by Lydia Sharp
“There’s a bed in here, with blankets, and some wood.” Vicki exits one of the adjacent rooms. “Either the owners don’t stay here regularly or this is a public cabin for mountaineers. Whichever it is, this will work. Now we just need to get a fire going.”
“Right.” Fire mage isn’t on my résumé, though. “You do the fire. I’ll go back and get the guys, show them where to go.”
Vicki waves me off as she opens cupboards and drawers. “Matches, matches, come on, where are you?”
I follow our tracks through the snow, back to the lake. Kai and Jack are crouched next to Hunter, close to the trees. There’s a blanket under him, with a rope securing one end of it around his feet, and a thick line through the snow-covered ice leads to him. They dragged him, which explains why they’re both so out of breath. Hunter’s not dead like I feared, or even unconscious, but he’s definitely not well. His breaths are ragged, he’s almost hyperventilating, and he’s sickly pale, like the blood drained out of him. And I think he’s trying to talk, but it’s nonsense, words jumbling together through his chattering teeth. How are we going to help him out here?
Panic bubbles up from my gut and threatens to seize control. I swallow it down. I can do this; I can help by making a plan. I’m in control.
“We found an empty cabin, not far up the mountain,” I tell Kai. “Vicki’s working on warming it up. Can you get him there? I’ll lead the way.”
“Yes. That’s the best news I’ve ever gotten in my whole life.” He looks to Jack. “I’ll take one corner; you take the other. Ready?”
Jack nods, chest heaving from the work they’ve already done. That was across flat land, though. Now they’re going uphill.
Hunter sputters, “W-walk … I—I can w—”
“No,” Kai says firmly. “Save your energy. Stop talking. Concentrate on not dying.” He picks up his rucksack and puts it on my back. “I can’t carry him and this.”
My balance wavers for a moment while he tightens the straps. What’s he got in there, cinder blocks? Once it’s secure, I lead the way as best I can. Kai’s and Jack’s grunts behind me blend with the rush of blood in my ears. My lungs burn, refusing to expand, and my heart throws a tantrum. I’m desperate for air, for heat, for this to all be a dream. I’m not made for this kind of physical exertion in this kind of weather. Survival of the fittest is going to remove me from the gene pool.
Somehow, after a century of hiking, I reach the cabin and open the door for them. They drag Hunter inside. His shoulders just barely clear the doorway. “In here!” Vicki shouts, and they make a hard left into the adjacent room.
I close the main door and then find them heaving Hunter onto a bed that’s a few inches too short. His feet hang over the end. Then Kai starts stripping him. Coat, boots, shirt, pants, another shirt. Slop, slap, everything hits the floor in a wet heap. When he’s down to his underwear and Kai tugs at that, too, I turn away to watch Vicki on the other side of the room.
She has the beginnings of a fire going in a small wood burner. The tiny metal chimney shoots straight up and through a hole in the ceiling. She fans the flames and they glow bright red for a few seconds.
Kai leans against the wall, his face flushed and glistening with sweat. I turn to see Hunter bundled up in blankets from neck to toe. Vicki abandons the fire, finds a towel in Kai’s pack, and uses it to rub the ice out of Hunter’s hair.
Jack visibly bristles, watching his ex-girlfriend take care of the guy he thinks is her new boyfriend. Then he turns his ice-blue gaze onto me. “What’s the plan now? We have no means of transportation and no way to contact anyone for help. Coulda used the radio in my plane if I still had a plane.”
“I’m sorry about your plane,” I say. Because I can’t answer his question; I don’t have a plan. What do we do now? “There’s nothing we could have done to save it.”
“Not good enough.”
“Hey,” Kai interjects, “Gabi isn’t the one who landed us on a lake. Losing the plane is your fault.”
“And it’s your fault we went to the Bermuda Triangle of Alaska in the first place.”
“Fighting won’t get your plane back,” I say. “Stop worrying about what you can’t change.” I’m the queen of telling people not to do things I excel at doing—where is my crown?
“That plane is my life,” Jack snaps.
“It’s just a thing,” I say, trying to sound reasonable. “Things are replaceable. I’ll buy you a new one.” Which means I’ll have to get my mother involved and somehow convince her to add tens of thousands of dollars—a hundred thousand? How much is a plane?—to my monthly allowance, and the chances of that happening are slim to none, but Jack doesn’t need to know that and I don’t have room in my head to think about it now, anyway. I’ll figure it out later.
“Kai,” Hunter says weakly. “Dad … Is-s-s he here?”
He must be delirious.
Kai rushes to his side so fast that Vicki practically jumps out of the way. “No, this isn’t his place,” he tells his brother. “We’re at a different cabin. The owners aren’t here. But don’t worry about that now, okay? Just get warm.”
“I c-c-can’t.”
“Yes, you can, you’re a human furnace. That’s what Dad used to call you, remember? He said you were born to live outside.” Kai’s voice is crumbling. “The cold never bothered you.”
Vicki pokes at the fire, twisting her mouth. “We can’t go anywhere until he’s better. So I guess we’re spending the night here.”
“And then what?” Jack says. “You and I were going to drop them off anyway, Vicks. We don’t have to stay. There’s gotta be a town around here somewhere. If we leave now, we might find one before dark.”
“Good idea. Go. I’m not leaving Hunter like this.”
“And I’m not leaving without you.”
“It’s not your job to worry about me anymore,” Vicki huffs.
“I don’t need your permission to worry about you. And I don’t care if you hate me for it—you can’t hate me any more than you already do. I am not leaving you stranded here. But I’m not going to stand here and let you grump at me, either.” Jack moves toward the doorway and I step in front of it, palms out toward him.
“Wait,” I say. “Don’t leave the room before we know what we’re all doing. We don’t know yet if we’re close to any towns or doctors, and there’s nothing more we can do to help Hunter right now, so let’s take care of our immediate needs first.” I instinctively look to Kai for direction. “What should we do?”
He offers no suggestions, still focused on Hunter. I’m not even sure he heard me, and he’s two feet away. Hunter is still shaking but has given up trying to communicate. I wonder how much he’ll even remember of what’s happening now.
I guess I’ll figure it out, then. What do we need to survive? Shelter, check. Heat, check. Although we’ll need more wood soon—lots more if we want to heat the other rooms, too. What else … ? Water. Kai has a canteen in his rucksack, but that won’t be enough for all of us, even for just one day.
My shoulders drop with a sigh while my gaze drops to the floor, which is sprinkled with wet spots. Small puddles have formed everywhere our boots tracked the snow inside.
Snow. We can melt the snow for water. Yes.
What’s left, then? Food. Kai can hunt, but it doesn’t seem like he’s going to leave Hunter’s side until he’s better. Vicki can hunt, too, but can she get enough for all of us on her own?
I look up at Jack. “How well can you hunt?”
“Not at all,” he says.
Right, Vicki said his shotgun’s just for human trespassers. “All right, you’re in charge of getting wood to keep the fires going. We can’t let it get cold in here.” I’m not a doctor or even a med student like Hunter, but that much I know. The cold is trying to kill him. The only way to fight that is with heat. And the fire that’s warming him up now will go out soon if we don’t keep feeding it. Thankfully, Jack doesn’t argue.
“Vi
cki, you’re in charge of food,” I say, and she nods. “And Kai …” Is acting really worrisome right now. “Kai’s going to take care of Hunter.”
“What are you in charge of, then, princess?” Jack says. I misinterpreted his silence before. He was seething at me. “Because no way are you going to sit around here barking orders at everyone and not lift a finger of your own.”
That snaps Kai out of his trance. He turns his head slowly and locks a glare onto Jack. “Watch it.”
Jack shakes his head and mutters, “Nothing like being a fifth wheel on a broken wagon.” He grabs the hatchet from Kai’s pack. “If anyone needs me, I’ll be freezing my butt off chopping wood. Don’t say I didn’t pull my own weight when this is over. I pulled mine and his.” He points at Hunter, then storms out of the room and, moments later, out the front door, slamming it behind him.
One of the bigger logs in the wood burner catches in the draft, bathing everything in a warm glow. My chest loosens, and even Hunter’s ragged breaths seem calmer now. He’s getting better, slowly.
And we have a plan. We’re going to be fine. “Okay, while Jack’s out doing that, let’s—”
“You’re right, Gabi,” Kai says. “Even if we found someone … by the time we did that and brought them here … the worst of it will be over already. All we can do now is wait and hope Hunter pulls through.” He tugs off his gloves, tosses them beside his pack, and exits to the main room. Vicki goes back to Hunter’s side, and I follow Kai. “This isn’t worth it,” he says, pressing the heels of his palms against his eyes and then onto the tabletop for one breath … two …
Suddenly he kicks one of the chairs, sending it careening away from the table, and stomps off.
“Kai?” I close the door behind me and approach him hesitantly, like if I get too close he might vanish into thin air. We’re in another bedroom, as small and suffocating as the other one, with a narrow bed, an empty wood burner, and a single-paned window completely frosted over.
He turns to face me, and his jaw pulses. Whether he’s holding back anger, frustration, or fear, though, I can’t tell. “I can’t lose him, too,” he says.
Fear it is, then. “You’re not going to lose him.”
“No. I said that wrong.” He sits on the edge of the bed and drops his head in his hands. “Hunter’s already gone. He’s been gone for a long time, and I don’t know why. You didn’t know us then, how things were before.”
I may not be able to survive Alaska on my own, I may not be able to tend the fire or provide the food, but this I can do. I can be here for Kai when he needs it most. When things were at their worst between my parents, how often did I want someone to just listen to me vent? Let him speak, my heart whispers to my brain. I sit next to him on the bed. “I’m here now. I’m listening. You can tell me more about what happened, if you want to.”
His head pops up and his gaze catches mine. He looks shaken for a moment, then everything drains out of him and he’s just an empty shell, eyes cold, so devoid of their natural sparkle that they seem black. He’s putting as much emotional distance as possible between himself and the past. I wish I could do the same.
“We used to be close—we did everything together, Hunter and Dad and me. Going out with Dad was one of our favorite things. When we were really young, we’d go camping in the backyard. Then as we got older, Dad taught us how to fish, how to chop wood and start a fire, how to hunt, what to do if you fall through ice.” For a second his brow tightens, but he relaxes it again before it can change his whole expression. “Hunter did it all. And we had fun. But then he just … stopped. Everything. He never told me why. I mean, he said it was because he didn’t want to shoot animals anymore, and I respected his view on that, but why stop everything? You saw how he was with the fire yesterday. And tracking. He’s a natural at that kind of stuff. He always has been. That’s why I don’t understand how he could just shut it off, without warning, as easily as flipping a light switch.”
He takes in a breath and lets it out slowly. “Before we were born, even before Mom and Dad were married, he built a cabin somewhere around here. Probably similar to the one we’re in right now. Dad said there’re a lot of dry cabins in this area, but none too close to each other. People come out here to be isolated.”
Which means we really are alone out here. Perfect.
“Anyway,” Kai goes on, seeming less agitated now than he was a minute ago. Hopefully he can see that talking about this is helping. “I don’t know for sure what Dad’s cabin looked like or how big it was. I never came up here with him. He always said I was too young. I’d ask every year if I could go with him, and every time, he said no. ‘Just enjoy being a kid for now,’ he’d tell me. ‘You have the rest of your life to be an adult and do adult things, like exploring the world.’
“Then, last year, when I was sixteen, he finally asked me to join him. By that time, Hunter hadn’t done anything with us for a few years—he barely even talked to Dad anymore—so Dad didn’t bother asking him. It would have been more than a month of just the two of us. I really wanted to go, to make the hike, to learn as much as I could from him, to finally see the ‘Great White North’ he’d been telling me stories about my whole life. But I said no.” His lip quivers and his tone trembles. “One of my last memories of my father is the crushed look on his face, him asking me why, and I couldn’t tell him the truth. I lied and said I had something going on that was more important. But the truth was, I … I did it for …”
“Hunter,” I say. If there’s only one thing I’ve learned on this trip, it’s that Kai and Hunter love each other more than anything or anyone, apparently even more than their dad.
“Yeah. Hunter—” His tongue trips and he swallows. “He’s, I don’t know, jealous, I think, of how close me and Dad are, even though it was his choice to stop doing things with us. It still didn’t seem right to go off with Dad and leave Hunter behind. He’s my closest brother; I know there’s something he’s not telling me. But he doesn’t know why I said no, and how much that upset Dad, and I can’t tell him. He’s messed up enough already by Dad disappearing, and believing he’s dead. How can I tell Hunter the last thing I did with Dad was hurt his feelings because I wanted to spare his feelings?”
His logic in this is as twisted as Hunter’s reasoning for not wanting to pursue a romantic relationship. But even so, I get why he felt he did what was best, for his brother’s sake. Both of them are too selfless, but that doesn’t make them wrong. They’re also not right. And here I am stuck in the middle, stretched taut between them, without a clue how to help either of them. Just like when my parents would fight, and when they were trying to decide “what’s best for me” after the divorce. They told me things they should have said to each other instead.
“I knew Dad favored me,” Kai goes on, “because I liked to do the things he did. I didn’t agree with it or encourage it—I said no to the trip I’d wanted to go on my whole life so that Hunter wouldn’t feel bad. But I thought I’d have more time, like I could put off the trip, just go when Hunter was in college and too busy with his adult life to notice what I did or didn’t do with Dad. I didn’t know he wouldn’t come back this time. I just … thought I’d have more time.”
Isn’t that what we all think? We expect bad things to happen to other people, not to us. So when something strikes out of the blue, we always think, I thought I’d have more time. If anyone told me a year ago that my parents would be divorced now, I would have thought, So soon? even though I knew it was coming. I’d mistakenly assumed they’d wait until I was in college, away from the situation. I thought I’d have more time. To do what, I don’t know. Fix what was already broken beyond repair? Hindsight has a way of making you feel like a moron.
“You couldn’t possibly have known—” I start.
“But I did know it was possible,” he counters. “We all knew it was possible, every time Dad left.” His gaze darts to my rock necklace, and I remember what Hunter said about how their mom wore hers when
ever their dad was away, and now she’ll never take it off. “We knew there was a chance he wouldn’t come back. I’m not stupid, Gabi, I know there’s a chance he really is dead like everyone else thinks. It’s just not something I can get myself to believe without proof. Do you … Do you think that’s crazy?”
“No,” I say, and for the first time I really believe it. “If it were my mom or dad, I’d want proof, too.” The realization smacks me hard, leaving a stinging handprint of truth. Yes, even if it were my mother, with all the hurt she’s caused, with all the anger I hold toward her, I’d still hope she was alive.
“Whenever he was gone I pictured him getting attacked by wild animals or something like that, you know, going down fighting. He’s a strong guy, big like Hunter, but I know he’s not invincible. There’s still a chance, too, that something like that has happened in the past year …” He squeezes my hand and I squeeze back, keeping us tethered. “What supposedly took him was an avalanche. The cabin he’d built to protect himself from the elements didn’t hold up against them. I know that much is true. The fact that his cabin was destroyed is meant to be proof of his death … but for me that isn’t enough.”
I shudder, wondering if the same thing could happen to the cabin we’re in now. This is the tiniest house I’ve ever been in.
“The force of the avalanche knocked out half the structure,” Kai says, “and they think it swept him away, burying him somewhere underneath rubble and heavy snow. Diesel was with him on that trip, like he always was on every trip. He ran to the closest town. He was barking and barking and barking, so they knew something was wrong, and they used his tags to identify his owner. Then he led them to the wreckage and kept on barking while they searched. He barked so much it destroyed his vocal cords. He can’t make more than a squeak now.”
“Is that town near here?” I wish he’d told me this sooner. Maybe we aren’t so isolated after all.