It’s amazing how closely the characters in Under the White mirror my NaNo struggle. Seems like we’re all slogging through the white together, just trying to keep our heads on.

My writing has certainly slowed a bit this week, with work and other interferences. But I’ll be plowing ahead again in the week to come, trying to make up some words. I think I’m only around 18k now.

Click the read more link to check out an excerpt about Thorn and Eril’s journey through the white.

Thorn stared at the arc of blood. Against the white it looked too vivid, like paint. Like someone had started with a brush and then changed his mind, sloshing the entire container.

Eril stopped too, mouth hanging open, flecks of the white melting in his beard. He pranced back and forth on his bare feet, trying to keep them both off the frozen ground. The poor bastard hadn’t thought to grab his galoshes. Thorn would have to be the one to cut off his hairy stumps of toes, after the white burned them dark as coal.

“I can’t feel my feets,” Eril said.

When Thorn met Eril, they had been pint-sized and young enough to count the summers on two hands. His voice always boomed, but the words seemed parroted, recorded, lacking depth and delivery; it sounded just as it always had—a giant child’s voice.

“I can’t feel—”

“I know.” Thorn put a finger to his lips. Eril hadn’t noticed the shadow struggling through the knee-deep drift to their left. Thorn had, though he couldn’t tell in the fog if it was friend or foe. A rifle popped twice not far to the right. That one was foe, as sure as sure. Thorn towed Eril by the collar around the blood and waded deeper into the wood.

While the forest would likely put an end to them with cold or starvation, the immediate problem was getting far away before someone pointed bullets at them.

“I don’t wanna get no scrubbed.” Eril said. The white, now up to Thorn’s waist, only came up to Eril’s thighs. But without any feeling in his feet, the oaf was lumbering at a glacial pace, tipping back and forth like a cork on water.

“We won’t get scrubbed if you keep your mouth shut and your feet moving.” Thorn felt sorry almost as soon as he said it. Eril didn’t mind when his parents yelled, never cared when a boss screamed or quit him from another job, didn’t even mind being laughed out of a pub. But when Thorn yelled, he was like to burst into tears.

Eril sniffed and snorked. “I can’t feel my feets…”

“Alright, I’m sorry. Don’t cry, it’ll freeze to your face.” That brought the tears to a halt. The trick with Eril wasn’t so much telling him the truth as telling him something that achieved the desired effect. Thorn heard feet crunching the white not far behind. “We need to hurry now.”

Eril did move a bit faster, though he fell several times. Before they traveled a hundred strides, the oaf had covered his brown coat, black hair, and black beard completely in white. The landscape fell sharply, and they both stopped, staring down at the river.

They were just stories. It was just a forest. Thorn opened his mouth to urge Eril forward.

“Wheere goin’?” A heavily accented voice taunted them from behind. “Leaving all dee fun?”

Thorn spun around. Eril went stiff, too scared to move, dark eyes blinking under a cruft of white.

A soldier, dressed in tan armor bristling with pockets and gadgets, crept along the rut they made through the drift, rifle trained on Thorn. He backed away, plowing blindly down the slope. Eril stood frozen in place but Thorn couldn’t take his eyes off the rifle. He couldn’t think.

“C’mon, stand ye up and take a shell in dee gut, like a man ye ken?” The soldier smiled, eyes wide, and most of his face disappeared against the white. He followed Thorn step for step.

“I’ve got no quarrel with the Shanes,” Thorn said. “You can have Glantros. I was never fond…”

The soldier walked right past Eril. He hadn’t noticed, probably thought him nothing more than a bush buried in the white. Eril froze, mouth dropping open—a request for instruction. But Thorn didn’t dare draw attention to their one chance.