by Jo Storm
“You are! Now get up and get your stupid coat!”
“I can barely walk, for God’s sake.”
Hannah waved her hand in a whatever motion. “I just saw you sprint fifty feet. You can walk just fine. You’re just lazy.” She hauled herself to her feet and casually set off in search of her own discarded gear, trying to keep her teeth from chattering too loudly. “And by the way, could you get any fatter? It was like hauling a whale out of the lake.”
“I’m going to kick your ass, you know that?” he shouted as she walked away.
“Whatever.” She grabbed her coat. It took all her willpower not to wrap it around herself immediately. If she did, the water from her wet sweater would soak right into it, making it useless. She bent and picked up her toque and put that on right away, along with her scarf and gloves.
When she turned back, Peter was getting to his feet, hauling himself up with the strength of pure rage. He took a few hobbling steps and grabbed his own coat, hat, and gloves. “You get back here, you little —” He stopped midsentence and stared at the things in his hands. “Did you just make me mad on purpose?”
“Well, yeah.”
He glowered at her. “I was going to get up, you know.”
“No, you weren’t.”
He stared at her, shaking his head. “Unbelievable. You are such a shithead, you know that?”
She grabbed the snowhook and began coiling the line to put it away. “Whatever you say, chicken.”
Their biggest obstacle now was building a fire, and the fact that they had no extra clothes. Hannah’s pants were mostly dry, but her sweater and undershirt were soaked. All of Peter’s clothing was starting to stiffen into chunks of ice. When he’d thrown himself out of the sled, the emergency blanket had been torn to pieces, skipping away in the light wind that blew across the lake. She went to the first-aid kit, took out the last emergency blanket, and gave it to him.
Peter stripped down to his underwear, put his dry coat on, and sat in the sled basket wrapped in the emergency blanket. Hannah took out the makeshift coat she had fashioned for Sencha — which was just a dirty undershirt, anyway — and put it on. Then she put her scarf and jacket on. She pulled Bogey’s frozen harness off, and the other dogs’, too. She got four portions of dog food from the sled and fed them, roughing up the fur of each dog as she did. They ate so fast that she was pretty sure none of them even chewed. Then all four dogs settled down immediately and fell asleep, Sencha wedging herself in between Bogey and Rudy. The Labrador was already dry, due to the fact that his oily coat shed water like a duck.
Hannah slapped her arms on her sides to warm herself and placed all the wet, frozen clothing in a pile near where she was going to start the fire.
“Okay. So how do I make a fire?” she asked.
“What?”
“You know, what do I do? I need birch bark, I remember that …”
“Are you kidding me? You can make slipknots in the middle of a disaster and run dogsled teams, but you can’t make a fire?” Peter laughed so hard the sled shifted, waking up the dogs momentarily.
He sent her off with instructions and teased her mercilessly the whole time she was tromping around gathering things. She came back with the first load, and he got off the sled and hobbled to the spot she had picked, using his remaining snowshoe to dig out a firepit while she went for more wood.
By her fourth trip, he had the fire going well. She dumped another armload of dead branches in the pile and turned to get another. “There’s lots of wood there,” he said. “You don’t need to go so far.” She paused, looking back. He was pointing at a large tree nearby. The front of it was almost obscured by a raft of snow, the trunk sticking out like a mast.
“Where?” She looked at the snowbank and the dead branches that started at twice her height off the ground.
“Go around the snowbank. I bet there’s all kinds of stuff behind it.”
She went around it, and sure enough, the snowbank had acted like a winter beaver dam; the snow was trapped on one side, while the other was dry and filled with branches and driftwood and old grass. She hauled armload after armload of it back to the fire. Peter took select sticks and made several teepees to drape their frozen clothes over. He set them close to the fire to dry.
“You could have told me that earlier,” she said.
“What, and miss out on the fun?”
“It’s really not funny, Peter. I’m starving.”
They both were. The last energy bars had been eaten as soon as they had stopped shouting at each other.
“I’m sorry. You can stop. That’s more than enough wood for the night.”
Hannah dropped the last armload and went to the sled. She pulled out four more portions of dog food and was unwrapping them when Peter called to her. “Hey, what’s in that?”
“In what?”
“The dog food. Why does it look like that?”
“It’s special,” she said. “Dad makes it for them for sledding, then he freezes it so it’ll stack up nice and neat.”
“Well, what’s in it?”
“I don’t know, meat and stuff.”
“Is there any, like, real dog food in it?”
She understood that he meant kibble and shook her head.
“No, there’s peas and carrots and oatmeal and stuff. Blueberries, I think, but mostly meat.”
He looked at her and grinned. “Like beef?”
“Yeah.”
“Sounds like stew to me, Hannah.”
Her stomach smacked against her spine with a resounding yes that overrode the smaller part of her brain that said people didn’t eat dog food.
But they had lots of dog food. Lots and lots.
Peter dangled the largest pot from his hand. “Toss some over.”
She tossed two of the bricks over, then got two more, woke the dogs, and fed them a second time. They ate this meal just as quickly as they’d eaten the first. Sencha’s sides heaved as she chewed and ripped at her meal, her ribs and muscles showing clearly. Hannah went back to the fire to see the first two bricks of dog food sticking out of the pot. Peter was adding snow around them.
Soon, the meat and vegetables melted, and the snow melted, too; the dog food watered down with snow began to look less like lumps of brown junk and more like … stew. It smelled like stew, too.
Dog food stew.
Finally, Peter quit stirring and used his poker to grab the steaming pot from the fire, and then they feasted. Hannah burned her tongue and lips, but she didn’t care. After three days of half-frozen powdered meals and energy bars, the richness of the stew was like eating chocolate, honey, caramel, freshly baked bread … every good thing she’d ever eaten in her life paled in comparison to that stew.
Peter ate even more quickly than she did. He built up the fire, tossing larger branches on until the heat of it started to make them sit back instead of leaning forward. The fire spat up far into the sky, the flames as tall as Hannah and getting taller.
Peter opened his emergency blanket a bit, took his glasses out of his jacket pocket, and put them on.
“Hey,” said Hannah, “your glasses!”
“Yeah?”
“I thought you lost them in the lake, like your knife.”
“I’m not going to lose my glasses over your stupid dogs. And you owe me a knife. That was a good one, too.”
“My stupid dogs are feeding you.”
“No, I’m feeding you with their food.”
She lowered her head in mock surrender and they ate some more. They finally slowed down on the third bowl. Peter added more snow and now it was like a soup; the salted meat and root vegetables still made it taste like the world’s best broth.
Hannah turned her spoon upside down in her mouth and sucked it clean.
“I can’t believe you jumped in the water,” she said.
He picked up the poker and stabbed some coals. “I just wanted to do something brave, like you.”
Her hands gripped her b
owl hard. “Brave? I was screaming the whole time.”
“But you got us out. You figured out about Nook. You got us through the blizzard, too.”
“Barely.”
“You still did it.”
“Yeah. Okay.”
“That’s all I meant.”
They stared at the fire for a while.
“What’s the temperature?” he asked. “It feels really warm.”
“I know. I guess about minus five or so?” she said. “The radio was in the other bag.”
“Oh.”
“You know what?” said Peter, coughing.
“What?”
He reached over and bopped her shoulder. “I really hate winter.”
They watched the embers of the fire shift, sending sparks up into the twilight. The sky darkened quickly this time of year. It didn’t alarm Hannah anymore. Somewhere behind them were Jeb and her mom, but Hannah couldn’t save them in the next eight hours, and she knew that pushing now, with the end so near, was just asking for trouble. No, they would stay by the fire, be warm, then go to sleep early.
Ugh. As soon as I put up the tent. And get the water ready. And check Peter’s wound.
Groaning, she rose, went to the sled, and pulled out the tent and their water bottles and the first-aid kit before she had a chance to think about it and feel too full and sleepy. The ground sheet had been in the bag that got lost, so she just put up the tent and the fly and threw the sleeping bags inside. She left the supply pack tied to the sled. The sky was still clear, with a few stars already showing, and she could feel that the weather was light, even on her ice-burned cheek. There would be no snow for a little while, and no danger of being buried again.
Even though she was practised now, it seemed like she was moving through a vat of glue as she set everything up and pulled the first-aid kit to the fire. Her arms felt like they weighed a hundred pounds each. She gave Peter the last of the Tylenol, then they unwrapped his bandages and dried off his leg. The wound was puffing up in places now, but whether it was from the freezing water, from infection, or just from healing, she couldn’t tell.
“I don’t know if that’s good or bad,” she said, pointing at the deepest part of the cut, which was turning purple all across his calf and heaving up much like the ice on the lake had. The flesh was swollen and angry-looking. Some parts still leaked blood sluggishly.
“I think it’s okay,” said Peter. “The water washed it out and I’ve had it near the fire. I mean, it feels like it’s on fire, anyway.”
They could do little more than apply the antibacterial ointment and cover it back up with the same bandages. Hannah could feel heat coming from the wound as she rewrapped it, and she tried to keep her face calm. Peter hissed and made faces, but didn’t swear, leaning back on his hands and looking at the sky when she had to tug especially hard.
“What do you think Jeb is doing now?” Hannah asked.
Peter looked sykward. “She’s probably recovered by now, and worried sick about me,” he said. “She knows I can take care of myself, but I try not to leave her alone for long when the weather is dodgy like this.”
“My mom is probably worried sick, too,” said Hannah. “Not just about me — she has to take care of Kelli, too. And my dad is probably still away.” She paused. “They’re going to be so happy to see me when I get back … but I’m going to be in so much trouble.”
She and Peter sat quietly for a moment. Hannah’s stomach ached from so much food after days with so little, and her shoulder smarted from being dragged over the ice. So did her knees and shins. But at last, everything was done. She put away the first-aid kit, lashed the pack closed, and secured it to the sled, then took off her snowshoes, went over to the fire, and slouched down beside Peter. She tugged her jacket open to let in the heat of the flames and clasped her hands around her shins. Finally, her body began to relax, and she stared into the red flames, dreaming with the fire.
They sipped water and stared at the embers as the night drew in around them. Hannah added more wood to make the flames leap high again, and they drank in the heat. The dogs moved and shifted and slept, the fire crackled, and Hannah’s belly gurgled, digesting the stew.
Sometimes Peter coughed. After a while, he handed her the poker, and she stabbed at her side of the fire, sending up more sparks that disappeared into the sky, their red glow fleeting against the sharp diamond white of the stars.
She handed the poker back after the fire had been poked to her satisfaction. “You know that book, The Hunger Games, where all these kids have to fight each other or be killed?” she asked.
Peter grunted. “Yeah.”
“Have you read it?”
“It’s a girls’ book.”
“It’s not a girls’ book.”
Peter looked like he was going to argue — his mouth opened in a flat, long way, like he was about to do the piercing finger whistle that boys loved to do so much — but then he stopped. “I didn’t read it. But I saw the movie.”
“You know the part where they’re in the big city and all the adults are telling them about how hard it is, about how they’ll face adversity?”
He smiled at the fire. “And then they have to do a parade and get dressed up and all that stuff. Matching outfits.”
“And makeup.”
Peter snorted again. “Yeah.”
She paused for a minute, because she liked the book, and she wanted to say it right. She didn’t want to make something else small just so that she could be big. And what she wanted to say seemed so funny; she couldn’t really stop the smile that started to tug at her lips. She picked up her smoke-blackened bowl and looked down at the hole in her snow pants. Then she looked at Peter. He had a blotch of grease across his forehead from wiping away sweat with a stew-covered hand. He scratched at scraggly patches of black hair growing on his chin and along his jaw, and one side of his glasses was fogged, the other a blurry smear. She looked down at herself again, and when she looked up, she was smiling so hard her cheeks hurt.
“I don’t think that adversity has makeup artists.”
He had that look again, like she was crazy, and who could blame him? They were talking about books in the middle of a winter night on the shore of a lake he had almost drowned in. But he began to shake his head, and then his shoulders, and she realized he was laughing, and then she was laughing, too.
Sencha sat up in case she was missing something interesting, but in the end decided to stay with her team. She lay back down again, burrowing in close to Bogey’s flanks. Hannah looked up at the stars. One shone brightly right at the horizon — she pointed to it. “Is that Venus? The Evening Star?”
“I don’t know. Could be a satellite. I think it’s moving.”
They both watched, and it seemed as if the star did move; it flickered and disappeared for a moment, reappearing a little distance away, but somehow bigger.
“Must be a satellite,” Peter decided.
Hannah watched as the light hovered along the tops of the trees on the other side of the lake, blinking out now and then and reappearing. After a while she could tell it was definitely getting bigger, and nearer.
“I don’t think that’s a satellite,” she said, rising from her seat. “I think that’s something else.”
“Like what?” said Peter, craning his neck.
Then the light dipped down and winked out for good.
Hannah peered into the darkness, but the light did not return, so she sat back down. A minute later, a movement caught her eye outside the circle of light from the fire, and she turned her head back to other side of the lake. The light was back, and this time it was pointed right at them.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
The light was accompanied by a sound, then it disappeared again but the noise remained, and then both the noise and the light broke the edge of an embankment, and she saw the dark, hulking shape of a snowmobile. It coasted to the edge of their campfire light, and then the light winked off and the engine cut o
ut. The dogs began to bark, but Hannah could identify their voices almost individually now and was not worried. Each of them was barking the hello/pay attention/we are here bark, not the wordless growl of being confronted by a true predator, the way they had with the wolf.
“Hello!” called a voice over the barking.
“Hello?” Hannah called back, standing up with her bowl still in her hand.
“I saw the fire. I live on the other side of the lake. Are you okay?”
For a moment Hannah was at a loss for words. She turned and glanced at Peter, who was still sitting and had his spoon halfway to his mouth.
“We’re okay,” she finally called.
A bulky shape rose off the machine and walked toward them carefully, snowshoe-less feet sinking in the snow. The dogs lay back down and went to sleep, even Sencha, who was still wedged between Rudy and Bogey.
“I would have been here sooner, but I couldn’t come across the lake — ice is rotten from this crazy weather.”
“We know,” said Hannah.
Beside her she heard Peter laugh, then cough, spitting out phlegm. “That’s the understatement of the year right there,” he said. It seemed like the understatement of her life.
Hannah watched the man as he walked into the light of the fire. He was wearing a long dark-green parka with fur around the hood. It had many deep pockets on the outside — a woodsman’s jacket. His mitts were the snowmobile kind, with wide ends that fit over his jacket to keep the wind out. Beneath his hood and above the snow goggles he wore, Hannah could see the edge of a brown knit toque.
The man stopped and took in the scene. Hannah imagined how the two of them looked to him: filthy from wood smoke and from gorging themselves, their noses running and their eyes red from leaning too close to the fire, still bedraggled from their icy dunking. His eyes flicked over the packed sled and the four dogs before coming back to the fire and the snow-filled pot beside it, then the water bottles that sat open-mouthed, waiting to be refilled. He took a step toward them. Silently, Nook and Bogey rose, their tails slightly lifted, and Nook raised a lip in silent warning. The man saw the dogs’ movement and stepped back, putting his foot into its previous footprint. He left his hands hanging and lifted his chin in the greeting that locals used, pointing it at them.