A gust of wind filled in the silence as she trailed off. She could feel the icy fingers weaving their way under her coat, and she shivered, sinking back into her memories. After a few minutes, she roused herself, reached into her belt pouch, and pulled out a familiar silver dagger. She ran her fingers over the soft leather sheath, then tied the dangling rawhide strips into a loop. Then she knelt down and hung the dagger on the stone cross.
"Here's this back. Sorry I can't put it down there with you, but the soil's frozen up this time of year. I'll come by when it warms up again and bury it then if that's all right." She paused, thinking back on the memories that had so recently returned to her. "Maybe if you'd had it with you that night, things would be different now. Only the good Lord could say for sure."
She kissed her fingers and touched them to the chiseled letters. Her hand lingered there, tracing each letter in turn. Another gust of wind swirled around her. After a moment, she sighed and rose to her feet.
"I best be getting on," she said. "Won't do to keep poor Father Baez out here in the cold, old as he is. I'll stop by and tell you where it is I decided to put our print shop once I get it figured out, but I expect you'll see me before then, too." She pulled her coat closer around her, then raised her hand and tipped her hat to the silent grave. "Take care of yourself, now."
Her boots crunched in the snow as she turned and started walking back to the waiting priest. Father Baez offered her the reins with a kind smile. She returned it, her tears still frozen on her cheeks, and climbed into Our Lady of Virginia's saddle. The priest followed suit, turning his small horse away from the cemetery. Together, they rode down the small hill toward the city, and Cora did not look back.
The wind continued to play with the long grass growing around the cold stone cross. Ben's silver dagger rocked against the granite, swaying with the ebb and flow of the air. The sun drifted down toward the mountains, and the shadow of the cross stretched out eastward, following his beloved wife's footsteps, reaching out with unmoving arms toward the place where she had stood.
About the Author
Lee Collins has spent his entire life in the shadow of the Rocky Mountains. Despite this (or perhaps because of it), he generally prefers to stay indoors reading and playing video games. As a child, he never realized that he could create video games for a living, so he chose to study creative writing at Colorado State University. Upon graduation, he worked as an editorial intern for a local magazine before securing a desk job with his alma mater.
Lee's short fiction has appeared in
Ensorcelled
and
Morpheus Tales
, the latter of which awarded him second place in a flash fiction contest. In 2009, a friend challenged him to participate in National Novel Writing Month, and the resulting manuscript became his debut novel,
The Dead of Winter.
In his spare minutes between writing and shepherding graduate students at his day job, Lee still indulges in his oldest passions: books and video games. He and his girlfriend live in Colorado with their imaginary corgi Fubsy Bumble.
Acknowledgments
Many thanks to my friend and fellow scribbler Matt Carman, who invited me to try NaNoWriMo with him and gave me the heads-up about Angry Robot's Open Door Month. Thanks also to Amanda Rutter for offering my manuscript up to the Robot Overlords and to the Anxious Appliances for sharing the mind-shredding anxiety with me. Thanks to Melissa Gardner for being the first one to finish this book, to Nancy Gerardi for insisting that it could be a Broadway musical, and to my parents for encouraging my love of books from an early age. Finally, thanks to all the friends and family who caught typos, suggested improvements, discussed ideas, and listened to my frustrations.
ANGRY ROBOT
A member of the Osprey Group
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Nottingham,
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"Courage is being scared to death, but saddling up anyway." – John Wayne
An Angry Robot paperback original 2012
1
Copyright © Lee Collins 2012
Lee Collins asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN: 978 0 85766 271 2
eBook ISBN: 978 0 85766 273 6
Cover artist: Chris McGrath.
Set in Meridien by THL Design.
Printed in the UK by CPI Mackays, Chatham, ME5 8TD.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.
This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher's prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author's imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.