by Jo Storm
“Hospitals,” she said with her mouth full.
“What?”
“Hospitals. They always look scary, right? I could build a hospital that’s inviting and calms people down.” She paused. “I like it when you look at something and it’s like looking at a mirror, not a wall. That’s what I’m good at, too, putting together things that don’t usually go together. You’re good at observing things, and you keep a lot of information in your head. So that’s good for being a doctor.”
“Yeah, plus I already know how to sew,” he said, rolling his eyes. “Brain surgeon, for sure.”
“You put things together, too, is what I mean. In your head. You think,” she said, “you analyze just as much as I do. Doctors do all that, put things together. Like about my mom. You just said all this stuff about diabetes —”
“I get it, Hannah,” he interrupted. “How about I don’t want to be a doctor?”
“Why?” She hesitated, then said, “Being a doctor is cool.”
She waited for him to say something like, What are you, five? But he didn’t; he said nothing, but ate faster until his packet was empty. He took her empty packet and his, filled them with snow, and emptied them, then Hannah added them to the small refuse bag they carried. She tied everything down to the sled and placed the emergency blanket in the basket.
She came back as Peter was struggling to his feet, but she said nothing. She merely swung her shoulder under his arm and helped him up. He was gasping as he lowered himself back onto the sled.
The wind was rising more and more, not content just to slip among their things, but pawing at them now with baby bear paws, thick and padded and immensely strong. It had started to shift, at first coming from behind, but now moving into their faces. They were running right into it.
“More Tylenol,” Peter said as he lowered himself into the basket. He arranged the tatters of his pants over the bandage and sat back, grabbing the sides of the sled.
“There’s only a few left,” she said.
“Just give me some,” he said, and she saw that his knuckles were tight on the wood frame. He hadn’t even looked at the dogs when they walked very close to him.
She came around to the side of the sled and knelt down. The sled was perpendicular to the trail, pulled there to make emptying it out easier.
“I can’t give you more right now.”
“Hannah, it hurts.”
“Do you see behind me?”
He looked over her shoulder and saw what she no longer wanted to look at, but could see clearly in her mind, anyway: the angry face of a winter storm.
“That’s what the radio guy was talking about. We have to beat that, Peter.”
He looked from the storm to her face. His glasses sat crookedly on his nose, and she realized they no longer fit because his face had lost some of its padding, making the glasses slide farther down. He rubbed his red-rimmed eyes. “This is bullshit.”
“I know. I’m scared, too.”
She called up the dogs and they lined out. She walked to the head of the gangline and started breaking trail for the team. The wind died down, and for a while it was just the thick, heavy snow falling and the jagged rent of the approaching storm in the sky above the empty tree trunks, but it started up again as they approached a section where the trees thinned. She could see the storm had swung around so they were facing it full-on now. It crept across the sky, dark enough that it covered the whole section of sky in front of them like it was night. Around the edges of the massive system, a sickly green light leaked, changed on its course from the sun by the suffocating storm clouds.
They came out of the trees head-on into a wind that almost blew Hannah off her feet. The snow sang past her ears, keening and slicing, stinging her eyes. She swore that she would never again go outside without a pair of goggles in her pocket. The darkness was falling fast, and she could barely see three feet in front of her through the snow and lapsing light, but there was a large open area — another lake? — in front of them. For a moment, the snow arced away in the wind and fell against their backs instead of their faces, and she saw the snow in front of her being driven far past her feet and then down, straight down, a good ten feet …
Hannah yelled and windmilled her arms, almost falling back onto Nook’s head. The darkness of the storm ebbed, and for a moment the scene ahead of them was suddenly lit with a weak, greenish wash of sunlight.
They were at the lip of a pit. Down and down it went, cascading in layered tiers ten feet apart to a wide-bottomed pit ten times that depth. They had missed the snowmobile trail turning to the left to run parallel with the edge and had almost fallen into the pit.
Hannah grabbed Nook’s collar, even though the husky had not moved. The wind shifted, and like a million frozen hornets, the snow tore at her face again. She brought her scarf up over her nose and turned, leading Nook carefully away from the edge and back to where the trail curved along the side.
Once she had relocated the trail, she struggled back to where Peter lay huddled under the emergency blanket. The wind whipped the foil, cracking and ripping it and making it sound like a broken wind chime.
“What’s wrong?” he shouted over the howling of the storm. The snow was driving so hard that it was piling up on the front of the blanket, sliding off in clumps each time he moved.
It was no longer a storm, she realized. It was a blizzard.
“There’s a pit or something,” she shouted back.
He sat up straighter and looked to his right into the dark-grey air where the snow disappeared from sight.
“The quarry?”
“I don’t know, maybe. It’s huge.”
“Yeah, it’s the quarry. That’s good, we’re almost there! It’s just the quarry, then the lake, then Timmins! We can make it!”
The wind was making her eyes tear up, and it felt like the temperature was still dropping. She could feel her eyelashes gluing together at the outside edges as her tears froze almost immediately.
There was no way they could stop now; the top of the lip was like a ski ramp for the wind; it whistled up the side of the quarry and blasted past them, almost lifting her off her feet. Then, from behind them, blizzard gales would swipe, full-grown grizzly bear swipes, lashing and buffeting them. At any moment, they could get caught leaning the wrong way and go tumbling off the side.
“Get under the blanket, including your head, and try not to move!” She had to shout so loudly that her voice was getting hoarse. Peter nodded and slid down until his head and wounded leg were the only things not lying flat. He pulled the emergency blanket right over his head and left only a small opening for his mouth.
Hannah groped her way to the black packsack and rummaged blindly in it until she felt a piece of rope. All the dogs were standing with their backs hunched against the wind, tails tucked and heads close to the ground. She struggled to the front of the sled again, tied the rope to Nook’s collar, and started off.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
One foot, then the other. Keeping the pit and the blizzard winds on her right, Hannah followed the trail around the rim of the quarry, rocked by the competing winds coming in from underneath and from the side and hemmed in by the thick undergrowth on the left.
She glanced back now and then to make sure everyone was okay. What she had thought of as darkness was, she saw now, just the sheer size of the storm. The dogs squinted against the wind so hard their eyes were almost shut, and they walked in a drunken zigzag, trying to keep up with the heaving of the sled as it rocked back and forth, buffeted by the wind.
The gusts were so strong now that the younger trees were almost completely bowed over. The trail they were following got thinner and thinner, until finally they were standing in front of a wind-bent wall of bush. Hannah cast her eyes around, lifting her scarf as high as it would go and shading her forehead with her mitt, trying to see through the snow.
The trail must go somewhere. It can’t just stop.
She swept her eyes al
ong the bush, looking for where the trail cut into it, but there was nothing but trees and shrubs and the occasional rock. She looked back down at her feet, then behind them a few metres, and she saw the tiniest of ridges on the edge of the lip, disappearing fast under the driving snow. She went back and looked more closely.
It was a trail that led down — down into the pit, the tiny edge following the pit wall on an angle.
The trail would have been tricky enough in broad daylight, with fresh dogs who knew what they were doing; but with an injured passenger in a blizzard on the edge of night, with her and the dogs dead tired and inexperienced, it was impossible.
She would have to lead the dogs down to make sure they didn’t miss the trail or capsize the sled. But someone needed to ride the brake as they descended, or the sled would run them all over.
Impossible.
But it can’t be impossible, can it? she thought. Because we’re going to do it. She thought of ways to make it work. She could cut a gee pole — a long pole lashed to the sled so she could walk in front of it, steering and acting as a brake. That wouldn’t work, though; the sled was too heavy and would be on an angle. She could unhook the dogs and pull the empty sled down, then go back and get Peter, but the snow and the wind made it impossible to see anything. She was scared that if she left something or someone alone, they’d get lost. No, it was better to keep everyone together. After a few more minutes of brainstorming, Hannah had a plan.
The path down was not straight, but canted, so if she didn’t steer or brake the sled, it would begin to slide downhill sideways, eventually capsizing, or worse, falling off the ledge. She went back and untied Peter’s remaining snowshoe from the back of the sled, then wedged it between the basket and the brushbow, with the curved end pointed toward the dogs.
“Use it on this side,” she said to Peter, pointing to his left-hand side. “Push down.” She still had to shout to be heard over the wind.
Peter nodded, understanding what she wanted: an additional brake that dug into the hill, keeping them from tipping over. He moved the snowshoe to the far left of the space and grabbed on with two hands, using his good leg for leverage against the brushbow.
Hannah went to the front of the sled and bent over Nook’s head.
“Easy, Nook, easy and slow,” she said, rubbing the husky’s flanks.
Back behind the sled, she took off her snowshoes and slung them over her back, got the brake ready, and shouted, “Huphup, eeeeeasy now!”
The sled moved forward over the lip of the quarry and down the steep slope to the next tier. Peter dug his snowshoe into the side of the bank, using it like a rudder to keep them more or less straight, and down they went. Hannah kept one foot on the drag mat and the other on the brake, using the drag mat to steer and the brake to slow them down.
The sled tilted and slid, and the dogs hustled to the uphill side of the trail to compensate, straining almost perpendicular to the trail. The wind rushed in again and blew them all toward the wall of the pit, and Hannah’s foot slipped off the brake for a moment. The sled shot forward. The gangline slackened suddenly and the dogs stumbled. The sled slid hard toward the side of the ledge.
“Hurry, huphup!” shouted Hannah, getting back on the brake. The dogs responded, pulling hard, and with their force, Hannah’s drag mat steering, and Peter’s leverage, they evened the sled out onto the trail.
It was only a hundred feet, but it felt like a hundred miles. The ledge loomed whenever the sled skidded too far, and Hannah’s heart slammed in her throat. If they went over it, they were all done. She could see Peter’s shoulder straining to keep the snowshoe brake in place against the incline, and the dogs scrambled and heaved and panted, digging through the snowbanks that the blizzard was piling up.
Finally, they were down to the next ledge and the trail flattened out again. Hannah couldn’t tell where they were in the quarry, but the ledge afforded them some relief from the wind.
She reached out a hand to her right, the pit side of the shelf. Her mitt was caught immediately by the up-rushing wind, which lifted her entire arm over her head, and she drew it back, her heart thudding. It was like they were in a bubble, and outside the bubble, the wind and the cold and the snow — winter — wanted to end them.
She stopped the team, grabbed the snowhook, and stumbled off the runners. There was nowhere to tie off to, just the smooth, endless expanse of the shelf running away from them. She set the snowhook as close to the pit wall as she could; if the sled somehow got caught in the wind and was dragged over the side, the snowhook would stop it from falling all the way to the bottom.
She hoped.
Peter sat up, rubbing his right shoulder with his left hand.
“What are we doing?” he shouted. They didn’t have to scream anymore, as they had at the top of the quarry, but he did still have to raise his voice to be heard, and if she went more than four feet away from him, she would lose sight of him in the swirling, stinging snow.
“We have to stop,” she yelled back. “We almost fell off the edge, I can’t see anything, and the dogs are exhausted.”
“We’re so close!”
“I know.”
“We could keep going,” he said. He sounded angry. “I don’t want to stop!”
He half rose from his seat, grimacing and starting to sound off some more, when the wind suddenly shifted. It was like Hannah had touched one of those static electricity generators they had at science fairs; beneath all the layers of clothing, she felt the hair on her arms lift as the space around them turned into a momentary vacuum, sucking everything upward, and then the blizzard was upon them, knocking Hannah off her feet, the dogs sideways against the quarry wall, and Peter back against the basket.
She struggled upright, hanging on to the bucking sled’s sides. The dogs were pressed in a single line against the side of the shelf. Sencha was keening, trying to get behind Nook, and Bogey’s eyes were wide with terror. Rudy and Nook pressed as close to the wall as possible, their paws splayed, their heads bowed as they metaphorically gritted their teeth.
“We’re stopping!” she yelled. Peter, gasping and holding his leg, agreed.
“Don’t get out,” she continued, “I need you to hold down the sled, okay? I need the weight. Don’t move.”
He nodded, and she crawled forward to get out the tent.
Setting it up was almost impossible. Four times, she put the poles in place and tried to spring them up to form the tent roof, and each time, the wind ripped one section or another from its mooring, or it pulled up the tent pegs, or it blinded her with snow. Each time, the tent ended up flapping in the wind like a handkerchief hung out the window of a car going at high speed.
Finally, the wind shifted. Again, it felt as though someone had turned on a vacuum over top of them, sucking up all the air. She had better luck then and eventually got the tent up and the fly over it. She pulled the two packsacks out and stuffed them into the vestibule, packing them up against the tent wall to keep out the wind and anchor the tent, however weakly.
Hannah could no longer feel her fingers, and her nose alternated between stinging and numb. The wind pushed and pulled at her clothing like teeth, snapping on the flapping hood that kept getting blown off her head. Her legs felt like lead again, lead bars that she had to lift and drag around. Her neck was sore from the constant shifting to keep it straight in the conflicting winds, and her arms burned from setting the poles upright over and over while she’d tried and failed to get the tent up.
Then she saw the dogs. They were as doing as badly as she was, if not worse. Sencha was the most pitiful; still tied to the gangline, she roamed the three feet available to her, trying to burrow in behind the other dogs and shivering violently. The three double-coated dogs were lying down, folded into themselves as tightly as Christmas presents wrapped at the store, but still Hannah saw the edge of the wind skimming across their bodies, lifting their coats so cleanly that she could see the pink skin beneath.
That was
not good. The sled dogs could combat almost any temperature and be fine, but they couldn’t fight the wind. The wind lifting their coats allowed the cold to get in, and if that happened, the huskies were no better off than the short-haired Dal was. They could all get hypothermia and die.
The wind whacked Hannah’s hood against the back of her head again. There was nothing on the shelf but the tent and the sled and them. The slats of the sled would not be an effective windbreak for the dogs, and they couldn’t get behind the tent because she’d put it right up against the rock wall. Besides, the wind was constantly shifting and knifing at them from different directions.
“Peter,” she called, “get out. I have to do something with the sled.”
Peter slowly hauled himself out. Wincing, he limped to the tent.
She crawled to the sled and released the snowhook, leaving it out on the snow for the moment. Then she tipped the sled over so that the runners pointed out toward the black nothingness of the pit and jammed the top of it up against the tent. It wasn’t a great windbreak, but it was better than nothing. Then she scrambled inside the tent.
Peter lay on his back. In one hand was the water bottle, in the other the flashlight.
“I feel like crap,” he said. She took the flashlight, got out more Tylenol and handed it to him, then handed back the flashlight.
“Thank you,” he said. He took the pills and drank some water and lay down again.
“Are you hungry?” she asked.
“Yes. No. I don’t know.”
“You need to eat something.”
“I know. Gimme a minute. I had a heck of a time getting in here.”
The side of the tent bulged around the outline of the dog sled up against it as the wind tore at them.
“Peter, I have to bring the dogs into the tent with us,” she said. “It’s too windy.”
“Yeah.” His voice reminded Hannah of the insulin vials: cold, rigid, and thin.
“I’ll put up a barrier, okay? They won’t touch you.”
“I’m tired.”