Parallelogram Omnibus Edition

by Brande, Robin

  “Move your sled,” Ginny ordered. “Now.”

  The two of them quickly pivoted their sleds sideways on the ice, then stood in between them. They wanted to make it look like they were big animals—like the sleds were part of their bodies. Then Ginny handed the flare gun to Halli and kept the pulse rifle for herself.

  “Shoot him a warning,” Ginny said.

  Halli swallowed hard, then aimed the flare gun. Ginny had taught her how to use it and then made her practice, but this was different—this was real. Halli’s hand shook as she fired the flare out in front of the bear.

  It landed far in front of him. He ignored it and continued running.

  “Get behind me,” Ginny snapped. She braced the pulse rifle against her shoulder and squeezed the trigger. Halli clamped her hands over her ears. The vibration from the rifle hurt: a loud, piercing, penetrating kind of sound that she could feel all the way through to her bones.

  The bear felt it, too. He twisted his head to the side as his feet slid to a stop. He shook his head, obviously trying to rid himself of the sound. But Ginny pulled the trigger again, sending a whole second wave of it, even stronger than the first.

  The bear roared, then turned away. He loped off into the distance, then turned back to look at them again.

  Ginny and Halli waited.

  The bear seemed uncertain. He took a few steps toward them, then a few more.

  “Shoot another flare,” Ginny said.

  Halli used both hands this time, hoping to hold the pistol steady. She aimed and shot. Once more the flare landed short.

  “Again,” Ginny said, keeping the rifle braced against her shoulder.

  Halli shot again, and this time the flare fell almost in front of the bear.

  He roared, but didn’t move.

  Ginny kept the rifle ready.

  The three of them stood that way for another several minutes. Then finally the bear turned and headed off in another direction.

  “Will he come back?” Halli asked.

  “He might,” Ginny said. “Let’s keep going.”

  The two of them started forward again, but Ginny kept the rifle in her hand. Halli still carried the flare gun.

  An hour later, just as Halli was wondering whether she could stow the heavy pistol and not have to carry it anymore, she saw movement to her left.

  Ginny whipped around and shot. The vibration hit the bear hard. He roared in pain and shook his head as he backed away. Ginny sent three more waves toward him until finally he took off at a run.

  Ginny cursed.

  She looked up at the darkening sky. A wind storm was coming, kicking up the loose snow all around. In another minute, they wouldn’t be able to see more than a few feet in front of them.

  “Anchor your sled,” Ginny said. “Hurry.”

  Halli fumbled to pull the ice screws out of her sled bag. The thick gloves she wore kept her fingers warm, but they also made it hard for her to work the zipper. Ginny had already anchored two sides of her sled before Halli started on her first. She twisted the screw into the ice and was just moving to do the next when the wind hit.

  Halli shouted as her feet shot out from beneath her. Ginny threw herself on top of the sled to keep it from flying up and hitting Halli in the head. Halli scrambled over to add her own weight, but Ginny pushed her away.

  “Stay down!” she shouted. “Hold on!”

  Halli crouched on the ice and gripped Ginny’s leg to keep from sliding away. The wind felt like a tornado, swirling all around them, beating them from the sides, the top, and slipping underneath to try to drag them off their feet.

  Then finally—maybe ten minutes later, maybe more—it began to subside. And Ginny immediately let go of Halli’s sled and raced back to her own. She unzipped the side of her bag and reached inside for the pulse rifle that she’d quickly stowed before the wind hit. Then she pivoted in every direction, checking for the bear.

  Halli’s breath came hard. There were too many things to be afraid of all at the same time. But seeing Ginny keep guard against the bear made Halli start to feel calmer, somehow. Like Ginny was in control again. Even though it might be crazy to think any human could be in control in a place like that.

  “Hungry?” Ginny called through the lessening wind.

  Halli had to think about it before she answered. But the truth was, she was. They hadn’t eaten for hours. And the stress had used up whatever reserves Halli’s young body might hold.

  “We need to eat,” Ginny said. “Heat some water. I’ll keep watch.”

  Halli wondered later if it had just been a tactic of her grandmother’s to get her to focus on something besides her fear. Whether Ginny planned it that way or not, it worked. Halli had to throw all her concentration into putting together the solar-powered stove, chipping enough ice from the ground to fill the pot, then monitoring the heat to make sure she kept it high enough to melt the ice into water.

  “I’d like some soup,” Ginny told her. So Halli pulled out one of the food bags, found the packages of dried soups, and added one to the pot. Five minutes later, she poured split pea soup into an insulated mug and handed it to Ginny.

  “You keep watch,” Ginny said, handing her the rifle.

  Halli stared up at her wide-eyed.

  “You can do it,” Ginny said. “I know you can.”

  Halli nodded and took the gun. And hoped that her grandmother would drink her soup in record time.

  “Go ahead and eat,” Ginny finally said, taking the rifle from Halli’s frozen grip. Halli still looked to her right, to her left, and behind her, the way she’d been doing obsessively for the past few minutes while Ginny left her in charge.

  “We’ll be fine,” Ginny said. “Eat.”

  Halli reheated the rest of the soup and poured it into her own mug. Then she sat on her skis to give her a little more insulation from the ice, and hungrily slurped it down.

  “Let’s talk about the ice screws,” Ginny said, still scanning the horizon for the bear. “What can you do to be faster next time?”

  Next time. Halli knew that was code for “you messed up,” but Ginny never put it that way. She never scolded Halli for her mistakes. Instead she made Halli analyze what went wrong, and decide how she could do things better next time.

  “My gloves,” Halli said.

  “What about them?”

  “I should have taken them off.”

  “Never take them off,” Ginny said, looking right, left, and behind her again. “You’ll get frostbite, they’ll swell, they’ll be useless. What else could you do?”

  “Practice?” Halli suggested.

  “I think practice would be good,” Ginny agreed.

  So right then, with Ginny looking on, Halli put herself through a drill of unzipping her sled bag, pretending to reach in for the ice screws, then turning and beginning to anchor the sled.

  “What did you forget?” Ginny asked.

  Halli looked around. And saw that she’d left the sled bag unzipped. She quickly fixed it.

  “Good,” Ginny said. “That’s very important. We don’t ever want anything to blow away.”

  Halli spent the next half hour practicing retrieving the screws and twisting them into the ice. Finally Ginny told her that was enough for the time being.

  “Ready to go again?” she asked.

  The blowing snow had finally settled once more. They could see far out in front of them.

  Halli undid the ice screws and stored them in the bag. Ginny did the same. Then the two of them reattached their sleds to their waist harnesses and began skiing again. Ski, ski, look. Ski, ski, look. But the bear never returned that day.

  Two days later, there were different bears: a mother and her two cubs.

  Four days after that, another male. And by the twenty-second day, they’d faced and repelled a total of seven bears. It might have seemed routine by then, if not for the fact that each bear posed exactly the same danger of attacking them before they could defend themselves. And even th
ough the pulse rifle meant pain, any one of the bears might still decide the pain was worth it in exchange for a meal.

  They had just finished a long stand-off with a lone female bear when Halli heard a familiar sound.

  “Anchor!” Ginny shouted.

  A wave of black cloud raced toward them, much faster than any Halli had seen before. And even though she’d learned to retrieve her ice screws quickly now after so many repetitions, this time she wasn’t fast enough. She only had two sides screwed in before the wall of wind hit.

  Her sled whipped into the air, tethered by the two straps. Ginny fought to anchor the fourth side of her own sled, and didn’t manage to catch Halli’s in time.

  The sled bucked through the air. Ginny yanked Halli away so the runners wouldn’t hit her. But as the two of them watched, suddenly supplies started flying out of Halli’s sled bag: clothes, gear, and worst of all, food.

  She hadn’t zipped it closed. Halli knew it right away. She’d been in such a hurry —

  She reached out to grab what she could, but Ginny pulled her away. “Too dangerous!” she shouted, and Halli knew she was right. The sled bounced and whipped and twisted on its tethers, spewing contents everywhere. Then the wind hurled the sled itself away as Halli watched in horror.

  Half of their remaining food had been on that sled.

  As soon as the wind burst ended, Ginny searched the immediate area, but there was no doubt the sled was gone.

  “I’m so sorry!” Halli cried. “I should have been faster! I should have seen the storm. I’m so sorry! I know it’s all my fault—”

  “It’s not your fault, and there’s no use going over it again,” Ginny told her. “It happened. Now we have to decide what to do.”

  “But I should have closed the zipper!” Halli said. “I know that was the most important part!”

  Ginny gripped her by both arms. “Halli. Stop. This is what happened. It’s over—move on. Now what are you going to do next?”

  Halli could feel tears start to well up in her eyes. She knew she’d let Ginny down. That she’d endangered both of them. That she hadn’t been quick enough or smart enough to do what she was supposed to.

  Ginny must have seen how distraught Halli was.

  “Want to hear a secret?” Ginny asked.

  Halli swallowed hard and nodded.

  “The first time I came out here, I wanted to cry all the time,” Ginny said. “About the bears, the cold, how hard it was—everything.”

  “Really?”

  “Really,” Ginny said. “But do you know what happened when I did cry?”

  Halli shook her head.

  “My tears froze. They iced my eyelashes together. Then I couldn’t see until I pried them apart, and then I was afraid I wouldn’t see the bears—it was a disaster. So I just decided I could never cry out here. I’d save all of it for when I got home.”

  “And then did you?” Halli asked.

  “No, by then I forgot,” Ginny said. “But if you want, I’ll remind you. I’ll say, ‘Halli, don’t forget you wanted to cry that one day. Go ahead now if you want.’”

  Halli gave her a tentative smile. “I’m really sorry.”

  “I know you are, but it could have been my sled,” Ginny said. “And then we wouldn’t have the tent or the delicious cashews or anything else I was carrying. It’s why we split up the gear and the food—just in case something like this happens. Because bad things can always happen, Halli. Always. If you understand that, you’ll learn to just keep going, the way I do.”

  Ginny slapped her thick gloves against the thighs of her thick pants. “So let’s keep going, shall we? You keep a lookout for any bears, and I’ll pull my sled. We need to keep going as long as we can tonight. The sooner we get to the pickup point, the sooner we’ll get to eat all the rest of our food and have a little party, all right?”

  Halli nodded.

  Ginny gave her granddaughter a quick hug. “Things happen, right?”

  “Right.”

  “And what do we do?”

  “Keep going,” Halli said. “And decide what we’re going to do next.”

  “That’s my girl,” Ginny said.

  That night when they finally rested in the tent, Halli wearing Ginny’s oversized jacket since she didn’t have any extra clothes of her own anymore to wrap around herself, Halli typed out her daily report so that everyone following them could know what happened.

  She’d been writing reports from the field for the past two years, ever since Ginny suggested she write her first one when Halli was five. That one had been short and simple: “So much rain we all most drownd.”

  This time her report was nearly as short: “Today my sled blew away. Saw one bear.”

  “That’s all you want to say?” Ginny asked after reading it.

  Halli shrugged. She didn’t really feel like writing anything at all. She wished she could forget the whole day.

  “Want to hear what I wrote?” Ginny asked.

  Halli nodded.

  “Fierce wind storm took us by surprise and swept away Halli’s sled. Lost all her gear and half our remaining food. But safe after another bear encounter: another female, not as aggressive as the one with cubs. Only needed the flares to scare her away. Halli and I in good spirits despite our meager dinner of nuts and warm water. Will squeeze into one sleeping bag for remainder of trip. Tent safe, so all is well.”

  “You always say it better,” Halli said.

  “Think about it,” Ginny answered. “Think about all the people out there—the ones reading what you write every night. People like to feel brave. They like to feel they could do daring things if they tried. But not everybody has the time or the freedom you and I do. So people like to come along on our journeys. And it’s up to us to give them details so they feel like they’re a part of it. Do you understand?”

  “Yes, I suppose.”

  “So when you write something,” Ginny said, “think about all those little girls and boys sitting in their warm, cozy homes, wondering what dangers and excitement Halli Markham faced today.”

  “But today wasn’t a good day,” Halli said.

  “What do you mean?” Ginny said. “We’re here, aren’t we? We’re together, we’re safe. So it must have been a very good day. We survived our challenges. You shot that second flare right in front of the bear’s feet—that’s why she ran away. And you managed to screw in two of your anchors before that wind hit—do you think most people could have done even that much?”

  Halli knew her grandmother was trying to make her feel better. And it was almost starting to work.

  “Try again,” Ginny said. “Don’t be afraid to tell people both the good and the bad parts. They like the bad parts. They like to know you got through them. It makes them feel like maybe they can do hard things, too.”

  So Halli started over.

  “GOOD. Saw one bear. She looked at us for a long time, but didn’t come close. BAD. Wind storm took my sled. GOOD. I can ski faster now because I don’t have to pull it any more. BAD. All the crackers and candy were on my sled.”

  She showed it to Ginny, who smiled and nodded. Then Ginny transmitted both reports out into the world.

  A little while later, as Halli and Ginny huddled together inside the one remaining sleeping bag, Halli yawned and asked if it was true.

  “Do you really think people care what happened to us today?”

  “I’m sure of it,” Ginny answered.

  “Why?”

  “Why do you like all the stories I tell you about famous explorers?” Ginny asked. “Why do you read all their books?”

  “I don’t know,” Halli said. “They’re exciting. I like to know what happens next.”

  “You like to know that they survived,” Ginny said.

  “Yes,” Halli said. “I always want that.”

  “Well, think of it,” Ginny said. “There are a million strangers out there in the world tonight who wanted to know that you survived another day out here. And n
ow they do. So they can have their hot cocoa and put on their warm pajamas and go to bed.”

  Hot cocoa. Something else that had been on Halli’s sled. Gone now.

  But Ginny didn’t leave any time for self-pity. No point in that. She was on to her next question. “So what is our brave adventurer Halli Markham going to do next?”

  Halli thought about it for a moment. Then gave the kind of answer she knew Ginny herself would give.

  “Get enough sleep tonight so I can ski as far as possible tomorrow.”

  “That’s my girl,” Ginny said.

  28

  “Miss Markham? Can you hear me?” a nurse asked.

  I peeked open one eye to make sure she was the only one in there. Maybe it was just a nightmare, but I could have sworn I heard Halli’s mother’s voice. Even if I were feeling a hundred percent healthy, that woman would be the last person I wanted to see.

  But the nurse and I were alone. I went ahead and opened my eyes.

  “There you are!” she said. “How are you feeling?” She had a beautiful voice, with a soft, lilting accent that sounded like she might be from the Caribbean or somewhere like that. It felt very soothing to my ears.

  I licked my chapped lips.

  “Water?” the nurse asked.

  I nodded.

  She helped me with the straw, then held the cup while I drew in fresh clean water. It felt so good on my tongue and my lips. Like rain on a pile of sand.

  “Please,” I rasped, “can you help me?”

  “Certainly, Miss Markham. Shall I call the doctor?”

  She was reaching for some button on her collar when I stopped her.

  “No. I need someone. His name is Daniel. Do you know who he is? Has he been here?”

  “Yes...”

  Good. I didn’t think I’d imagined his voice before, but my brain was so muddled, I couldn’t say for sure.

  “Can you find him for me?” I asked. “Please? It’s very important that I talk to him.”

  Out of everyone in that world, only he and his parents knew the truth about me: that I wasn’t sick, wasn’t damaged in some way, but had merely switched universes and taken over Halli Markham’s body. That’s all.