Through Ice

by Parker Jaysen

  Whatever the case, she doesn’t sleep all that easily the first night. Her mind feels wonky, distracted by this new partner.

  That’s dangerous.

  After a while, Jane turns in her sleep and burrows into Dorie, and eventually Dorie falls asleep, too, and dreams of bewitching small riders with fur hoods and laughing hazel eyes.

  Jane’s a fast learner. Dorie had made their own hot mash the first morning, but Jane is awake ahead of her the second day with perfect breakfast and some orangey thing she must have packed to bring along. Sort of a gel, like a slush drink.

  It’s sweet, and its color is welcome in the gray universe of the sleigh.

  She brings color into everything she does.

  Her pillow – yes, she brought pillows – is bright green and fringed with yellow and red, children’s primary colors. To Dorie, it gives the bunk space a whole new identity. Her eyes are tugged by the green.

  The second day is also when Dorie starts to notice that the sleigh is not quite as cold as usual. Day two, out on the lake good-and-proper. There is no warmth. They’re not at the demon ice, not yet, but its influence is here. And even the conventional cold here would be perfectly satisfied to slow you and stop you until all your heat was leached away. Dorie’s day two is usually a day of adjustment.

  But she’s not sluggish and grouchy at all. Hasn’t been all day.

  She glances over at Jane where she’s perched at the front port watching the dogs, one knee bouncing softly like a nervous tic. No sluggishness there, either.

  “What are your powers?” Dorie has narrowed it down to Jane. She must have something besides shielding, something with a warming effect.

  “Shield.”

  The foundation of Dorie’s long ice run is a highly developed resistance to demon song, though nobody can agree if that resistance is even a magical power. Dorie believes it can be taught.

  Dorie does have a magical power, a firebolt. But it never developed fully and she can’t aim it worth a damn. She’d as likely burn everything down as kill a demon. So she relies on her checklists and protocols. They’re her armor.

  “Just a shield,” Dorie mutters, shaking her head. It doesn’t compute.

  Jane turns to look at her.

  “It must be a strong one,” Dorie says.

  “It’s – it’s strong,” Jane says. For the first time since inspection in the ready room, she seems slightly awkward.

  “How strong? Are you keeping the cold out?”

  “Maybe,” she says after a long hesitation.

  Dorie thinks about people lost out here. The dogs and cargo and riders lost. “If you have something that can help, maybe you should always be on this leg.”

  “Dorie, I don’t know. I hope so.” Her usual friendly cheer is dimmed. “It’s not as clear-cut as I think some of the other riders’ talents are.”

  Dorie frowns. “My firebolt is shite, but I know when I’m doing it.”

  “I’m doing it. I’m trying various things,” Jane says. “Should I stop?”

  “No.” Dorie is torn between annoyance and admiration. She also wonders what the cost will be.

  ACT II

  The temperature stays a hair warmer than normal each day. It’s not much. It’s certainly not enough to survive without the usual gear. But it matters.

  On day five, Dorie calculates the dogs have used 14 percent less fuel than usual. She’s astonished. And as far as she can tell, it’s not costing Jane much energy to keep it that way – certainly not as much as 14 percent of six dogs’ calories, anyway.

  “How far does your shield reach?” Jane does look a bit tired, Dorie suddenly realizes. “What effort are you expending?” To hold warmth, against this bitterness? That chemical energy has to come from somewhere.

  “Dorie, the thing is,” she says, “I don’t understand the mechanics, not yet. I know I can throw an elemental shield. I can block stuff. I can’t stop a freight train, but demon shit, small landslides, sure. Rain is a cinch. I’m a fucking umbrella.” She turns serious. “But this is something else. Something that’s always around me. And maybe it’s even stronger now, for some reason. Here on the ice. I’m still figuring it out.” Then she’s her smiling self again. “Don’t tell the others.”

  “Here on the ice,” says Dorie, “it seems like an enormous power.” She teases Jane a bit. “You shouldn’t be ashamed. The guild can use you. You might revolutionize the ice leg.”

  Jane sticks her chin out like she’s trying to be brave. Dorie relents.

  “Okay, I won’t tell the dogs,” she says.

  Jane chuckles at Dorie’s attempt at banter.

  Dorie adds, “we could explore it a little bit, though. Find more ways to measure it during the run? Together.”

  Jane beams.

  True test conditions aren’t possible, but Dorie continues her notes on calories, dog feed, and travel time, while Jane feels for the fringes of her shield. The sleigh is faster than ever. No rider, even using Molly and her pack, has ever made it to Waypoint Delta before day ten, and Dorie and Jane get there on day eight.

  The depot isn’t manned, but there are essentials – booties, calorie packs, repair parts. Every time Dorie has needed something, she’s found it there.

  The pyramidal building is brittle, and gets more brittle with time. The bay won’t open unless there’s full sun, and there are complications every time you try, so if you don’t need anything or have restock supplies to drop off, there’s no point messing with it.

  But Jane looks at the depot with great interest, like she looks at everything. She looks at it with delight.

  Permanent ice fissures, refrozen many times over, radiate out from its base, like a web from a stone spider. The building itself, rimed with frost, catches the sunlight on its facets as they slow the sleigh to a stop.

  Dorie supposes it looks enchanting if you haven’t seen it before.

  Jane curls into her as they gaze out at the depot. “It’s like a palace,” she says reverently.

  Dorie doesn’t push her away. The girl fits wonderfully next to her. “Let’s check rations and supplies and make sure we don’t need anything before we go on,” she says.

  The ride is one-third over.

  The middle of the lake has nothing so simple as demons, or so simple as only demons anyway. The guild still considers the ice itself demonic, but Dorie has survived this long by believing in a slightly more complicated reality: a demon – just one – lives under the lake, but like a tree that has grown into buildings and under highways, it long ago fused with the very ice.

  And it is an ancient and malevolent demon. It’s one of the few who has a name. Uther, after another lake legend.

  Uther knows they are there.

  Dorie has done this often enough that she knows the first stirrings of Uther’s call. One becomes a bit more relaxed. It’s fine, the dogs are fine, you don’t have to check everything all the time to be safe, that’s the trainers being careful.

  She stands. “Time to fight.”

  Jane is reading a manual on a tablet, and startles. She puts the tablet down.

  “Dorie?”

  “It’s Uther.”

  God help her, she looks only interested. “Oh, I’ve read about Uther! They make him out like a siren.”

  “He’s not a siren.”

  “Think about it,” Jane insists. “His voice, with the ice song, he lures you into the depths.”

  “It’s not a voice.” Dorie grins, she can’t help it. Jane, arguing book learning against years of experience. She thinks Jane just likes the sport of it, like foreplay, feint, retreat, enjoy.

  But the banter pushes back the early pull of Uther. It’s hard to hear his insidious call when you’re flirting with a cute girl.

  Dorie clears her throat. “This is the protocol.”

  Everything gets double-, triple-checked when within range of Uther. The bladders, the harnesses, the fingertips of their gloves. Everything. Uther convinces riders that there is no
danger; he will convince a rider, in the frozen dead of night and leagues from home, that the mission is complete.

  The only remedy is to check and recheck, and log the results.

  Dorie reads from the list. “Count the calorie packs.”

  They huddle under the heat tent on the bunk. From there, Dorie checks the dogs’ speed, which is still a good 5 percent faster than average for this part of the leg. She makes a note. They can get away from Uther that much sooner.

  The deeper they go, the more the thoughts intrude. Stop, enjoy the view. Ice is beautiful. Rest, the dogs need rest.

  Uther’s messages are all the harder to resist because they are true. And they’re lethal because you can’t tell them from your own thoughts.

  Jane swipes to the last page of the checklist. “We’re supposed to check our extremities.”

  Under the tent, they pull off their gloves. Dorie wiggles her toes in her thick fur-lined boots. Jane opens and closes her hands in evident relief. She reaches out for Dorie’s fingers. “Pink is good,” she says.

  She manages to make perfectly innocuous words sound flirtatious. It’s almost magical.

  Jane’s fingers on hers start a tripping pulse somewhere deep inside.

  “Okay, you check mine,” Jane says.

  Beautiful hands. Petite. Sweet little fingernails, not the kind that would claw you or pierce you.

  Dorie turns them over, checks the color, feels Jane’s tendons, traces the faint blue veins.

  Jane has on three rings. One is her guild ring, for passing the final and hardest test; she wears it on the middle finger on her right hand, probably the only finger big enough for the smallest-size ring the guild offers. The others are elementals – ruby for fire, opal probably for marsh. After this run she can wear diamond, for ice.

  Interesting choice for the marsh stone. Most riders wear galena or lodestone. But, Dorie decides, Jane is not like most riders. She’s never met anyone like her.

  “Like what you see?” Jane asks quietly. She might have meant the health of her extremities, or the elemental stones, but Dorie knows she means something more intimate. Does Dorie like seeing her?

  She nods.

  Under the tent they’ve uncovered their faces, and Jane reaches up and brushes Dorie’s cheek with the fingers wearing ruby and opal. “So do I,” she says.

  There’s a question in it, and Dorie nods again, a part of her doing a little hiccup of surprise.

  Jane leans forward and tilts her face up to Dorie’s. She’s so damned small, like a gem herself.

  Hell runs are no place for finding love, it’s true, but a casual tryst is okay. In the cold, in the boredom, turning to each other for warmth and as a bulwark against Uther. There’s no worry in it. Right?

  But Dorie is not sure Jane has ever learned about casual trysts. Jane’s every molecule is oriented towards her, like she is only thinking of her mouth.

  She tastes orangey, like the breakfast gel, and her own taste, and something minty. She is not shy on Dorie’s lips. She kisses her like she wants her, a long dance of lips and tongue until Dorie thinks she could forget all danger. All checklists.

  The checklist. Dorie reminds herself it’s to keep them from slipping into a deep sleep, to keep them from becoming lulled by the ice. But she’s in no danger of being lulled by anything at the moment.

  But it’s also to keep checking the dogs, the status of the sleigh.

  Dorie starts to pull back and Jane nips at her lip in mock frustration. “I know. Recheck the calorie packs,” she murmurs.

  Civilians in the city, with a cold store and an ordinary life, might not know that frozen rations are still in danger out here. Frozen means preserved, right?

  But sleigh rations are life, and if there’s one thing that demon ice knows, it’s where to focus its will – its decay, its urge to undo. Dog paws, rations, and riders’ souls. Pretty much in that order, too. The elements of survival.

  So the rations are checked and rechecked. Demon crud first shows up as pinholes, tiny flakes that peel away from blister packs. Then layers of gray mold that will eventually eat everything. The team would be dead before then.

  Some hypothesize that the crud originated from the plastic of the seas. But who can know?

  The heat mash ingredients are undamaged, stacks and stacks in the belly of the sleigh.

  Every item that Jane checks, every time she swipes through the checklist on the tablet, she brushes against Dorie or catches her eye.

  But there is demonic crud on the orange gel. Jane looks stricken. “I’m sorry, I didn’t realize they’d go after those.”

  Dorie ignores the frothy bits of underclothes strewn about in Jane’s duffle. “It’s okay.” Wisps of fuchsia fabric. Red, gold, lace. Distracting femininity.

  Dorie is too focused on getting clear of the crud to turn it into a training lesson. Their suits are resistant, but they also can’t risk spreading it around. They wordlessly slip on disposable gloves-over-gloves, and working together, scoop up the affected gel packets.

  Some of Jane’s underthings get caught up in the operation, dangling from handfuls. Dorie is prepared to pause, make sure they’re only tossing infected things, but Jane doesn’t break her rhythm. Everything goes in the disposal pouch.

  She’s practical.

  Dorie seals the pouch like it’s a sandwich for later, and it goes into the chute out the back. Is it litter? Or returning demon belongings? She doesn’t care.

  Uther can do with it what he will.

  The worst period is at the midpoint. The center of the lake. They are in Uther’s grasp now.

  The still, rigid cold of regular ice is replaced by an eerie fluidity. It’s barely light by day, and never fully dark by night. After a while a grim veil clouds the eyes, and the rider tries to blink it away to read the next checklist, and the next. But your vision never clears.

  The dogs come in. They can only pull for about a half-day at this stage. On the icefield around them, rough shapes loom and fade in the shadows, reminiscent of old, lost sleighs. Some of them probably are. For once, Jane is deeply somber.

  And Molly seems tired already, bone tired, already. Dorie worries that even with a shortened journey something is sapping her usual delight in the job.

  She spends more time with Molly and the pack, checking every limb and pulse, but finds nothing obviously wrong. It is Uther, she decides, pulling at Molly the way he pulls at all of them. To be safe, she gives them extra rations, and everyone crowds around, snapping at each other as usual for the choicest morsels.

  Maybe, she considers, Uther is tricking her in a different way.

  Jane has done the nighttime checks by the time Dorie’s done with the dogs, and she has the bunk set up with glows and their own heat mash. It’s the most dangerous night. The pair settles in, prepared with every speck of help they can muster, from science, from magic, from each other.

  As animals themselves, human team members know what to do when cold – at least until the instant of final surrender to the deep warmth of death. They shiver. They pull their limbs in. They huddle together. They sleep to pass the time.

  Sometimes they fuck.

  When did Dorie decide she wanted Jane? When she unpacked that ridiculous orange gel? When she showed what a quick study she is? Maybe when she said she was interested enough in her to sign up to ride the ice.

  Maybe the first time she laid eyes on her, in a station somewhere, months ago.

  She’s warmth in the middle of Uther’s hell, and it’s not the treacherous warmth that makes one decide to stop moving. It’s real heat.

  Their fur-lined gear is made to save lives and is extremely frustrating when you’re trying to touch someone’s breasts. Jane stretches up against Dorie, her hair picking up glints of the glow under the blanket tent.

  She’s so tiny in the huge suit.

  Dorie, however, knows this suit. She knows the access points, and she can unzip a panel at Jane’s side enough to reach inside.

&n
bsp; God, there’s nightclothes to get through, too.

  Jane laughs at Dorie’s mutter of frustration. “Give me a little warmth under here,” she says. Dorie has no idea what the hell she means, but she has managed to work her fingers up under the nightshirt. Jane’s skin.

  Her hands must be too cold, but Jane’s gasps are only gasps of pleasure and want.

  Her breasts are small, and Dorie hesitates. She’s afraid her fingers are too big and clumsy, she doesn’t want to hurt her.

  “Dorie, please,” Jane whispers.

  Dorie closes her eyes and brushes her breast. Jane bites her lip, almost hard, and Dorie suddenly wants way more than can be accomplished there in the middle of the lake. They can’t be naked together, not on top of Uther.

  Jane presses her nipple up into Dorie’s palm. “Please?”

  She kisses like no one Dorie has ever kissed before. She searches her mouth, like the secret of her is in her tongue. She nibbles, she plays with her lips. Dorie finds herself smiling, her heart racing and her blood hot. “You are amazing.”

  “Touch me,” Jane says.

  “I want to,” she breathes.

  “Then do it.” She nips at her chin.

  Jesus, this girl likes to bite.

  Dorie’s supposed to be training her to fight the cold, and yet she’s undoing another panel of Jane’s suit, the one like a pocket, hugging her pelvis, and slipping her hand inside like a furtive schoolgirl.

  Dorie knows her fingers are cold. Jane’s belly muscles spasm as she comes in contact with her skin.

  Cold fingers can feel good on some flesh. Dorie pushes down before they’ve warmed too much, and feels her way through a soft nest of curls to the heat within. And heat it is. Jane has been wanting Dorie’s touch, there is no doubt of that at all.

  The icy fingertip to her clit makes Jane jolt. Dorie grins. “Nice?”

  “Oh my god.”

  With her hand resting for a moment there, conscious of Jane’s lean mound and growing wetness, Dorie realizes something – she wants more, more than a casual tryst.

  She wants to learn everything about her.