Christmas Under the Stars

by Karen Swan

  ‘Hello? Commander? Can you hear me?’ she cried. ‘Please! Oh God, are you still there? Can you send help?’

  But even as she said the words, she knew how ridiculous they sounded. What the hell could he do? The man was in space. She had got through to quite literally the only person in the world – no, he wasn’t even in the world, he was off their planet – who categorically couldn’t help her!

  She threw the mic down in despair, collapsing onto the desk, her head in her arms as angry, bitter, furious sobs wracked her.

  There was nothing, nothing she could do. Mitch was gone and she had failed him. There would be no help coming tonight. They had to wait for the sun to crack the night sky, for the snow cannons to blast away the loose slabs before Search and Rescue teams could be deployed, for the winds to drop before the helicopters could take off . . . So many conditions necessary before they could even start to look for the man she loved.

  Three hundred kilometres above the Earth, Jonas Solberg looked back down at his own planet. The meniscus of light heralding the new day’s dawn shone from behind the horizon like a halo, not yet visible from Earth. The airwaves were quiet, most of the residents of continental America now sleeping, even though the time aboard the ISS was – according to the GMT guidelines they worked to – currently half past seven in the morning. He had already orbited Earth five times since his own midnight.

  He heard the woman’s voice again in his mind – her panic, her tears, her desperation as she fought to keep her head above the emergency that was engulfing her. He pressed a hand to the window, the land mass of Canada almost out of sight now as they sped towards Greenland. But he had seen enough to understand her terror, for he could see what she could not – nature extended to her full might down there. He had done what he could to help, immediately radioing the SOS to his flight director in Houston, whilst trying to calm the woman: Meg Saunders in a cabin near Wilson’s Gully, outside Banff in Alberta. But he had felt sick in his bones – the thick, swirling white cloud cover in the sky above her and below him had been a menacing sight. He hoped the best for her, that frightened, lone woman in the Canadian mountains, but it didn’t look good: he couldn’t envisage how anyone caught outside in a storm like that would survive.

  Chapter Five

  Sunday 26 March 2017

  There were plenty of people now – now that the sun was in the sky and the snow had stopped, the wind had dropped, and the landscape simply looked pretty and puffed up in its fresh white padding. Now they were here.

  And there were tens of them – Search and Rescue volunteers filling her tiny cabin, boiling her kettle to make rounds of coffee, tramping a slushy path outside the porch as they went back and forth with sombre expressions, the forest’s beloved silence polluted by the synthetic crackle of two-way radios.

  ‘So let’s go over it again, Meg,’ Martin Hughes, the S&R team leader, said, his knees splayed wide, his hands loosely clasped by interlaced fingers. ‘He left at what time?’

  ‘It was . . . uh, six-thirty. Maybe just before.’

  ‘How can you be sure?’

  ‘I was putting out dinner. We usually eat around then.’

  Hughes nodded. ‘OK. And he told you he’d be back at—’

  ‘Half past eleven. He said to give him five hours.’

  Five hours. The words echoed in her head. Five hours’ margin for what, in ordinary conditions, wasn’t even an hour’s hike. It was too long to have been gone without raising the alarm. She never should have let him go.

  ‘Has he ever done this before?’

  ‘What? Gone to the gully?’

  ‘Tried to launch a rescue mission on his own.’

  Meg frowned, picking up on the undertone. What was he doing – trying to make Mitch out to be some crusading hero? ‘No! N-never. It was only because it was so close to here and no one else was doing anything.’ She directed a pointed stare at his boss, Robin Patterson, the station chief for the Search and Rescue unit. ‘Plus he knows this back country better than anyone. He’s an experienced skier and hiker, you know that. He said he couldn’t just leave them – there was a twelve-year-old boy out there! He had to do something. That’s the kind of man he is. He would never abandon someone in need.’

  Hughes looked into the flames of the fire for a moment before bringing his gaze up to her. ‘The thing is, Meg, those hikers he was looking for—’

  She caught her breath. ‘Oh, God. Have you found them?’ Her hand covered her mouth, her eyes looking straight back to Patterson, his walkie-talkie silent in his hand. Tears welled. ‘Oh, no . . . don’t say they’re—’

  ‘They’re fine,’ Hughes interrupted. He paused. ‘They always were.’

  A stunned silence billowed out like a thrown sheet. ‘What?’ Meg croaked, her brain befuddled.

  ‘The hiker and son got back to town. They were late but . . . not missing.’

  ‘But . . .’ The words wouldn’t come out, stoppered by too many emotions. ‘Mitch said Tuck—’

  ‘We know. The man’s wife had raised the alarm mid-afternoon and we got the call, but conditions were already too bad to go out in the chopper, the avalanche risk was too high to go on foot, and the light was already fading . . . There was nothing we could do until dawn,’ Patterson explained with what Meg thought was a sheepish look. ‘Then two hours later we got another call, telling us to stand down preparations, they’d made it back. Turns out they’d got lost when the weather closed in again. There was zero visibility but they made it down by following the river and then managed to hitchhike their way back to town. The boy’s got frostbite on one hand and the father’s suffering some mild effects of exposure but other than that – and a serious fright – they’re OK.’

  OK? Meg stared at him, barely able to process what she was being told. Lack of sleep, panic, worry, stress . . . they were making it hard for her to process facts, to think clearly, but she did understand the point he was trying to make: it had all been for nothing. Mitch had risked his life, walking into a storm – for absolutely no good reason.

  ‘When . . . when did the call come? . . . To stand down,’ she mumbled, feeling her panic rise again.

  ‘Four-forty.’

  ‘But that doesn’t make sense.’ Meg blinked, trying to comprehend. Mitch had set out almost two hours later. Even allowing for the time it would have taken him after Tuck’s call to dress and get ready – maybe fifteen, twenty minutes – Tuck must have called at six-ish, at least an hour and twenty minutes after the good news call had come in. How could he have been so off the mark, making an SOS call to Mitch when everyone else was standing down?

  But she knew exactly how. The doors to Bill’s bar are thick and heavy and very effective at locking out the world. News travels slowly over beer.

  ‘. . . Does Tuck even know Mitch is missing?’ Her voice sounded strange. Thickened, somehow.

  ‘We’ve got an officer speaking to him and his wife, along with other guests in the hotel,’ Hughes said. ‘Tuck says he tried getting through as soon as he heard the hikers had made it back, but there was no connection.’

  And at what time had that been? Meg wondered bitterly. Eight o’clock? Nine? She hadn’t tried the line herself till ten.

  ‘The air crew have sighted a pylon down in Blackwoods Gully,’ Patterson interjected, holding his walkie-talkie up slightly. ‘It knocked out all the phone lines on this side of the valley.’

  Meg blinked. Bad luck mixing with horror again.

  ‘What matters is establishing the route Mitch would have taken. It’s imperative we find out which way he might have gone.’

  ‘But surely you can see his tracks?’ she asked, feeling another wave of fear. She looked over at Patterson. ‘I told your team, just follow them out the door . . .’

  ‘There are no tracks. Over a metre of snow fell last night, Meg, and what with the wind blowing so hard and all the avalanches—’

  ‘Avalanches?’

  ‘Thirty-three at last count,’ Patterson s
aid quietly. ‘The choppers are still up, assessing the damage.’

  ‘No.’ She shook her head, knowing what they were implying. ‘No. He’s got a . . . a safety pack. A transceiver and a probe and those inflatable wings. He’s a very experienced snowboarder. He’s outskied avalanches before.’

  ‘And he was wearing that when he left? You saw him in it?’

  ‘Yes. Definitely.’

  Patterson glanced at Hughes. ‘That’s good.’

  ‘And Badger,’ she said urgently, gabbling now, knowing what that look meant. ‘He’s got Badger and I can absolutely promise you, on my life, that dog would never let any harm befall either one of us.’ She realized her hand was pressed against her heart, as though conviction alone would swing the balance.

  Patterson’s walkie-talkie crackled to life in his hand and he sprang up from the chair. ‘Patterson.’

  Meg watched him walk out of the room, appearing on the porch on the other side of the window a moment later, his gaze casting down the valley and then left, looking up the slopes.

  ‘You’re going to find him, right?’ Meg asked, turning back and giving Hughes no corner to hide. She wanted him to look her straight in the eye.

  ‘I promise you, we’ll find him.’

  She rubbed her hands together, one cupped around the other, then switched, feeling suddenly cold and shivery. ‘He’s . . . he’s probably been in a snow hole, that’s the thing. He’ll have bunked down for the night and set out at first light again this morning. I mean, now with the conditions so much better and him not knowing those people are safe, he’ll just keep going.’

  Hughes nodded. ‘I reckon so.’

  ‘And he knows the terrain better than anyone. He and Tuck are forever going off on expeditions to do their filming. Sometimes they go for two, three nights and . . .’ She shrugged. ‘I don’t worry. Not really.’

  ‘He’s a good guy. We’re all real fond of Mitch. I assure you, we won’t stop till we find him.’

  A sudden commotion outside made them both look up – voices calling, doors slamming – and Meg was on her feet before Hughes, rushing to the window.

  Patterson and a police officer were running, lurching down the slope towards the brook, the route Mitch had taken last night as he’d pushed himself off into the storm.

  With a cry, Meg ran outside after them, oblivious to the fact that she hadn’t got her shoes on until she sank into the snow up to her knees. But she didn’t feel the stinging cold on her skin, didn’t notice how her feet blanched and then blushed a strong, bright pink. She just ran, her arms flailing, trying to propel her onwards, faster. The clamour of voices round the other side of the escarpment told her people were coming. He’d been found!

  Overhead she heard the heavy drone of a helicopter taking off not far away, the vibrations reverberating through her chest as its propeller blades sliced through a sky so frozen she half-expected shards to fall from it like daggers.

  ‘Mitch!’ she screamed, almost falling as she rounded the rocks, her mouth open as she gasped for breath.

  But the sight that greeted her snatched it away in the next instant.

  A man, his face all but obscured by the thick snow-encrusted fur trim of his jacket, was staggering down the embankment, his knees almost giving way from the effort of carrying something wrapped in a thick blanket.

  ‘Mitch!’ she screamed again, lumbering forwards as the other men turned, their arms outstretched to hold her back – or hold her up, she wasn’t sure which; because she’d seen now what the man was carrying, Badger’s dark mournful eyes peering back at her, his front leg supported with an emergency make-do splint.

  ‘Badger,’ she whispered, faltering to a standstill as Patterson lurched through the snow, back up the slope to her.

  He didn’t need to say the words. She knew it from the expression on his face, she knew it from the mere sight of her faithful dog being carried – limp, helpless and defeated. She knew it from the helicopter which had now moved clear of the mountains and was heading into the wide spread of the valley, a heavy, covered stretcher dangling from the winch below it and dragging in the breeze.

  Part II

  AFTERWARDS

  Chapter Six

  Saturday 1 April 2017

  It was her wedding day but she was in black. There was no spring lamb but plates of sandwiches, the bottles of champagne switched for a mediocre white wine, the displays of photographs on boards around the large room which were supposed to have charted her and Mitch’s lives up to this point where they were officially joined in matrimony until death would them part, now showing only Mitch, whose life wouldn’t ever go past this point. Death had already parted them.

  The guest list was largely the same and in some respects it could have passed for a wedding – the Homestead’s beautiful reception room with its double-height ceiling and twin stone fireplaces at either end was crammed with people, and even the typed notice outside the door, Closed for a private event, was what would have been used had she been in white instead. But she wasn’t dancing; she was sitting in a chair, staring at the flames that leapt and leaned and swayed like Arabian dancers, as all around her, people talked. They chatted, even smiled a little, the sombre silence of the church now beginning to dissipate as the wine’s effects took hold and the tragedy of a life ended too soon was gradually replaced with more upbeat reminiscences of high-school pranks and daring back-country expeditions that had passed into the town’s folklore. He will be much missed. That was the mantra that had been repeated over and over since his body had been found – tumbled and broken at the bottom of a couloir, a massive avalanche on top of him and poor Badger, the darling dog, sitting bereft on top, unable to dig that many metres deep with only one good paw.

  Mitch hadn’t been the only victim of the storm, she knew that. Old Mrs McClusky had slipped trying to clear snow from her path and broken her hip, dying of exposure within the hour when no one heard her cries over the howling winds; a car carrying six teenage boarders had hit black ice on the road out to Lake Louise, killing two, leaving three in hospital with ‘life-changing’ injuries and one in a coma; and some of the fifty-four avalanches that had struck in the Banff range overnight had completely engulfed seven remote (and thankfully empty) cabins just like hers. Meg supposed she was ‘lucky’ to have escaped one herself but it was hard to feel lucky just now. It was hard to feel anything at all.

  A hand touched Meg’s arm, lightly enough that it was several moments before she noticed. She jumped, startled, and Badger’s hackles went up between his shoulder blades, fully alert to another threat to his owners.

  ‘How’re you doing, sweetheart?’

  It was Barbara, doing one of her half-hourly rounds as though she was on a self-appointed suicide watch, checking Meg wasn’t hot or cold, hungry or thirsty, tired or sleepless . . .

  ‘Are you warm enough?’ she asked, squeezing Meg’s hand.

  Meg nodded but Barbara tutted. ‘You’re frozen. Here, let’s get that chair a bit closer to the fire.’

  Meg went to protest but found she didn’t have the energy and the chair she was sitting in was shuffled a few centimetres closer to the hearth, under the watchful eye of Badger.

  ‘And you haven’t touched your food.’

  Meg looked down guiltily at the plate on her lap – or at least, aware she should feel guilty. But she didn’t feel anything. She was in shock – deep shock that she had just buried her fiancé in the very church and on the very day where they were supposed to have been married. When they’d first been offered the date, Meg hadn’t been sure. She didn’t want to get married on April Fools’ Day; she didn’t want their day to be a joke. (And she could only imagine what Tuck, as best man, would do to mark it.) But Mitch had embraced the idea. ‘We’ll begin as we mean to go on – laughing.’ But no one was laughing today.

  Whilst the vicar had been shakily delivering her eulogy, praising Mitch’s bravery, nobility, generosity, compassion and zest for life, Meg had stared open
-mouthed at the altar where she had been practising to kneel in a long dress, listening to the organ that was supposed to be playing ‘Here Comes the Bride’ and not Handel’s Messiah, formal displays of white lilies pouring forth at the pew ends instead of the bouquets of wild flowers she’d spent hours choosing.

  Was he really gone? She’d stared at the coffin, its top adorned with hundreds of yellow roses, unable to believe he was in there, wearing the suit he’d bought to marry her in. They’d planned a small wedding – ‘intimate’ they’d said, although in truth they couldn’t afford food and drink for a hundred people – but the church had been full to overflowing today. Mitch was one of the town’s best-loved sons, a local boy who’d valued home and given his life in the service of others. There had been whispers he might make mayor one day or take over the Search and Rescue team or become the spokesman for the local tourist board. A local face, a name. But she’d just wanted him to be her husband. She’d have been happy for it to stop there. She didn’t need him to be bigger or better than that.

  ‘Tuck’s getting ready to say a few words. Are you OK with that?’ Barbara asked, rubbing her hand gently as though trying to warm it up.

  Meg flinched at his name and looked into the flames. ‘Of course.’ But her voice was flat and her lips thin, the very mention of Tuck closing her down further. When she’d been standing at the lectern, reading ‘Death is Nothing at All’ in the monotone that was all her body could now produce, her eyes had met his briefly and she had been stopped in her tracks, feeling a fury explode in her as she took in his tear-streaked cheeks and swollen eyelids, as though his loss matched hers just because he and Mitch had been friends since kindergarten. According to Lucy, he had screamed like a child when they’d been given the news, dropping to the floor as though his bones had been snapped. Lucy was worried sick about him but Meg didn’t care. He had made that phone call, he had sent Mitch to his death. Let him suffer, feel the guilt, live with the burden of what he’d done.