by Sara Grant
Between the slushy spray from the dogs and the sled and the falling snow, I could barely see more than a few feet ahead of us. I gasped as we were spat from the forest and into an open field. Suddenly the dogs darted to the right. We bounced through fresh snow drifts. Had they seen a rabbit or a deer? Whatever it was now controlled our course.
“Think, Mackenzie,” I shouted to her as I looked around for something, anything to save us. “How do you slow this thing down?”
“Check the musher’s pack!” Mackenzie yelled and pointed to the pouch attached to the sled. I could have kissed her. Great idea.
With painfully slow movements, I steadied myself then climbed over Mackenzie. The handlebar of the sled had broken off. That must have been the crack we heard and what made the musher fall. I spotted what I thought was a footbrake, but I was afraid what might happen if we stopped too suddenly.
The dogs began to bark and jerked to the left. I wrapped one arm around the top rail that ran from the back to the front of the sled and rummaged in the deerskin pouch that was tied right below the raw edges of the handlebar. Something shiny winked at me from the bottom of the pouch.
Please. Please. Please let it be…
“Yes!” I said as I pulled a knife from the bag.
The dogs’ barking seemed to make the air and my insides rattle. I dived to the front of the sled and pressed my body flat. I gripped the rope that tethered the dogs to the sled and began to saw. Almost immediately I could feel the rope give. Just a bit more and…
“Yeah!” we shouted as the dogs surged forward, and we slowed to a stop and flopped into the snow. My legs were shaking too badly to stand.
“I’m never travelling by dog, horse or even a hippo ever again,” Mackenzie said, and crawled next to me.
We lay on our backs. The snowflakes looked like they were diving, not floating, towards us. “I hope the dogs will be OK,” Mackenzie said as the barking faded away.
“I’m sure they’ll find their way home,” I said, sounding more sure than I was. I stuck out my tongue and let the icy drops coat it.
Mackenzie elbowed me in the ribs. “You like this, don’t you?”
“What?”
“Action. Adventure.” She said the words as if they were dirty.
I realized I was buzzing. It was the same feeling I got when I crossed any finish line or jumped a ditch a bit too wide and still made it across. I shrugged. “Yeah, so?”
“Does danger follow you everywhere you go?” she asked with a laugh.
I stood and pulled her to her feet. “You can’t blame me for this.” I showed her the broken handlebar. “I think that wood has been cut.”
Mackenzie didn’t look. “This was an accident.”
“I think someone wanted the sled to crash.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. Look at this thing.” She kicked the sled’s runner. “It’s ancient. The handlebar snapped because it was old and worn out.”
“I’m not so sure.”
Mackenzie planted her fists on her hips. “I know you’ve been bored. Planning a party isn’t really your style but don’t look for a mystery when there isn’t one.”
I didn’t say it, but I wondered if this was another attempt on Mackenzie’s life. Had someone figured out she was alive?
“This isn’t about me,” Mackenzie insisted as if she’d read my mind. “We weren’t supposed to be on the sled.”
“OK, whatever,” I said because I could see she was freaking out a little. I’d drop it for now, but I’d have to be more vigilant. “How are we going to get back to the resort?”
“We call for help,” she said, as she removed her gloves and pulled her phone from the zipped pocket with the logo on the front of her snowsuit. “No reception!” she shrieked.
“Maybe we can retrace our route and find the others.” I marched the way we came. We could be miles away from where we started. It was getting colder and the snow seemed to be coming down in sheets, not flakes. The dogs could have taken us closer to the resort or in the opposite direction. I had no idea. I stopped when I realized Mackenzie wasn’t following.
“Mackenzie!” I shouted.
She raced past me. “If my calculations are correct, I think there’s a cabin less than a mile this way.”
“How could you possibly know that?” I said when I caught up to her.
“I studied a map of the resort,” she said as if that’s something everyone would do. “Don’t you remember? They gave us one when we checked in.”
“Yeah, but how do you know where we are and where it is exactly?”
“Well, I calculated our average speed and how many times and in which direction we turned, the route we were supposed to take and how long it should have taken us—”
“Yeah, yeah. OK, smarty pants, I believe you. Lead on!”
Within five minutes, we spotted a chimney above the tree line. In ten more minutes we were standing outside an old log cabin. I had to admit that having a geeky friend came in handy.
“What is this place?” I asked. My dad would have called it rustic. That’s what he called our zillion-year-old house in Indiana with its peeling paint and leaky roof.
“It’s part of the Winter Wonder Resort. Guests can pay extra to stay in the middle of nowhere.”
“Why would you pay more to stay in this old place when there’s a big lodge with a roaring fire and non-stop, all-you-can-eat buffets?”
“Out here you have the best chance of seeing the Northern Lights.”
My fingers and toes were tingling with cold. Even the thick, custom-designed gloves and boots the resort had loaned us had their limits. “Let’s get inside and find a phone,” I said and jiggled the door handle.
“Locked,” Mackenzie said, and rubbed her arms. “We really do need to seek shelter. Based on the wind chill and at these temperatures, we could get frostbite on any exposed skin in ten to thirty minutes.”
“Duh,” I said. I didn’t need her to tell me it was freaking cold. My nose hairs were beginning to freeze.
We raced around the cabin. Every door was locked up tight. We couldn’t even smash a window because the windows were covered with wooden shutters. I tried to prise one open but with my gloved hands and fingers stiff from the cold, it was no use.
“Try your phone again,” I said to Mackenzie.
She held her phone high in the air and walked around on her tiptoes. “Nothing.”
“Maybe we need to get higher?” I pointed to the roof.
Mackenzie shook her head. “No, thanks. I prefer to freeze on the ground so my body won’t shatter when I finally pass out from the cold.”
I dragged her to the back of the cabin where I’d already spotted how we could climb to the roof.
“They will be looking for us. We don’t need to do this,” Mackenzie protested.
“Then we will be easy to spot from up there.” I scrambled up a pile of wood that was stacked next to a shed. I hauled Mackenzie next to me. From there, it was only a matter of launching ourselves across a few feet to the rooftop. “See, nothing to it,” I said when I reached the roof.
“How do you talk me into your crazy schemes?” She shrieked as she leaped for the roof. The top half of her body made it, but the bottom half dangled off the side. I grabbed the belt of her snowsuit and dragged her to safety.
“Wow,” she sighed once we were safely perched on the roof’s peak.
“Wow,” I echoed as we took in the landscape.
The world around us was a hushed glittery white. The horizon glowed as the sunset painted the clouds what Crayola would call a neon-carrot orange. I loved everything about this snowy paradise, except the lack of daylight – and the fact we might freeze to death. This time of year there were only six hours of sunlight. How did people live with so little sunshine?
We checked our phones again. No signal. Argh!
“Maybe if we make noise they’ll hear us before they can see us,” she said, and fumbled with her phone. Her favourite song blared
from the phone’s tiny speakers. The sound seemed to fill every space in the forest. “We need to keep warm,” she said. She planted her feet and started to sort of dance and sing at the top of her lungs and so did I. We must have looked ridiculous but neither one of us cared.
“It’s like a painting,” she said when the song ended.
“Amazing,” I agreed, and then I saw something even more beautiful – two Winter Wonder snowmobiles racing to our rescue!
I should have been excited that I wasn’t destined to be a human icicle, but something was bothering me. It was the same feeling I’d had when I’d arrived in the Maldives, that nagging sensation that something bad was brewing.
“We are saved,” Mackenzie said, and wrapped her arm around me. “What is it? What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.” I tried to sound convincing.
“We aren’t going to freeze to death. Why aren’t you happy?”
“I am,” I said.
“Chase…” Mackenzie said my name in a way that meant she knew something was wrong.
This place was cold in more ways than the low number on the thermometer. “Something’s not right.”
“Can’t you relax and enjoy yourself?” she said.
“Yeah, sure,” I said but I couldn’t.
“It’s your overactive imagination combined with the loss of feeling to your extremities,” Mackenzie said with a playful punch.
I hoped she was right.
Grandma and Shauna were waiting outside the lodge when Mackenzie and I returned from our snowy adventure. Grandma didn’t say a word, just hugged us.
“Are you all right?” Shauna asked, piling in on the hug. “What happened out there?”
“All that matters is that my girls are unharmed.” Grandma’s words were muffled because she was still hugging us so tightly, and her face was smushed against our snowsuits.
“What about the dogs and the musher?” I asked, trying to wriggle free of the group hug, but Grandma wouldn’t let go. “Are they OK?”
“The dogs have been reunited with their musher,” Shauna said. “I’m so sorry this happened. I was assured that the dogsled teams were the best in the area.”
“Never mind,” Grandma said, almost pushing us away. She wiped at her eyes. “We’ve got work to do. Shauna, how are the final preparations coming for the party in the ice pub tonight?”
“Absolutely, one-hundred-and-fifty percent under control!” Shauna must have been a cheerleader in a past life because when she was in full-on event-planner mode she spoke in exclamation marks. “I’m glad my two best assistants are OK! See you later!” Shauna bounced across the snowy courtyard towards the ice hotel and pub. The resort constructed a hotel, church, pub, maze and loads of sculptures every year using ice from the nearby lake. It would melt over the summer, and then they would start again the next winter. That was pretty amazing but also pretty weird.
“Maybe you girls should rest for a while,” Grandma said, leading us into the lodge. We surrounded the massive stone fireplace in the middle of the lobby. The warmth of the roaring fire was almost overwhelming after nearly freezing to death. We unzipped our snowsuits and removed our gloves. I wasn’t sure I’d ever feel my fingers again.
“We are fine, Ariadne, really,” Mackenzie replied, although the fluffy cushions seemed to swallow her as she collapsed into one of the lobby’s many overstuffed couches. “According to the itinerary, Chase and I are supposed to be delivering gift bags.” If she read things once or twice, she remembered them. She was worse than Shauna about the itinerary. “Where are the gift bags?”
“They are in my room,” Grandma said.
“I’ll get them,” Mackenzie said, springing to her feet. Grandma handed her the key card, and she dashed off. Since we arrived, Mackenzie was always doing things like that.
“She doesn’t always need to be working,” Grandma muttered.
“She thinks she owes you,” I explained. Mackenzie’s life had been threatened when she lived in London with her mother. Because Mackenzie’s mum and my mom had been childhood friends, Grandma had agreed to act as Mackenzie’s guardian and hide her in the Maldives to keep her safe. That hadn’t worked very well. We caught the baddies who were after Mackenzie in the Maldives, but we still didn’t know who the mastermind behind it all was.
“I am happy to look after that lovely girl.” Grandma watched Mackenzie disappear on to the elevator. “Her mum has always been a good friend to me.”
Now was my chance. It was the first time I’d been alone with Grandma for days, and she was in a sentimental mood instead of the drill sergeant she sometimes was when it came to her business. “Um, Gran,” I started. I’d decided I wanted to contact my long-lost mom, and Grandma was the only one who could help me. In the Maldives, I’d discovered why my mom had never been part of my life. She was in prison. I’d been born there. That’s why my dad and grandma never, ever mentioned her. I was kind of, sort of getting used to the idea of my criminal mom. “I thought I might like to—”
Grandma interrupted. “When you drop off the bags at the ice hotel can you check that the ice sculptures are finished?” She was examining her itinerary.
“Yeah, sure, but I wondered if you might have—” I gulped.
“And the rooms; Shauna said some of the beds needed to be rebuilt,” she added, rifling through the pages on her clipboard, not noticing that I desperately was trying to ask her something.
“Mackenzie and I will check.” I needed to say this quickly. My courage was thawing faster than my toes. Everybody only gets one bio mom, and I was ready to know more about mine. “I was thinking I would like to…”
She looked at me at last. “Go snowmobiling?”
“No, it’s not about that.”
“Cross-country skiing? That’s on the itinerary for later in the weekend.”
“No. I mean, yes, but what I was hoping you could tell me was…”
She squinted at me. “Go on.”
My mom’s email address, I said it over and over in my head but the words wouldn’t form on my lips.
“Ready, Chase?” Mackenzie called from the lodge door with fists full of shiny blue gift bags exploding with silver tissue paper. We’d helped Shauna assemble them last night.
“Chase?” Grandma said. “What did you want to ask me?”
I couldn’t do it, not like this with Mackenzie breathing down my neck and Grandma staring at me as if I was a pink rhino with fairy wings.
“Nothing,” I said, and gave Grandma a kiss on the cheek. She’d worried about me enough for one day.
I grabbed some of the gift bags from Mackenzie. “Did you ask her?” she whispered.
I shook my head. “Not the right time.”
“It’s never the right time,” she muttered. I knew she was right.
I yanked open the large wooden lodge door. “Whoa!” I sort of screamed and stumbled backwards.
Identical twin boys were framed in the doorway. They had straight brown hair that was too long to be short and too short to be long. They were tall and thin with skin so white it looked like it had never even seen a picture of the sun. Two identical black wheelie suitcases bookended the boys.
“Welcome,” Mackenzie said, and nudged me aside. “I’m Ma — ” she started but caught her mistake. “I’m Berkeley and this is Chase. Are you here for the launch of Love Late in Life?”
The boys smirked. “How old do you think we are?” the one on the left said. They looked our age, maybe a little older. “We’re here—” Right Twin started but was interrupted by his brother, “We are on a break from our boarding school.” They had British accents like Mackenzie. “Yes, yes, that’s right,” Right Twin said.
“I thought we had reserved the entire resort for the launch,” I said to Mackenzie. She shrugged.
“We, um, come here the same time every year. We promised to stay out of your way and take one of the staff rooms in the lodge—”
Left Twin interrupted his brother. “I’m Taylor
and that’s Toby, but everyone calls us TnT, like, short for dynamite.” They were staring at Mackenzie as if I wasn’t even in the room.
Mackenzie nervously giggled at their lame joke. She cocked her head and twisted one of her perfect reddish-brown curls around her finger. Was my shy, awkward, geeky friend actually flirting? Did flirting come naturally to all pretty people? I tried to laugh too, just to be nice, but my forced laughter sounded like a half-cough, half-bark.
“I went to boarding school in the UK,” Mackenzie said. Did she bat her eyes at them? I elbowed her, not only to make her stop flirting, but also to remind her that she was presumed dead. She wasn’t supposed to tell people where she was from.
“What school do you attend?” I asked the boys, not that I knew the names of any posh British schools.
“Ingenium International College,” Left Twin said. I couldn’t remember if it was Taylor or Toby.
That school name sounded familiar for some reason.
“There’s a party later and then we’re going to see the Northern lights,” Mackenzie said, flirting again. “You are welcome to join us—”
“Yeah, maybe we’ll see you around,” I interrupted. “We’ve got work to do.”
“Toodles, TnT,” Mackenzie said with a giggle as I dragged her out of the lodge.
In the centre of the courtyard stood a huge block of ice. It was twice my height and had the Winter Wonder Resort logo – a series of snowflakes and wavy lines that I thought were supposed to symbolize the Northern Lights, not that we’d seen them yet. When we passed it, I shouted “Race ya!” and took off. I reached the ice hotel first. I always beat Mackenzie.
“I wish you wouldn’t do that,” Mackenzie said between pants, trying to catch her breath.
“Do you want to time ourselves to see how fast we can deliver the gift bags?” I asked.
“No,” she replied. “I want to look at the rooms properly. The last time we were here, Sven was still making improvements.”
“Grandma wants us to check to make sure everything’s finished.” I could be business-like too. We jumped when a chainsaw roared to life. “That’s Sven,” I reassured Mackenzie. I’d watched him carve a life-sized angel from a hunk of ice using a chainsaw yesterday. He was a Boy Wonder when it came to ice. He was only seventeen and the featured artist for this year’s ice hotel. I loved watching him work.