On the cold blister of a dead, broken highway walked the spectral blurs of three figures. A minuscule speck of dim light glowed from the center of the group. Ethereal beings? Perhaps…once upon a long ago time. Now just three individuals looking for a hot meal and a dry bed. The light itself felt like a memory, was nothing but a feeble tin lantern to guide their way, and barely bright enough to do that well.  

Hunched beneath their large, swooping hats, and huddled down into their weather-beaten dusters, they continued shuffling forward. The smallest of the three androgynous figures fell just a bit behind. Her softer, more delicate features would imply an inherent femininity, but no sex could be derived from the faces, nor the figures hidden behind layer after layer of worn, mismatching fabrics. Once, a very long time ago, she was a woman, and her two companions were males, but the time and place they existed was beyond the distinction of gender. Gender, let alone sexual expression, had never been part of their identities, aside from the way they wore their hair.  

The slimmer of the two larger figures—his gaunt, sunken face filled with disdain—looked back at the other and then rolled his eyes at his brethren. The larger went back and took her carefully by the arm, brought her forward. The three again bunched together, attempted to shield themselves from the steady wave of dark, ashy snow. Once they had everything, now they only had one another—and barely that.  

The hills rolled on for miles beyond counting and, it seemed, so did the storm. Beyond that, there was the great ice bridge. The eternity of their walk was the only distance that exceeded the expanse of gray, snow-covered country before them.  

The light from their lantern grew increasingly faint with each labored step. The oil-dampened wick flickered; soon there would be no light to guide them.  

None of the three could recall how long they had walked. One would say days, another weeks, the last eons. All were right and all were wrong. The truth lay somewhere in between. The three agreed that the walk had gone on far too long, and that they were much in need of a great rest—the final peace they were long ago promised. The rest and peace they traded away.  

There was no consternation between them regarding why they walked. If you could manage to get them to say the how and why of it, the details would likely be vastly different, but the crux of it always remained the same.  

These three cast their lots with the wrong man. Fooled by shimmering jewels of false promises, they found themselves exiled, and began their walk. There was more to it than that, as there always were with these things, but those details were all forgotten. The penance was not shackles, but being bound to the source of the Earth. They had no wings and could not leave the world behind. Their prison a place, but no place in it. 

Ahead, across that expanse of ice, they could not see it, but all of them could feel it. There was a village, and in this village there was a hope. Their punishment and their walk had worn away the tattered fragments of hope just as it had their garments. They once lived in victory, in the reality of the hope they no longer knew. Although they could not remember it, somewhere deep in the hollow of their shaking bones, the flickering light of that hope still lived.  

Gasping for oil like a drowning man for air, the wick finally reached its end. The light on their lantern died, the meager warmth it provided blown away with the knifing of the icy wind.  

The three came to a single halt.  

The first examined the lantern and spoke as he tapped the glass. “Oil’s run dry.”

The second stepped forward, straining his eyes to see the wick through the glass. “There’s light up ahead.” 

“A town,” reluctantly spoke the third in a raspy voice. Each word came with great effort and great strain, but, like an unused organ, every word carried a tremendous  melody. “A town of ugliness.”  

“Ugliness?” asked the first. 

“But great beauty,” added the second. “There is love there.” 

“Where there is love there is hate,” growled the first. 

“But we go there? You’ve seen us there?” inquired the second. 

“I have,” continued the raspy melody.  

“Then we go,” said the second with a nod to the first, who returned the gesture.  

Huddling closer, they pressed forward. Beyond sight or smell, they moved towards a feeling, drifting through the eternal storm to a hope they knew they would not find.