Wilds of Eldraine | Episode 4: Ruby and the Frozen Heart
The day is brisk and bright when Kellan and Ruby return to Edgewall. After the rough living of Dunbarrow and the wonder of the giants' home, this place seems both a paradise and a hovel. That is what Kellan likes most about it. If he were to return home to Orrinshire, he knows precisely what he would see: his mother at the loom, his stepfather tending sheep, the villagers going about their day in perfect harmony. There are no traces of the Wicked Slumber in Orrinshire, nor any surprises.
Here in Edgewall there are plenty.
First is the spread of violet across the town. Where once the cursed threads accented the streets and alleys, they now form rivers and brooks. When they left, there were dozens of sleepers. Now, with a sinking heart, Kellan realizes that the victims are beyond counting. Leaning against balconies, hidden beneath parchment and blankets, standing at open windows ...
Even Ruby is thrown off by the sight. She doesn't say so—she's too brave—but he hears it in the sharp draw of her breath as they walk the streets. He sees it in the careful hops she makes to avoid any strands of violet, in the stiffness of her posture. "Watch your step," she tells him with a smile more for his sake than any joy of her own. "Can't have our hero falling asleep on us."
"Don't call me that," Kellan replies. "My mother always tells me that if I act like something I've done is no big deal, everyone else will, too. You're just as heroic as I am."
Ruby laughs. "Your mom does sound like a nice lady, but you're mistaken. Peter's the hero in our family. Raising your little sister all on your own and being the best hunter in town ..." She hops a cursed thread. "That's a real hero."
"I think there are plenty of ways to be a hero," Kellan says. "Peter's one, but so are you. And I'd like to be one someday, too."
"Well, you're already on a quest," says Ruby. She leads them through the streets to a small cabin on the very edge of town. An uncharitable soul might say it isn't part of Edgewall at all, but the city colors draped in the window proudly proclaim otherwise. A plume of applewood smoke rises from the chimney. Kellan's stomach rumbles.
"What do you think makes a hero, anyway?" she asks him.
"A hero is someone who always does the right thing," he says. "Someone who makes other people's lives better."
Ruby stops with her hand on the door. She narrows her eyes. Kellan waits to see if she'll answer, but there's no chance to talk it over. Peter spots them from the window and invites them inside. With fresh venison steaks sizzling in his cast iron pans, the subject of heroism gallantly gives way to that of dinner. And plans.
They tell him they are going to Loch Larent, and he agrees to take them—on one condition.
"You must wear my thickest cloak, and when you can no longer feel your nose, you must turn back. No matter the circumstances."
"But what if we're not done by then?" Kellan says.
"Then once the two of you have returned, I will go myself," says Peter. "I've heard about that castle. No one's managed to get to the center. Not the other hunters, not the bandits. Syr Imodane tried it before she came here. In her opinion it was an easier thing to brave the wilds than it was to walk more than forty paces across the drawbridge—and she with that firey magic to warm her."
Quiet falls over the room. Kellan glances to Ruby, and Ruby to Kellan.
"I'm not going to turn back," he says. "I can't. Not when so many people are sick. My lord said that whoever defeats the witches will end the curse—"
"Your lord did not say it had to be you, lad," says Peter. "There's no shame in needing help. You're only a boy, and Ruby still young herself. You must know when a beast can be felled, and when it is best to leave it be."
When Kellan catches Ruby's eye again, he knows she's thinking the same thing.
What if Peter's right?
In the end, Ruby makes the promise. Her brother drapes a bearskin around her shoulders, though she insists on keeping the hood. To Kellan he grants a fine coat of wool, the sight of which makes the boy break out in a groan. The wool is from Orrinshire.
Yet he wears it proudly at night, when Peter tells them he has a surprise for them, and he buries his face in its raised collar once the embarrassment overcomes him. For there, in the town square, there are children gathered in red hoods and woolen cloaks. Dozens of them, he thinks—and there are girls in wool as much as there are boys in red. All watch in perfect stillness as two puppets triumph over all manner of trouble to defeat an evil, man-eating witch.
In the flickering candlelight, Kellan thinks he sees Ruby tear up. But she wipes them away the second he spots her, and the two of them say no more of this sacred moment.
Loch Larent lies a long week's journey from Edgewall. Peter takes them much of the way, but as they approach the loch itself, he announces that he will stop to make camp. And who could blame him? Even a full day's travel away, it is so cold that Kellan must hop from foot to foot to keep warm. In all his winters, he's weathered only two days colder than this—both in the bitterest months. He and his family huddled up with the sheep so that no one would freeze. Deep down, he wondered whether it was possible for someone to freeze at all. It seemed a thing that water did, or perhaps beer, but never people.
He wonders less about that now. But he doesn't bring that up. Neither does Ruby.
Peter is more vigilant. "Are you certain you don't want me to come with you?" he asks.
"You're still recovering," Ruby answers, though Kellan hears a pang of regret in her voice. "And besides ... I think I want to try this one. To see how far I can go."
They bid farewell to Peter. He holds them close, wishes them well, and lingers by the fire as they go. For a long while afterward, Ruby looks over her shoulder, perhaps searching for his silhouette against the orange light. Everything else in this place is blue, green, or violet. The sky above is marbled with all three colors swirling over each other like the layers of a noblewoman's cloak. Beneath the frozen surface of the loch, eerie blue lights bob and weave, vying for their attention. Kellan thinks he sees a pair of yellow eyes under the ice—but a moment later they disappear.
Most striking of all is the castle. Seeing it through the mirror is one thing; to lay eyes on it in person is quite another. Kellan had no idea how large it was until now. The main tower stands on a cliff overlooking the loch, but whoever designed it could not bear to stop there. Madness struck the unseen architect: gates leading to new fortresses, drawbridges to nowhere, a never-ending series of baileys, each giving way to a new gate. Kellan counts five portcullises alone.
They'd snuck into a cabin, climbed a beanstalk, and walked beneath the door to enter a giant's stronghold.
They had not yet stormed a castle.
The road before them, paved with glittering crystal gravel, seems more threat than invitation. Yet Kellan does not hesitate to step upon it. Fear is nothing in the face of the greater good, he tells himself.
But Ruby stops, her foot at the very edge of the crunchy gravel. "This ... feels different, doesn't it?"
"Only if you let it," Kellan says. He holds out his hand. "At least we don't have to do any climbing this time."
Ruby laughs up a cloud of vapor. She takes his hand and starts on the path. "Don't say that too loudly, or Troyan might burst out of a snow drift."
"I don't think that would be so bad," Kellan says. "The places he used to talk about sounded great, didn't they?"
Ruby blows a raspberry. "The places he was talking about were made up, Kellan! All my life in Edgewall and I've never heard anyone talk about a pain circus before. What does that even mean?"
"I don't know. I thought maybe it was something the fae did," Kellan says. He tries not to let the disappointment reach his tone, but as always, Ruby's too clever for that to work.
"You really want to see more of the fae lands, don't you?" says Ruby. She squeezes his hand. "I'm sure once this is done, you'll be the toast of the town."
He isn't so sure about that. Part of him wonders—he was always too fae for the humans, so what if he's too human for the fae? Talion already pointed out how little he knew of fae customs every time they spoke. He still hasn't gotten the basket hilts to work for him. What if it's the same there, but different?
He tries to think of something to say.
But someone else soon speaks for him: a woman's voice carried on gelid wind.
"Knights, bandits, and would-be kings have failed to walk this path. Two children have little hope of success. Turn back."
The sky overhead darkens, the wind strengthens; were it not for the steel pin holding Kellan's cloak in place, it would have been torn right from his small body.
Ruby pulls down the bear's head over her own to keep from freezing. Kellan does the same, though with his plain hood of wool.
"We're not going to give up that easily," he shouts into the air. But here the air is so cold that it cuts him to speak, and when only silence responds, he regrets making such an effort.
"The brave live short lives. Do not think your age will earn you any mercy from me. My realm will be safe from threats, regardless of who those threats might be. Turn back."
With every word Hylda speaks the air around them grows colder. So powerful is the wind that they must strain against it with every step, but they do not stop walking.
Kellan keeps glancing over to Ruby as they go. He can't see much of the rest of her face, but what he can see is red as her hood. Surely she can no longer feel her nose. "You don't have to keep going."
But Ruby only shoots him a sidelong glance. "And let the witch win?"
"She won't win if I get there," Kellan says. He speaks into his scarf to try and keep warm. "If we keep going ..."
"You will die," comes Hylda's voice. "This is your final warning. Heed your own words, and turn away."
The veil of snow has gotten so thick that all he can see is gray and white. Still, he turns in place, looking to find the castle. In the distance he spots the faintest smudge of blue. A mile away, if not more.
Kellan blinks cold eyes. He could turn away—but if he does, no one will ever wake up, and he will never know who his father was.
"You ... don't know ... a questing hero when you see one," he rasps. Next to him, Ruby laughs, and it makes him feel a little braver.
"I do. They die as easily as anyone else. You will not be the last," Hylda answers. Her voice fades into the howling of the wind—and the creatures within it.
The first moves too quickly for the two youths to see: a streak of cerulean across their vision, a sound like breaking glass. Only when the icy spear lands at their feet do they realize what they're seeing. The swirling snow ahead of them has solidified into mail and plate: a warrior of frost, at least twice Kellan's size, bears down upon them. A new spear forms in his open palm.
A wicked thrust aims straight for Kellan's heart. Ruby pulls him out of the way. Still, the point pierces Kellan's fine cloak to the snowy ground beneath them. Wind howls in his ears and snow stings his eyes as he tries to scamper away.
But Orrinshire wool is renowned for its strength. The very fiber of his home—perhaps sheared from his own sheep—keeps him in place. Try as he might, he cannot tear the pinned corner away.
"He can't hurt you if his spear's stuck!" Ruby shouts. "Just drop the cloak and go!"
But he can't. His fingers are too stiff to work the clasp keeping his cloak in place, and even if he did, where would that leave them? In cold like this he'd surely freeze.
Kellan locks eyes with the warrior through the murk. There's a new shape forming in its free hand: an axe.
"Ruby, go on ahead!" he says.
"Don't be s—aah!"
Her protest is cut short when she's yanked high into the air. Another warrior's formed, and this one's got her in its clutches. A rime-streaked sword is pressed right up against her throat.
No, no, this isn't how this is supposed to go. It's one thing for him to be in trouble, but there has to be some way out of this. In stories, there's always something the hero figures out. But he doesn't have any weapons and he doesn't know any magic because his mother never taught him any, and his father never ...
The warrior readies a blow.
"Dad, please," Kellan whimpers. He reaches one last time for the basket hilts ... and gold light cuts through the gray. Something in Kellan feels bright as spring no matter the surroundings, something that pours into the hilts and changes them. Acting on instinct he lashes out—
—and his newfound sword cuts straight through the frost warrior's arm.
Kellan gawps at the delicate blade of light in his hands, the thing he's conjured from his own desperation. Around the hilt the light seems to sharpen like thorns. He admires it for a second, but now he has to get them out of this mess.
Kellan ducks beneath the warrior's legs, running straight for Ruby. Before he can think to hesitate, he lops this warrior's arm off, too. Catching Ruby on the way down is an easy thing in comparison.
"Kellan, you're doing it!" she says, eyes wide. "Fae powers, you're really doing it!"
"I am!" If he says anything else, he's worried he'll ruin it, as if naming it aloud will dispel the effect.
He sets her back down on the path. The warriors, howling with pain, have wandered away, leaving their weapons lodged in the snow. Ruby picks up the sword and stands back-to-back with Kellan on the path. But the longer they wait, the harder it is to stay upright. His initial giddiness begins to give way. The magical sword in his hands is heavy as iron. Has it gotten colder already? A strange sleepiness creeps in and he worries that it must be the curse—but there are no plumes of violet here, no magic save his and Hylda's. So why is he so ...?
Kellan's eyelids begin to droop. "Ruby ... I think I might be ..."
"Kellan?" Ruby says. She turns. "Kellan!"
Maybe they should rest before then, though. He's so cold, and so tired, and ...
He's already done so well, he's earned a little nap.
Kellan falls.
This time, Ruby is the one to catch him.
