I mined the town for rumours, and trawled its streets for news, hoping to hear word of a certain womer, fitting a certain description. Beginning from the tavern, then through the mill – where it seems the noise of splitting logs makes for little conversation or trading of tales between the workers; I found nothing there – and then to the stables.
Trading in the stolen mare for a golden Septim, I think this absolute steal of a deal for the horse-trader softened them to me. A crooked-nosed Nord with the bow-legged walk of a lifelong horseman, he surreptitiously tapped that nose of his, and let me in on something he knew.
There is a place, he said, outside Ivarstead and just to the North – towards the great sloping foot of the mountain – where any good ostler knows not to drive a horse: not through it, nor near it. Beasts of all kinds spook there, he said, as if there were something nasty in the air. The local elk avoid it, so say the poachers. The old mother bear that once made her home in the area has long since left, and instead it is eerie quiet, with grass a good while undisturbed.
He said, in hushed and superstitious tones now, touching a hand to the amulet around his neck, that there is a windmill, nestled into the hillside – the mountainroot – there. Its blades haven’t spun for years since the old miller hung himself from them for the sake of his lover: a Stormcloak swallowed up by the war. He haunts it now, or so the story goes.
In the meantime, I’d heard quite another little tale. Several months ago, a female Bosmer made her way into town. She stayed briefly at the inn, remembered for the comparative rarity of her race in these parts, and for the nestlike mess she left in her room at the Vilemyr, and the tired daunted, haunted look in her eyes. Only she went into the wilderness, and came back appearing to have left that look behind. After that, she left Ivarstead behind too, returning a month or so later, dropping into the market to buy a mattock, potatoes, and a canvas bag of honey-candied jerky, and then into the wilderness once more.
And each time she headed away from Ivarstead, she was travelling north!
Something – a small inkling – felt appropriate here. Like a thread in each little story and every fragment of information I gathered from each disparate source, from stables, to tavern, to market and back — a thread pulling at me. My writing grows fevered and fractious too. Breathe, Simra, but blast if I’m not fevered too, with a kind of hungry excitement. I am not writing from Ivarstead…
I get ahead of myself.
I journeyed North too, while the sun rose this morning. Snow had fallen the night before but the sun when it rose was bright and made every inch of the deepish snow glisten crystalline. Like a layer of salt had set over the world: shining flake upon shimmering shard; on the pine fronds and bare tree branches, and on the ground alike. I walked until the birds stopped singing, and a quiet descended over the world, tangible in the woods. It was a silence that trickled down my spine like sweat.
I felt a watchfulness from just beyond my field of vision, just outside what I could sense. But with it that feeling of being pulled grew, and the rightness of this feeling made me brave. A trio of wolves loped alongside me, jaws slavering, a growl deep in their chests. Careful to move carefully, and incant precisely and calmly, I wove a spell of fear in my left hand, ready to send them away, tails between their legs. But the magic crackled and spat, grinding like a lock when the wrong key tries to grindingly coax it into opening. It was a friction that set my teeth on edge. Illusion magic stronger than mine was at work here, sown into the very earth, and carved into the trees…
I resorted to less subtle means. “Hah!” I barked. “Away with you! Go on. Get!” I made myself large, spreading my arms, facing the wolves head on and swiping at them with my spear’s bladed end. I punctuated my shout with a belch of fire from Foyatra’s wake, and a stamp which spat sparks across the ground, sputtering towards them. With a growling yip they turned about and sauntered off, at least for a time.
Soon after that, I saw the windmill. Its blades raised like sails, becalmed in the breezeless unbreathing day. I remember I couldn’t quite breathe by then. My every inhalation caught and a restless unease teased at the edges of my mind. But I soldiered on, with that strange bravery still working away in my heart, while my head grew fuddled and fretful: a feeling inside my skull telling me to turn back; a conviction within my breast letting me know this was where I was meant to be.
It stood in a clearing, a stout little stony base, hung with moss, and built up with spindly timbers. Some were old and half-rotted. Some were newer and more amateurishly built: assembled into a lean-to porch, a rack of stretched out pelts, a clothesline of ragged dripping smallclothes; desperate attempts to scab over holes in the windmill’s crumbling frame, or to reinforce its bones where they so wished to tumble down.
In turn, I stood on the clearing’s edge, looking in, grinning to myself. For what I saw, in front of the windmill, was more than ever I could have hoped. Dashing across last night’s undisturbed snow, barefoot and bare-legged up to mid-thigh, and with bramble-scratched gingery-tan legs, was a Bosmer, and she cackled in mixed tortured glee as she scampered on the chill ground. Her hair was altered, but the colour was the same, and that voice, that laugh, that build, I knew well.
“Narit!” I cried, in a voice more choked and hoarse than I’d have liked.
She turned, a little curved skinning knife suddenly in her hand, and a cornered-fox look in her eyes that left as soon as it came. “Bones and feathers!” she snapped. “Simra Simra Simra! What are you—? How did you—? Sneaking up on—! And grinning like an idiot! You got any idea how big a fool you look right now, Sim?”
I cocked my head to the side, furrowed my brow, as an expression of disbelief flooded over my face. Then, just a little, I raised my brows… “Says the elf running barefoot through the snow, yipping like a frightened rabbit.”
I could not help it. I started to laugh. I doubled over like I was coughing, leaning forcefully on my spear, back heaving as I broke out in guffaws. And it only got worse. I realised Narit was laughing too, through her chattering teeth, dancing a frenzied jig in the snow to keep her feet from it as much as she could. J’adra leapt from my pocket in alarm and immediately raced out of the snow and up into the scaffolds of the windmill, with a low agitated murr in her throat at the sudden damp cold.
I don’t know how long we laughed for. I don’t recall ever having come so close to suffocating. Mirth, pure and simple. I’ve found her.
