across her face before they could escape. Before she met him, it would have been easy for her to simply turn around and walk away. But he wouldn't let her. She could tell by the gentle way he was squeezing her hand. It was like he knew she wouldn't do it, that she couldn't do it. But what did he know that she did not? What could give him so much faith?

She did not ask any of those questions, but Mateo gave her an answer regardless, as if he could do more than simply feel her emotions for her, but look into her very soul as well. "Nilia. I have faith in you."

The bitter sting in her eyes was back, but she didn't bother to wipe it away this time. She didn't need to hide her tears from him. She didn't need to hide anything.

She stepped up, grabbed hold of a slanted spike, and looked over the edge.

She remembered the moment she first set foot inside this valley, how clean it was, how pure. The endless blankets of snow, covering the hills. There were no marks of any kind, not even the tell-tale tracks of rabbits or birds. It was so beautiful it stung her eyes just to look at it.

She remembered how she had felt, standing right at the very edge of the treeline, too terrified to take even a single step forward, terrified of breaking all that white, defiling it with her presence. She remembered thinking that they never should have come here, that they never should have allowed evil into this peaceful place.

That they never should have left any footprints at all.

"Do you still think we're doing the wrong thing, Nilia?" Mateo asked.

Nilia could not answer. She didn't need to.

There were Foxes everywhere, scurrying back and forth, yelling and shouting, erecting torches to see by. They were down on their knees, hundreds of them, digging through the snow with whatever was at hand, working with the same speed and precision she had come to expect of Fox kind. Some groups used spades and picks still left over from the wall's construction to fill buckets and pots with heaps of snow. Other groups then took those makeshift containers, carried them all the way back to the remains of the wall, and dumped the contents over the side before hurrying back, creating big, constantly moving circles of Foxes. Some of them had even resorted to digging through the snow with their bows. In the hands of these Foxes, weapons that would have taken lives were now being used to save them.

And almost directly beneath her, right at the base of the wall, were Renna, Hezzi, Taberah and Sorrin, digging through the snow with their bare hands.

Renna was barely keeping herself together. She kept wiping at her eyes with a hand covered in frost and snow, but that didn't stop her. She kept going, digging and digging even as her tears fell into their steadily growing trench.

Sorrin grunted, took two big cauldrons filled with snow and passed them on to Taberah, who passed them on to a pair of Foxes who nearly collapsed beneath their weight.

"Come on!" Hezzi shouted, digging like an animal, scooping quick handfuls out between his legs, not stopping for even a second.

Nilia reached up and closed her hand over her mother's bear claw necklace.

Be strong, my enka...

There were footprints everywhere; crossing over and under each other in random profusion, coming and going, zigging and zagging, broken black shadowlines inside the white. And leading away from all this, headed towards the centre of the pass, was a separate line of footprints. Nilia followed them with her eyes until she found Kiana, bent forward, struggling through the storm with her arms up to shield her face, but that wasn't where the footprints ended. She was only following yet another set of footprints, leading up to a large hole in the middle of the pass.

Ander's head suddenly appeared over the lip. His face was covered in a fine layer of frost. He heaved a big double armful of snow over the edge, then immediately went back for more, scraping snow out of the hole as if it were a mortal enemy. And that was where the footprints ended. The first footprints. Despite everything that had happened to him, despite everything they had done, he had been the first to jump down. And why?

Because he was different. Because he was Ander.

And so was she.

Nilia pulled herself up so she could join Mateo, standing high on the ruined wall. "It's scary when you do that," she said.

"Do what?"

"Like you don't know." She squeezed his hand. "Now come on. It's time for me to add my own set of footprints to this world, and I aim to make them deep."