Tide of Shadows and Other Stories Read Online Free PDF Page A

pious man and took no liberties with those who derided our beliefs. The man was lucky to be alive and not sinking to the bottom of the sea, where his people claim the gods rest.
    I still don't have an answer to that question. I'm not even sure I believe what the Old Knight had to teach, that his beliefs weren't formed of desperate yearnings for answers rather than holy truth. I used to laugh with the others when the Old Knight's back was turned. If heaven existed, it was the concern of the dead, not the living.
    Now, with four friends buried in the ground, ready to find their way to the skies above, I pondered that man's words again. To what end does this life lead? Are my friends basking in the glory of the gods? Or are they gone, ether on the wind and food for worms? Does my father walk the earth as a spirit? Or is he just a pile of white bones and sad memories?
    At least my companions here would not be food for the wolves. That was one small gift I could bestow.
    I once laughed at heaven—at the idea of gods watching over us all from some luxurious, inconceivable realm—but now that was the only comfort I had in the lonely night. Was I wrong before? Or desperate now? Would the gods keep me safe in this land, or was I left to my own devices? I am a man now, no longer a boy.
    What awaited me? With bodies to bury, my purpose was clear. But now? Now I must save myself, find a path from this hell back to the living world.
    I ate one of the Northmen. A slice off his leg, raw. It was a sacrifice, an acknowledgement that to be human is to be weak, to die. To live, I must be ruthless.
    For reasons incomprehensible to me, I was still alive. I had survived a battles that had killed others—seasoned, brutal men. I lived through this skirmish, watched each man killed and buried the good ones. Could I survive again? Win a battle against a foe I could not fight?
    The gods—ours, theirs, or someone else's—wanted me alive. It was an easy conceit to grasp in the wilderness, alone and friendless. Would the gods have kept me safe through so much destruction only to serve me a slower death by freezing or hunger?
    I left the clearing. I don't know how much time had passed since we had first entered—the days and nights were a messy blur. I couldn't even remember sleeping. I left their bodies behind but not my memories of those men. The harsh truths I'd learned at their sides came with me, too—those I kept, tucked safely away within me, along with a promise that I would not meet those men again until I was an old man who died happily in bed surrounded by grandchildren. I would live. I would laugh in the face of the gods who had stolen away so many others.
    I left my father with them—a piece of his spirit in each grave—his regrets and mine laid to rest beside my friends. Perhaps we could find our own peace.
    Like a ghost, haunted by my memories and fears, I disappeared into the dark forest.
    Snow fell, and soon the fresh-turned dirt was covered. Years would pass, and eventually that clearing would stop whispering the secrets of its death-steeped soil. Life would reclaim it, and all would be forgotten.

“A Night for Spirits and Snowflakes” (2010)
    Story Notes

    In 2011, having recently finished the first draft of a novel, Through Bended Grass , I decided to turn my hand to short fiction. It was both a palate-cleanser before jumping into novel revisions and a self-directed exercise in correcting some of the mechanical/structural weaknesses that I discovered in my craft while working on Through Bended Grass . My novel was a single-point-of-view narrative, so I wanted to explore the intricacies of telling a story through multiple sets of eyes—to discover how the different ethnic, religious, and professional backgrounds of the characters would affect their perceptions of such a devastating encounter. I wanted to understand how to better use language to dictate rhythm and pace in a story.
    I’d recently finished Guy Gavriel Kay’s