by Lydia Sharp
Maybe Alaska wasn’t trying to scare me away after all. Maybe this is Alaska’s gift to me. Freedom. The pressures weighing me down don’t exist out here. I’m not the broken child of divorced parents, or the lost girlfriend of a lost boy, or an aspiring actress who can’t act her way out of a paper bag. I’m just a girl with the whole world at her feet, trying to decide where to make her first mark. It can be anywhere. I can be anything.
We speed along for an hour before Hunter slows us down. Ahead, Vicki comes to a stop by a wooden structure that’s little more than a shed. Please let this be as far as we have to go. I pull off my helmet, gasp at the cold rush of air against my sweltering skin. “Is this it?” My heartbeat quickens with hope. “Is he here?”
“This is it,” Vicki says. “My brothers and I stop by here all the time when we go hunting. Not sure if Kai’s here, though.”
Hunter parks, removes his helmet, and steps off the snowmobile. The temperature gauge on the control panel reads twenty-nine degrees. “No tracks in or out. If there were any before, the snow covered them.”
Without Hunter’s warm body right up against me, the cold quickly seizes me. The insides of my nostrils are freezing over, and breathing through my mouth makes my teeth ache.
My dismount isn’t as graceful as Hunter’s was, my legs stiff, protesting every movement.
Vicki does a 180, eyes still cast on the ground. The snow isn’t quite as deep here as it was at the lodge, but it’s still cumbersome to walk through. Her gaze drifts upward and out, toward the way we came from. “Let’s check inside,” she says. “Kai might be in there if he was waiting out the storm.”
“Only one way to find out,” Hunter says. He wrestles with the door for a minute and then it pops open with a crack! Vicki and I hustle in behind him.
But Kai isn’t here.
Why did I think it would be that easy? The previous hope in my chest shifts into worry, keeping my heartbeat quick. If he’s not here, then where is he?
The shelter’s interior is furnished with a single bed. No sheets or pillows, but a couple of blankets are folded on top. A small hearth connected to a chimney sits opposite the bed, filled with ashes. It isn’t warm enough in here for there to have been a fire recently. If Kai was here at all, he didn’t cook anything. I’m not sure if that’s a good thing or bad. Hunter said Kai would have packed some food for emergencies. I just hope he has enough.
Hunter analyzes everything in the room, turning slowly. Then he gets up close to the wall right next to the hearth. With the tip of his pocketknife he works something out from between the wood slats. A note?
I step up beside him as he unfolds and then silently reads the paper. He hands it to me.
I recognize Kai’s handwriting—today’s date and a new message:
“What does this mean?” I ask Hunter. “And the one he wrote on his picture?” The world is too big to ignore how loudly it sings to me. “Am I missing something? Are they connected?”
“Not really,” he says. “Except that they’re both things our dad used to say.”
I flip the paper over, but nothing is written on the back. No names listed as either a blessing or a lesson, no explanation. I refold the paper and consider tossing it into the cold ashes but jam it back into its hiding place instead. “There’s nothing else to see here.”
Vicki heads for the door, but Hunter turns away from us, focusing on the wall. He touches it gently, reverently, then pulls out his pocketknife again and etches something into the wood slat. Stepping closer, I see two sets of initials beside the glint of his blade. The ML has been there a while, darkened and worn with age, but the KL is clean and sharp, bright wood pulp freshly exposed. He adds HL to the group, for Hunter Locklear. No matter what happens after this—today, tomorrow, whenever, wherever—he, his twin, and their dad will always be together.
We continue on in the direction of the next shelter, which is thankfully not as far from here as the first one was from the lodge. We might still be able to beat the sunset, only two hours away now. Kai’s note had today’s date on it, but his tracks have been covered with new snow. He must have left that shelter before the storm got bad, but he can only go so fast by foot, even at an energetic pace, so he can’t be much farther. It’s possible he was caught between shelters during the blizzard’s first wave, like we’d originally feared. It’s also possible he made it to the next shelter. We won’t know until we find more evidence of … anything.
Finding him and making sure he’s okay is my first concern. But if we find him and he’s okay, plenty of other concerns are waiting in line to be given voice. Why didn’t you just talk to me? We never had a problem talking before. Is it too much to ask to have a boyfriend who explains himself clearly before he leaves on a long, dangerous trip like this? But I can’t change the past, and I can’t control what Kai does or doesn’t do, or what he says or doesn’t say. I’m not sure what I’m going to say, either. I’ve considered every reaction I might have, and I decide on doing nothing. I want to see what he does first, want to hear his reasoning for taking off like he did, want to see what he thinks of me coming after him, and I’d rather he not be swayed by my words one way or the other.
Too soon, the snowmobiles stop again, leaving my body buzzing. Vicki and Hunter remove their helmets.
I take off my helmet, too, and gulp in a few crystal breaths of fresh air. Looking around, I notice two things right away. One, the sky is getting dark again, both from thickening cloud cover and the sun getting lower. It’s not even dinnertime yet. When I first moved here, in July, daylight stretched into the night hours. The Alaskan sun is a tease.
And two, there are no shelters in sight. “Why did we stop?”
“I thought I saw something …” Vicki removes her fleece cap and fluffs out her hair, scratches her scalp. Bright red curls fly in the wind, then she secures them under her hat again. She heads toward a copse of trees, and Hunter follows. I hang back, waiting to hear what they find first. If Kai is there, I don’t want to see him unless he’s warm and breathing, eager to take me into his arms.
“Gabi, come here!” Vicki shouts. She sounds more excited than horrified, thank goodness.
I trot up to them. They’re standing by a person-sized hole in the snow—but it’s empty. A bunch of feathery evergreen branches lie around it. “What is that?”
Hunter says, “Someone was taking shelter from the snow … in the snow.”
“How ironic.”
“It’s the next best thing when you don’t have a building,” he explains. “I remember my dad said he had to do that a few times. You dig a hole in the snow and it works like insulation with your body heat, keeps you warm. Then you cover the opening with branches. If this was Kai, at least we know he’s being smart.”
“But we don’t know for sure this was Kai.”
“There are some tracks we can follow now, though.” Hunter gestures ahead of us. A single set of footprints leads off from the hole, heading the same direction we were going. “Whoever this was waited out the first wave of the storm and then left, probably thinking it’s over now.”
“And it isn’t,” Vicki says. “But if we follow these tracks, we don’t know if we’ll find the right person. And even if we do find Kai, will we have enough time to get back to the lodge before the next wave hits? Before it gets dark?”
“Maybe not, but what’s the alternative?” I press. “I know you need to get back home, Vicki, and I really, really appreciate you helping us with this, but if we head back now, we have nothing, no answers, and we’ll be leaving Kai to face the worst part of the storm tonight. We have to keep going.”
“I know.” She grins. “I just wanted to make sure you were sure.”
“Okay, how about this? We follow the tracks, and when we get to the next shelter, we go no farther, whether we’ve got Kai with us or not. If by that point we can safely return to the lodge, then we will. If we can’t, we stay at the shelter overnight and figure out what to do from there.”
A far cry from ideal, but it’s better than getting caught in a blizzard in the dark. “Sound like a plan?”
“Yeah,” Hunter says, and Vicki nods.
“All right.” I turn back toward the snowmobiles. “Let’s go, before it gets any later.”
The tracks follow the marked trail, leading us to the next shelter, this one close to a wide, tumbling river. We slow to a stop. Gray water rushes past us at a ferocious speed, eager to get somewhere else. I don’t blame it. I’d rather be anywhere but here—wherever “here” even is I don’t know anymore, but the dark side of the moon is probably warmer than this. Mountain ridges monopolize the horizon now, and I assume we’re near Denali National Park, somewhere close to the middle of the path marked on Kai’s map that Hunter found yesterday. I thought I saw a snowplow on a road somewhere, but it was far in the distance.
Hunter goes to the shelter first. Vicki’s right on his heels, and so am I—if Kai isn’t here, either, I don’t know what we’ll do. Go home? Let him go? Get someone else to find him?
Then what?
As we near the shed, I see another set of footprints, coming in from a different direction, that mingles and blends with the first. One follows the riverbank while the other ventures into the trees.
Hunter pushes the door open and all three of us let out frustrated sighs. “Nothing extra’s in here but firewood,” he says. “So someone was here, but they’re gone now.”
I mutter a curse, try to think. The sky isn’t dark yet but it will be soon, and flurries have started up again. “Two sets of tracks. Do we risk following the wrong ones, or just … what do we do?”
“I don’t know.” Hunter studies the ground again. “If either of these tracks is Kai’s, it’s possible he could be getting food, and will return to this shelter. He could be hunting in the woods or he could be downriver, fishing. I hope it’s that. He needs to eat, and he’s better at fishing than shooting—” He catches himself. “Don’t tell Kai I said that. I was just thinking out loud. It’s kind of a point of pride with him, to be able to hunt as well as Dad did.”
Vicki steps into one of the footprints. Her boot fills half of it. She steps into the next one, and the next one, stretching her legs unnaturally wide for her gait in between each imprint. She’s like a little girl playing dress-up with her mom’s heeled shoes, off-balance but having too much fun to let that stop her. She plants both feet, legs spread wide, and turns her head to face us. “Does Kai walk like that?”
“Like a drunk?”
“Hang on,” Hunter says. He watches Vicki as she hops over to the other set of tracks and repeats her previous action. The boot prints are nearly the same size, but this time her movements aren’t quite so erratic. “Or like that?” she says.
“She’s a genius.” Hunter lets out a puff of laughter and quickly snuffs it out, but he’s still smiling as he trots up to Vicki, then turns back to me. “Watch me, okay? Imagine I’m Kai.”
“Have you both lost your minds?”
“Just watch,” they say in unison.
Awesome, they’re teaming up against me.
Hunter steps into the tracks the same as Vicki did, except not at all the same as Vicki did, because he has a naturally longer stride. It just looks like he’s walking, his back toward me, along the bank of the raging river. It’s not his walk, though. It’s like I’m watching a stranger. How is this helping?
He hops to the other set of tracks and heads for a dense patch of trees behind the shelter. He shifts rhythm, but it’s still not like his heavy, clomping gait. It’s fluid and light-footed. Like Kai. If Hunter could be compared to a Clydesdale, then Kai would be a Thoroughbred.
Imagine I’m Kai … I see him now, walking off into the trees, ready to face his next adventure. He’s in those woods somewhere.
“Hunter, that’s it!” I run up to him. “Come on, he’s right there. Let’s go!”
But all trace of his prior enthusiasm has fled. He’s back to his usual serious calm. “He most likely went out to hunt. We should wait for him to come back.”
“What? Why? He can’t be that far off.” After we came all this way, he wants me to sit on my heels? What if Kai isn’t going to come back to this shelter, and escapes us again? I tug Hunter’s arm and he shrugs my hand off, like he’s flinching from an insect.
“He’s shooting at things, Gabi; we can’t just walk in there. And those ‘things’ are wild animals, and that forest is their home, and they didn’t invite us in. Bears, wolves, moose—”
“What’s a moose gonna do?”
“Oh, moose can get nasty if they think you’re a threat,” Vicki chimes in, nodding. “Even nastier than that bump on your head.”
“That was from the car, not the moose.”
“Moose have killed people.” She stiffens, suddenly defensive. Of a moose. “They’re not as slow and stupid as they look.”
Hunter ignores us both and heads for the snowmobiles, his decision final. “It’s safer to stay here, under a roof. I’ll get a fire going. Kai’s smart; he’ll be back. But if he doesn’t show up, or if we’re wrong and it wasn’t him, we’ll have to spend the night here.” He looks up at the sky, then right at me. “We won’t have enough time to get back to the lodge before dark, even if the snow holds off until late. It took us almost two hours to get here, so we’re only a little more than an hour from sunset now.”
“Okay, but he’s right. There.”
Hunter ignores me and says, “Vicki, you got any water in these?”
She bounds toward him and opens the small back compartment of a snowmobile, then pulls out a bottle of water. It’s frozen solid.
Just put it in my hand; my fury will melt it. “After all we’ve done and how far we’ve come, you’re going to sit here—”
A crack of thunder ripples through the air. I flinch and look up, instinctively searching for rain clouds. But there aren’t any. It’s snowing.
“That was a gunshot.” Hunter glares at the trees as if they’d fired the shot at him.
If that really was Kai and he’s already killed something, then he should come back now. Vicki and I exchange a look of relief. This excursion might be over soon.
Then we hear a scream.
The voice slicing the air is definitely Kai’s. It’s almost exactly how he sounded when he swung on a rope over the lake, throaty and robust, full of life.
Or maybe begging for it.
Is he in danger? My gut twists into a mess of knots.
Hunter takes off like a rocket toward the trees. I didn’t know he could move that fast.
“Wait!” I shout, but he keeps going. After he just argued all the reasons why we needed to stay out of there.
The forest isn’t dense, but the trees are close enough together that I’ve already lost sight of him. The trunks are only half covered with snow, as if the snow came in sideways, creating a dizzying pattern of dark and white. Vicki trails him quickly like a wolf chasing prey, leaving me behind. Alone. Unsure whether I should go or stay. This is my time to be brave. Kai might need me. But how can I help him against … whatever made him shout like that—after he fired his gun? This isn’t a jump in the lake. I can’t just show up with a dry blanket and expect a wild animal to stop its attack. Hunter and Vicki can handle it. They know what to do. I don’t.
“Kai!” Hunter’s voice echoes back to me.
His panicked tone forces me into action. No, I can’t just stand here and do nothing. If Kai is hurt, I’ll never forgive myself. I take off running across the open stretch between me and the woods. My legs scream murder from the sudden exertion of pumping them through snow, at a pace I haven’t used since I was last on the beach, happily jogging toward the surf. Move move move. I’m breathing icy needles.
The forest darkens the sky even more. But the snow isn’t as deep here, making it easier to move, and before I know it I’ve run farther than I meant to. “Hunter! Vicki! Kai … ?” I stop and listen for a reply. My heart kicks madly as I spin in a full circle, but
all I see is trees and snow. Which way did they go? And … mierda, which way did I come from? My gaze instinctively drops to the ground, searching for footprints, but there’s more brush here than snow. The evergreens must have caught most of it in their boughs higher up.
Movement above catches my eye, and I look up just in time to see a bird of some kind, with a gray wingspan that seems as wide as I am tall, soar right over me. Snow flutters down from the branch it was perched on. It saw me before I knew it was there—and took off, thank God, but what else is in here watching me that I can’t see?
“Over here!” Vicki yells. I turn toward her voice and find her in her black snowsuit jumping in place, waving her little arms over her head. Beside her, Hunter stands tall and broad and stoic as the tree trunks, waiting for me to catch up, but his eyes are wild, scanning the area.
I trot up to them. “Where is he—Did you see anyone at all? There aren’t any tracks.”
“I can see that,” Hunter says through gritted teeth. Maybe he isn’t really annoyed with me, just with the situation, but his reaction stings a little.
“Now what?” I say.
Hunter shushes me like he would one of his younger siblings. “Listen,” he whispers.
Something rustles nearby, or at least it seems like it’s nearby, but I don’t see anything moving. It’s so soft at first I think it must be an animal, and part of me—strike that, most of me—fights the urge to turn tail and run.
Then I see a person walking toward us, still quite a distance away, maybe fifty yards. The closer they get, the more their pace slows and their brows knit, like they think they’re seeing a mirage in the desert.
“Hunter?”
That voice … dripping over me like warm maple syrup, even in this chill. It’s him. He’s okay!