“If the people left, maybe something scared them away. Maybe they were all killed by something. We might not be safe even being this close. We don’t know enough about that place.” Handro was growing openly flustered trying to convince Cooper of all these things. “I have seen many different styles of settlements over all the years and I have never seen anything like that. I have also never seen a place in pristine shape like that and empty. Something is going on there!”
“I’ll grant you that it is very odd that it’s empty. Really though, if something had killed them or chased them away, wouldn’t there be a mess? It was like it was never lived in at all. I think people may have built it but then never made it inside or something.”
“Maybe it’s cursed. Maybe the builders knew that it was cursed and never went inside.” Handro was reaching on that one and he knew it. He just wanted to try to think of any reason a place like that would be empty.
“I think there’s more evidence that we’re cursed.”
Handro smiled back at Cooper, knowing it was his way to try to lighten the mood. Handro appreciated it.
The delicious smell of rabbit meat filled the air and both men knew it was time to eat. The dogs crawled out of the shelter in time for food, as was their way, and the foursome dug into the roasted meat. Cooper had shaken some salt off the dried meat from their bags to season this meal and it tasted phenomenal.
Naturally, the dogs had finished eating before the two men were even done chewing their first bites. Cooper laughed at the way they still stayed out there, staring at them. Rufus would hold as still as a statue. The only indication the dog was alive was an ever growing line of drool that extended from his mouth nearly to the ground. It used to be slightly nauseating to the redhead, but it had turned into one of Rufus’ many endearing traits.
After the meal, Handro decided to turn in. Trying to walk around on the crutch had taken its toll on him.
Cooper, on the other hand, decided to stay up and read by firelight. He flipped through the handful of books he had grabbed before departing. He knew he should be reading through one of the school books to maybe pick up a new skill, but instead he chose the story book titled ‘Wool’. His brain had been through enough for the day and he wanted merely to relax.
He cracked open the book he thought was named after his outer layer of clothing and stayed awake by the fire long into the night learning it was about anything but that.
+++
In the morning, Cooper crawled outside the warm shelter to discover that a biting wind had returned. He saw Handro braiding more shrubs into a new wall of the little shelter.
Since Handro couldn’t walk around very well, he had been trying to stay productive by expanding their small camp. Currently, he was constructing a small addition to give them more room to move around inside. He had tilted their small boat slightly to allow them to store things underneath it and have access without having to go outside. The boat was also one side of the shelter, so with his additions it would be three rooms.
Cooper admired Handro’s ability to construct things so quickly but still have them be incredibly durable. The previous day he had constructed a sled to pull firewood back with. This tool allowed the redhead to stop making multiple trips with his arms full. It was very helpful considering how far he had to walk now to find dead wood worthy of burning. They had used up all the wood that was close and all that was left were the green branches that didn’t throw off much heat all.
After telling Handro that he was going to check the snares and bring back firewood, Cooper headed off into the wind, dragging his sled behind him in the snow. The wind this morning was so cold it made his eyes water. He knew he had a bit of a walk to find firewood, so as he trudged along, he stared out at the great expanse that was the frozen river. He could actually see some tracks across it in the snow. Some gutsy animal had taken a big risk.
Looking across the river, he could see trees over there he hadn’t touched at all loaded with dead limbs. He weighed his chances as he pushed through the deep snow. It was simply too much of a risk to cross and he knew it. If he were to fall into the icy river, especially with Handro’s injury, he wouldn’t be coming out.
After walking all the way across the field for wood, he was rewarded with an ample supply. He had seen this wood when he was checking snares the first time. With the aid of his sled, he would be able to bring several days worth back in one trip.
With the sled full of wood, Cooper knew it would be heavy. Once he got moving in the snow it moved easily and the weight seemed to lessen. For the return trip home, he would just have to continue moving.
As Cooper approached his snares, he could see he had caught a few more rabbits. He was very pleased with himself as he quickly dispatched them and then set them on top of the wood for their sled ride home.
The rabbits were nearly frozen from this cruel wind and cleaning them would be a pain. Thankfully, Handro had volunteered to clean all the game since he couldn’t go hunt.
After checking his deadfall style traps and once again finding nothing, he thought about removing them. The small piece of meat for bait was still there on all of them. Did nothing in this cold eat meat? Could they not find it because it was frozen? Cooper wondered all these things, but he decided to leave them where they were.
His nose had grown so cold it was starting to feel hot. He knew that had to be a bad sign. He had the covering over his face, but the wind seemed to be able to slice right through it.
Since he was already all the way across the field, he decided to stop in the warm hallway just to allow his body to shake off the cold for a second. Handro had asked that he not go back inside alone again, but it wasn’t like he was going to run over here and yell at him. Besides, maybe the rabbits would thaw slightly if he left them just inside the door for a bit.
Hearing the familiar ‘welcome’ as he walked through the door made Cooper smile. Setting the rabbits in the corner, he started walking down the hallway. As usual, nothing had changed. His note was still exactly where he had put it further down the hallway the last time he had come inside.
Feeling more comfortable inside the strange structure, he decided he wanted to explore one of the large rooms, the rooms labeled ‘S’. Heading over to ‘S 1’, he watched the door slide open and all the lights inside pop on.
The room seemed even larger than he remembered. His confidence was slightly shaken, especially by the distance he had to cross before he even made it to the large crates. Summoning his courage, he began crossing the open space anyway. He was placating his nerves by telling himself that the crates were wood, so this whole thing was full of potential firewood!
As he walked across the room, he saw the floor had the same parallel lines running all across it as well as the small black boxes along the walls. He caught a glint of a reflection off one of those small boxes. He still wanted to know what those things were, so he walked over there to see what might have reflected light back at him. All the other small boxes were matte black and hadn’t been able to reflect anything when he inspected them thoroughly the first day he came inside.
Cooper was quickly sidetracked when he saw a box labeled ‘Medical’ in large print. He walked right up to it and saw several others had the same word painted largely on all sides. The box looked large enough for him to sleep in if he curled up, so he couldn’t even imagine what could be inside.
He could see small hinges, nearly at the same height as his shoulders, and quickly knew prying on the lid would do no good. Walking around to the other side revealed small, butterfly shaped metal closures. They were still very shiny with no signs of rust, or even dust, on them anywhere.
Fidgeting with the closures, he discovered that he had to flip the flat metal part out so that it was perpendicular to the rest of the equipment. Then he simply spun it and watched a small piece of metal pull out of the box. He did this same procedure to the other two locks and slowly lifted the heavy wooden lid.
Inside he saw
hundreds of other boxes labeled with what looked more like random groupings of letters, rather than words. The boxes said things like ‘Cyclobenzaprine’ and ‘Naratriptan’. Since they were inside this box, he assumed he could look those words up in the medical books that were in the other room.
He saw one box labeled ‘Aspirin’ and grabbed that one. At the very least, it was a less complicated word to look up! He opened the small box and found it filled with many small vials that were all labeled identically. He stuffed one vial into his pocket and went to open some more big crates.
While he was interested in the contents of that first crate, he was hoping for more exciting things. After peering inside three more crates, he found that they all contained similar items. Most of them were small, hard round things, but many were vials of liquid with metal lids. Some were tubes of things. He took a small sampling of various items until his pockets were full.
He wanted to try one more crate before leaving to look these things up in the heavy books. Spinning the latches on a final crate revealed something different. This crate was full of pieces of leather and straps of all different sizes. He pulled a few out and saw that each one had a sheet of paper with a picture on it. The one in his hands detailed a wrist and how the piece of material laced it tight and held it in place.
At first, Cooper was confused, thinking maybe these things kept your wrist warm. As he read the words on the paper he discovered that wasn’t accurate. These items were to help injuries! The redhead grew excited that there might be something in there for Handro to use.
Quickly, he tilted the box on its side and dumped many of the contents on the floor. He started flipping through them until he found a heavy one with a picture of a foot and ankle. It almost looked like a shoe but it had a thick piece of metal along the bottom that attached to straps and wrapped up the leg.
After reading the information on the page, he learned that it was supposed to take the weight off the foot and transfer it up the leg, bypassing the injury. Cooper was very excited to find this and emptied some of the contents of his pockets to make room for the useful item.
He knew he needed to be getting back fairly soon or Handro might try to tromp all the way across the field to make sure he was ok. He quickly left the room without putting anything back in its place and found himself back out in the hallway. Before he left, he wanted to look up some of the words in the medical books.
Walking down the hallway towards the smaller room, he noticed something looked different. The small black boxes had opened. He stared into one of the tiny lenses housed inside. He knew they weren’t open when he first saw them. He couldn’t figure out what must have changed, but he knew the lights came on automatically. It wasn’t a far stretch to assume that these were also somehow activated by him walking around.
As he walked into the library room, he noticed the two black boxes in there were open also. Casting that out of his mind, he opened one of the big medical books and started searching through it for the names on the small vials. Most of them weren’t in the glossary, but he did find the word ‘Aspirin’ listed.
He read that it was a pill to relieve pain, especially joint pain, and that it was made from the bark of willow trees. Cooper instantly remembered that Handro had mentioned chewing on bark to relieve pain in the past because he lamented not having any when he injured his ankle.
“Could this be the same bark, just in a different form?” Cooper said aloud to the empty room.
Since he had found two things that might benefit Handro greatly, he figured he wouldn’t be too angry at him for sneaking back inside. Cooper brought the book listing ‘Aspirin’ along with him to show the other man, in case he needed convincing. As he strolled out of the hallway, he remembered to grab his rabbits, which had thawed nicely.
As the doors opened, he discovered that the conditions outside had grown even worse. The wind was stronger now and blowing snow all over the place. He couldn’t see the fire across the field and felt guilty for spending so much time inside the warm rooms.
Tucking his face back into its cover, he pulled the rope on the woodsled around his waist and started high stepping through the deep drifts of snow. His eyes were nearly squinted shut against the blowing snow as he slowly made his way back across the flat field.
+++
Handro was feeding the fire with the remaining wood when Cooper returned. He had built the fire very large to compensate for the action of the blowing snow. Cooper’s journey back had taken longer than he expected since he was fighting the wind and dragging the wood at the same time. The sky was so cloudy he couldn’t tell where the sun was, but he knew it couldn’t be much past mid day even though it had grown so dark.
“Got some more rabbits, Handro!”
“Excellent. Looks like the sled worked out pretty good for the wood, too.”
“Yeah, it worked great. Easy to pull it once you get it moving in the snow.” Cooper glanced back at the large pile of wood he had dragged through the snow. The wind had already hidden his tracks. “I brought some things for you from the supply room, too.”
He waited to see if Handro would be upset with him, but it never came. “If you think I believed you would walk all the way over there without going inside, you are wrong.” The dark skinned man smiled. “I just wanted you to be careful. What did you find?”
Cooper laid out the drugs first and Handro looked at them questioningly. He was obviously not planning on trusting some tiny, hard dot. As Cooper reached for the medical book explaining the pain pill, he pulled out the reinforced boot.
Once Handro saw that, he lost all interest in the medication. “Do you think this works?” he asked with wide eyes.
“Let’s find out.”
Cooper unwrapped his ankle and could see that the discoloration had mostly gone away now; the area was just a dull yellow against the deep gold of his skin. As he slipped the boot on, the grimace that slid across Handro’s face was evidence that the area was still very tender.
“The instructions say to lace it up tightly, but not so tight it stops the blood flowing.”
After Handro had adjusted the new boot until it felt right, he stood up. He was able to hobble around the camp faster than he did with the log for a crutch. “The pain is much less than it was. Thank you for bringing this back for me.”
Cooper was smiling with pride. “Just think of what else we may find over there? I only went inside one of the ‘S’ rooms and even then I didn’t open very many crates. There are hundreds in each room!”
“You’re right. It’s foolish to ignore what could be valuable tools. Tomorrow we will both go over there and look in the other two rooms.”
With the wood stacked nicely underneath their small boat, Cooper watched Handro quickly and efficiently clean the rabbits. They had re-frozen on the trek back, but it didn’t appear to slow him down at all.
With the other rabbits he had snared, they now had eight pelts. Handro laid the new ones fur side down on the side of the boat to catch smoke coming off the fire. This had a preservative effect and helped dry the hide down, cinching the hair in place. He placed a rock on each one so they didn’t get blown away. Cooper assumed the other pelts were done since he had removed them. Once they were thoroughly smoked and dried, all he had to do was break them in by rubbing them on a log for awhile until the skin grew soft.
Cooper was getting ready to ask Handro about the other ones as a crack of thunder shook the world around them. The redhead jumped as he saw the dogs come running in from wherever they had been and practically dove into the shelter.
The wind picked up considerably as Handro and Cooper followed the dog’s lead into their house made of sticks. As they all sat inside, the wind rocked the small space. They could both hear it shifting uncomfortably.
“How much of this do you think it can take?” Cooper asked. Somehow his face had gotten even whiter except for his bright red nose.
Handro seemed unfazed. “Truly, I don’t know. I had hoped th
e wind would die down as the day progressed, like it normally does. So little about this northern environment seems normal, though.”
As Cooper began to reply, another gigantic boom of thunder filled the world. The rumbling was so long and deep, it seemed to shake Cooper’s bones. He was not comfortable there. He wanted to leave this shelter and go back to warmth and safety of the rooms.
“Handro, what if we moved…” Just as Cooper was asking him the question, nature answered it for them as a massive gust of frozen wind tore their meager shelter down and flung one wall onto the frozen lake.
Both men yelled out as the dogs practically crawled into their laps. “We need to get to the other side of the field. It’s safe there!” Cooper was yelling now so the other man could hear him over the howl of the wind.
Handro simply nodded and grabbed his handful of possessions before they could blow away. He also grabbed the four new pelts and stuffed them into his waistband.
Both men knew their only chance was across that field. They could not hope to survive in this weather without the protection of a shelter.
Cooper flopped a few things he couldn’t carry onto the wood sled and they began fighting their way across the harsh field.
The sky had grown ominously dark and Cooper hated it. It was not a darkness that comes from a setting sun; this was a darkness that came from something not wanting the sun to reach you.
Handro still could not walk quickly, even with the boot on. Cooper was trying to aid him, but it wasn’t helping much in the given conditions. The redhead had time to think to himself that with the lack of trees, at least they didn’t have to worry about anything falling on them.
By the time they reached the door, both men could barely move. The snow and ice had built up in every little bend in their coverings. Once it started thundering the snow came down much faster. It was nearly waist deep when they reached their destination. They finally crossed the threshold and the door quickly snapped open.
Further: (Down The Path Book 2) Page 14