Stitches throat together

She was cold. Blood was smeared on her face and an incredible ache in her throat pinched off a scream; she touched her neck by reflex, and felt the tight weave of fine stitches. The same night sky spun above her, the moon dark, but the stars shifted. From the temperature of the blood—her own blood—and the movement of the sky, she had been dead for at least an hour. She lay on her back on something so frigid it burned, a sheet of white, and specks of the stuff floated down through the desert air. Snow. Aina had only seen it in books brought by the missionaries, and yet here it was so beautiful that it hurt to look at.
The Great Spirit knelt over her, its body a hooded veil outlined by the drifting snow, and somehow she knew that the Spirit had made the snow, and it seemed very alone in their small patch of white frost in the middle of a vast desert.
“Did you save me?” Her voice came out a raspy whisper because of the threads through her neck.


Prologue, Page 4