My dear, consider the fate of an ice zombie. It was NOT how I would have chosen to see the future after a thousand years in the grave, but few of us are born or reborn in a way that matches our desires.

I will say this: I was special, even at the start. When they pulled me from the rubble, from the freezer in which I had entombed myself, I was blind and disoriented. My head felt as if it had been thrown against an anvil (repeatedly) with a stunning force that brought waves of nausea when I tried to stand.

I fought to see through obscuring curtains of light, but I could feel well enough. There were hands pulling at me, arms lifting me, bodies pressing close. With what reason I could muster, I knew this must be a rescue effort, with firemen, the National Guard and the like digging through collapsed buildings to find those still alive. And I could not believe I had made it, that I should be among the lucky few. How could I be so fortunate?

Then suddenly, I remembered my loss. I recalled the reason I had been hiding in our basement, and it had not been in anticipation of doomsday. Had it been a kindness then, to be rescued into a world without you? Even before I could see what was going on, the thought stabbed at me with the sharpness of a knife.

When I tried to speak, I could not. My tongue seemed small, oddly withered in a mouth suddenly spacious and unmoving. My lips were numb. My jaw was frozen, as if broken by the blast that had entombed me. With a quick pang of self-preservation, my thoughts turned to how badly injured I must be.

As I tried to take stock of myself, the shifting curtains of light slowly parted. The veil of my shocked awakening passed from my eyes and I saw, clearly, that what I had assumed to be a rescue was instead a nightmare! Before me stretched a scene of horror my darkest dreams could not touch.

The nailless, yellowed bone and ragged flesh of a decomposing hand closed about my arm. I started, but as I pulled away the head of the thing that had grabbed me swam into view, its hair worn in patches atop a visible skull, the still human face pulled taut, as was the rest of its leather skin, mere remnants of flesh stretched over enduring bone. The head itself sat atop exposed vertebrae, with no veins or arteries, no muscles to provide the movement which nevertheless was there as this thing turned its crystal, glittering eyes my way.

In that moment I went nearly mad, fighting to convince myself a nightmare had fallen upon me in the grave. But when I could not awake, when the phantasm refused to retreat from my gaze no matter how forcefully I willed it to, then I began to despair.

Though I tried to scream, no sound escaped my unmoving lips. For a time I could not even blink or close my eyes, and so I was forced to watch my undead captors handle me. My eyes bounded from one horrific vision to the next, and, if I could have breathed at all, I would have been panting in terror.

There were no firemen, no police. The Red Cross had no relief stations set nearby. It was not even our world! The sky had been replaced by a vaulting ceiling of ice. Above me stretched a cavern of blue and white, lit by brilliant lanterns spaced on either side of a stream, a quickly running torrent of the coldest water that was busily digging its way through the center of the ice. And all those about me had been digging too. The ice was full of cavernous holes, some as big as subway tunnels, and in places great supports had been erected to keep the frozen mountain above us from collapsing. An arched bridge, wide enough for vehicles, joined the two sides of the stream.

Taken as a whole, the scene before me presented the elements of both a construction site and an archeological dig. The “workers” were divided into groups, the ice into well defined quadrants. A few machines stood by, resembling excavating equipment, but mostly it was the workers who moved across the debris-filled floor of the cavern. With voiceless resolve, they chipped away using pick and shovel, some working at the ground while others concentrated on frozen walls which reached a hundred and more feet above them.

I became aware that I was not alone in being resurrected, but that I had been herded along with others newly freed from the grave. At my sides stood ragged zombies, looking just like the workers on the ice, but my fellows were as docile and disoriented as was I. My immediate impression was that those about me resembled that ice man, Ötzi, whose famous corpse was found in the Alps, frozen somewhere between Austria and Italy for over 3,000 years. Where it could be seen, their skin was brown in places, sickly white in others.

On the whole they were thin and skeletal, their bones showing through uniformly even where folds of fat once hung or a woman’s breasts had once shown full in life. All now lay flat with the appearance of wrinkled clothing. And of the garb they wore, I recognized tattered and burned remnants of jeans and t-shirts, long ruined business suits and party dresses. On some I saw threads of color that might once have been ties.

My new companions had a leathery appearance, their eyes sunken but uniformly possessed of a strange glitter, as if their frozen eyeballs had become mirrors, reflecting the flickering blue light in the cavern. And I wondered if I looked the same.

Lifting my right hand, I took some comfort in the sight of it. It seemed old, no doubt of it, as thin and drawn as my grandmother’s hands had been when she passed her first century. The nails were yellowed, the veins discolored. But there was no bone showing, no rotten holes in the flesh.

Still I was terrified, numbed. As the pounding in my head receded and what I had taken to be nausea died away, I realized I could feel little to nothing. Certainly, I was not cold, neither was I shaking with fear.

In glimpses, I saw things that I would only come to understand in time. I watched as the undead wore themselves out tearing into the ice, uncovering every conceivable bit of debris and wreckage. Bricks and glass bits. Metal pipes and wheels. The trunks of long dead trees. Little was handled with care, and there was a great urgency about the work that escaped my comprehension.

I saw one of the workers, a bit more ragged than the rest, tumble across the slick surface, his leg twisting as he fell. With a wicked crack, the long bone snapped upon the ice, tearing through the worn flesh that surrounded it.

As the creature tried to right itself, another bone gave way, this time in its wrist. The poor creature began to flail, with arms slipping against the freezing wet, its head banging down again and again to discolor the ice. It was obvious the thing had worn itself out. Approaching quickly from the shadows, a hooded figure dressed in black shuffled across the ice, moving toward the fallen figure.

I could not quite see what transpired next. The hooded figure carried at its side a small satchel of the same dark color at its cloak, at first giving me the impression of a doctor hurrying onto the scene, ready to treat an injury. The satchel was opened and the man (I supposed it was a man) spent a moment pulling something from within, but what it was I could not make out. After more motions, that same something was placed against the struggling corpse. This action had immediate results. The struggling corpse collapsed in an instant and lay unmoving, after which, responding to a kick from the hooded man, the body slid a few feet on the sloping ice. The fallen creature now seemed nothing more than the bag of bones it should have been, or at least would have been in any world other than this.

Before I could contemplate this scene any further, suddenly I had a task. I did not know from whence it came. I heard no order, but with perfect clarity I moved forward across the ice to grasp the fallen worker. Together with another “zombie,” we pulled the ragged remains of the fallen one toward the stream flowing through the center of the cavern. With my hands, I pushed the body into waters that were deeper than I had first supposed, and the corpse tumbled under and was gone. It floated away with other debris and the many broken bits that I could now see were being constantly fed downstream.

Later, the dark robed one came forward again, near where I had been set to digging. As I worked, I watched. This time the monkish figure drew forth a bottle. Being closer this time, I was in a better position to see the object he held, and I felt this must be the same object he had drawn from his satchel before.

There was nothing special about it. It seemed a tiny bottle, nothing more than a small glass cylinder with a little style in its workmanship and design. But by the way the hooded one manipulated it, I knew it must be precious to him and to those like him. His motions were careful, his considerations deliberate.

When the cap was twisted free, a spray of black ink hit the ice. It was a stain that began to wriggle and move. The sight brought to mind the notion of a large, invisible pen writing across the ice. The squiggles were its calligraphy. Within seconds the writhing doodles disappeared beneath the cold surface at a spot several feet ahead of where I and a few others had been working for hours.

Again, my actions changed. Something over which I had no control went off in my head and I redoubled my efforts while more of my leather-skinned companions moved in to work beside me, shoulder to shoulder as we threw shovel and pick against the barrier of brick and crumbling timbers before us, a wall of wreckage protruding through the ice.

We were pushing through a collapsed structure, and, as we took it down one wet, cold piece at a time, I soon came upon a hand. It twitched. Even so, one of the fingers was broken and bent at a wild angle. As I brushed away the detritus of a thousand years, I saw that the bone was exposed along the arm, but still there was movement, and soon a machine was brought in to help lift a heavy beam from atop the body.

As I watched, standing still now as if I had been told to pause and wait, I was surprised to see the black, sinuous ink make its appearance again, this time writing and flowing all about the body we had found, a corpse which continued to move and flail under the rubble, much as I had pounded against the inside of my freezer-coffin when first awakened.

Soon we had the remains fully uncovered, this corpse not much better or worse than the rest of us. It appeared to me that we had found the body of a young woman, still dressed in the filthy rags of what had once been her wedding gown. I helped the newly- awakened creature up, as it seemed I must, and took her to stand in the growing line where I myself had been placed at first, against a wall of ice with the other new arrivals.

I was coming to understand there was nothing merciful about our being pulled from the wreckage of our homes and cars, of our churches and schools. To our rescuers, we were no more than an army of hands and arms. A disposable labor force that could find its own replacements as it pushed on through this incredible cavern beneath the ice.

But the knowledge of what we were looking for was not mine, and so far the only savior I had seen was that mysterious monk in his black robes, one who seemed as uncaring as death itself. My arms were compelled to move, my feet to shuffle forward. I could still reason, but I could no more speak or choose my actions than might an endlessly repeating mechanical arm.

When I looked for my fear, I found it had gone. When I sought for hunger and fatigue, they were nowhere to be found. There was only the endless dig forward. On and on without reprieve. Then I began to wonder, when would my arms snap and the little man in black hurry forward with his little bottle. When could I at last rejoin the thankful dead?

In the Age of Discovery

Maya

Upon Awakening, the Child Ascends

Maya’s awakening was quick, and not altogether disconcerting. Her eyes opened upon a maze of trees, small things compared to previous ages, but tall and thick enough to form a shield against the driven cold. There was snow at her feet, fragile underbrush, and icy mosses. It seemed familiar somehow, for indeed Maya in her windblown form had inhabited the stick and the stone of it but moments before.

Nearby, a large rabbit scratched the base of its ear with an oversized hind foot. Its white fur was giving way to a summer coat of rusty, grayish brown. Maya saw the rabbit clearly, and in its eye saw a reflection of her own appearance: of the beautiful white mane and the horn that spiraled up from the horse’s head, of the new physicality her thoughts now inhabited. She had taken on the guise of a unicorn, a beast whose sturdy hooves were far more appropriate here than the fins of a mermaid or the bare feet of a little girl.

The rabbit, without knowing why or being asked, sprang off in the lead, and Maya followed. The leaping ball of fur and flopping ears took the unicorn deep into the forest, beyond even the range Maya’s ghostly form had taken before it coalesced. They arrived at last near the base of a broken hill.

Here a glacier, sometime past, had torn away earth and rock to expose a waterfall. Crystal streams of pure water rushed out across stones and moss, coming over a stony embankment meters above the ground. Maya drank deeply from the stream and nibbled at a few cold, green shoots nearby, all while the rabbit went back about its business, quickly putting distance between itself and the strange newcomer. A newcomer that might easily call danger down upon both their heads.

Every few steps Maya called out to Skye and Erok. But no answer returned along the path of her most determined mental shouts.

For a time Maya stopped to watch a gathering of little things whose wings trembled in the air. These were birds. Bug eaters. And they were busy about it too. No more than fist-sized, but plump, they wore forked tails, with red caps upon their heads, and seemed always to flit by in pairs. Fascinated by these creatures, Maya soon lost track of time.

When next she glanced down, the forest floor had already fallen into shadow. The greater light above her began to fail too, darkening in a way her underground home had never permitted. Maya thought of retreating, of leaving the forest to return to the endless halls of ice where her sanctuary awaited. But the wind was not blowing back up the mountain. And where exactly was the mountain? For a long while now, the trees had obscured all sight of it.

Maya began to grow afraid. Increasing her fear was something new: a sight of shadows caught in glimpses between the trees. Something had taken note of her appearance in the forest, and it was following her now, haunting her steps. Soon she saw that here was more than one.

In pairs, they scurried by, one always close on the heels of another, their bodies bigger than men, their tails following like smoke. They were not close at first, keeping to the ridge above the little stream she walked, threading through trees at the edge of her vision. But occasionally, coming closer than the rest, a pair of glowing eyes took her measure, then disappeared into the trees.

As a child, Maya had harbored a fear of canines. Dogs were unpredictable and quick, nowhere near as compliant as her imaginary friends. They bit. They could make a frightening commotion and their thoughts were never hers to understand.

Now she recognized something of their fearful form in the closing shadows. But today's creatures were large and long of tooth, not the nuisances she remembered. They called to one another, and by their howls Maya quickly knew she was being surrounded. With each new step Maya’s heart expanded to fill her chest, and —strangely— drowned out the calls of the beasts around her, so loudly did her own blood thunder in her ears.

As twilight deepened, one of the beasts came within sight, its head low, its shoulders hunched. Moving almost on its belly, the gray shadow circled around, trying to get behind Maya. Unlike the rabbit, it harbored no unconscious need to aid her. Or if it did, its hunger had put aside all influences other than the burning need to eat. At the first true recognition of its intent, Maya was off. Running.

Her hooves sent up cold sprays from the water as she crossed the shallow stream and bounded up the low hill beyond, making her way quickly between closing trees.

At the top of the hill, as Maya reached its crest, another of the beasts stood guard, its jaws suddenly open and snapping. With a lunge, this guard sent her off toward the rest of the circling pack.

Maya’s thoughts were everywhere, crashing into one another, colliding with desperate emotions. She recognized the hunger of these wild hearts and was afraid, as all the gods who have ever taken on mortal guise must have been afraid.

Moving too quickly and too close, Maya scraped against rough-barked trees. Again, and the collision knocked the wind from her lungs. Once more, and she tore a cut across a virgin, white shoulder, smearing her coat with blood. It was too dark now to run, but darkness seemed no concern for those who followed. The pack grew closer, hoping to finish its kill.

Passing another line of trees, Maya burst out upon a small clearing. As she did so, her predators closed the door behind her, tightening their circle with practiced ease. They moved with a careful certainty, assured by experience and long practicse that no turn or break of their prey could win its escape.

While the pack waited for Maya to fight, she turned her thoughts to other means. The only thing for her to do now was disperse. To become as smoke across this clearing and into in the deepest wood. Big as these creatures were, they could not bite smoke; they could not bloody the dust beneath their feet.

Before her, two of the beasts broke from the circle and began to close.

Maya’s steps stuttered, side to side. She had not been so frightened in all her life. The circling beasts held all of her attention now, more of it than she had to give. One by one, Maya’s senses were overpowered by the fall of darkness and the rising tempo of her terrified heart. She saw only teeth. Heard only growls. And even these began to fade beneath the overwhelming tide of her fear. It became hard to stand on quaking knees and hocks.

Maya cried out at last for her mother. For her father. But the pack gave no notice. They found the screams of the white, horned beast within their trap not at all out of the ordinary. If they held back, it was only to measure the risk of the long, spiral horn that graced Maya’s forehead. That one of them would have to brave its danger was a foregone conclusion, but how and when were calculations well under way.

One of the nearest two approached Maya head on. Its jaws lay open with the lips pulled back in a vicious snarl.

As the fanged nightmare made its way forward, with head low to the ground, it became obvious to Maya that the leader of the pack had come to face her. Though she pleaded with the creature to stop frightening her, it either did not understand or had no care for her words, for it closed the distance with a growl. Only when Maya saw the attention it gave to her horn did she lower her head, at last realizing the ivory spiral was like a stick she could place between herself and the ugly beast. And ugly it was, for the closer this one came, the more she could see the seams of old scars on its muzzle and the deep turn of knotted flesh that ran above one, pale eye. And it was this eye, alone among the many that gazed upon her, which seemed to peer with a malevolence all its own.

The beast snapped and charged, stopping just short of a lunge. Maya kept her horn centered at its gnashing teeth as the beast moved obliquely, sidling this way and that, forcing her attention upon it and it alone. Once more she tried to dissolve, but it was her thoughts that had become as smoke. She could not remember how. Her heart was a loose thing now, wild and without rhythm. Her breaths were ragged, and when she tried to diffuse, she fell instead to her knees.

Something landed on her back and neck from behind. Not the leader, but another of the predators dug in with tooth and claw, nearly throwing her over by the force of its attack. The weight of her assailant was severe, its teeth and claws tearing open her hide.

Then the leader was at her throat, and she felt herself being torn apart between the two, their jaws locked in her flesh, their heads lashing violently from side to side.

Though she screamed for help, though the little girl within shut her eyes and cried for mercy, there was none. All around Maya, the forest rose high, cold, and uncaring toward the first of the evening stars.

Pushed over, she fell to her side. Her eyes wide with the shock, Maya saw the others, the rest of the pack rushing toward her out of the dark. But closer still, its rank breath filling her nostrils, Maya caught sight of the leader. Her gaze locked with its one pale eye in the instant it lunged again to bite deep. Her blood ran freely across the predator’s tongue. And then, in that instant, a sudden, stunning rift tore through her and entered her attacker’s soul. She saw the beast shudder. The lead wolf yelped, releasing her as it threw its tail between its legs and backed away.

The other, biting at her spine, suffered a similar blow. It was pushed away with such force that it fell upon its back and writhed wildly before recovering to stand beside the pale eyed one. Both creatures remained close. So close that even in the waning light Maya could see her blood on their muzzles. She watched as that blood disappeared, each red splash streaming between their teeth, disappearing from fur and whiskers more quickly than dew drying in the desert.

Then she understood. Maya’s own blood was defending her, taking her will into the very mouths and hearts of these creatures. It rushed into their brains and guts with a force more powerful than any blow she could have delivered.

The onrush of the wolf pack stopped dead. Before all the others, the pair who had tasted Maya’s blood laid down to expose their bellies in the timeless ritual of canine submission.

With some effort, Maya managed to get her hooves beneath her, to stand. But she could not steady the weakness of her knees. Blood fouled her mane and ran freely down her white chest. Her breath came in quick and shallow confirmations of her fear.

Had she wanted to, Maya could not ask the predators why they had stopped. Nor would these starving animals have understood the equation themselves. She knew only that something profound had changed between them and the blood they had drawn was the cause.

More startling still, another form moved out of the blackness of the trees and into the clearing. Although it was indistinct in the starlight, Maya nevertheless recognized one of the horned beasts, majestic in its weight and lines, unhesitating in its step and purpose as it came toward her. A deer, an elk, or something similar, its horns formed an elegant rack of artful curves against the stars.

The majestic newcomer walked within the circle of predators, and they dispersed around it as mist races before a falling tree. Here was no weak young thing to be taken unaware, no diseased elder unable to keep pace with the herd. This was a prime buck of impressive stature. In open combat, this horned creature might reduce the pack to half its numbers before going down, if he could be taken at all.

This heart of the forest moved forward, its blood pounding with a rhythm that matched Maya’s own, and which she could feel in her own pulse.

Then she saw it begin: the startling sacrifice!

Like a red scarf drawing itself across the animal’s throat, the majestic creature’s own blood began to flow. Not a tooth had touched it. Not a claw had drawn near. Yet the flow of blood increased, and in moments, with lowered head, as if the horned one had chosen to bow before her, the great buck toppled and fell. It was dead before its weight sent a shock through the frozen ground.

The predator with the pale eye looked to Maya first, then to the sacrifice. The beast seemed to understand what Maya did not, and without hesitation turned both its attention and the unyielding pain in its belly toward the fallen form. The ravenous pack followed suit, and heartbeat by heartbeat, Maya watched as the fallen body, with its magnificent, branching horns, was torn apart beneath an assault of hungry predators.

Concerning the rest of that night, Maya had no memory. Perhaps she fell again, unburdened of consciousness by the terror of all that had transpired. What is certain is that when evening had passed and morning was all but upon them, she awoke in a different form, in the body of a young girl, barefoot and clothed in a tattered dress. Her arms were stretched deep into warm fur, and the pack was all about her, as close as bedmates.

She took comfort in the rise and fall of their breaths. The shoulder of one formed her pillow and when she moved to stretch, a warm tongue brushed her cheek. Maya’s fear of these creatures was not gone, but infinitely lessened. It was not that she controlled them. Nor had she commanded the horned one to sacrifice itself. The miracle of her survival was the miracle of a toddler suddenly finding it can balance on two legs, with the idea of walking still waiting in the wings. The greatest of her powers remained hidden, and all unknown to her.

Gazing upward toward the lightening sky, Maya tried to think, to wonder what her next steps should be. There were still a few stars visible in the blue light, and for a moment she thought she saw them twinkling. But this was something else. A different light was coming into the morning sky, something more than a flicker of starlight, but less than the full white glory of the sun.

Maya rose, careful not to disturb the full bellies lying torpid around her. With the same careful steps she once used to evade her parents’ attention, she stepped between clawed feet and restless tails.

She walked out into the clearing as the light above grew stronger. It built from flickers high above into sheets of green light that flashed across the mossy ground. The frost and the glittering needles on the trees reflected it back like a mirror. It was a lightning devoid of any thunder, detached from any darkening of the sky. When rays of light, each wide as a streambed, fell out of nowhere to sweep across the ground, Maya froze.

She could only watch as the light touched the sleeping pack, causing the leader and his mate to stir. Another beam fell upon the eviscerated body of the horned sacrifice. Still another chased a bounding rabbit near the edge of the clearing. When at last the full light of a single beam fell upon Maya, she looked up, squinting, into the blinding intensity of its source.

“It’s all right, darling. Not to worry.”

Maya found her teeth chattering and a cold shiver ran the length of her arms.

While it was feminine, the voice was not her mother’s, nor any she recognized. They were the first and only words she had heard voiced inside her head since the departure of Skye and Erok.

“You’re safe. I’m right here.” This time the words were given upon the air as well. There was care in the timbre of the voice and a strength that comes with age.

As Maya listened, the words seemed to drift down upon the light, stopping to center themselves directly before her in the clearing. When the intensity of the beam subsided, Maya understood why. She blinked, adjusting to the vision before her.

There stood upon the frozen ground a woman of alarming stature. She seemed clothed in robes of green, crystal light, and upon her head rested a delicate weave of jeweled filaments: a crown of sorts. When the figure lifted her arms from her sides, as if in greeting or welcome, folds of light draped from them nearly to the ground. Her countenance was without fear, and her long face spoke of the ages through which she had passed.

“Who are you?” Maya asked, realizing it had taken courage to do so.

“I am Nenquin,” the light-enrobed woman answered. “And you?”

“Maya. Maya Winters. My dad is Jim Winters. We live in…”

“Your name is not one with the People,” Nenquin interrupted. “Did you come in the company of the soldiers I have seen?” When Maya hesitated, the woman repeated herself. “Maya, did you come with the soldiers?”

Maya shook her head in the negative, unaware of any soldiers, unaware even of the People to whom Nenquin referred.

“You can hear my thoughts as well, can’t you, child?” Nenquin asked, so assured by her own detections that she had no need of confirmation from Maya. “Now what day is this, that so many strangers come to visit us in the north? Soldiers. Thieves. Monstrous animals and metal men. Now I find a child who sleeps with wolves. What stirs so much to happen in the world? Is it you, my dear?”

“I didn’t mean to…” Maya said weakly as Nenquin stepped toward her.

Closer, and Maya could see that the light which wrapped about the statuesque woman clothed real flesh, and that the hand reaching out to her was real as well. When the long, worn fingers met Maya’s cheek with what was meant to be a comforting touch, Nenquin withdrew her hand as if shocked, or as if Maya’s young features had concealed a raging fire.

“It is you!” Nenquin exclaimed. “By all the gods!” And there came a tremble to shake the foundations of woman's voice. She backed away; her hand still outstretched but curled in pain.

And Maya looked up to see fear in her interlocutor's glittering eyes.