Aysel had been inside of binding circle before, of course, but as soon as she was taught to make them she was taught to break them. This time, though, escape was literally out of her reach.

"Aysel?" Dunyasha asked. She was so close to her, but she was an eternity away. "Why haven't you broken the circle?"

"Just give me a moment so I can figure out what to do," Aysel said, fighting in vain against the overwhelming force that kept her entire body inside the bounds of the circle.

Dunyasha turned, teetering, in her circle. Whenever she swayed too far to one side, the boundaries pushed her back away from them. At last, she faced Aysel and saw her plight, but she didn't seem impressed. "Oh, you got stuck too. Just break it, and then come help me."

"I can't."

Her eyebrows knitted together. "What do you mean, you can't? I've seen you break circles before."

"I mean, I can't reach it. I can't bend over. The circle is too small."

"So?" Enrick asked, sauntering over towards them. "Why does it matter--"

"Enrick, get back!" Aysel warned. "There may be more of them."

He stopped, held up his hands in mock surrender, and took a large step backwards. "As I was saying, why does it matter how small the circle is? Wouldn't that make it easier to break?"

"Not this time," she said darkly. "Binding circles push blood away from the drawn boundaries, like oil and water. Look." She extended her fingers, only for them to be somewhat painfully pushed back against her side. "I can barely move."

"Do you need to move to break the circle?" Dunyasha asked.

"No. I just need to touch my hand to the boundary, but I can't reach." She demonstrated, bending forwards and snapping back once her body reached the border. She tried crouching, but as soon as her knees neared the circle, they were forced back upwards. "See?"

Enrick shrugged. "Just use the magic floating blood thing you always do. And hurry, please; I'm getting bored."

Aysel glared at him. "It doesn't work that way. I need to touch it."

Dunyasha's eyebrows furrowed even further. "And you can't. Stars, does that mean we're trapped here?"

"I'm not trapped here," Enrick unhelpfully reminded them.

"Be quiet," Dunyasha groaned. "Ugh, if I could move my arms I'd be rubbing my temples." Within the small space the circle granted her, she was moving as much as she could, twitching her fingers and shifting her weight from foot to foot. Her eyebrows were deeply furrowed, but every once in a while they would soften, turning up into an expression of concern, maybe even fear.

"Don't worry," Aysel said with a cheery smile. "We'll figure a way out of this. We've been in worse before."

Dunyasha didn't answer. Her fingers began to scratch frantically at the fabric of her trousers.

"I've gotten out of lots of sticky situations," Aysel said, trying to calm her friend. "Including the one you put me in. Remember? You had me tied up and I got out of that."

Dunyasha finally gave her a grudging smile. "Yeah, for about a second. Besides, how could I forget? You took me by surprise and nearly blinded me."

She smiled back. "I was desperate..." Her mind began to spin a little bit faster. "Hm. Not so different from right now, actually."

"You're going to bit your lip and spit blood at me?" Dunyasha asked sarcastically.

"No. I'm going to bite my lip and spit blood at my shoe." And she did. She directed the stream of blood through the frigid air down to the leather boot she had stolen from the Letters they had ambushed. It would be unpleasant to be barefoot in the snow, but it would be even more unpleasant to be trapped here forever. Carefully, she used her blood to cut the leather away from her foot until her sole was exposed to the cold. She grit her teeth and slashed along the bottom.

"Ugh," Enrick muttered, turning away with a clawed hand over his mouth. "I understand what you're trying to do, but ugh."

Aysel ignored him. With a quick prayer to the Ancient Ones that the method of breaking binding circles would work with feet instead of hands, she swiped her now-bleeding foot across the snow.

The border broke and Aysel tumbled to the ground as the force propping her upright disappeared. She lay there for a moment, disoriented as she always was after breaking a circle, but soon slowly sat up and smiled at Enrick and Dunyasha.

Enrick whistled. "Clever Letter."

"Did you expect anything less?" she asked. She stood and limped over to Dunyasha, pushing her already-bleeding foot across the boundary and once again sinking to her knees.

Dunyasha helped her up. "Thanks," she said. Her eyes fell on their hands entwined and she quickly pulled away and cast her gaze onto the snow at her feet.

Aysel's heart gave a twinge. Had she ruined their friendship so much that now Dunyasha could not even bear to look at her? "You're welcome," she mumbled.

"We should get moving again," Dunyasha said. "Aysel, you should wrap your foot in a scarf or something and let Enrick carry you so you don't get frostbite. I know Letter toes are... soft."

Aysel's heart twitched again. Dunyasha wanted Enrick to carry her. She reminded herself that she was the one who had pushed Dunyasha away, that she was the one who had chosen her brother over whatever feelings she was pushing down, but it did nothing to quell her disappointment as she once again climbed onto Enrick's unfriendly back.

They started to move swiftly through the snow again. It glittered in the midday sunlight, but the blood on the snow drew Aysel's eye even more. As they cantered away from the broken binding circles, Aysel wondered, "Why were those circles there? They weren't guarding anything."

"Old traps, maybe?" Dunyasha suggested. "I know you use them to hunt."

"We do, but we're supposed to break them if we stop using them so we don't accidentally trap animals we don't need," she explained.

"Maybe someone forgot."

"Maybe... but even traps are strange in the middle of nowhere."

"We're not in the middle of nowhere," Dunyasha said. "Look." She pointed at the ground. "The snow has blurred them, but there are boot marks here."

"Letters," Enrick said darkly. "I'm not in the mood or the health to run into them right now."

"Neither am I," Dunyasha replied. "Let's keep on, but be wary."

They continued through the trees, though all three were on edge for the owners of the bootprints to appear. Dunyasha kept glancing at the smoke in the sky, Aysel suddenly only felt comfortable with her blade in hand, and even Enrick seemed more wary of the sounds of small animals scuttling through the still, snowy wood... so when a flash of bright red appeared between the trees, the three of them were ready.

Dunyasha stood back on two legs and grabbed a spear, Aysel had her blade unsheathed in a moment, and Enrick tensed his body as if to run. They stayed like that for a moment, poised for battle, before Enrick said. "So... is it going to attack us or what?"

Dunyasha gripped her spear tighter. "Quiet," she whispered, and took one silent step forward. She held up a hand, signalling Aysel to stop following her, which she did, reluctantly. Instead she watched Dunyasha stalk towards the red thing, noticing the ways the muscles in her legs stretched and compressed, the way her pawlike feet spread out wide and unsinking in the deep snow. She reached the copse of trees where the red thing hid, peered in, and froze. Aysel's heart froze too as she waited for Dunyasha to either throw her spear or be attacked by a flurry of blood weapons.

Instead, she lowered her spear. "It's nothing," she called back to them.

"What was it?" Aysel asked.

"I said it was nothing," Dunyasha said, but her words were much too quick for whatever was inside to be nothing. Aysel slid off of Enrick's back and, despite her missing boot, marched towards the trees.

Dunyasha stepped in front of her. "You don't need to see this. Let's just keep going," she said.

"Tell me what it is," Aysel demanded.

Dunyasha sighed. "I don't want to upset you."

"You're upsetting me by not telling me what it is," she argued back.

"It's a dead Letter," Dunyasha said flatly.

"Oh," Aysel said. "Do you know what killed them?"

Dunyasha tipped her spear towards her. "I don't know, but..." She swallowed. "It looked like he killed himself."

Enrick shivered loudly behind them. "Brr. All this talk of dying gives me the chills. Let's just get going; we're so close now."

Aysel turned to him, a terrible thought in her mind. "Enrick... your father is close to us. Is it possible he did this?"

Dunyasha raised a heavy eyebrow. "Is that where we're going, then? To uncle's settlement?"

Enrick smiled. "I knew you knew."

"I suspected," she said wryly. "Although I am a bit annoyed you told Aysel before you told me."

"Hey!" Aysel snapped, clapping her gloved hands together to get Enrick's attention. "Answer my question! Did your father do this?"

He rolled his eyes. "I told her because when you don't tell her things, she gets all cranky," he said behind his hand to Dunyasha. "But no, Ay-sel, I don't think my father did this. How could he have made someone kill themselves? Besides, he's busy fighting his own battles... speaking of which, we're very close. We can probably make it by nightfall if we don't run into any more problems."

"Then let's go," Dunyasha said. "I'll take Aysel this time. You could probably use a break, huh?" she asked Enrick. Her eyes were planted firmly on the snow.

Enrick smirked for a moment, then forced it down. "I would like a break, actually. You can take her."

"You know, it's getting quite tiresome to be carried around like a child getting a backpack ride," Aysel said as she climbed on Dunyasha's back anyway. It felt familiar and somehow more comfortable than Enrick's.

"If you were faster and not so shoeless we'd let you walk through the snow as much as you please," said Dunyasha, hefting her higher.

Aysel smiled, but it quickly faded. "So, are you not angry with me anymore?" she asked.

Dunyasha sobered. "I'm still mad."

"Because of what I said earlier?"

"Because of what you did. You let me think that you..." Underneath her, she squirmed. "Look, I don't open myself up to very many people. If I had known you were just tired and that what you said didn't mean anything..." she sighed. "But I'm trying to forget what happened, because we're almost at the end."

"The end?"

"The end. We'll reach Enrick's father and it's over. I'll go home to my cabin. You'll go get whatever reward Enrick promised you. We'll never see each other again."

Her words took a moment to sink in, but when they did, it felt like they were twisting Aysel's gut. Never see Dunyasha again? After the time they had spent together, the thought seemed impossible. But in the end, she wasn't here to make friends, was she? She was here to save her brother's life; there was no room for feelings or friendships. But still...

"Dunyasha?" she asked softly. "I just want you to know—"

But Dunyasha had frozen in her tracks. "Aysel, I think it would be a good idea to look away from the ground right now," she said in a too-calm voice.

Of course, her words only made Aysel look down, and so she saw the body Dunyasha's steps had unearthed under the snow. It was another Letter, his face blue from the snow and burned by frost. In his rigid hand was clenched his blade. His other arm was bare and striped by a single, deep cut running from his elbow to palm.

Aysel stepped down, ignoring the snow on her unshod foot. "What..." her eyes traced the wound, examined the blood frozen to the blade. "Suicide?"

"Dunya! Aysel! There are bodies over here!" Enrick shouted from a little bit ahead. His voice was low and strained.

"Here too," Dunyasha called back. "In fact..." She put a hand to her mouth. "Look around."

Aysel's scanned the grove in which they stood, and suddenly the lumps beneath the snow, which she had previously assumed were brush or tree stumps, began to take on a more sinister form. Her eyes grew wider and wider. There were so many bodies. To confirm her suspicions, she walked over to one and brushed the snow away, and even though she knew in her heart what was buried, she couldn't help but gasp as she saw another frozen face. Like the last corpse, this woman's blade was tight in her hand. A deep, gaping wound peered up from her neck, as if someone had driven a short knife deep into the veins and ligaments... a short knife like that the dead woman held.

"Stars," Dunyasha said, a hand still covering her mouth. "Did we wander into these people's resting place?"

"Letters burn our dead," Aysel said. "There are so many of them... by the Ancients." She fell to her knees in front of the dead Letter and began to pray.

"Their blood is not theirs alone. Your rivers have no end." These words were back on her lips, and they tasted as bitter as they had the first time she had spoken them. Tears began to fall, tears of confusion, exhaustion, and mourning for people she had never met, would now never meet.

"What is she doing?" It was Enrick, looking pale and slightly shaky at the sight of so much death.

"Praying." Dunyasha's voice was gentle. "It's the Letter funeral prayer."

"Their blood is not theirs alone. Your rivers have no end."

Or so she hoped. In the past few days she had seen nothing but death and blood and violence and hate. It had been pieced by the light of hope and friendship, yes, but it was like the dim pinpricks of stars on a cloudy night. The river inside her seemed dry and polluted, anything but unending. Her words stopped, and she dropped her head.

Dunyasha placed a hand on Aysel's shoulder. "I'm sorry you had to see this, Aysel. We never should have come this way."

She stood and wiped away her tears, which had already begun to freeze to her cheeks. "Yes, we should have. Otherwise there would be no one to lay them to rest." She looked up at Dunyasha. "Could you gather some wood, please? We need a fire."

Dunyasha bit her lips, nodded, and went to collect wood for the funeral pyre.

It didn't take long for the three of them to gather branches from nearby trees into a large pile. Wordlessly, they moved onto the bodies. Aysel tried to close their eyelids, but they were frozen stuff, and so they stared at her as she pulled them from the snow and carried them to the pile. There were ten of them in all. They were different in every way but for their deaths; they had all taken their lives by their own blades. Aysel didn't wonder why. She was too busy trying not to break down and cry at the pointlessness of it all.

At last, all were gathered on top of the pile of sticks, even the first man they had stumbled upon earlier. They looked like carvings, still and silent, atop their pyre.

Dunyasha cleared her throat. "I feel as though we should say something. When the People have funerals, we say things about who the person was, their best traits, our good memories of them. But we don't know these people."

"I know them," Aysel said. "I never met them, but we're bound together by the blood of the Ancient Ones that flows through us all." She took out her blade and pricked her poor, scabbed wrist one more time. "But as long as our bloodline remains, so do they." She held her wrist above the wood and let the blood drip out. It ignited as it fell, and soon the flames licked up the branches and the bodies, engulfing the crimson cloaks.

Aysel took a step back. "Their blood is not theirs alone. As long as one of us is here, the blood of the Ancient Ones will continue to flow."

"Your rivers have no end," Dunyasha muttered.

Aysel nodded. She watched as the flames reached higher into the midday sky. "What do the People think happens after they die?" she asked.

Enrick answered. "Nothing. Some elders believe they become stars, but most of us? We believe that after death there's just... nothing. Forever."

"Oh."

Dunyasha put a hesitant hand on Aysel's shoulder, and Aysel leaned in until their bodies pressed together. Dunyasha froze, then wrapped her arms around Aysel as the tears once again welled up in her dark eyes. Enrick walked over and put his hand on Dunyasha's shoulder. Aysel looked at him and placed her hand on top of his. She silently forgave him for all he had done. Dunyasha was right; soon it would all be over.

They stood like that, connected, and watched the pyre burn. She was mournful, but there was hope back in her heart, brighter even than the flames of the fire. She had her friends. She had a direction. She had a way to save her brother and the other sleepers, and she would save them soon. These mourning flames would not burn for them.

After a while of watching, Aysel raised her head off of Dunyasha's chest. "If we leave now, the fire will burn down on its own. There's nothing dry for it to catch, anyhow." Hope flared in her again. "We're so close."

Enrick squeezed her hand. "We'll be there soon. Do you want me to carry you?"

But Dunyasha answered, "You lead the way. I'll take Aysel." She looked down and smiled at her. "Might be the last time."

And so she climbed on Dunyasha's back again, buried her hands in the soft mane running down her spine again, wrapped her legs around her warm body again as she began to run. She wanted to think of her brother's coming recovery with joy, but she couldn't.

Soon it would all be over. Soon she would never see Dunyasha, with her wild hair, her mountain ridge nose, her strong hands, her broad shoulders, and her strange, strange eyes, ever again. And as much as she loved Elkin, as much as she longed to see his dark eyes open and shining, she couldn't help but miss Dunyasha even as she rode with her higher and higher into the mountains of the south.