by Daniel Smith
Right away, tears welled up in response to the wind, and they streaked back along my cheeks just like when I had ridden the ATV fast through the forest. I blinked to clear my blurry vision, then took a deep breath of cold, fresh air and forced myself to look around.
The sight of the wilderness below me was awesome. Amazing. Terrifying.
It was the most incredible thing I had ever seen in my life. The treetops sped past beneath me as we headed down the slopes of Mount Akka toward the forested wilderness, a sea that exploded with light and dark green. There was no snow here, though, just a thin mist that hung over the ground among the trees, as if a huge ghost had risen up from the dark soil and spread itself through the forest, obscuring the bracken. Hardly able to take my eyes off it, I looked about, seeing the crags of distant mountains breaking up from the forest and pushing their way into the sky. I saw clouds tinted orange by the sun, and mountain streams glittering like rivers of diamonds.
When I looked up, though, I saw Morris leaning out from the side of the helicopter, looking right at me.
The speed at which we were traveling and the movement of the freezer chest made his face unclear and monstrous. I couldn’t quite make out his features, but he was a picture of fury. His eyes were wide, dark holes, and his mouth was tight and grim as he pointed a submachine gun at me, ready to fire.
A quick rattle and the weapon kicked back at his shoulder, making him shudder. The sound of the wind and the helicopter drowned the shots so they were little more than faint pops, and the swinging of the freezer disrupted his aim, sending his bullets wide. He tried to correct himself, moving the weapon in time with the freezer, ready to fire again, but a pair of gloved hands reached out from inside the helicopter and grabbed him.
It had to be Hazar. I would have recognized those leather gloves anywhere.
Morris looked to his right, shouting something at Hazar, and he tried to pull away. There was a brief struggle before Morris lost his grip on the weapon and it tumbled away, swallowed by the mist that hung in the wilderness below.
Morris grimaced at me, then disappeared into the helicopter, only to be replaced by Hazar, who looked down with a big grin and pointed at me before pointing at the forest below. He waggled his fingers as if he was waving at me and then retreated from view.
As soon as he was gone, the helicopter banked to one side and changed direction. The freezer chest swung out to the opposite direction, moving in a wide arc. I clung on as hard as I could when it changed a second time, banking the other way. The steel rope holding the freezer went slack for a fraction of a second, then snapped taut again, almost throwing me off. My left hand came free of the cargo straps and I slipped to one side, losing the grip I’d had with my legs. Pitching across the freezer, I slid off the side and was left hanging by one arm. The knife, still gripped tightly in my hand, caught me across one cheek with a shallow stinging cut.
They were trying to throw me off. They were going to kill me.
I pulled hard, swinging around to grab hold with my left hand. I managed to grasp the cargo straps and, with a huge effort, dragged myself back onto the freezer — but only just in time for the helicopter to change direction again and drop lower in the sky. This time I swung out to the other side, and even though I was better prepared and managed to stay on, I knew it was only a matter of time before they succeeded.
When the helicopter stabilized, I looked up to see Hazar lean out and glance down at me. He didn’t grin this time; he grimaced and disappeared once more, and the helicopter banked again, making the freezer lurch beneath me.
Once more, my face came close to my knife, but there was nothing I could do. I couldn’t release my hold on the straps and I couldn’t let the knife go. It was one of my most important possessions. It was also my only means of releasing the freezer chest from the helicopter — something I now realized was not impossible, because in their attempts to shake me off, the helicopter was descending.
The treetops loomed closer and closer and I knew this was my best chance. I couldn’t see the ground, covered in mist as it was, but I was sure that if I could cut through the straps now, it wouldn’t be so far to fall. I could save both the president and myself.
My muscles were aching and my hands were burning, but I tightened my thighs around the freezer and secured my left arm, using my right to slide the knife under one of the three remaining straps. I pulled upward with as much pressure as I could manage, and began sawing at the nylon.
The freezer struck the first treetop with a terrible shudder. It jolted hard and twisted to one side, starting to spin, and I looked up, seeing the world rushing around and around me. My stomach heaved as a feeling of dizzy sickness welled up, but I shook my head and went back to cutting, holding tight with my left hand.
Still the helicopter flew lower, dropping me deeper among the trees, where the mist swirled about in whirlpools, churned by the rotors. Branches slammed against the freezer, bending and snapping. The noise was incredible, as if I was in the center of a hurricane, but I kept on with my task. There was nothing else for me to do. There was nothing else I could do. Hazar was determined to shake me off, but I was not going to abandon my friend. Not when we were so close.
I looked up through the mist and branches and saw a spot in the near distance that would be perfect. There was a rise in the land, a place where no trees grew and the ground was brown with mud. If I could cut the straps as we reached it, there wouldn’t be far for us to fall. Just a few yards into the dirt. If we were lucky, there would be no rocks and we’d have a soft landing.
The nylon strap gave way with a sudden release of tension and I wasted no time in starting on the next one.
Not far now.
I slipped the steel of my blade beneath it and began cutting as the branches whipped against me, stinging and scraping. My eyes were streaming and there was blood on my hands and face, but it was as if I had been possessed by some kind of demon. I was no longer scared; I was angry.
“I’m not going to die!” I screamed at the top of my voice. “I’m not going to die! I’m not going to —”
The freezer slammed into a thick tree trunk with a sickening crunch and my legs lost their grip. I jerked forward, backflipping over the top of the freezer so I buckled against the trunk for a fraction of a second before the helicopter dragged the chest onward, sending it spinning through the trees. My left arm was tight under the cargo strap, and my shoulder felt as if it had been wrenched out of its socket, but I was still secure. My body swung out to one side, though, and when I twisted and reached up to haul myself back onto the freezer, I lost my grip on my knife. It slid across the top of the chest, spinning like a propeller, skittered over the side, and was gone.
Lying facedown on top of the freezer, I knew that all hope was lost now. Without my knife, I would never be able to cut the president free. How could I fight tooth and nail if I didn’t even have my most important weapon? All I could do was wait for the rise in the land beneath and let myself drop; try to save myself.
“I’m sorry, President,” I said, pressing my bloody cheek against the top of the freezer. “I have to go.”
I looked up at the helicopter one last time to see Hazar staring down at me with an ugly smile on his face. He waved again, waggling his fingers, and I turned away from him, something catching my eye. A quick flash of light drawing my attention. My knife. It was right there, wedged against the side of the freezer chest, caught under the last of the cargo straps.
I could still do this!
We were almost at the muddy ground, but there was still time.
I wriggled forward and reached over the side of the freezer, touching my fingertips to the handle of the knife.
Just a little farther.
Stretching as far as I could, I wrapped my fingers around the hilt, and twisted it so the blade was against the nylon. I pushed hard and drew it toward me, feeling it bite into the edge of the strap, making the first cut. Straight away, I forced the knife down again, and frayed edg
es sprang up as the sharp steel sliced through a section of the nylon.
The freezer smashed into another tree, spinning to the left and swinging out to crash through some smaller branches, but I hung on tight with my left hand and turned the knife so the point was wedged against the hard plastic casing of the freezer. I tried to ignore the sickly feeling of spinning and the battering of the branches clawing at me, and I drew the knife up for the last time.
There was a sense of release. A moment of hanging in the air.
Then we were falling into the mist.
The drop was so quick and so sudden, it felt as if I had left my insides somewhere up in the sky. An overwhelming light-headedness washed over me and I didn’t even think about what was going to happen when we hit the ground. All I could think was that I had succeeded. I had won. The freezer chest was free and I had managed to get the president away from Hazar and Morris.
We descended like a landing plane, traveling down and forward at the same time, carried by the momentum of the helicopter that had been dragging us. Except we weren’t heading for a flat landing strip, we were heading for a muddy bank at the edge of the trees. And the freezer chest wasn’t built for flying. Or landing.
I lay spread-eagled on top of it as it came crashing down through the trees, but it was heavier than me and there wasn’t enough for me to hold on to. It fell faster than I did, the two of us coming apart as we hit an area where the trees were close together and the forest was a thick tangle. The outstretched branches pummeled the freezer chest, disturbing its flight path and sending it into a tumbling spin. I fell just behind it, colliding with a tree limb that hit my chest like a baseball bat, bruising my ribs and knocking the breath right out of me. I came to a very sudden stop and then dropped like a stone, crashing through the smaller branches. There wasn’t even time to grab hold of anything as I fell, my face and hands burning from the scratches and cuts that were opening up all over my skin.
I hit the ground facedown, with a painful crunch, and skidded on my front as the freezer disappeared from view, twisting and tumbling and crashing into the trees.
The helicopter passed overhead, its rhythmic thumping fading into the distance until it was nothing more than a faint heartbeat, then it was gone. The forest was silent except for the trickle of pine needles dropping in my wake, and the sound of my own breathing. There was a gash on my cheek, my ribs were bruised, my skin was scratched and cut all over, and every muscle was sore, but I had survived.
I sat up and looked about in a daze. “Holy crap. I’m alive.”
What made it even more incredible was that my right hand was still bunched into a tight fist, gripping the handle of my knife — and the bow and arrows were still secure across my back.
My arms and legs complained when I tried to stand, and my face stung from the cut. Blood ran down my cheek and neck, and my whole body was racked with pain, but I pushed myself to my feet and took the bow from my back.
“Still in one piece,” I whispered as I checked it over. “That’s a miracle.” I looked up, seeing nothing but the mist, and shouted to the forest: “Thank you!”
The fact that the bow and arrows were safe and that I had managed to separate the freezer chest from the helicopter could mean only one thing. I was right about the president being my trophy, and something in the forest was protecting me, encouraging me to take what it was offering.
There wasn’t much time, though. It wouldn’t take Hazar long to realize the president was gone, so the helicopter would be back any moment. I had to find that freezer chest first.
With stiff legs, I stumbled in the direction of the muddy bank I had spotted from the air. The eerie mist hung in the trees around me as if I was running through an alien world, but I knew where I was going and I knew it was close. I pushed on through the forest, struggling to stay on my feet as I brushed aside stray branches, wading through dense bracken until I burst out of the trees.
It was a relief to be in the open and see the muddy bank just ahead of me, a long, dark smear running from left to right, shrouded in mist. Inclining away from me, the bank sloped upward seven or eight yards, then appeared to fall away into an abyss on the other side. There was no way of knowing what was over the ridge. It might have been a gentle hill or a terrifying drop off the side of the mountain.
“President?” I called as I moved out onto the mud. “President?”
Nothing.
“President?”
In the distance, the sound of the helicopter slipped into range. Hazar was coming back.
“President!” I shouted, feeling my sense of urgency grow. The mist might hide us from view, but if they came low enough, the twirling blades would clear it away and they would spot us. And what about the president’s satellites? Could they see through mist?
“President?” I had to find him before they came back.
Slipping and sliding, I forgot about my aches and pains and scrambled across the mud, looking this way and that, searching for the white box.
“President?”
Then I saw a long, flat path scraped through the dark mud. The freezer chest must have landed here and shot up the gentle bank toward the tipping-off point. I set off toward it without delay, moving as quickly as I could, following the flattened trail of the freezer. The soft, wet ground squelched and sucked at my feet, so I bent forward, putting my hands on my knees to force my legs to work harder. There was almost no grip on the incline and my boots were becoming heavy with thick mud, making it difficult to move, but I battled on, slowly making my way higher.
Coming closer to the top, I began to hear another sound competing with the noise of the approaching helicopter. From somewhere nearby came the rush of cascading water.
Of course! The river.
We must be close to Lake Tuonela. As we came down, the trees had obscured it from view, but it made sense for it to be near here, and that noise was the river that fed it. It ran fast and white and fell into the lake in a frothing storm of tons and tons of water.
I stopped.
If the freezer had gone over the edge of this bank, it might have slipped all the way down the other side into the river. It might have splashed into the fast-moving water and washed down toward the waterfall. There was no way the president could survive that. He’d drown for sure.
“President!”
With a new surge of energy, I pushed harder and harder, struggling to the top of the incline where I stood looking down at the raging river. It rushed through the mist, flanked by mud and rocks and decaying driftwood, stopping for nothing and nobody.
And there, upside down on the riverbank, just a few paces from the water, was the large white freezer chest.
“President!”
I started to run, but without any grip my feet skidded out from beneath me, whipping backward so that I landed on my stomach and carried on down the slope like I was lying face forward on a toboggan. Thick, slimy mud gathered in heaps around my shoulders and piled up in my face as I went. By the time I came to a stop, my mouth was full of it and my clothes and boots were caked in it. The weight of the mud meant that it took a lot of effort to get to my feet, but I struggled on, wiping my face and spitting out the grime as I shambled over to the president’s prison.
The freezer was upside down and covered in muck and smears of my blood. Its corners were crushed in, and the sides were dented and scratched from its fall into the forest. I imagined how it must have felt for my friend to be trapped inside it, being tumbled about, not knowing what was happening. He must have been terrified — but as I came closer and saw the extent of the damage to the chest, I began to wonder if he could have survived his ordeal.
“Please don’t be dead,” I whispered. “Please don’t be dead.”
Closer still, and the roar of the river filled my head, mingling with the beat of the approaching helicopter.
“Please don’t be dead.”
When I reached the freezer chest, I put both hands on the side, dug my feet into
the mud, and pushed as hard as I could to turn it. At first it refused to move, but with a little rocking and a bit more strength, I managed to tip it first onto its side, then upright.
I unlatched the old locking mechanism and threw open the lid.
The president was curled in the ice and bloody water at the bottom like a dead animal. He was battered and bruised, bleeding from his nose.
“President?” I whispered. “Please don’t be dead.”
He opened his eyes. “Oskari?” Covered in mud as I was, I must have looked like some kind of forest creature. “Is that you? What the hell just happened?”
“President!” I could hardly contain my excitement. “You’re alive!” I wanted to jump up and down, but there was no time for that. “Come on, quick, let’s get you out.”
“I don’t know if I can move,” he mumbled.
“Of course you can. I’ll help. Quick, before they come back.”
I reached into the chest and took his hands, helping him to sit up.
“I feel like I’ve been in a washing machine, not a freezer.”
“Anything broken?”
He shook his head. “I don’t think so.”
“I figured it out,” I said, unable to contain my excitement any longer. I had to tell him what I had realized; why our meeting was so important. “I figured it out.”
“What? What are you …” He put his hands on his face and moaned. “Oh my God. Everything hurts.”
“I know why I found you. I figured it out when I was up there.” I pointed to the sky as all the adrenaline of the past few minutes raged through me, lifting my exhilaration. “The forest gives us each what we deserve. Those are the words. And it did give me something. Something big.”
The president looked at me like I wasn’t making any sense.
“You.”
“What?”
“You. The President of the United States of America. That’s what the forest gave me. You.”
“What? No …”
“Yes. And I listened to the trees, and I fought tooth and nail, and now I’m going to take you to my dad, and all my village will see.”